Green Apple Quick Step burst onto the music scene in 1993, just a few years after a band named Mookie Blaylock (soon to be rechristened Pearl Jam) played their first show opening for them.

Their first release, Wonderful Virus, was produced by Daniel Rey (Ramones, King Missile, Misfits), mixed by 14-time Grammy-winner Ron Saint Germain, and recorded at the iconic Bad Animals Studio (owned by Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart). Featuring “Dirty Water Ocean” and “Ludes And Cherrybombs,” the album put them in strong rotation on alternative radio.

They followed it up with 1995’s Reloaded, produced by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard and multiple Grammy winner Nick DiDia (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against The Machine). The album’s first single, “Dizzy,” was featured both in the film The Basketball Diaries, and on its soundtrack—sitting alongside tracks from The Doors, Soundgarden, Jim Carroll, and The Cult.

While both Wonderful Virus and Reloaded are being reissued on colored vinyl, they also comprise the heart of the double-CD Dizzy: The Medicine Label Anthology. Freshly remastered by multiple Grammy winner Michael Graves, the songs are as vibrant as they were three decades ago. To make this collection even more special, it contains nine bonus tracks including rare remixes and B-sides, and 4 previously unissued tracks featuring songs never before heard!

With packaging featuring new liner notes from Joe Marchese (TheSecondDisc.com) including a new interview lead vocalist Ty Willman, Dizzy: The Medicine Label Anthology captures the 1993–1995 Green Apple Quick Step experience. As exciting as the records were then, they still deliver to this day.

So, get dizzy with Dizzy: The Medicine Label Anthology!

Disc 1: Wonderful Virus
1. Dirty Water Ocean
2. Broken
3. Ludes And Cherrybombs
4. Bottle
5. Rapid
6. Feel My Way
7. Pay The Rent
8. Can’t Believe
9. Eating On All Fours
10. Stereo
11. Ludes And Cherrybombs (Remix) [Bonus Track]
12. Feel My Way (Acoustic Version) [Bonus Track]
13. The Unheard Music [Bonus Track]
14. Pay The Rent (Live at RKCNDY) [Bonus Track]
15. Shifting (Live at RKCNDY) [Bonus Track]
16. Stereo (Live at RKCNDY) [Bonus Track]
17. Feel My Way (Teacher’s Polished Apple Mix) [Bonus Track]

I have to fully admit that back in the day when I first heard the lead single Dirty Water Ocean on Muchmusic (remember that?), I bought the album right away and it stuck to my CD player like glue. While far from a perfect album, Wonderful Virus is full of quirky charm, snappy songwriting, and instrumental hooks.

There’s something to be said for a band that can make Peel away/Hairless skin from the alien into a chorus hook, and that’s exactly what it does on Ludes and Cherrybombs. While the sci-fi-hip lyrics are an acquired taste, the inherent musicality of the songwriting gets through.

Dirty Water Ocean is a breathless rush of adrenalin, like the fastest, crunchiest ruckus raised by a band right next door; rip-off or no, the shuffling Bottle with its sludgy Alice in Chains-like groove, changing tempos and male-female vocal tag team, is an arresting rock tune.

Rapid and my own personal favorite Eating on All Fours distinguish this band, the former with its languishing free-flowing melodicism, the latter for its muscular rock-anthem energy, blitz of chord changes, and bassist Mariann Braeden’s wistful backing vocal.

Disc 2: Reloaded
1. Hotel Wisconsin
2. Ed #5
3. No Favors
4. T.V. Girl
5. Underwater
6. Dizzy
7. Alligator
8. Los Vargos
9. Tangled
10. Lazy
11. Space C*cksucker
12. Halloween
13. Party Dream [Bonus Track]
14. Some New Kind Of Kick (Live at The Dragonfly, Los Angeles) [Bonus Track]
15. On Your Back [Bonus Track]*
16. Pills [Bonus Track]*
17. Five Way Switch [Bonus Track]*
18. Restless [Bonus Track]*

Tracks * previously unissued

Displaying some real initiative on Reloaded, Green Apple Quick Step wisely opts not to compete head-on with Pearl Jam (which was kinda hard as they were both under the same management, Instead, the group co-opted Stone Gossard as co-producer and spread its surprisingly useful stylistic wings.

After trundling through a thick soup of gloomy atmospherics (Hotel Wisconsin) and a crunchy demonstration of wah-wah technique (Ed #5), the album suddenly comes alive with Braeden’s lead vocal on the don’t-care punk onrush of No Favors. Her high harmonies with Willman on the poppy T.V. Girl and the pretty Alligator fan the fun.

A loopy cocktail lounge instrumental (Space C*cksucker) and now a set of wondrous and previously unissued bonus tracks put a frothy head on the shaken-not-stirred music that delights the ear here on Reloaded (expanded). Even when the lever swings back to Big Rock, the quintet still pulls something better out of its bag of tricks: the bleary-eyed gambol through Los Vargos.

Pairing up the two voices, forcing songs toward places maybe they didn’t mean to go and generally not settling for the obvious when there’s another idea to try, Reloaded gets a lot closer to nirvana.

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