Acetone was an American rock band formed in 1992 in Los Angeles, California, The three core members first came together in 1987 as Spinout when Lee on bass and Mark Lightcap (guitar) were attending the Cal Arts Institute in Valencia, Calif. Lee and Lightcap, a compositional music student and tuba player, recruited local high school student Steve Hadley to play drums. The group disbanded after Lee committed suicide on July 23rd, 2001.
The band played together behind a succession of singers under the name Spinout before finally settling as a trio. Acetone released several well-received albums beginning with their debut record Cindy, the album generated comparisons to the Velvet Underground. While Acetone toured in support of label mates the Verve, the band’s debut was lost amidst a glut of alternative rock releases. In addition to pursuing music, Lee earned a degree in Fine Arts from Cal Arts. Both a painter and a photographer, Lee frequently contributed artwork and photography on the band’s releases.
In 1994 Acetone released I Guess I Would, an EP of country covers that included an eleven minute version of Kris Kristofferson’s “Border Lord,” as well as covers of Jerry Cole and John Prine tunes. If You Only Knew, their next full-length release and a critical favorite followed in 1996, but failed to make any waves in the already waning alternative music scene, and the band was dropped from Vernon Yard in 1997. They signed to Neil Young’s label Vapor Records and released their self-titled third album that year and last October released York Blvd..
Between 1993 and 2001 the trio released two LPs and an EP on Vernon Yard Label-a Virgin subsidiary-and two LPs on Vapour, the L.A.-based label . In that span, they were selected to tour with Oasis, Mazy Star, The Verve, and Spiritualized. Against a rising tide of post-Nirvana grunge and slipshod indie rock, Acetone tapped into a timeless Southern California groove by fusing elements of psychedelia, surf, and country. They rehearsed endlessly in an empty bedroom in northeast Los Angeles, recording hours of music onto cassettes that were subsequently stuffed into shoeboxes and left in a shed behind the drummer’s house. Those tapes are being released for the first time in this anthology, which also includes highlights from Acetone’s official releases. Taken together, the songs form a companion soundtrack to Sam Sweet’s book, which maps the character of Los Angeles as a place through the lens of these three unique characters bonded by music.
This fall, the independent literary press All Night Menu will publish Sam Sweet’s Hadley Lee Lightcap, a nonfiction novel that traces the backstories of the three members in Acetone, a band that played in Los Angeles for nine years. Though few heard them, their recordings are time capsules of who they were, how they lived, and where they came from. Light In the Attic has partnered with All Night Menu to present Acetone 1992-2001, the first anthology of the trio’s music. The book and the album will be released concurrently on September 22nd.
Counting their early years in the scuzz-rock band Spinout, whose sole self-titled release came out in 1991 on Delicious Vinyl, guitarist Mark Lightcap, bassist Richie Lee, and drummer Steve Hadley played together for a total of 15 years. They disbanded in July 2001, when Lee committed suicide in the garage next to the house where the trio practiced. Afterwards, Rolling Stone ran a short obituary saying Acetone’s albums were “well received” but “failed to make any waves.” It was the first and only time they were featured in the national music press.
They rehearsed endlessly in an empty bedroom in northeast Los Angeles, recording hours of music onto cassettes that were subsequently stuffed into shoeboxes and left in a shed behind the drummer’s house. Those tapes are being released for the first time in this anthology, which also includes highlights from Acetone’s official releases. Taken together, the songs form a companion soundtrack to Sam Sweet’s book, which maps the character of Los Angeles as a place through the lens of these three unique characters bonded by music.
“I think our music is all about moods and feeling but hopefully it will get as weird as it possibly can,” said Richie Lee in 1997. “We want things to get weird in the way that you could hear an Acetone song and know that no one else in the world could make that kind of music but us.”
The Fat Angel Sings 