What’s new with you? Ask any member of the Radioactive Flowers that often rhetorical question and you’re liable to end up with a rather long-winded reply. While most of Bowling Green’s college age/ bar hopping crowd have spent the summer working, loafing, or studying, the Radioactive Flowers have been…well…active. Since their inception two years ago (as the opening act for a drag show Chris Hughes, Cat in the Hat wearing member of the band likes to joke), the band has steadily built up a following in most of the cities they play. Crowds at their shows in Mufreesboro, Nashville, and Bowling Green have grown larger each time they’ve played. While it’s not surprising to see a youth market who cut their teeth on the Indigo Girls, Phish, and the Grateful Dead sink those same teeth into a loose playing, groove finding, female fronted band, it’s refreshing to see the wide range of ages coming into my shop to pick up their last CD. One day after a concert in the park, I had a couple in their fifties stop in on their way home to Texas to pick up a Radioactive Flower’s CD. That might embarrass a lot of bands, but it makes perfect sense to me. Look at the influences of most young bads —many of our parents were listening to those bands, and many of those same parents (much to their dismay) now live in Texas. Scratch that. Many of those parents are now in their fifties. I think both generations are uncomfortable with how much we have in common musically. Maybe that’s why so many bands are trying to get such a hard edge – so that they can separate from that sixties thing. It would be a travesty if every band tried to sound hard and ragged like NIN or Hole.

Most people like the road the Flowers have taken. They’ve been building their set list (Why Should I and Good Mourning) polishing their performance, digging for leads as an opening act, playing free gigs for charity, working on songs for their second album, doing what they can to sell through the second run of their self-published album. That persistence has finally started to pay off. The Flowers put together a promotional package a few months back and sent them out in the mail fishing for interest as an opening act. They landed a big, venerable fish by the name of Neil Young. I’m sure a few beers were cracked open the night they got the news that they captured the opening slot for Jewel and Neil Young at Deer Creek Amphitheater located just outside Indianapolis. That gig will have happened by the time this ish of the Amp hits newsstands… Maybe this will mean more exposure for the Flowers (Atlantic has been sniffing around), and more contact with agents and reps offering slots, contracts, firstborn children. Sometimes a big fat contract isn’t so fat after one gets through reading all the micro print at the bottom of the page. Maybe that’s why the Flowers have done a few things to hedge their bets. They seem to understand that signing with a big label isn’t necessarily blessing from heaven and sometimes it’s the kiss of death. Look at Aimee Man, the former lead singer of Til Tuesday. She signs a great deal with Imago label. Imago folds, but won’t release the rights to her music. She flounders for more than a year until some bigger label gobbles up her contract so that she can release her sophomore album.

The Flowers have already put their money where their mouths are. They believe enough in what they’re doing that they funded the first two runs of the CD. They competed in this summer’s Battle of the Bands, came in first, and walked away with the prize of beau coup hours in a local recording studio. So if the labels aren’t interested enough just yet, or if they’re interested but have a stinky offer, the band knows there are other paths to success. Other ways to grow a Radioactive Flower without piling on what so many other bands, so many other flowers, usually take to grow. Pounds and pounds of manure.

Originally published September 1996.