There must be more to life than rules and regulations

We've Got A Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It, or Fuzzbox for short, were an all-girl punk quartet from Birmingham, England circa 1985. This was their first big hit:

My favorite band that never was

In the 1990's Mary Timony and Carrie Brownstein had a collaborative project called The Spells. They released a 4 track EP in 1999 called The Age of Backwards, and never released anything again. They lived on opposite coasts, Brownstein in Olympia, WA and Timony in Boston, MA. Apparently after the release of Age of Backwards they had a songwriting correspondence via the internet where they wrote a few songs which they planned to make in to a full length. This never happened.

More recently, Timony's been playing with a new band called Soft Power in DC, and Brownstein has been concentrating more non-musical projects such as writing a book, starring in the upcoming film Some Days Are Better Than Others and relocating to NYC. She also has a music blog on NPR.com called Monitor Mix. Here she discusses The Spells with Timony and has posted a few unreleased songs for download:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/2008/11/the_spells_bat_vs_bird.html

In my opinion, the Spells were the most perfect fusion of Timony's ethereal magical stylings of Helium and Brownstein's angular poppy hooks of Sleater-Kinney. A match made in heaven. Now if only they would release that full-length!