The ones that nearly got away: East of Eden, self-titled
![[East of Eden- East of Eden]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/EastOfEdenEastOfEden-298x300.jpg)
I’m part of the last generation that knew what life was like before the Internet. For most people my age, we discovered new music by listening to the radio. If you hated radio — and I did — we found out about music through magazines. More adventurous listeners would seek out zines.
I picked up the self-titled debut of a Boston band named East of Eden because their album was on sale at Tower Records. There might have been a review somewhere. At the time, Boston was home to Throwing Muses and Pixies, so there was a chance some of that rubbed off on East of Eden.
Also, I liked the cover.
The album actually turned out to be pretty decent. It wasn’t Pixies or Throwing Muses by any stretch of the imagination, but it had all the requisite gloss of an ’80s record, and it wasn’t Richard Marx.
The album was released in 1989, a crowded year with a lot of stellar albums by XTC, the Replacements, the B-52’s and 10,000 Maniacs. East of Eden was good, but it didn’t have enough heft to elbow its way into regular rotation on my Walkman.
I bought the album on cassette, and in a crunch for cash, it was an early casualty.
East of Eden shares it name with a number of bands, and the Boston ensemble registers barely a footprint. Information is scarce on Discogs.com, which misattributes them as a Pennsylvania band. Google returns more results for a progressive rock band in the UK. The album itself is nowhere to be found on digital services.
I was surprised to find a copy of the album on CD at the Lifelong AIDS Alliance Thrift Shop. It was evidence I wasn’t the only person to have ever owned the album, nor the only one to surrender it. For $1, I was willing to explore why I let it go in the first place.
Back in 1989, I wanted every album I bought to change my life. East of Eden didn’t, which was pretty unfair to the band. They recorded a good album that was victim to inattention by a major label in a fertile period ripe with great bands doing excellent work.