Circa 1995
Matthew Sweet
- Date
- Circa 1995
- Dating
- Year and venue confirmed by John; the exact night is not recorded anywhere
- Venue
- Belly Up Tavern
- City
- Solana Beach, CA
On the 100% Fun tour. John confirmed both the year and the venue. No listing survives for the night itself: setlist.fm has six Matthew Sweet shows at the Belly Up, but the earliest is April 1997, and the club's calendars from the mid-nineties were never digitized. He was plainly a regular there. John also saw Wilco at this venue in 1999.
The moment
Girlfriend had made Matthew Sweet the great power-pop hope of the alternative era — Television's Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine trading solos over perfect Beatles-and-Big-Star songcraft — and 100% Fun, riding 'Sick of Myself,' was the commercial peak. The Belly Up got him mid-victory-lap: the roadhouse scale that suited a songwriter whose whole catalog argues that a chorus is enough. One of the archive's circa records — the year is certain, the night dissolved into the era.
From the time
- Girlfriend
“The 1991 power-pop landmark that built the audience 100% Fun cashed in.”
The stub
No physical stub on file — this show was reconstructed from the
confirmation email. Drop a photo in public/stubs/ and add
"stubImage" to this show's record to attach one.