From the cutout bin: Foam - Big Windshield Little Mirror

Welcome to From the Cutout Bin, where we dig up old CDs that have been forgotten for whatever reason and can now be found in the dollar (or quarter) bin at your local used CD store (if your community still has a used CD store). This installment features the debut (and only) album by Maryland natives Foam, 1998's Big Windshield Little Mirror.

I found this album for $1 in the clearance used bin at my local shop, still in its original shrinkwrap, and when I opened it up, I found a little card offering a month's free access to Earthlink (assuming I had Windows 95 or 3.1 or Macintosh 7.5 installed). I was also invited to "cruise the internet!" with Sony Music Online and their custom browser. I'm pretty sure that custom browser thing didn't really pan out.

Anyway, Foam. Produced by Michael Beinhorn, mixed by Tom Lord-Alge. Quite the pedigree. Beinhorn's famed for being one of the most expensive producers out there, and he'd just done Hole's Celebrity Skin, Social Distortion's White Light White Heat White Trash,* and Marilyn Manson, so he was coming off three platinum albums in a row.

Foam sound like Live. A LOT like Live. You can hear it from the first notes of "Head Not Love." "If" sounds like the Gin Blossoms for about 45 seconds, then it dips back into Live territory. This shouldn't be that surprising, as Foam came from Hagerstown, MD, in the northwestern part of the state, about 75 miles from York, PA, the home of Live. When their debut album came out, they were in their early 20s, meaning they grew up on Mental Jewelry and Throwing Copper. Their early demos were produced by Live's guitarist, Chad Taylor. Reportedly, they hadn't even played a show outside of Maryland when they got signed (if you want to see how green Foam were, check out this interview from the Baltimore Sun in the spring of 1998). Knowing their backstory now, I'd have been more surprised if they didn't sound like Live.

Remember that great lost Live track that Kevin Smith used a couple of years ago? This is like the great lost Live album. Same guitar tones, same vocal stylings, same everything. Even that same Ed Kowalcyzk falsetto. Seriously, go to their Myspace page and listen to "Rollercoaster." That being said, Big Windshield, Little Mirror is really pretty good. It sags in the middle, and the lyrics are a bit sophomoric, but those are problems that could have been fixed with a follow-up had this album not tanked.

If I were to guess, I'd say the biggest problem with this album is Live's 1997 album Secret Samadhi, which flopped as Foam were recording. It would have fit in exactly on the radio in 1995. Problem is, it came out in 1998, and up against Semisonic, Fastball, and Third Eye Blind on the radio, Foam sounded way too heavy. This album has to be considered one of the bigger flops of the late '90s, based on the large amount of money that Epic undoubtedly spent on recording / mixing, and the fact that none of the singles charted.

Based on the sketchy information I was able to find on the Internet (there are no Foam videos on YouTube and no Foam page on Wikipedia), the band spent most of '98 opening up for second-tier alt-rock acts, then dropped off the face of the earth. There are vague references to a band called Head Not Love (the name of the opening track on this album), indicating that they probably had to change their name in order to get out from their record contract after being dropped.

This album's super-easy to find; there are a lot of penny albums on Amazon, and if you want to pay less than $3.50 for shipping, copies pop up on eBay a lot, too. Or you might find an unopened copy like I did.

Postscript: Foam reunited in 2007... they now have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed and a Myspace page. If you go to any of those, you'll see they're promising new music in 2010. Maybe there's still time for Foam.

* Beinhorn's pedigree: Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mothers Milk, Soul Asylum's Grave Dancers Union, Soundgarden's Superunknown, Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals, the absolutely spectacular Verve Pipe self-titled album.