50 Foot Wave
Encyclopedia
50 Foot Wave is an American alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...

 band, formed in 2003. The band is fronted by Kristin Hersh
Kristin Hersh
Kristin Hersh is an American singer/songwriter who performs solo acoustic concerts; she also continues to perform as lead singer and guitarist for alternative rock group Throwing Muses and the hardcore punk-influenced power trio 50 Foot Wave...

, who writes the group's songs with collaborative efforts from the other group members in composing and arranging the music. The group's name is a reference to both an illustration and the term for the 50-foot sound wave of the lowest F tone audible to the human ear. The band sometimes abbreviates its name as L'~, using the Roman numeral for 50.

History

Kristin Hersh previously spent more than two decades playing with Throwing Muses
Throwing Muses
Throwing Muses is an alternative rock band formed in 1981 in Newport, Rhode Island, that toured and recorded extensively until 1997, when its members began concentrating more on other projects. The group was originally fronted by two lead singers, Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly, who both wrote the...

, releasing several solo albums as well. Her solo tours in the late 1990s and early 2000s focused on acoustic guitar playing. In 2003, she launched the more electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

-oriented 50 Foot Wave.

The band was designed as a power trio
Power trio
A power trio is a rock and roll band format where the traditional power trio has a lineup of guitar, bass and drums, leaving out the rhythm guitar or keyboard that are used in other rock music to fill out the sound with chords...

, with a lineup including drummer Rob Ahlers and Throwing Muses bassist Bernard Georges
Bernard Georges
Bernard Georges is best known for his bass guitar work in Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave.Beginning in 1992, he played bass for Throwing Muses on their album releases and in their concert appearances, having previously worked as roadie for the group...

. Hersh contributes guitar, lyrics, and vocals to this project. The band's first live performance was recorded in Burbank
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....

 in October 2003 and released on a very limited basis as an official bootleg. Among other live appearances internationally in 2004, 50 Foot Wave performed a month-long residency of shows in January that year at the Silverlake Lounge, while the group was based in the Los Angeles area. The group's self-titled studio mini-album was co-released in March 2004 by the band's ThrowingMusic label and 4AD Records
4AD
4AD is a British independent record label that was started in 1979 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, funded by Beggars Banquet Records, and is still active today...

.

Hersh has described 50 Foot Wave's music as "having a lot of math in it," while also calling it less emotionally and musically "tangled" than some of her past Throwing Muses work. Others have described some of the new songs as having "confrontational" lyrics.

In March 2005, the group released its long-planned, full-length album, Golden Ocean, on ThrowingMusic, in partnership with 4AD.

The group toured Europe and the United States in 2005, while Hersh simultaneously continued her solo concerts in alternating parts of the year.

In December 2005, the band released a new EP called Free Music! available via free FLAC
FLAC
FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...

 and mp3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 downloads at their website and several download partner sites. The downloads reserved some rights though Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

 licenses.

In early March 2009, the band released all their previous albums along with a selection of live tracks, an Instrumental EP and the upcoming Power+Light album for download at their website. As before, the tracks were available in FLAC
FLAC
FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...

 and mp3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 format and the band reserved some rights though Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

 licenses.

It was announced on the website in early 2010 that their new EP, "With Love from the Men's Room" is in the process of being recorded and will be released later this year.

Discography

  • 50 Foot Wave
    50 Foot Wave (EP)
    50 Foot Wave is an extended-play recording by American alternative-rock band 50 Foot Wave, released on March 23, 2004.-Track listing:-Personnel:*Kristin Hersh – vocals, guitars*Bernard Georges – bass*Rob Ahlers – drums, vocals...

    (2004, ThrowingMusic/4AD)
  • Golden Ocean
    Golden Ocean
    Golden Ocean is the debut full-length album by hard rock band 50 Foot Wave, released in 2005 .-Track listing:all songs by Rob Ahlers, Bernard Georges and Kristin Hersh#"Long Painting" - 2:57#"Bone China" - 2:29#"Pneuma" - 3:45...

    (2005, ThrowingMusic/4AD)
  • Free Music!
    Free Music!
    Free Music! is the second EP recording by hard rock band 50 Foot Wave, released in 2006 .-Track listing:all songs by Rob Ahlers, Bernard Georges and Kristin Hersh#"Hot Pink, Distorted" - 3:36#"Vena Cava" - 3:59...

    (2005, ThrowingMusic)
  • Power + Light (2009, ThrowingMusic)

Song samples


External links

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