Monday, November 23, 2009



Grit - Where the Red Fern Grows
1993

Anyone looking to peg Grit’s sound need only scan the song titles of their first cassette, Teach Me To Rock, Baby. One song is called "Haley Mills" and another is a cover of a song from Degrassi High. Tony Perkins and Marc Mazique, who met while attending Rutgers university, formed Grit in 1992 after the demise of Mazique’s other band Sponge. The band never played outside of New Jersey, opting instead to play informal shows in dorm halls on campus.

After recording this cassette, Perkins and Mazique went into a studio to cut a few tracks for an upcoming compilation that their schoolmate Mark Gutkowski was putting together for his Jiffy Boy Label. Tony was still tweaking the lyrics to "Where the Red Fern Grows" the night before the session, but the song made the cut and appeared on the comp, Ten Cent Fix.

By 1994 the band broke up, and both went onto to other projects. Marc Mazique lives in Seattle and Tony Perkins lives in Olympia, Washington with his wife Carrie and daughter Imogen.

1 comment:

Dan said...

Fuck yes, I have loved this song for years! Just googling it now and pulling up yr blog, Mark. Had no idea they'd recorded other stuff. Need to hunt that down