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Date:    Wed, 13 Aug 1997 12:17:45 -0400
From:    Zarqa Javed <javedz@ROCKVAX.ROCKEFELLER.EDU>
Subject: Informative AND 4AD-related!

Wednesday, August 6, 1997

     Throwing Muses Call It Quits
     It shouldn't come as a shock, but Kristin Hersh is formally announcing the
     demise of her band, Throwing Muses. What's surprising is that the reasons
     behind the split are neither artistic nor personal.

     "We couldn't afford to go on, and it broke our hearts," says the
thirty-year-old Hersh, who, along with her half-sister Tanya Donnelly,
co-founded the Muses
     in 1980. She later went on to form the band Belly and is now a solo
artist.

     "It not only wasn't paying the rent; it was costing us money," says
Hersh. "If
     we win the lottery, we'll play again. But I'm not sure I see that
happening."
     Hersh says calling it quits was painful. "I was so grief-stricken,"
she says. "I'd
     be brushing my teeth and start sobbing." Her reaction is
understandable. After
     all, Throwing Muses is one of rock's touchstone bands, a group that
     preceded--and influenced--not only the new women's rock movement but also
     the modern-rock scene that surged to popularity during the early nineties.

     Hersh and her husband have started a small band of their own, called
Casa Rita,
     but right now she's gearing up for the early 1998 release of Strange
Angels, her
     second solo album and follow-up to 1994's Hips and Makers. But where Hips
     was quiet, acoustic, and contemplative, Hersh says she approached Strange
     Angels more like a Muses album, though it's still acoustic in nature.

     "I think that it's more solid," says Hersh, who has three children,
aged eleven,
     five, and six months. "The material is more like Throwing Muses
material and
     less minor key, melancholy. It's all acoustic again, but there's a lot 
more
     strength."