Fig Dish, 1997/Photo: Danny Clinch
The Chicago rock scene of the mid-1990s left behind a litany of also-rans and should-have-beens. Once the so-called “grunge” feeding frenzy had sucked all of the talent out of Seattle in the early nineties, record labels tried to bet on what market would be the “next Seattle,” and many, rightly or wrongly, concluded it would be Chicago.
It’s a tale that’s been told and retold many times by now, but there was something happening in Chicago. Although the comparably early success of the Smashing Pumpkins was viewed by many as sui generis, an outlier, it was clear that this particular pumpkin patch had sincerity to offer and a stable of bands with a more generous sense of humor (at least at the time).
This allowed Urge Overkill to finally get their seventies glam-rock retro chic to the masses and the Jesus Lizard (originally Austinites) to share David Yow’s yowls with a wide audience. Both acts graduated from the comparatively pure handshake deals of stalwart indie label Touch & Go to major labels like Geffen and Capitol.
Both acts had been recorded by the late Steve Albini, a local iconoclast, and even then a legend in the indie community. To say Albini wasn’t a fan of the major label system would be a gross understatement, as he allegedly called the Jesus Lizard’s decampment to Capitol a move that would see them “become a third-string act for a big corporation that didn’t give a shit about them or their audience.” Albini was less kind to Urge, but he was well-known for his acerbic prickliness and low tolerance for sell-outs (my words, not his).
There were reasons to heed these words. For every breakout success like Urge Overkill or the Jesus Lizard, like Local H or Smoking Popes (and “success” is a relative term), there were dozens of Loud Lucys or Squash Blossoms or Triple Fast Action or Motorhomes who never got their due.
One of those mid-nineties bands that should have been big was Fig Dish, which reunited in 2024 and released their third album. The super-ironically named “Feels Like the Very First Two Times” had been recorded in 1998 but shelved for more than a quarter-century. And this time, at least locally, media and listeners paid attention.
Fig Dish was originally formed by four high school friends, guitarists-vocalists Rick Ness and Blake Smith, bassist-vocalist Mike Willison and drummer Andy Hamilton. As their bio says, “in their day, they were known for catchy songs, memorable (often booze-fueled) live shows and bad luck.”
Fig Dish/Photo: Allison Dye
After their stellar debut garnered them local notice, Fig Dish got themselves signed to Polygram, and in the winter of 1997, they sojourned to Philadelphia to record their second album with new drummer Bill Swartz and producer Phil Nicolo. Nicolo is one half of the Grammy Award-winning Butcher Brothers, who produced Urge Overkill’s “Saturation,” that trio’s breakout major label debut.
Tracks were recorded at the Butcher Brothers’ Studio 4, which shared a building and a lounge with the Ruffhouse Records label—a Columbia imprint whose roster included Cypress Hill, Kris Kross, Wyclef Jean and the Fugees. While Fig Dish was recording the album, the Fugees won three Grammys, and suddenly “Studio 4 felt a lot more like Studio 54.” Cypress Hill began dropping in regularly too, with a contact high emanating first “from B-Real’s denim jacket.” Fig Dish would “get really high from the secondhand smoke of whatever pungent, hallucination-inducing plant he was smoking.”
Somehow a solid sophomore album, “When Shove Goes Back to Push,” also emanated from their recording sessions. The record is now twenty-nine years old, and had its long-awaited first release on vinyl with Forge Again Records this June.
When Fig Dish opened for Veruca Salt and the Muffs in Milwaukee back in 1995, Forge Again Records owner Justin Wexler said his teenage self was “blown away.” Remembering it today, he says, “they were right in my wheelhouse—a catchy, loud, alternative rock band whose members clearly did not take themselves seriously. I picked up their split 7” [single] with [the band] Everready at the show and immediately bought [the Fig Dish debut] ‘That’s What Love Songs Often Do.’ [And when] ‘When Shove Goes Back to Push’ came out, it was in my opinion even better. I never imagined I’d be working with Fig Dish nearly thirty years later, and it’s incredibly exciting to finally bring this album to vinyl for the first time.”
Wexler’s Forge Again label has given Fig Dish’s sophomore album a “definitive” double LP that “honors the layout of the original release while elevating it for the format.” The records are housed in a gatefold jacket featuring the original sleeve art of a model race car by Veruca Salt’s Jim Shapiro, “meticulously recreated” by Wall of Youth. Lacquers were cut by Carl Saff, and the records pressed by Chicago’s own Smashed Plastic. The standard white vinyl edition was distributed to record stores worldwide—“to match the other Fig Dish records in your collection”—but an exclusive paint thinner-colored vinyl variant, strictly limited to 400 copies, can be purchased on Bandcamp.
“When Shove Goes Back to Push” may have been a product of 1997, but today it still sounds fresh and at times eerily prescient. Fans of local bands like OK Go, Fall Out Boy, Alkaline Trio and national bands like Weezer (Fig Dish opened for their spin-off The Rentals on tour) should have a similar reaction to mine when hearing this record for the first time: Where have you been all my life? It’s not dramatic hyperbole to recommend Fig Dish to fans of Rockford’s favorite rockers Cheap Trick, or more Minneapolis hometown heroes like the Replacements and Hüsker Dü.
Beginning with a chaotic and discordant scream may not be the smartest way of kicking off the album from a sales standpoint, but that is how “Come On (Don’t Come on)” starts before the world-weary vocals begin and the band begins to seriously rock.
The standout single “When Shirts Get Tight” was accompanied by a music video directed by adult film star Jon Dough and cast with some “stars” of that time. Playboy named it one of the “sexiest music videos,” but MTV refused to show it—true, there are moments that are maybe inappropriate for all ages, but for the most part it’s tame by today’s standards, and fits well with Fig Dish’s sterling sense of humor.
More importantly, the song is strong, with a memorable melody and muscular power-chords. But the music video’s doomed airplay was a harbinger for the band’s eventual doom—MTV had provided Fig Dish’s major label Polygram with an oral assurance they would play the video. (And the video does look expensive, maybe more so than a Weezer-Spike Jonze joint, and just as well-choreographed as the boys from OK Go, but with more participants.) When MTV didn’t, the label lost interest in promoting the album, eventually dropping the band entirely.
Following the single, “Pretty Never Hurts” begins with a throbbing intro a la Local H, then swiftly pivots to Blink-182-like irony-speak—another “should have been a hit single” song. Fig Dish dares “you to vanish” with the next number, starting like Guided By Voices but almost out-Nirvana-ing Nirvana as it quickly climbs to a climax on the choruses.
From there, the record proceeds apace, with the occasional (still-rocking) catchy ballad thrown in to apply the brakes here and there. Solid song “Sleep Startles” barely hits three minutes, even after leaving in two false starts, “They Can Only Hurt You” refuses to sand down the rough edges and embraces some screamo accents, and “Sinking Feeling” is comparatively epic, clocking in at almost five-and-a-half minutes. It’s all good, so it’s a shame to have to pick favorites.
The climactic cut “All Eyes Upon You” somehow begins like the Jesus and Mary Chain and morphs into a power ballad sound, the stuff of Big Star’s heavenly dreams or U2 tapes left behind in an undiscovered country. The denouement is provided by the barely two-minute conclusion, which is untitled, a hidden track accompanied only by electric guitar.
Fig Dish/Photo: Barry Brecheisen
In 1998, the year after “When Shove Goes Back to Push” was originally released, a publication hated Fig Dish so much that they offered $500 for them to break up, and the band accepted the offer. But as Blake Smith told James VanOsdol for his Car Con Carne podcast, no one from the band ever got around to picking up the money, “in true Fig Dish fashion.”
Rick Ness and Bill Swartz started the band Ness, while Blake Smith and Mike Willison started Caviar, and all parties presumed that was the end for Fig Dish.
In terms of their live show, Ronnie Barnett of The Muffs is quoted as saying “you’ve seen nothing until you’ve seen a Fig Dish soundcheck.” A critic in Pittsburgh wrote that they played so sloppily, they made the Replacements look like Rush. Smith told VanOsdol that some alcohol might have been imbibed before that set—only as the band gained touring experience did they learn to get drunk after they played and not before.
Riot Fest Presents a live performance by Fig Dish at Cobra Lounge, 235 North Ashland, on Saturday, August 22 to celebrate (finally) the vinyl record release of 1997’s “When Shove Goes Back To Push.”
