A Web Home Away From Home: "Purple Veins Scenic Greens"

Purple Veins Scenic Greens

Back in the latter 1990's when I first began my online life, I found a wonderful little message board hosted on AOL run by Lush fans. It remember the feeling of how awesome it was to finally connect with others just like myself!

The band was still in the news in those days, and that message board was kept busy daily. Not that there was much to be seen there, due to the limitations of web services in those early days. It was all fan talk.

We'd type in our short praises to Lush, relating back and forth when we first heard the music, what shows we saw (if we were SO lucky!), our shock and saddeness concerning Chris, the relating any rumours of a possible reformation, and the inevitable announcement that the surviving band members would perform together no more.


Fast forward several years and we now have something we could only have dreamed of before. A web-home away from home for the Lush fan which was light years beyond that old message board.

The Purple Veins Scenic Greens Yahoo Group, or PVSG for short, has been around for a while so it has quite a bit to offer the new member, tons of fan-collected photos, hard to find recordings, links to other sites and a much bigger community of fans. Founded in December 2004 by group owner Jen (a.k.a. mladka2000), she is a knowledgable Lush fan who is devoted to making the group the best it possibly can be. Because of that, there is always something new to be found there. In fact PVSG has been so successful that the moderator has been forced to create a PVSG-2 just to store the overflow of files.

As a follower who wants to keep up-to-date with all-things Lush, I have much to be thankful for, especially for a devoted fan like the group's owner.

Job well done, Jen!

Stratosphere Fanzine Yahoo Group

Stratosphere Fanzine

This one site covers a goodly swathe of my pre-millenial listening habits from those long gone care-free days of yore. It's another Yahoo group I enjoy browsing through for unexpected goodies, which focuses soley on a broad spectrum of alternative music. Interests are mostly of the 90's variety, or if you prefer to hang labels: alternative, indie, rock, pop, shoegazer, guitar, dreampop, new wave, goth, electronic, punk, metal, alt folk, twee... the industrial tag was ommitted, but I'm sure that was just an oversight ;P

Seriously, Jen the group's moderator writes for the DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY music site. She is also a mega-huge Lush fan. There is a ton of exclusive material found here and here alone.

Lush "Single Girl/Ladykillers" at The White Room, 1996

Lush - Rage Interview

No date given :(

Lush 500 (live) at T in the Park

Lush "Ladykillers" (live) at T in the Park

Performing for T in the Park, 13 July 1996. The Tennents Brewery-sponsored music festival known as T in the Park took place in Strathclyde Park, near Hamilton, Scotland.

Following after the The Prodigy, Lush came on in the small King Tut's Tent, a small venue in Glasgow. The venue was fairly full for the show of indie fans compared to the earlier bands. Lush played a very tight set, including crowd pleasers like "Sweetness and Light", "Ladykillers", "Single Girl" finally closing the set with a hard-driven version of "Ladykillers."

Miki in Green Wallpaper

Here's the old background I used on one of my earlier Lush websites six years back- feel free to use it as a desktop wallpaper on your computer.

"Lush: Sweetness and Light" (live) Vancouver, 1996

Lush: Sweetness and Light
Live at the Commodore Ballroom. Vancouver, Canada, April 11, 1996

Unofficial live recording. Offered as an audio CDr. I'm not sure when this was first released, but I found my copy a couple years back. There's audience noise and all but it's not too distracting. The recording quality is okay to good, but the band's performance is excellent. I rate this as one of my favorites. Miki belts out a jagged-edge and Emma, Phil and Chris piledrive away a powerful version of 'De-Luxe' which continues to build to "Hypocrite." Yes, there's sweetness and light... along with a lot of raw rock.

PLAYLIST
1 Heavenly Nobodies
2 The Childcatcher
3 Lovelife
4 500
5 Single Girl
6 Kiss Chase
7 De-Luxe
8 Light from a Dead Star
9 Undertow
10 Hypocrite
11 Runaway
12 Sweetness and Light
13 Ladykillers
14 Last Night
15 Demystification

Lush Interview

No date provided :/

De-luxe v.2 Video

Unforgettable.

How do you descibe this with words?? You must watch to truely appreciate the great visual artistry that matches in every way a great piece of music. The most beautiful music video ever made in my opinion, and my all-time favorite. Everything in my world faded away whenever this was shown late Sunday nights on MTV's 120 Minutes, a showcase for indie music which unfortunately in later years choked itself by catering more and more to promoting the media darlings big record labels. But that's an entirely different subject ;)

Fortunately I recorded the Lush videos from the show on to VHS so that I could enjoy them again and again whenever. Now then, when, oh WHEN will the record companies be brave enough, and with the band members' blessing, to offer a professionally recorded collection of all the Lush videos? Should this art be lost to us forever?

We continue to wait . . .


- - - - update - - - -

The audio has been disabled on this video due to the fact that WMG has not authorized this posting... booooo! As I stated earlier, if WMG is so worried about losing a buck by bringing up the copyright issue on a low quality youtube video, than they need to cough up what Lush fans clearly want.

Some Lush Links

This is a list of currently active Lush related sites, odds and ends, dumped from my bookmarks in no particular order...

Lush Sites

• Yahoo! Groups : Stratosphere_Fanzine_2
• Lush (quimby site)
• Yahoo! Groups : purpleveinsscenicgreens
• Neil's Lush Video Page!
• Sing-Sing
• BILL'S LUSH HOME PAGE
• De-Luxe Lush (broke links 'cept pics)
• Starlust's Lush Page
• downer / the lush site
• Lush Interviews/collected on "depth"
• Emma Anderson
• RAD Interview with Lush
• Lush Interview
• Lush
• Yahoo! Groups : Stratosphere_Fanzine
• lush page!
• Yahoo! Groups : purpleveinsscenicgreens Messages : Message 7 of 131

LUSH merchandise

• Amazon.com: Music: Lush
• Amazon.com: Music: Scar [IMPORT]
• eBay - Lush, Lush CDs items at low prices
• eBay item 4709542403 (Ends Mar-19-05 02:24:27 PST) - LUSH KALEIDOSCOPIC HARMONIES CD 1991 16TRK EUROPE RARE!
• Red Eye Records Australia CDs vinyl LPs rare collectable promo deleted

My Tribute

a tribute
a memorial
a shrine

All may be applied to a blog that pales in the brilliance of the subjects to which it respectfully, enthusiatically and humbly pays hommage to.

Together they were called LUSH: Chris, Phil, Emma and Miki.

But then, you obviously already know that ;)

And myself? I'm just another humble fan.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment when Lush found me, here in the heart of America (was it by the local college radio, or through my fave indie/import record shop?). I can only say I was very fortunate, because they found me early on, soon after Gala came out.

How to describe that moment? The dreamy melodies struck me down like an ethereal sledge hammer. I quickly sought out the '90 Gala album, was transcended by the overwhelmingly deep magic created by it's artists. Then there was the '91 Black Spring ep that soon followed. I obsessed over each consecutive release one after the other. And later, when I saw for the first time those videos, For Love, then De•Luxe ...absolutely Brilliant! There were never any doubts, only positive affirmations. I've been a jealously loyal follower since those early days.

This blog is the newest reincarnation of a humble (and dreadful!) page I created back in 1997 which languished through several forgettable variations over the years. Oh well, perhaps this time I can get it right ;P

I'm having a go as a blogger. My hope is to keep a somewhat current, up-to-the-minute site rather than strictly focusing on the past. The Lush story is not over yet, not for me or any one of the thousands of Lushfans.

So, using the same image of the band that graced my old site, I begin anew. I don't know if it'll work out any better. That's my intent anyway. We'll see where it goes from there...

Lush - Undertow (Spooky Remix) / Footage taken from the 1994 'Split' tour

I absolutely love this video. It's strictly in black & white, yet it's nothing but fitting for Undertow, far removed from the colorful eyecandy were used to. A perfect video interpretation of the multi-layered musical mood set by "Undertow" remix.

The footage was taken from the band's 1994 tour in America promoting 'Split.' It was all filmed by bassist Phil King, who is also a bit of a shutterbug – Thanks Phil!