Bricks was started by Mac McCaughan and Andrew Webster in 1988 while the two were roommates on 108th Street in
Manhattan. McCaughan has just returned to Columbia University from a year off and began recording songs on a four-track
cassette tape recorder. One night while recording with headphones on, McCaughan heard a loud noise and, thinking it was a gunshot, hit the floor. It turned out to be a brick that a neighbor had thrown through their apartment window, and thus the band named themselves "Bricks" in tribute to the event. Because McCaughan and Webster had no space for a drumkit in their apartment, percussion sounds were made with household objects, such as empty juice bottles hit with sticks, or
Tupperware containers filled with dried grains and shaken. The duo soon recruited Josh Phillips because he was taking drum lessons, and then Laura Cantrell to help keep time and sing. Many of the band's songs were about life in the apartment, where the band continued to practice. The group also recorded a set of
Albanian
Christmas songs. Between his junior and senior years at Columbia, McCaughan drove across country to visit
Sub Pop Records during the week that
Mudhoney's first single was released. Seeing the operations of the label at the onset of
Seattle's
grunge music scene inspired McCaughan to found
Merge Records, among whose first releases were Bricks'
Winterspring cassette (MRG001, featuring the first seven songs recorded by the McCaughan/Webster duo) and "The Girl With The Carrot Skin" single (MRG005, featuring all four members), both released in 1989. By 1990 Bricks were playing shows with well-known indie bands, such as
Fugazi, and at
punk rock venues, like
CBGB's in New York and the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, NC, before disbanding when members finished at Columbia. ==Member activity post-Bricks==