* En anglais uniquement
Gumball were the highest-profile occupation of indie gadabout
Don Fleming, already a veteran of several bands, a guest collaborator for many more, and a significant producer who -- ironically -- helped shepherd alternative rock into its major-label boom years. As
Gumball's singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter,
Fleming's record-collector obsession with pop culture and pop music, from
the Monkees to
the Damned to
Sonic Youth, reached full fruition. Snatches of '60s guitar riffs sat next to '80s guitar noise, and '70s punk rubbed shoulders with '70s schlock metal; all of it proved his knack for treating the worst pop music as serious rock, while dirtying respectable indie sonic tricks with (true to the band's name) sugary-sweet bubblegum pop.
Gumball enjoyed a two-album stay on major label Columbia, and earned some notoriety as owners of perhaps the largest collection of eight-track tapes in the country. However, they never broke through to a wider audience, and
Fleming returned to his myriad other pursuits.
Prior to forming
Gumball in 1990,
Fleming had been a member of the Washington, D.C.-based
Velvet Monkeys, where he first worked with
Gumball drummer
Jay Spiegel. Following
the Velvet Monkeys' initial breakup in the mid-'80s,
Fleming and
Spiegel played behind
Jad Fair in
Half Japanese on a semiregular basis, and wound up relocating to New York City. There they fell in with producer/Shimmy Disc label head
Kramer, who joined them on bass to form B.A.L.L., a unit specializing in ironic deconstructions of classic rock numbers. After several albums, B.A.L.L. fell victim to a contentious breakup in 1990, and
Fleming and
Spiegel put together a one-off, all-star version of
the Velvet Monkeys that included
Dinosaur Jr.'s
J Mascis,
Sonic Youth's
Thurston Moore, and
Pussy Galore's
Julia Cafritz. That same year,
Fleming and
Spiegel formed the more permanent, straightforward
Gumball with bassist
Eric Vermillion.
While working on their debut LP,
Gumball issued a self-titled, four-song preview EP on the British label Paperhouse. Their proper debut, the full-length
Special Kiss, was released in 1991 on the indie Primo Scree and featured guest appearances by
Thurston Moore and
Teenage Fanclub. It was followed by a U.K.-only EP, Light Shines Through, which featured several new songs. By this time,
Fleming had already produced notable major-label debuts by
Teenage Fanclub (
Bandwagonesque),
Sonic Youth (
Goo), and
Dinosaur Jr. (
Green Mind), and a major-label deal for
Gumball was not long in the offing. In 1992, Columbia released the covers EP
Wisconsin Hayride as a teaser for
Gumball's label debut; it featured material from far-ranging sources like
Foetus,
Black Flag,
the Damned,
the Small Faces, and
the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Produced by
Butch Vig, the full-length Super Tasty arrived in 1993 to mostly positive reviews. The single "The Damage Done" had some success on alternative radio, but despite some definite polish and commercial potential, Super Tasty never quite broke through to a wide audience. In the meantime,
Fleming's profile as a producer continued to grow, thanks to work on albums like
the Screaming Trees'
Sweet Oblivion,
the Posies'
Frosting on the Beater, and even
Alice Cooper's
The Last Temptation. In the meantime, keyboardist Malcolm Riviera -- a member of the original
Velvet Monkeys lineup -- officially joined
Gumball. The band's second major-label album, Revolution on Ice, was released in 1994, and many of its songs showed
Fleming's conflicted feelings about the rock underground having been so quickly absorbed by the music industry's corporate mainstream. Unsurprisingly,
Gumball disbanded not long afterward.
Fleming released the occasional solo project and continued his production career, though on a more sporadic basis than his early-'90s heyday. ~ Steve Huey & Stephen Thomas Erlwine