Red Red Meat - Stained & Lit

JUL 01 1994 · 12:00

Red Red Meat - Stained & Lit (1994) Era: Mid-90s American Alternative Underground (1993–1994) - Chicago-rooted Sub Pop blues-rock at the peak of post-grunge indie ferment; contemporaneous with the Siamese Dream touring cycle and the rise of college-radio alternative as a commercially legible but still subcultural form. A rare official video document for one of the most critically lauded tracks from Jimmywine Majestic, a record that occupies a significant but underexamined position in the Sub Pop catalog. The video's visual grammar, dim, warm, texturally degraded, functions as an audiovisual correlate to the song's blues-drenched paranoia and emotional murk, offering researchers a primary artifact of the Chicago indie underground at a pivotal cultural moment, just as post-grunge alternative was being absorbed into mainstream culture. Context: Red Red Meat were a Chicago-based blues-inflected alternative rock band active from the early 1990s. Jimmywine Majestic (Sub Pop, 1994), the album from which 'Stained & Lit' is drawn, was recorded at Idful Studios and produced by Brad Wood, who also worked with Liz Phair and Sunny Day Real Estate. The band were signed to Sub Pop after director Jonathan Poneman saw them at Idful, making them the first Chicago act on the legendary Seattle label. The record was described by critics as Exile on Main St.-era Rolling Stones filtered through American paranoia and blues fatalism. The song's mopey, narcotized quality, reviewers compared it to a 'catatonic Billy Corgan strumming his guitar', and the video's amber-stained visual grammar place it squarely within early-90s indie rock's valorization of degraded, lo-fi authenticity as artistic statement. Tim Rutili would later found Califone, carrying the band's experimental, cinematic sensibility into the post-rock era. Director notes: The video carries an 'OFFICIAL VIDEO' designation per the YouTube filename [sbUi9nohmBU]. 'Stained & Lit' is track 2 on Jimmywine Majestic, released February 15, 1994 on Sub Pop Records (catalog SP243). The source album was produced by Brad Wood at Idful Studios, Chicago. The video's aesthetic, low brightness, muted warm tones, moderate pacing, is consistent with low-budget indie video production practices of the early-to-mid 1990s Chicago underground scene. No production company, director, or video commissioner credit has been located in Discogs, Bandcamp, Sub Pop Records, or any other indexed source.