David Middleton

OTHER BRIGHT COLORS  “Stands To Reason” b/w “Circle Square” (1985)

Sporting no visible label name or serial number of any sort, Other Bright Colors’ first and only 7-inch appeared magically in stores around the fall of 1985.  This was, as you can guess, a fertile time period for young indie bands in the southeastern US.  Early ’80’s LA punk stalwarts Black Flag had forged a giant path, like a modern-day Lewis & Clark, through the Deep South and the Great Northwest and back again, paving the way for what would become the American Indie Revolution. 

Soon, kids nationwide were turning burned-out churches and abandoned VFW halls into punk co-ops, creating fanzines and record labels from Xerox paper and glue, and galvanizing bored drop-outs everywhere to stand up and say, “Fuck, we can do this, too!”  Suddenly, it was as if there was a flood of little black plastic discs raining down from the sky.  The “45-as-art” concept that started when Television’s “Little Johnny Jewel” hit the stands in ’74 had now come full-circle.  This was our CNN.  Or maybe not, but whatever it was, it was glorious.  Anyway…

Hailing from Chapel Hill, NC, Other Bright Colors quickly gained a foothold in the greater East Coast rock clubs with this sweet little teaser of a single.  I remember the thing that caught my eye about it was the way the artwork, a simple handwritten scrawl over orange-and-flesh backdrop with sepia-tone “band frolicking through nature” photo on back, seemed both very D.I.Y. and very professional at the same time.  And the rich music contained on the plastic held even more mystery.

OTHER BRIGHT COLORS \”Stands To Reason\” on YouTube

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