Minerva Strain - Strum (1992)

Formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1990, Minerva Strain maintained a consistent line up for all six years of the band’s existence. Pat Johnson, Nick Lingg, Andy Shull, and Jason Summers all met while working at UNC student radio station WXYC. Shull was the primary songwriter, but Summers and Lingg also wrote. Ted Goss, who ran Jettison records, attended the band’s first show and agreed to release a single. "Fissure," backed with REM-ish "Strum," appeared in 1992. Minerva Strain followed their debut single with two more singles and eventually Blue Tarantella, a 73-minute album that appeared in 1995. An early song called "Anushka Babar" appeared on Cognitive Mapping II (Cognitive Mapping I was cassette-only), which is an excellent introduction to the ‘90s Chapel Hill scene. According to Shull, "Things just wound down sometime during 1996, as our futures pulled us all in diverging directions. There was no official farewell performance, so under band law, we are still a band."