- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Fetchin Bones is a hard rock outfit that was ahead of their time, featuring a powerhouse female vocalist (Hope Nicholls).
Fetchin Bones – Bad Pumpkin (1986): Another North Carolina band, this time from Charlotte, Fetchin Bones is a hard rock outfit that was ahead of their time, featuring both a powerhouse female vocalist (Hope Nicholls) and a female bassist (Danna Pentes). Anticipating music scenes that would arrive in the 1990’s like grunge and riot grrrl, Fetchin Bones started out as college-radio darlings but had trouble finding an audience by the late 1980’s. Bad Pumpkin is the second album by Fetchin Bones. Their fourth and last album Monster (1989) came out in the same year as Nirvana’s debut album Bleach, though it was their second album Nevermind two years later and its landmark single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that announced the arrival of grunge.
Fetchin Bones worked closely with top North Carolina record producer Don Dixon to hone their sound. Dixon and several other freshmen at UNC started the band Arrogance in 1970, one of the early success stories in North Carolina rock and roll. Don Dixon is considered to be key to the success of jangle pop – for example, he and another leading North Carolina record producer, Mitch Easter co-produced the debut album by R.E.M., Murmur (1983). Fetchin Bones has a more aggressive sound than most of the bands that Don Dixon has worked with or his own music. It was baking hot when I first arrived at the lot where our home used to be in Gulf Hills. Almost immediately I remember picking up a dirty disc that turned out to be the third album by Fetchin Bones, Galaxy 500 (the cover wasn’t in sight). I laid it back in the grass, and when I saw it again, the record had warped into a flower shape. I was beginning to despair of saving any of my albums at that point, but my mistake was returning it dirty side down – the bayou mud helped to protect the albums from the heat in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.