Electric Love Muffin

Electric Love Muffin was a Philadelphia-based hard rocking quartet of the late 1980's that spiked the melodic thrash-pop of The Replacements, Soul Asylum and other indie bands of the period with touches of country/western, classic rock and prog-rock.

Electric Love Muffin quickly became a club and college radio favorite in Philadelphia and beyond. The band released two full albums, Playdoh Meathook (1987) and Rassafranna (1989), plus an EP, Second Third Time Around (1990). While the band's original songs won raves from critics, imaginative covers of The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" and the '60s chestnut "Venus" (then best known for Bananarama's version) were highlights of the live set.

A combination of bad management and bad timing--Nirvana, building on some of the same musical antecedents, would become superstars just 18 months after the Muffin disbanded in spring 1990--kept Electric Love Muffin from the acclaim their fans believed was their due. Even so, their music and live performances remain the stuff of legendFact|date=February 2008, and occasional reunions over the subsequent decade and a half after their breakup thrilled Philadelphia club audiences.

One reviewer had the following to say:"I saw these guys once, in 1989, in a bar in Bethlehem, PA. A generic local Grateful Dead tribute band was the first opener, and about a quarter of the audience walked out after their set. The second opener was the Psyclone Rangers, an uninspired local band led by rock critic and Phawker Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Valania, that thought they were clever for covering the Dream Syndicate - but at least they wrote most of their own songs. At then end of their set almost everybody left. There were about five or six customers left in that bar when the Electric Love Muffin came on, and they played for about an hour. You can't imagine how discouraging it is to play in front of an empty room, but it didn't faze them at all. It was the most viscerally intense hour of rock'n'roll I've ever been blessed with. They played like their lives depended on it. I don't think I've ever seen a band give so much: And in front of five people, all five rooted to the floor. Forget dancing, I had a hard time remembering to breathe. We just stood there and stared at those guys. For all they could have known, we might not have given a damn. So they charged through the set, and they were razor sharp. They were at that point where they could abandon all control and stay tight because they were an organism of eight hands and one brain. Not a lot of bands get there, and the ones that do don't necessarily have a brain that's worth hearing. These guys did. For an hour, they were the greatest rock and roll band in the world, in an empty room, forgotten and unloved. I think they broke up not long after."cite web | title=The Electric Love Muffin | url=http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=693963 ]

This is a picture of what is considered their most powerful albumFact|date=November 2007

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