#smallfactory

July 1991 calendar listings flyer for Cambridge, MA rock club The Middle East.

Yesterday I talked about all the amazing shows I saw at T.T. the Bear’s in July 1991. But just around the corner that same month, a newer rock club called The Middle East was really starting to find its footing.

While they’d soon embark upon a number of physical expansions that enabled them to uplevel their bookings to bigger national and international acts, The Middle East at this time consisted of just the upstairs room and the bakery area. And it provided an excellent home for shows by local artists, such as favorites the Gigolo Aunts and the Dambuilders, and Roger Miller of Mission of Burma this particular month.

But here on July 24th was the clear indie pop event of the summer for me: Sarah Records band Heavenly, all the way from the UK on what I believe was their first tour of the U.S., plus locals Swirlies and Small Factory from nearby Providence, RI. (Contrary to what the flyer states, Velvet Crush did not play that night.)

I was there to see Heavenly and wasn’t familiar with either of the two opening acts. Swirlies were up first: noisy and kind of shambolic, but melodic. Good stuff. Next were Small Factory, who were the surprise delight of the evening, all earnestness and energy and damn good pop tunes. And Heavenly more than lived up their record, Heavenly vs. Satan, which I’d bought at Newbury Comics earlier that year and listened to over and over again in anticipation.

Countertop-friendly. Operator-driven. Production-ready. Perfect for labs, brewpubs, and early-stage factories.

Press release for the 1994 Small Factory album For If You Cannot Fly, issued by U.S. label Vernon Yard Recordings.

For If You Cannot Fly was Providence indie pop band Small Factory’s major label debut. That’s right, Vernon Yard was one of those “fake indies,” a pointless imprint of a major label (here, Virgin Records) created in an era where “selling out” was a vague concept that people worried about. Whatever!

Small Factory demo tape circa 1991, featuring songs that would appear on the band’s first two singles.

Small Factory were one of the bands I saw the most in the early 90s, located as they were in Providence, between the two cities—Boston and New York—from which I bounced back and forth for most of the decade. And they were a favorite from the very first gig of theirs I saw: as the second band in a packed set opened by the Swirlies and headlined by Heavenly. What a bill! (And amazingly, a video exists of both Small Factory’s performance that night and that of Heavenly.)