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Precursors of the esoteric sound eventually tagged "post-rock," Shrimp Boat was among the key Chicago indie bands of their era, with members later going on to even greater success in groups like the Sea and Cake. Originally comprised of singer/guitarist Sam Prekop, guitarist Ian Schneller, bassist and David Kroll, Shrimp Boat formed in 1985. Their affinity for unusual time signatures, jazz-influenced structures and exotic rhythms were unlike anything else on the contemporary Chicago club circuit. They added drummer Eric Claridge in 1986 and issued their debut cassette album Some Biscuit in 1988, followed later that same year by Daylight Savings. On their own Specimen Products label, they issued their first vinyl LP Speckly in 1989. That year, Claridge left the band, replaced by Brad Wood. Shrimp Boat signed to Bar/None in 1990 and recorded their next album, Duende, that same year. The album didn't see release until 1992, and in the meantime, the band self-released the Volume 1 collection. 1993 saw the release of Cavale, but by this time, both Kroll and Wood had exited, while Eric Claridge returned to the band as bassist and Tom Jasek stepped in on drums. Within a few months of the album's release Shrimp Boat disbanded; Prekop and Claridge soon reunited in the Sea and Cake, while Wood emerged as one of the most sought-after producers in indie rock, helming records for the likes of Liz Phair, Veruca Salt and the Smashing Pumpkins.

If you're a typical indie rock fan, you probably hear that you follow obscure bands because they make you look good, because your niche tastes set you apart, and because your music snobbery won't allow you to enjoy anything that's on the radio. But you probably wish, for the one or two best unknown bands that you've discovered, that more people had heard them. A band like that never leaves behind enough recordings. They put out more home-burned CD-Rs or hand-labeled cassettes than actual CDs, score an indie label deal that falls apart one album later, and only make it into the studio by the time that their set has changed three times, leaving all the early songs in the dustbin. You know what the rest of the world is missing, but you have no proof.

So I'll admit my heart went out to AUM Fidelity's Steven Joerg when he told me that he actually founded his label with the hopes of finishing this project, a multi-disc collection of music by Chicago's Shrimp Boat. And the final product is the kind of compilation that's better than the sum of its recordings. In 3 CDs (4 if you get a copy with the bonus disc), Something Grand features entirely out-of-print or unreleased material, without repeating any of the songs on the two Shrimp Boat records that are still in print. (Duende and Cavale, on Bar/None, are both highly recommended, but only offer a snapshot band's history. Something Grand documents the whole story.)

Shrimp Boat remain a legend from the start of Chicago's early 90s rock renaissance, flourishing right before Billboard put the city on the map as a post-Seattle grunge factory; Shrimp Boat's Brad Wood recorded and played with Liz Phair, among others, and Sam Prekop and Eric Claridge went on to form The Sea & Cake, which includes John McEntire, who plays with all of the bands that, like them or not, make up the Chicago post-rock scene.

As the root of all of these influences, Shrimp Boat is better known by reputation than recordings. The three high-minded art school students who formed the band in 1985 proudly didn't know their instruments. (That was also a requirement for Wood, a successful recording engineer who had learned the drums after the other members dragged him into the band.) The earliest recordings, which feature the line-up of Ian Schneller, Sam Prekop and David Kroll, are acoustic and shambolic, kicking off the set with the tunelessly meandering banjo on "Rocks are Oil", the hypnotically circular "Collecting Me" with Kroll's keening, inexpert saxophone, or the midget-army martial drums on "Only Making Fools". The songs sound exactly like when your roommate who's learning guitar finds four notes that sound great together and repeats them until you're sick, except they're great; and Prekop's slurred vocals distort the lyrics-- which, according to the Miles-Davis-box-set-quality liner notes, were mostly made up back then anyway.
Something Grand also includes tape collage experiments, most tiresomely on a 12-minute instrumental that slouches across Ollie North's Iran-Contra testimony, but these art-school excesses are shunted aside by the short and deeply unpretentious songwriting that the band once described as "Midwestern folk." The liner notes describe the "circle dances" that would spontaneously start at their gigs at Phyllis' Musical Inn, where the open-faced friendliness that covered their harsh noise noodling would inspire the crowd to dance and stomp together around the bar. The first disc is full of these pieces, some better than others, and many of them come from the barely released cassettes that the band sold at gigs.

The earliest Shrimp Boat shows were long, improvised jams that cleared out many pretentious loft parties, but by the time they started recording to four-track, they were writing actual songs and assembling actual sets. Discs two and three introduce them as a "real band," through live recordings from clubs and college radio sets, and outtakes from their two main long-players. Duende and Cavale collected the strongest of the band's material, and discs two and three of Something Grand admittedly focus on outtakes and oddities-- Wood and Joe Vajarsky on sax unwinding with "I Loves You, Porgy", or experiments with the vocal tracks from "Limerick" and "Oranges".
But this is more than a B-sides collection. Hearing the band evolve on these albums helps explain the wild stylistic leaps from pop to rock to blue-eyed soul on Cavale, and the concerts-- "Medea Rising" or "Draught '43", where the crowd's shouts punctuate the song-- capture the live side of the band. Shrimp Boat became clean and tight, and Prekop's idiosyncratic voice has more confidence, finessing his barks and yelps while developing the gaspy credulity and breathy wonder that dominate his style today.
The real odds and sods are confined to the bonus disc, which ships with the first 2,000 copies of the set. This fourth disc includes a lot of sludgy old recordings and working tapes, as well as some strong, straightforward live cuts. Listening to this material can make you wonder: What if they had simplified the jams, streamlined Prekop's emoting and turned into the Dave Matthews Band? Or dumbed down to dirgey rock songs and fallen in line behind Veruca Salt and Red Red Meat to make a small dent on alternative radio? What would Beavis and Butthead have done with a video for "Free Love Overdrive"?

"Chicago's Shrimp Boat are the best band on the planet," gasped CMJ in 1990. (And you thought Pitchfork was hyperbolic.) But before they could take over, tensions inside the band caused first Brad Wood to quit, and then the rest of the members to disband. The Sea & Cake retains the unironic pleasure of Shrimp Boat's material, but refines it to glass-like perfection on their laptop-on-the-beach albums, like last year's One Bedroom. Ian Schneller went on to form Falstaff, and build musical instruments under the company name Specimen Products. Brad Wood now produces records in L.A., and although his early work with Liz Phair-- like the barest tracks on Whip-Smart-- evoked some of Shrimp Boat's later, hazy afternoon-on-Milwaukee-Avenue laziness, he most recently got acclaim off-Broadway for producing the soundtrack to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. David Kroll quit the band even earlier, to paint, and his recent work graces the covers of this set.

If this box set were a movie, it would tell your generic coming-of-age story-- except that most bands at this level never tell the whole story, except through the occasional bonus demo tracks. Something Grand is more than a scrapbook: It completes the fossil record of a legendary indie rock group, sets the trajectories for the guys who learned to make music in this band, and revives four hours of floor-beating, drunkenly whirling, homemade Midwestern circle dances.

Eric Claridge - drums, bass
David Kroll - bass, banjo, tenor sax
Sam Prekop - vocals, guitar, bass
Ian Schneller - guitar, vocals, drums
Brad Wood - drums, soprano sax
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Joe Vajarsky - tenor sax
Tom Jasek - drums