Oblivians

Since issuing their first album, Soul Food, in 1995, the Oblivians have unsettled rural residents around Memphis through their sleazy raunch & roll approach. The trio avoids the familiar expectation that three-piece groups inevitably sound "wimpy" or "watered down." Instead they salute the Ramones, the Sonics, and the Stooges by shaping a nostalgic '60s garage punk identity built on lo-fi equipment. Sympathy Sessions, a live-in-studio collection, surfaced the next year together with their second album, Popular Favorites. Retaining their unconventional two-guitars-and-drums formation, the band joined keyboardist Mr. Quintron for the aptly named Play 9 Songs with Mr. Quintron in 1997. That set proved to be their final studio recording, after Greg Oblivian (aka Greg Cartwright) and Jack Oblivian elected to revive their earlier project, the Compulsive Gamblers. Sympathy for the Record Industry issued the authorized non-Crypt compilation The Best of the Worst: 93-97 in 1999, and Melissa's Garage Revisited appeared the following year.

After the split, further ventures included the long-running Reigning Sound fronted by Greg Oblivian, plus work with the Detroit Cobras and with original Shangri-Las singer Mary Weiss on her late-2000s comeback album, Dangerous Game. Oblivians member Eric Friedl kept running the expanding Goner Records label and its attached store, collaborating with rising artists such as Jay Reatard. In 2009 the Oblivians reunited for shows alongside the likewise reassembled trash rockers the Gories, and by 2012 plans were announced for a new studio album. Desperation appeared in 2013 on In the Red Records.