American Music Club

American Music Club (AMC) is a San Francisco rock band that was formed in 1982 by lead singer and song writer Mark Eitzel. often cited as the first slowcore band but far more intense and melodic than this genre allows. Formed from the ashes of the band, Naked Skinnies Eitzel took AMC through numerous personnel changes before settling with Vudi (guitar), Danny Pearson (bass), Matt Norelli (drums) and Brad Johnson (keyboards) in 1983. They released their first album, Restless Stranger which was produced by Tom Mallon and released on his newly formed Grifter label. Johnson and Norelli left after the album and Mallon would replace Norelli on drums for the recording and further touring for their following albums which came out via Grifter/Frontier for Engine, California and United Kingdom. The band were to split with Mallon in 1990 and recorded Everclear for Alias Records which featured Bruce Kaphan on pedal steel as well as Mike Simms on drums. This album brought attention of the majors after Rolling Stone named Eitzel 'songwriter of the year' in 1991 and shortly after Virgin and Warners signed the band for their albums Mercury and San Francisco. The bands live shows were very intense and up there with the best. While selling out 2000 capacity venues in Europe where the band was bigger than at home Mark decided to break up the band after the 1994 tour and proceeded on a solo career. The band had a reunion in 2003 producing two more albums for Merge Records before splitting again in 2008.