We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Carefree Theatre
Year: 2020
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The Florida indie-pop band Surfer Blood had been making well-regarded albums for nearly a decade when the released their fifth album, Carefree Theatre, in 2020. And while I remember enjoying their first couple of records — 2010’s debut Astro Coast definitely got some buzz — it was Carefree Theatre that broke through with me.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2587: Surfer Blood – “Karen”
Album: Wipe Out
Year: 1963
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So the reason I knew that Mike in my post high-school covers band — the one where I attempted (and failed) to be a front man — was a great drummer was that he could play the tom rolls in “Wipe Out.”
I mean there were other reasons, of course, but I seem to recall that “Wipe Out” was a particular highlight in our sets — and not just because it was a song that I didn’t sing (I don’t think) — and that had to do with his drumming. Which got him into Fresno hardcore kings Capital Punishment, and is still a thing he’s doing today.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2586: The Surfaris – “Wipe Out”
Album: Kudos
Year: 2010
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All of the promise shown on Surf City’s self-titled 2007 EP came to full fruition on their debut album, 2010’s Kudos, which still retained the garage-y vibe of their earlier record, but also just sounded better and fuller.
Album: Surf City EP
Year: 2007
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One of the things I like about the randomness of going (roughly) alphabetically through an iTunes (OK fine, Apple Music) playlist for Certain Songs is that we follow zillion-selling songs that everybody knows by Supertramp & The Supremes with a band named after a song that everybody knows but very few people have probably heard. Though, they were reviewed in Pitchfork, so maybe not that obscure.
I don’t recall how Surf City came across my radar — it definitely wasn’t the Pitchfork review — but they’re a psychedelic pop band from New Zealand that plays into that country’s long tradition of noisy guitar bands, while also reminding me of U.S. bands working in the same vein like Pavement or The Dream Syndicate.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2584: Surf City – “Free The City”
Album: The Supremes A’ Go-Go
Year: 1966
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It didn’t really happen until decades after the original recordings, but pretty much everybody knows by now, the Motown studio musicians awesomely known as “The Funk Brothers” were as responsible for their amazing 1960’s run as the above-the-line performers, writers and producers who got the big glory. And the big bucks.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2583: The Supremes – “You Can’t Hurry Love”
Album: Where Did Our Love Go?
Year: 1964
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It took them three years and twice as many singles to get going, but once they did — with “Where Did Our Love Go” — the aptly-named Supremes were perhaps the most reliable hit-makers of the 1960s, selling tens of millions of records in the process, and generally recognized as one of the most popular American groups ever.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2582: The Supremes – “Come See About Me”
Album: Breakfast in America
Year: 1979
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I never bought a Supertramp album; I never saw a Supertramp concert. And yet, I know all their 1974-1979 albums very very well. Why? Because I lived in Fresno, California, one of the biggest hotbeds of Supertramp fandom in, well, the world.
How big? In 1977, then-mayor Daniel K. Whitehurst gave them the Key to The City of Fresno. Two years before Breakfast in America made them multi-platinum, chart-topping stars. Weirdly, the only reason I remember this is that I read about it in Creem Magazine, which was clearly my main source of Fresno music news in the late 1970s.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2581: Supertramp – “The Logical Song”
Album: Even in the Quietest Moments
Year: 1977
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In the mid-1970s few bands played both sides of the AM/FM divide better than Supertramp, aiming singles at the AM market while their longer, artier cuts got played on FM stations. Nowhere was this more pronounced than on their fifth album, 1977’s “Even in The Quietest Moments,” which featured their first top U.S. Top 20 single, the perfectly serviceable “Give A Little Bit,” but also FM fare like “Lover Boy” and the utterly gorgeous title track, which I only came to love decades later, even though I’m pretty sure I heard it all the time on stations like KFIG and Rock 96FM.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2580: Supertramp – “Even in the Quietest Moments”
Album: Crime of The Century
Year: 1974
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The first thing you should know about “Bloody Well Right” was that it wasn’t really intended to be the lead single from Crime of The Century, which featured that trippy “jail in SPACE” album cover, a marked improvement on the probably infamous and now problematic cover of their previous album, Indelibly Stamped, which I’ve still never heard anything from. Or their first, self-titled album, for that matter.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2579: Supertramp – “Bloody Well Right”
Album: In It For The Money
Year: 1997
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Determined to prove that their instant success — in the U.K, of course — with I Should Coco wasn’t fluke, Supergrass reportedly turned down an offer from Steven Speilberg to become the 1990s version of the Monkees, a factlet that even when sourced back to an old SPIN Magazine article, I still don’t quite believe.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2578: Supergrass – “Sun Hits The Sky”