Talk:The Ophelias/Additional material

More for the lede, or a description of their genre/etc

Give some facts the Ophelia's music/genre from this source. "What finally emerges is a mesh of the ephemeral mystery of Bolan and Donovan, with a weird, confident modernism that makes them a leading contender."

Unsourced Medford's distinctive voice and an accompaniment of eccentric, heterogeneous music, were the hallmarks of their recordings and performances. The wide variety of musical styles employed led to a large number of comparisons to other (mostly British) bands in the press. The Ophelias sound is closer to British psychedelia and British post-punk than it is to American forms.

Unsourced, and also this sounds very arguable to me -- it's essential that something like this has a reliable, respectable, well informed source The multiform nature of their music made it difficult to pigeon-hole or categorize the Ophelias during their tenure, which saw – in the mid and late Eighties – the hardening of musical categories and territories, and an end to the experimentalism which so characterized the music of the 1960s and 1970s to which the Ophelias obviously subscribed. Conservatism and contraction were rampant in the music industry in the late 1980s as video took the baton from vinyl and the uncertainties of the digital metamorphosis loomed. In this environment the Ophelias were perceived as increasingly quirky and bizarre compared to the mainstream and even the trends of the alternative scene. Whereas the Ophelias were embraced for their artful unusualness by underground audiences and university radio – which since the 1990s has been termed "the Alternative market" – the major record labels chose not to sign the Ophelias for the same reasons.

“Leslie Medford's songs are structurally and lyrically all over the place, consistently fascinating, and his singing is like no one else ever. The band is instrumentally superb, with Medford's rhythm and David Immergluck's lead guitaring always impressively original and trailblazing, and the odd assortment of other noisemakers at Medford's command make for some wild juxtapositions of mood and color. Each song is like three or four.” 

History

Cut, no source:

The band was also included on six compilations, their video was played on MTV, they had a track used in the motion picture A Matter Of Degrees, and were reviewed by Rolling Stone and Spin. Ophelias records consistently reached high chart positions on alternative radio stations around the country.

The band performed more than 100 times as a headliner, and were paired with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Pixies, Crime & the City Solution, Screaming Trees, Gene Loves Jezebel, Green On Red, True West, 10,000 Maniacs, Pylon, Camper Van Beethoven, Love, Chris Isaak, Pere Ubu, Hugo Largo, Souled American, Snakefinger, Redd Kross, Opal, Beatnigs, Seahags, Nymphs, Ricky Williams, Spot 1019, Monks of Doom, Shiva Burlesque, and American Music Club at venues around the country. 

After the breakup of the Ophelias Leslie Medford formed two bands concurrently: the hard rock band HighHorse with James Juhn and Alain Lucchesi, and The Heaven Insects, a folk-rock duo. Both bands recorded demos but were short-lived. Among the live engagements The Heaven Insects played in 1990 were support slots preceding The Replacements, Happy Mondays, Pixies, and Love And Rockets, all at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium. Medford also fronted the well-received Doors tribute act The Perceivers in 1991. He retired from music in 1992.

Medford produced a 15-track band retrospective audio-visual album entitled Bare Bodkin which was released on YouTube in 2017 and is available on multiple streaming sites. It includes five hitherto unreleased Ophelias tracks and ten previously released songs. A further 16-track retrospective is slated for 2018.

Could this source provide facts and a reference for a history section? In August 1987 SOMA – a glossy art magazine sold in upscale San Francisco restaurants and boutiques – devoted 2500 words to an interview of Leslie Medford by Bay Area journalist Dan Ouellette in which the band's genesis is discussed, as well as Medford's background, and Shakespeare's relationship to the psychedelic rock music of the Ophelias.

Research & Write: could get facts and insight from this source about independent releases.

The Ophelias

Cut: no source. Strange Weekend Records manufactured 4000 vinyl copies of The Ophelias. Never released on compact disc or cassette, The Ophelias is the most difficult of their albums to obtain.

This quote is nothing but fluff, no facts. "The debut album by The Ophelias is astonishing… a tour de force… Perhaps the best independent album to come out of San Francisco in recent years, this album is brilliant."

The Night of Halloween

Couldn't find this source, also, it's fluff, not facts One national publication touted "Wicked Annabella" as "the best cover ever done of a Kinks song".

The Big 0

Don't want to put this up until I have a hard copy to verify with Gregory Cline of BAM wrote: “Medford has improved as a songwriter, showing more diversity in melody and construction by incorporating an array of moods that shift from the delicate and tragic "Pretty Green Ice-Box Eyes", to the weight of "Holy Glow", a masterpiece that funnels all the darkest, most surreal moments of The Wizard Of Oz and The 5000 Fingers Of Doctor T gloriously through Presence-period Led Zeppelin licks."