Mixtape Friday

Its Memorial Day weekend, so let's remember music from different decades.  I've got a couple songs covered from the 80's till now.  Enjoy.

Whatever Wednesday

I heard yesterday that one of my favorite bands of my adolescence, The Sundays have been thinking about a come back and coming up with some new music after a 17 year hiatus.  This is amazing news!
I first heard of The Sundays from my brother Matt, who also writes on this blog.  He was dating his wife at that time and she owned their second album, "Blind" and I decided to "borrow it".  This happened quite often with my brother's or sister's CD's.  I'd borrow them and end up keeping them for a long time.  It wasn't that I'd listen to it a little bit and let it sit there.  I'd listen to them everyday all of the time.  Remember, computers didn't readily have music at your finger tips, if I didn't have the CD, I couldn't listen to it.  Desperate times calls for desperate measures, so I'd borrow them until I could scrounge up enough money to go buy it a store.
Anyway, got a little sidetracked.  I listened to their second album after I got the CD from my brother who was borrowing it from my soon to be sister-in-law.  I snagged it after hearing it during a trip to Yellowstone back in 1994 and they immediately became my favorite band at the time.  I soon discovered The Sunday's first album "Reading Writing and Arithmetic" and listened to it heavily during the summer of 1996.  I played it on repeat when I worked as a courier taking medical records from clinic to clinic.  It also was the main theme during a church youth group getaway.  I listened to the song "Skin and Bones" over and over during that week.....while my friend Ryan played the Mission Impossible Soundtrack over and over, ha!  The album "Blind" doesn't have as many specific memories, but is equally as good as the first.  The combination of Harriet Wheeler's lovely vocals and David Gavurin's crisp dream poppy guitar riffs are incredible.  Their last album was made five years after their second album and wasn't quite as good, but still had some great standouts.
They had initially called it quits due to Harriet and David (who are married) raising their two kids.  One is out of high school now and the other one is just starting high school, so it makes sense that they would start to collaborate again.
If this reunion actually happens, I will fly to wherever they are closest to see them.  They were definitely one of my favorite bands for many years.

Here is the article about their possible reform:

Stereogum: The Sundays

Here is the song "Hideous Towns" from their first album that I love:

Mixtape Friday

A great collection of tunes from the 90's that are somewhat obscure from bands that are well known.

Spring to the past - Obscure 90's from RubenFarr on 8tracks Radio.

Throwback Thursday

Juliana Hatfield's "Universal Heartbeat" is easily one of my five favorite songs from the 1990's.  Boasting a sturdy melody, a killer guitar-laden chorus, vocals dripping with cool attitude, and awesome keyboard noodlings, this song leaps from the speakers and wrestles you to the ground in a musical half nelson.

Juliana was at the forefront of the wave of assertive female musicians in the 90's who found in expression in, among others, the Riot Grrrl and Lilith Fair movements.  Hatfield was a founding member of the beloved college rock band The Blake Babies and continues to be a prolific musician to this day.  But in her impressive musical career,  "Universal Heartbeat" (at least to my mind) remains her crowning moment of musical glory.

Juliana Hatfield - Universal Heartbeat    

Whatever Wednesday

The year was 1996...and just like anyone who saw the new version of Romeo and Juliet...you heard a song that became immensely popular, The Cardigan's "Lovefool".  I, like everyone else, got my copy of "First Band on the Moon" just so I could hear that track.  After the song lost its luster and the album left my car cd book, my friend and I saw a music video for their second single, "Been It" on the only music station that my antennae would pull in, The Box, "Music television YOU control".  After spending a couple of our precious dollars to play the video we were surprised with how much we liked it.  I thought for sure that they, like so many bands before them, would become a one hit wonder and fizzle off into the sunset.  What I saw in the video was that there was a lot more to the band.......unfortunately it took me a long time after that to pick up that album that I purchased years before  from Media Play and discover its......for lack of a better word.....amazing-ness.  I was holding onto gold.  The album is extremely under-rated and tends to be brushed off by a lot of people because of Love Fool.  But if you dig deeper, you'll find the entire album is much, much better than its #1 hit.  Soon after that I skewered all of their albums.  Their older albums, 'Emmerdale' and 'Life' set the stage for the Moon album.  Like most bands, they had a hard time repeating that magic from there and stumbled with releases after that.

Their music is so sunny and happy....even in its darker songs.  This band began an age of 60's/70's pop influenced music that I listened to non-stop back in 2005, I was obsessed, but that's another story.  I have heard they have reformed and have played in the last couple months in Europe.  They are in the top 10 current bands I'd love to see live.  This is the track "Carnival" from the album "Life".

This is from their first album Emmerdale, "Black Letter Day"

Lastly from First Band on the Moon, "Your New Cuckoo"

Throwback Thursday ... Snochi Style

I suppose there are worse places one could be stranded than Tampa, Florida. I've been here in the Buccaneers' and Rays' hometown on a business trip since Monday and was scheduled to fly back to DC this morning. However, a light 12-18" dusting of snow in the greater DC region (the storm's now being dubbed Snochi — cute) has all but paralyzed air traffic in the nation's capital, meaning that my original return flight as well as my backup flights all got canceled. I'm now scheduled to get home by tomorrow evening. But even that's in jeopardy now, as another system advancing into the area may drop up to 4 more inches tomorrow night. So with the status of my return less than certain at the moment, I continue to cool my jets in the warm Tampa sun.

And speaking of the warm sun, let's take a quick jaunt back to the summer of 1992 — a time I always associate with sunny optimism and carefree frivolity. To me, no song more immediately conjures up that era than the Soup Dragons' highest-charting single "Divine Thing." So for those who sit in their snowbound houses tonight (or worse, an incapacitated airport), here's a little ditty that will hopefully send a ray or two of sunshine your way. Enjoy!

Soup Dragons — Divine Thing