Director: Mark Allen Davis
L.A. band IDAHO are a band that no-one has ever heard of, although their melancholic music has some hard-core fans. This documentary charting the band’s beginnings in the early 1990s to today as the band puts out a new album seems designed for only those same hard-core fans.
Despite being hailed as the best new thing by music magazines in 1993, IDAHO’s refusal to write a hit single that would garner them a wider audience means that the band is still relatively unknown, even after eight albums. The talking heads in Mark Allen Davis’s film struggle to compare them to any other band but Joy Division, Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake are mentioned as possible influences. With slow distorted guitars and languid vocals, IDAHO sound quintessentially 1990s, and, to non-aficionados, like many other Indie bands of that decade.
Formed by school friends Jeff Martin and the late John K. Berry, IDAHO were first signed to Caroline Records and their debut album Year After Year was meant to propel them to stardom at a time when, after the wildfire of dance music, there was a return to ‘real’ music played with guitars and drums. But the breakthrough into the big time never happened. It has never happened, and it’s doubtful that this committed and sometimes dull documentary will bring them the success that Davis believes they are due.
After that first album, IDAHO became the solo project of Martin. He was forced to sack Berry who was battling a heroin addiction. In many ways it’s a familiar story but not as dramatic as when Pink Floyd banished lead singer Syd Barrett in 1968 because of his addiction to LSD that meant that he would often not turn up to gigs or wander around the stage in a silent daze. In contrast, IDAHO’s Berry remained connected to the band and often worked backstage at their shows and then later encouraged Martin to release more songs.
Woven into the interviews with Martin, other ex-band members like Dan Seta who took over Berry’s role, and family members, are home movies featuring the band travelling around the emptiness of L.A.. Accompanying these black and white segments is the music of IDAHO, sad, and epic with an undercurrent of nostalgia. Every so often a hyperbolic quote from the music media appears on screen such as this one from CMJ Magazine ‘ IDAHO’s music exists in its own cinematic universe, waiting for an audience.’
In the home movies, there are glimpses of an audience at a gig behaving very respectfully at the front of the stage. The audience members stand so still, they are like the motionless crowd listening to The Yardbirds in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, but, of course, IDAHO have never made a song that could be danced to. That is why, perhaps, they have never become famous.
Traces of Glory: The Musical Journey of IDAHO is screening at the Raindance Film Festival 2022
