Trios: Blake Babies

Blake Babies: Rain

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The Blake Babies are Juliana Hatfield, John Strohm and Freda Love. They met while all were attending college in Boston in 1986. The story is this: Juliana painfully shy but desperate to play music and find kindred spirits; Freda, outgoing, loved by many follows Juliana to her dorm one day after seeing her walking through campus all the time with her guitar...asks her to come jam with her and a friend some time. At the tme Juliana had never played an electric guitar let alone a bass, but a bass player is what they need, so she borrows John's and learns and becomes their main vocalist and bassist. Shortly there after they go to a talk by poet Allen Ginsberg and in the questions and answer part they ask him to name their band, he suggests "Blake Babies", inspired by William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience". The name seems fitting and sticks, a band is born.

They got a lot of great reviews and garnered a following in that late 80s and early 90s college scene. Soon after Juliana went solo and did even better. In 2001 they got back together for a reunion album, and Juliana and Freda have had a side band (Some Girls) that's been off and on for a while as well. They remain friends but now live in different parts of the country, the rest is history.

Their music is folk-tinged rock, Juliana's innocent sounding voice is even more so in her early days when she was even more shy, but the music is charming.

The Bountiful Feast: Boiled Potato

Blake Babies: Boiled Potato

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The Blake Babies were college music darlings in the early 90s. Their jangly rock style paired with the the girly and sweet vocals of Juliana Hatfield made them stand out from the grunge scene. As many will know, Juliana Hatfield went solo after a few albums with the Blake Babies and became another college music darling in her own right over the years.

This song is sung like a love song to a potato. If you replace all mentions of potato with a name it becomes a lot less odd, so it does seem like it could most certainly be a love song had they not chosen to use the words "boiled potato" instead of someone's name. But the content goes much deeper than that. Though the song is cute and jangly, you get this whole new view of it when you hear a re-worked version of it off a b-side single from Juliana's first solo record a few years later. The song, then called "Feed Me", shares the same tune and many of the same lyrics, except now instead of "boiled potato" she simply says "oh baby", and it's much more sad, and it is quite clearly about dealing with an eating disorder. I find it hard to ever hear "Boiled Potato" the same way after hearing "Feed Me".

Juliana herself has dealt with an eating disorder off and on for most of her adult life, and just recently finally went to a rehab program to try to get better. You can read about her experience on her blog where she talks about her song "Universal Heartbeat". And I have uploaded "Feed Me" here as well.

Juliana Hatfield: Feed Me

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