Info on The Question Is No

The Question Is No

The Fastbacks - The Question Is No

Released: 1992 by Sub Pop Records.
Most tracks produced by Kurt Bloch in Seattle, WA.
Duration: 15 Songs, 40 Minutes, 1 Second.
All songs written by Kurt Bloch, except 'Dear Mr. Oswald' which was sampled from a instructional typing record. Only available on CD. Released in both the US and Japan . May currently be out of print.

Personnel:
Kim Warnick - Bass, Vocals
Kurt Bloch - All Guitars, Vocals, Etc. (see songs)
Lulu Gargiulo - Rhythm Guitar, Vocals
Various - Drums, see songs.

This album is a collection of unreleased FBX songs and hard to find tracks from FBX singles and compilation albums. The first FBX CD to be released by the Sub Pop label. Liner notes on the record were written by music scribe Greil Marcus (see below).

This CD only release includes some excellent liner notes by Kurt Bloch as well as various old photographs of the Fastbacks. The package also depicts all of the covers for the various Fastbacks singles released over their history, and even includes a fictional single for 'I Never Knew' as the B-Side to a promo of 'In America'. There is also another completely made up cover and single for 'What's It Like' along with a full explanation of it's fictional origin!

General liners read: Songs - Kurt Bloch, Publisher: Energy House, Affiliate: BMI, Administer: Bug Music, Layout and Design: Kurt, Cover and Tray Photos: Charles Peterson, Victrola Photo: Kurt and Lulu, Other Photos: Randall Fehr, Roisin Dunne, Others we forget (oops), Audio Assembler: Chris Hanzsek, Audio Master: John Golden/kdisc, Printer under the auspices of: David K. Livingston at: Windward Press.

Greil Marcus writes: You don't usually find the Fastbacks in features on "The Seattle Sound" or "America's New Liverpool." The Fastbacks don't sound like anyone else in town, and they've been around since well before Nirvana was a gleam in the Melvins' eyes. Twelve years and counting, for guitarist and songwriter Kurt Bloch, bassist and singer Kim Warnick, guitarist and singer Lulu Gargiulo, and various drummers, from Duff McKagan to Richard Stuverud to Rusty Willoughby - and they can still play as if the notion just occured to them. There's no attitude in their music, and very nearly no style - instead, a headlong, heedless impulse to communicate, to come across. Warnick's vocals may sound flat, at first - after a tune or two what you hear is real life, real talk, lifted, dramatized, slamming the walls. That's how music like "Everything I Don't Need" catches the passion, the blood, and the regret of an all-night argument - even if it's with a mirror. The Fastbacks are an unreconstructed punk band - or, maybe, unconstructed, period - and also full of pop. They're not ashamed to cover Sweet, still in love with the Buzzcocks, and a sense of fun, the thrill of breaking loose, is almost always near the center of their songs. Their edge - feeling that more is at stake in any piece of music than can be said in any words - might come from all their years in the pop wilderness, a wilderness of no-fame and no-money that remains as present in the music they're making now as it was implicit in the first numbers they ever cut. The Fastbacks hammer on the door of an imaginary audience - the millions who could care less about their heart-on-thjeir sleeves noise - as if it were most of all the fact that the door is closed that keeps them talking. Through it all there is a snap in the music = moments of dissatisfaction, frustration, refusal to settle for what everyone has been raised to take for granted. It might come with a bent note from a levitating Kurt Bloch (he plays better in the air than anyone I've ever seen), the way Kim Warnick might nail the last word of a line, or with Lulu Gargiulo fading that same word - but it will always be there. This band can turn you around no matter where you're standing - Greil Marcus