We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: loveBUZZ
Year: 1989
There was always too much music. Always.
For example, if you had told me in 1989 that there was an Australian band that was a slightly less-crunchy version of The Primitives, and was produced by Mitch Easter to boot, I would have rushed right out and grabbed it.
But nobody did. Thanks, gang!
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #635: The Hummingbirds – “Alimony”
Album: Dare
Year: 1981
Impossible to ignore even at the time, “Don’t You Want Me” was a synth-pop landmark that hasn’t ever really left the pop landscape in the 35 years since it first topped the U.K. charts.
I mean, this isn’t my default type of music, but come on! Even I can hear how much power and drama is brimming from every single bit “Don’t You Want Me,” especially when Susan Ann Solley starts singing.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #634: The Human League – “Don’t You Want Me”
Album: You’d Prefer an Astronaut
Year: 1995
A primo slice of math-rock metal all tarted-up as alt-rock, Hum’s “Stars” was as unlikely of a radio hit as you could possibly imagine in the mid-1990s, or pretty much anytime, really.
On the other hand, “Stars” is definitely on the list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Metal Division. And even in the post-grunge days of the mid-1990s, it still sounded like nothing else on the alt-rock radio stations that played it.
Album: Picture This
Year: 1982
While the early days of MTV is usually remembered for focusing on photogenic British acts — and foisting upon the world folks like Duran Duran, Adam Ant & Billy Idol — the truth that they also helped the careers of non-photogenic ugly-ass folks who happened to make clever videos.
Right? So we also had huge hits by Greg Kihn, ZZ Top, Eddie Money and of course, Huey Lewis and the News, whose completely agreeable and totally inoffensive if slightly slicked up bar-band sound somehow battled Prince, Madonna & Bruce Springsteen for chart domination in 1984.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #632: Huey Lewis & The News – “Workin’ For a Livin’”
Album: Jerky Versions of THE DREAM
Year: 1983
After co-founding and leaving both The Buzzcocks and Magazine, Howard Devoto’s next move was to put out his only solo album, 1983’s Jerky Versions of THE DREAM.
And while, truth be told, most of the album didn’t do all that much for me, I really loved the single, “Rainy Season.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #631: Howard Devoto – “Rainy Season”
Album: The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death
Year: 1987
I always got the impression that the people who loved The Housemartins, really really loved The Housemartins, but for all of the buzz & critical acclaim that surrounded their two records, they never really did much for me.
The exception, of course, being the title track from their second album, The Queen is D, sorry, I mean The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death.
Album: Painted Shut
Year: 2015
“There all is aching.”
That was one of the experiences that “life reviewer” Forrest McNeil was asked to review in the first season of Comedy Central’s brilliant TV show, Review.
I won’t go into exactly what happened (though I will link to a clip), except say that not only did it involve a perfectly-cast Emo Phillips, Forrest could have saved himself a lot of time if he’d just put on Hop Along’s Painted Shut and discovered there all is aching in the vocals.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #629: Hop Along – “Sister Cities”
Album: Electric Chair
Year: 1998
This is my favorite song in what is perhaps the all-time smallest category: “Late-90s Songs About Gene Hackman as Sung By 1980’s College Rock Icons.”
How small? There are only two songs in this category: The Hoodoo Gurus’ “Gene Hackman” and Robyn Hitchcock’s “Don’t Talk To Me About Gene Hackman,” which may or may not be an answer song. Probably not, as Hitchcock’s is a live acoustic take that was a hidden track on Jewels For Sophia.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #628: Hoodoo Gurus – “Gene Hackman”
Album: In Blue Cave
Year: 1996
The year is 1996. I’ve moved to Oakland, and I’m doing what I did at least twice a month on Saturday mornings: digging through the recent additions in Amoeba Music’s used CD section.
It was one of my rituals: driving into Berkeley first thing on Saturday morning, standing in trade-in line with CDs that had run the gamut of usefulness in order to get some store credit to offset the a bit too much I was going to spend on music that day.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #627: Hoodoo Gurus – “Down On Me”
Album: Kinky
Year: 1991
After four good-to-great albums in a row, the Hoodoo Gurus finally stumbled with 1991’s Kinky and 1994’s Crank, both of which suffered from songwriting that just wasn’t up to their previous standards.
And when you’re a straight-ahead rock and roll band, and all you are ever going to be is a straight-ahead rock and roll band, you live and die on the strength of your songwriting, and — for the most part, those two records just didn’t have it.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #626: Hoodoo Gurus – “Dressed in Black”