Papas Fritas

Papas Fritas
Papas Fritas performing at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, Spain, on May 28, 2011
Background information
Origin	Somerville, Massachusetts
Genres	indie rock, pop
Years active	1992-2000
Labels	Minty Fresh
Website	papasfritas.com
Members	Shivika Asthana Keith Gendel Tony Goddess

Papas Fritas (typically stylized as pApAs fritAs) is an American indie-rock band that formed in 1992 and released three studio albums before quietly breaking up in 2000. The band's name is Spanish for "French fries" but is also a pun on the phrase "Pop has freed us," which they used as both the name of their music publishing company and their 2003 career retrospective. (In 2006 a German band also named Papas Fritas released a single called "Stehpisser," which is erroneously listed as part of the American band's discography in several online music stores.)

Tony Goddess (guitar, vocals) and Shivika Asthana (drums, vocals) met in high school in Delaware before enrolling in Tufts University in Somerville, Massachusetts, where they met classmate Keith Gendel (bass, vocals). At first the band performed just for fun in and around the Tufts campus—their recording aspirations were limited to the self-distributed cassette-only releases "Careers for Culture Lovers" and "Retards/Cowboys"—but by '94 they'd recorded a proper seven-inch single for Sunday Driver Records (Friday Night) and agreed to promote it with a US tour. The song "Smash This World" received some radio play on college stations, prompting Chicago-based Minty Fresh to sign Papas Fritas, and in October 1995 they released their self-titled debut album.

The band spent the rest of the year and most of '96 touring Europe and the United States with the Flaming Lips and the Cardigans, respectively. They released their second album, Helioself, in April 1997, kicking off another tour of home and abroad with the Cardigans once again, as well as Blur and Eels. (Matt O'Keefe, a roadie for Papas Fritas during their tours with the Cardigans and Blur in '97, wrote a novel titled You Think You Hear, published in 2001, that is "LOOSELY based on our experiences on the road," according to the band's website. "If you decide to read it, remember that in reality, Papas Fritas are mentally stable and considerate individuals.") Donna Coppola (keyboards, percussion) and Chris Colthart (guitar) of the Solar Saturday (later the Faraway Places) joined Papas Fritas's touring lineup in the summer of '99 and helped promote the band's third LP, Buildings and Grounds, which hit stores in March 2000.