Launch Titties

Launch Titties were a punk/ early grunge band active from 1990 to 1994. They are best known today as the band that became The Nautical Stairs. The group consisted of Stairs founder Jimmy McCain, Stairs cofounder and drummer Michelle Wood, lead guitarist Blake Fraser, and bassist Samuel Lane. The bands name is an imperfect anagram of "The Lunatics"- this anagram technique would be used again by Jimmy in forming The Nautical Stairs.

**History**

Launch Titties was formed by McCain in 1990, after he had been learning guitar for only three months. McCain asked then-girlfriend Michelle Wood to join. In his words, he wanted to "balance out my lack of talent by shoving a musical genius into the group". The duo started playing regular gigs at The Lion's Share, a short-lived music venue in Seattle. Through Ben Murphy, the venue's manager, they met guitarist Blake Fraser and bassist Samuel Lane. Despite the two of them being significantly older than Michelle and Jimmy, they got along well and soon joined the band.

This quartet started playing gigs around Seattle and developed a local following. In 1992, with a more refined sound, they began thinking about a record. One famous story is about their attempt to get signed to Sub Pop. The band quietly set up outside the record labels headquarters early in the morning. When people started arriving, they threw a rock in the window with a note that said "come outside for the best show of your life". Then they played for about half an hour to a fascinated crowd. They were never signed- Bruce Pavitt famously said that they were "too young and too stupid" to be taken seriously.

Eventually, they got signed to the short lived record label Mud Man Records, and released *The Milky Way EP*. To promote the record, they famously piled several copies in Seatttle's famous Green Lake Park and burned them. The stunt got them some publicity, a small profit, and a short tour around the greater Seattle area. One year later, they released their first LP, *Ready... Set... Fuck!* This album was mildly more succesful than *The Milky Way*, leading several music critics to call the band "the future of Seattle rock".

Tensions began to arise in the band during the recording of *Ready... Set... Fuck!* Blake Fraser, the bands lead guitarist and occasional co-songwriter, became frustrated by Jimmy's vulgar and immature lyrical style. Samuel Lane started to feel underappreciated as a band member. On top of that, Jimmy and Michelle quietly broke up their romantic relationship in 1993, and for a brief period they refused to talk to each other.

In 1994, during the recording of their second LP, tensions between Blake and Jimmy rose to the point where the two of them could not stand to be in the same room together. After a particularly intense argument about a guitar solo, Blake finally left the band, soon followed by Samuel. Launch Titties was no more.

**Aftermath**

After leaving the band, Samuel quit music for good, and attended OSU to study journalism. Blake stuck with it, and eventually founded the mildly successful art-rock band The Oblique. Jimmy and Michelle continued playing as a duo for a few months, returning to The Lion's Share as a house band. During one show, Jimmy invited his friend Sean Lyle as a guest guitarist. The three of them clicked, and Sean continued to play with the band. He later invited his friend Craig Beech to play bass for the group. They changed their name, and The Nautical Stairs was born.

**Discography**

The Milky Way EP (1992)

Ready... Set... Fuck! (1993)

(Demos from their planned second LP *Where The Pleasant Fountains Lie* were later adapted into the basis of The Nautical Stairs' self-titled debut)