'Yank Crime' & 'Scream, Dracula, Scream!'

This might be a first (and only) for the 1,001 Records You Should Listen To Before You Die.

Plenty of artists are involved in multiple records on the list. For example, The Beatles or Elvis Costello. But very few are involved with two different albums from two different bands within a year of each other.

This is the case with John Reis and his two bands, Drive Like Jehu and Rocket from the Crypt.

Reis was in the band Pitchfork (had the website Pitchfork been around in the late 1980s, I’m sure they would’ve given the band a poor review) with Rick Froberg. Pitchfork died and Reis’ attentions went two different directions. He formed the post-punk/hardcore outfit Drive Like Jehu with Froberg and Rocket from the Crypt, a punk band, basically.

“Different” doesn’t do the two bands justice. Rocket is a collection of two-minute, three-chord punk songs. Drive Like Jehu are orchestrated eight-minute multi-sectioned compositions with heavy guitars interconnecting into crescendo and release.

The two bands released eponymous debuts in 1991. Drive Like Jehu released its only other record, Yank Crime, in 1994 (which seems like a lifetime after Nevermind) and Rocket released Scream, Dracula, Scream! a year later. Drive Like Jehu promptly broke up even though they were the superior band, but there’s no accounting for taste, I guess.  

Ever friends, Reis and Froberg formed another band, Hot Snakes, together several years later.