Today’s entry: Loa: The Hair and Skin Trading Company.
The Hair and Skin Trading company were a band spun off from the late 80’s space rock band Loop. Part of the band became THSTC, while the other part became the noise droners Main. This song is probably THSTC’s most poppy track, and indeed was the “single” off of their second album, “Over Valence.” As an aside, 1992 was awesome because even bands as inaccessible as THSTC had 12” singles. Theirs was even on clear vinyl.
This album came out when I was the music director at KSUA, the college radio station for the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I put it into heavy rotation. I tried to make the song a hit in the town. I made everyone play it like once an hour, the way they did it on the mainstream stations. Despite us growing the station to the number one station in the city in the 18-34 age group, I met with no success whatsoever in making THSTC a big band in Fairbanks, AK.
I still love this band, and this album. While it’s not quite obvious from this poppier song, THSTC occupied this interesting no man’s land between the drone of the 80’s (Spacemen 3, Loop), and the post rock of the later 90’s (Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky). There was the traditional bridge, of course - shoegaze - but these guys never really fit into that. They were coming from a slightly different place.
