Eleventh Dream Day is the band that taught me about the fiscal realities of being a top college radio act. The Chicago group had a surprise hit on the CMJ charts with their second full-length and major label debut, Beet, in 1989. As it recall, it came out of nowhere, and wound up making it all the way to #2 on the CMJ album charts. To us, it seemed like a big deal. This was obviously a huge new band, rubbing shoulders with the iconic likes of the Cure, the B-52’s and Public Image Ltd. Surely they were now huge, comfortably ensconced among rock ‘n’ roll royalty. A lower tier of that particular pecking order, to be sure, but still among those who could take solace in knowing the hard battle to prosperous notoriety was over.

My worldview took a dent a couple years later when I and a cohort got a chance to interview the band at a show in Milwaukee. They were touring to support their follow-up album, Lived to Tell, which I remember as even better than Beet, although it didn’t have quite the same impact. We talked with a couple of the band members, our Marantz unit whirring. We asked them about the success of Beet–they were headliners now, after all, with no less than Yo La Tengo opening up–and the response was surprisingly downbeat. They noted that the college radio success hadn’t really translated anywhere else, and in fact all it had done was build expectations with the label that they would put in the extra effort to go out on the road and promote their records with more extensive tours. They were actually better off financially, they told us, before the record had modestly taken off, and the band was there to add extra income to their day job paychecks.

Eleventh Dream Day never really cracked the code that turns a great band into a cult following into an act that rakes in enough dough to feel like they’ve properly conquered the business of show. After we saw them that chilly Wisconsin night, they were only allowed one more album for their label, Atlantic Records, before the execs decided to part ways with the band. That record was another good one, at least. Released in 1993, El Moodio led off with the fantastic “Makin’ Like a Rug,” which is tough, smart and immediately engaging, all the qualities that turned on college programmers in the first place. By then, though, it was the world that Kurt Cobain built, and any act that didn’t come equipped with a film of Seattle grunge was sure to struggle.

Interestingly enough, the band is still active. And they’ve gone back to having day jobs. Guitarist Rick Rizzo, who was probably one of the people we interviewed that night, is primarily a teacher of middle school aged kids. Hopefully that means the band has gotten back to being what had seemingly been lost more than twenty years ago when we talked to him: a passion rather than just another pressure-filled job.

Listen or download –> Eleventh Dream Day, “Makin’ Like a Rug”

(Disclaimer: There’s loads of Eleventh Dream Day albums still in print that you can head straight to your favorite local, independently-owned record store and purchase, including the previously mentioned Beet and Lived to Tell. The band’s last four albums have come out on Thrill Jockey, which I’m betting is a lot quicker to compensate the artist for record store purchases than Atlantic is, so opting for one of those releases isn’t a bad idea. I recall Zeroes and Ones being quite good. For all that available material, it looks to me like El Moodio is out of print as a physical object and therefore can’t be procured in a way that compensates the band and the proprietor of that record shop invoked a couple sentences earlier. The track is shared here with the understanding and hope that posting it won’t harm a soul. If I’m asked to remove it by someone with due authority to make such a request, I will promptly and gladly comply.)