The Bags (1985)
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- This article is about the hard rock band. For other meanings, see The Bags (disambiguation).
| The Bags | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Lexington, Massachusetts |
| Genre(s) | Hard rock |
| Years active | 1985—present |
| Website | www.thebags.org |
| Members | |
| Jon Hardy Jim Janota Crispin Wood |
|
The Bags are a hard rock/punk rock band from Lexington, Massachusetts, and are not to be confused with The Bags, a punk rock band formed in 1977. The band is composed of members Jon Hardy, Jim Janota, and Crispin Wood. Their first effort was titled Rock Starve, and was released in 1987. An article by Charles M. Young written in Playboy magazine best describes the band's sound: "The Bags fall somewhere among the Ramones, Hüsker Dü, and early KISS. Their debut, Rock Starve, consists of thrilling guitar-bash riffs that pound like the sound of a herd of giant woolly mammoths going over a cliff, just enough melody rasping though shredded vocal cords and lyrics wholly unbesmirched by any panty-waist college-poetry influence."
The band began touring in 1988, released an album under the alias of "Swamp Oaf," and later released a self-titled LP. Their next album, Night of the Corn People, came in 1991; shortly thereafter, the band broke up. After remaining separate for over a decade (not counting a single reunion show in 1996), they came together again in 2003 to write songs for their latest effort, Sharpen Your Sticks. A track from this album, "Caveman Rejoice", made it into the PlayStation 2 game, Guitar Hero. In late April of 2007, The Bags released a mighty follow-up to Sharpen Your Sticks, the 14-cut, aptly-titled album Mount Rockmore. With ace producer Carl Plaster (Sebadoh, Buffalo Tom, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, etc.) at the helm, this new full-length marries the slash-and-burn aesthetic of Sharpen Your Sticks with some adventurous muscle-stretching that shows that The Bags haven't lost their knack for righteous rock opera exuberance (case in point being the eight-plus minute song suite "Dark Days In the Valley".
