Let's Active

Let's Active was a jangle pop band based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina . The principal songwriter and sole continuous member was Mitch Easter , who kept the band active through most of the 1980s . Although critically praised, Let's Active had limited commercial success and are mostly known because of Easter's connections with R.E.M. as the producer of their early albums.

Let's Active formed in 1981 and soon signed with I.R.S. Records . The original trio, comprised of Easter (vocals/guitar), Faye Hunter (bass), and Sara Romweber (drums), recorded the EP Afoot (1983) and the full-length Cypress (1984). Romweber quit the band during a UK tour in 1984, and Hunter and Easter (a couple) split up shortly thereafter. However, the band name was kept alive by Easter, who played as Let's Active with Hunter and members of The Windbreakers until a new permanent line-up could be established.

The band's second full-length album, Big Plans For Everybody (1986), was actually largely a solo outing by Easter, who played most of the instruments himself and handled the mixing and production. On board for a few tracks, however, were bassist/vocalist Hunter, drummers Eric Marshall and Rob Ladd, and multi-instrumentalist Angie Carlson, who would later become Mrs. Easter.

By the time of Let's Active's third and final album, Every Dog Has His Day (1988), the band's sound had evolved into harder-edged power pop . The album was produced by John Leckie and Easter, and credited a line-up of Easter, Carlson, Marshall and new member John Heames, a bassist. Despite the credits, though, the album was largely played by Easter and Marshall, with significant contributions by Carlson. The subsequent tour featured a cohesive lineup of Easter, Carlson, Marshall, and Heames.

The band has been inactive since a final performance in early 1990 -- around the same time Easter and Carlson broke up. Carlson went on to form the band Grover , who released one album with Easter producing some of the tracks. Easter, meanwhile, concentrated on his production career, and rarely performed or recorded his own music throughout the 1990s, although he did join Velvet Crush as a touring guitarist for a time in the mid-1990s. In 2000, he re-teamed with Eric Marshall and his new wife, vocalist Shalini Chaterjee , to form the trio Shalini . The three also play as The Fiendish Minstrels , which features Easter's lead vocals, as well as a selection of Let's Active tunes in their repetoire.

North Carolina's Let's Active was probably the most misunderstood of the South's '80s new-pop bands. Though dogged by a rosy-cheeked nicest-guys-of-wimp-pop image, they could be downright moody. Producer/multi-instrumentalist Mitch Easter assembled the trio in 1981, but it only emerged nationally in the wake of R.E.M., whose first two discs Easter co-produced at his Drive-In garage studio outside of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Joining that band's label, Let's Active released a six-song EP, Afoot, bringing new meaning to such overused pop adjectives as crisp, bright and ringing. All the songs, even those with melancholy lyrics, are hook-filled, boppy and ultra-hummable. Pick to click: "Every Word Means No."

But things were not as they seemed. Although perceived as the engineer of the now-sound-of-today in American guitar pop, Easter's own tastes were running towards the electronic gadgetry of techno-rock. (His career as a producer was also taking off.) Also, his two original partners bassist Faye Hunter and drummer Sara Romweber (sister of Flat Duo Jets' Dexter Romweber) were viewed as sidepeople, despite Easter's egalitarian efforts to the contrary. In real life, the trio were not just simple, cheerful popsters. Both Easter's love of "sounds" and the band's inner conflicts were explored on Cypress, a record that is deeper and more enduring, though not as immediately winning, as Afoot. Denser, rambling textural pieces some wistful, even angry came to the fore. Few records sound so multi-dimensional, and Let's Active has, for that reason, been tagged psychedelic they make sounds you can almost touch. (In 1989, IRS combined Afoot and Cypress on a single CD.)