Sub Pop sanctioned 1990s alt.rockers Eric’s Trip don’t get anywhere near as much love as they deserve.
In any just world, the Canadian four-piece take pride of place alongside Pavement, Sebadoh et al as one of the standard bearers of slacker rock. Led by Julie Doiron, they specialised in drowsy indie and quietly furious lo-fi songcraft. Their greatest record, 1993’s Love Tara, was described as the decade’s “greatest break-up album” in our rundown of the Best Albums Of The 1990s, and the group released a handful of overlooked studio LPs before dissolving in 1996 (although they haven’t been averse to the occasional reformation since).
Guitarist Rick White has cobbled together an assortment of vintage VHS and Super 8 recordings of the band, painstakingly recorded and archived over the band’s lifetime. The resulting video has been chronologically compiled into a new two-hour film, available to watch for free online. White offers some insight into the genesis of the movie:
I’ve collected a lot of stuff from friends over the years and luckily, i personally bothered to lug 4 tracks machines, mics and old video cameras to the shows at the time. Talking friends into holding the camera or keeping an eye on the input levels. I’m really glad i kept all those VHS tapes and reels of super8 films safe. The boxes of cassettes stored at my folks house still play great after 20 years. In 2007 i started transferring all these tapes into digital form to put this movie together, dubbing old VHS tapes was the scariest thing as some of them would barely play but i eventually got them all. I was excited that with use of modern editing stuff, i could finally sync up old video with better sounding tapes recorded at the same show, or editing together footage i had with someone else’s camera angle of the same show that i got from them years later. I worked on this movie for four years with much love until i finally had what i thought was a good document of what Eric’s Trip really was.
