Lost Notes: Groupies

Early in his career, English songwriter Wesley Stace borrowed his stage name from that of Bob Dylan’s eighth album. His stateside success arrived under the John Wesley Harding banner, as did his sole SNAP session from June 10, 1991.

Touring in support of his album “The Name Above The Title,” Stace also borrowed Steve Wynn’s backing band. Now called The Deceivers, the band provides sturdy and sympathetic support to Stace’s wordy and melodic tunes.

Now a cult figure in the American underground for her witty, literate, and acerbic songwriting, Sam Phillips was still in her ascendancy when she dropped in on SNAP in June 1991.

For one of Deirdre’s final live sessions, Sam brought her charming rapport and a brace of her best songs in this magnetic and endearing session.

Peter Himmelman’s decades-long career can hardly be distilled into anything as simple as a “singer-songwriter” tag. Nevertheless, during the SNAP era, he was best known for his deeply humanistic, literate, and thoughtful songwriting, played here without fuss by the Peter Himmelman Band.

The sextet focuses on material from Himmelman’s then-new album, 1991’s aptly-named “From Strength to Strength.”

Throwing Muses were already legendary by the time they touched down on SNAP in May 1991. Having recently shed long-time bassist Leslie Langston for new recruit Fred Abong, the reconfigured quartet played a short but sweet set of songs from that year’s “The Real Ramona.”

R.E.M.’s meteoric rise was already well underway when they came to SNAP in April 1991. But the agreeably loose acoustic session feels like a gathering of old friends.

A rambling mix of classics, covers, and spontaneous outbursts, it exemplifies the very best of SNAP.

London’s Kitchens of Distinction were always a few steps ahead of their time. Their swirling, shoegaze-adjacent pop arrived moments before that genre officially exploded. And vocalist/bassist Patrick Fitzgerald’s frankly queer lyrics were still a rarity, even in underground circles.

The band dropped into SNAP on Valentine’s Day 1991 for a noisy and rapturous set in service of their second album, “Strange Free World.”

A collaboration between Steve Kilbey (The Church) and Donnette Thayer (Game Theory), Hex released two albums of lush and mystical pop during their brief existence.

This 1991 SNAP session finds Thayer leading an expanded lineup (minus Kilbey) to promote their second and final album, “Vast Halos.”

Downy Mildew were perhaps the archetypal SNAP Band: scrappy, independent, locally beloved but nationally obscure, and possessing an earnest but ambitious indie-pop sensibility. The LA band’s December 1990 session was their third for Deirdre, and it arrived at a transitional time.

They were between record labels, having parted ways with Santa Monica’s Texas Hotel Records. And their next album, 1992’s “An Oncoming Train,” was still two years away. But Downy Mildew are here in fine form, offering up punchy and artful renditions of material from throughout their career.

The Blue Aeroplanes and The Jazz Butcher (a.k.a. Pat Fish) were not only mutual favorites of Deirdre’s, but also long-standing friends and collaborators in their own right.

While both in LA by chance, they dropped into SNAP during the show’s off-hours to record this ramshackle but lovely acoustic set for later broadcast.

In the wake of Aaron Neville’s surprise return to the pop charts with Linda Ronstadt, the soul legend graced the SNAP studio in 1990 with a transcendent solo set for voice and piano.