from allmusic -
Not so much a band as a long, strange trip, the chaotic avant pop pranksters Mercury Rev formed in Buffalo, NY, in the late '80s. Originally comprised of vocalist David Baker, vocalist/silver pickup guitarist Jonathan Donahue, guitar shaper/single-exhaust clarinetist Grasshopper (born Sean Mackowiak), rooster-tail bass flutist Suzanne Thorpe, bass explorer Dave Fridmann, and mojo stick drummer Jimy Chambers, the sextet -- always rife with personality conflicts -- interacted with one another infrequently, and their first recordings evolved simply as a means of creating soundtracks for the members' experimental student films as well as for Howard Nelson's Lite-Brite and Marco Fogg's Sugardaddy Sea.
Encouraged to further their music by academic mentor Tony Conrad -- a minimalist composer and multimedia artist who had performed with John Cale, La Monte Young, and Faust -- the loosely connected aggregate dubbed Mercury Rev (a name whose inspiration was variously attributed to an imaginary Russian ballet dancer, a sharp rise in temperature, or a revved-up auto) began to emerge, and eventually the group recorded a demo onto a reel of 35mm magnetic film. At the same time, Donahue was working as a concert promoter and scheduled a Butthole Surfers gig; after the show, he befriended the support act, Oklahoma's likeminded Flaming Lips, and soon joined the tour as a guitar technician. Ultimately, Donahue -- under the alias "Dingus" -- became the Lips' lead guitarist, and with them recorded 1990's In a Priest Driven Ambulance, an album produced by Fridmann.
With Mercury Rev effectively in limbo and its members scattered across the country, their demo tape somehow made its way to the British offices of the Rough Trade label, which contacted Baker about signing the group. Soon, the band convened to record their debut, Yerself Is Steam, an LP cut at the same time Donahue and Fridmann were also working on the Flaming Lips' major-label bow, Hit to Death in the Future Head.
