twitch

With all this coverage of Thought Industry, it only makes sense to mention Twitch – perhaps ultimately the more compelling Kalamazoo rock act for me, and undoubtedly the more tragic Michigan r0ck n roll legacy. I came to own their full length CD Beaten Senseless and Giddy With Love more or less by accident: at the time (1993), there was another Detroit-area band called ‘twitch‘ with a Primus/NoMeansNo vibe that I had heard featured on WPHS fm.
Of course, the k-zoo Twitch has eclipsed every other band (and there’s many of them!) which has adopted the same name.

Within a short time, I had phoned Grass Records to buy the last two available CDs of their Homewrecker EP, and urged everyone I knew to listen to them. Twitch had a dense, aggressive heaviness with Chris Bryers‘ moody Peter Gabriel/Mission of Burma-influenced vocal melodies contrasting warmly against Kevin Oberlin’s jagged axe-work. I found that the overall impact of their craft seemed to appeal to fans of Tool, which made sense when the HUGE news broke that Twitch were signed by RCA imprint Zoo (Tool’s label).

Poised to be the greatest success story of the Kalamazoo music scene, their Medicine Ball EP made rounds with local press just in time for the rather devastating announcement that their label had dissolved and so Twitch came to end. I was able to attend their “last” performance, with easily the largest crowd I’d ever seen at Club Soda.

Later, Bryers surfaced briefly as vocalist for Knives are Quiet, and both he and Kevin Oberlin went on to provide more sonic brilliance in the band Sleet years after.

As always, leonstemple.com is the definitive Twitch resource, and they are also remembered with a great myspace page (including live video!). Another fantastic Twitch web archive is maintained by Allyson Martin (wife of bassist Steve), and – like most of the music I like so much – you can buy the Beaten Senseless… CD for $.01 at Amazon.

And lastly, as precious evidence of what RCA could’ve sold to the world, here’s the song “Propellor” from the hard-to-find Medicine Ball EP:

Twitch – “Propellor” (mp3)