American Music Club

American Music Club, a name chosen for its deliberately nondescript qualities, turned out to be perfect for a band that tied together so many strands of the American musical fabric—rock, folk, punk, country, even crappy lounge—into a remarkably distinctive sound that wove darkness into the shimmering light of pop choruses. The San Francisco band was led by the volatile gutter poet/singer Mark Eitzel, who often acted as his band’s worst enemy. AMC shows often disintegrated into uncomfortable backdrops for Eitzel’s onstage shot-glass rants and drunken showmanship. Ignored by MTV and radio, the band languished in relative obscurity in the U.S., while at the same time earning a sizable European cult following. Lavish critical praise finally made the major labels take notice. Cue vicious bidding war. With the unleashing of 1994’s San Francisco, college radio fell in love with songs like “Wish the World Away” and “Johnny Mathis’ Feet.” As with all things sad and beautiful, their ending was inevitable, and the band dissolved in the mid-nineties. And as with so many good (and not-so-good) things, now the band has reunited after nearly a decade. If you missed them on their first go-round, see them now or forever remain a dollar short in a two-dollar alternative rock world.