Trip Shakespeare - Complete Discography (1986 - 1992) [mp3@320]

Trip Shakespeare was a Minneapolis-based alternative rock band of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The band included Dan Wilson and John Munson, who would later go on to be founding members of Semisonic.

The band originated when Harvard University English student Matt Wilson (guitar/vocals) teamed up with Elaine Harris (drums), a Harvard grad student in biological anthropology, in the early 1980s. Harris had responded to a notice posted by Wilson seeking "wicked percussion hands."

Wilson and Munson had played together in an earlier band (E Brown), and Wilson had not been impressed by his bass playing, so he didn't want Munson to audition for the new band. "But he came over anyway and played, and he'd improved a lot," Wilson later recalled. "We ended up begging him to just give it a try and stay around."

In 1986 drummer Tim Rowe, who had played with Munson in several other bands, joined the group as percussionist. They performed as a quartet for several months before Rowe left the band during the recording of Apple Head Man to join The Nietzsches with the former guitarist for E. Brown, Jimmy Harry.

Matt Wilson originally proposed that the band be named Kirk Shakespeare, after two of his heroes: James T. Kirk and William Shakespeare. "I think maybe John and Elaine didn't want to be in a band named after Matt's two heroes, so they changed Kirk to Trip," explained Dan Wilson, Matt's older brother, who joined the band later.