the enduring rock myth of guitar-hero supremacy." Hailing from "Brainerd where the children go to milking school," the Toolmaster learned to play the Gibson that his dog had found And he came to haunt the bars of Minneapolis town. "Toolmaster," according to the Twin Cities alternative new weekly paper City Pages, "perfectly captured the tension between Minneapolis ambition and outstate resignation that pretty much informs life in the Land of 10,000 Lakes." Across the Universe The next year they signed with A&M Records. The label "really gave us a chance," Matt Wilson later said: "They spent a lot of money on us making the records. A lot of people at the label genuinely seemed to love the band. The president of the label showed up at our gigs and got all psyched up and said this was not a vanity project on the part of the label. They really thought that we could sell some records. They really thought they could mass market Trip Shakespeare. The band's first release on A&M was Across the Universe, released in 1990. The album's was titled in homage to the Beatles song of the same name. Matt Wilson later explained: There's a part of us that's plainly trying to make epic, gorgeous music that can be admired on at least a couple of levels. And there's another part of us that's embarrassed about that, because there are people who will say: "Rock 'n' roll is supposed to be simple, three-chord stuff like Keith Richards plays." But when you get right down to it, I guess we find ourselves more in the Beatles' school than in the Rolling Stones'. TrouserPress.com called Across the Universe a "too-rare example of an indie act benefiting musically from major-label treatment"—citing an "increased rock edge that doesn't detract from the gentle charm" of tracks like "Snow Days," "Gone, Gone, Gone" and "The Crane"—the latter being the closest thing the album had to a hit. The band members were less satisfied with the results. "We did not succeed on Across the Universe, Matt Wilson later said. "There was kind of a compromise between what the label wanted on there and what the band wanted." "If anyone was satisfied by that compromise, it wasn't the record-buying public." Across the Universe sold only 33,000 copies. Lulu Trip Shakespeare's final major release was 1991's Lulu. Upon its release, Matt Wilson declared: "On Lulu, we