Whatever Wednesday

Its been a long time since I've posted.  I hate to say that I didn't have enough time since this post took me 5 minutes, but its been busy busy.  The song that I have rediscovered lately is from the Crystal Stilts.  The song Sycamore Tree is from one my favorite albums of 2011, In Love With Oblivion.  It has been stuck in my head for the past few weeks so I thought I'd create an outlet for it.  Enjoy.

Whatever Wednesday

I've been curious as to the origins of a certain Talking Heads live album called Monkey Business.  My brother brought it as an import and it is very hard to find the original now.  I was able to track down that this was actually a bootleg of a concert, although the sound quality is outstanding.  It is by far my favorite album of Talking Heads music.  Here is the album cover that I was able to track down.

  I'm not one for owning live albums.  For a long time, I hated when bands put out live albums because they didn't sound at all like the recordings.  But this is different.  A lot of the songs are similar to the live album "Stop Making Sense" but after listening to both, I felt and still feel that Monkey Business is the better sounding album and has the most energy with the crowd noises involved.  I'd say "Go take a listen at Spotify" or wherever else you can go listen to music for free, but this is no where to be found.  I will have to post some examples comparing the recording to Stop Making Sense and see what everyone else thinks.

In the meantime, here's "Found a Job" from the famous "Stop Making Sense" film.

Whatever Wednesday

The Ocean Blue

As with grunge music I was a little late to the game listening to certain bands of the 80's....namely The Ocean Blue.  Growing up with older siblings that exposed me to the best that the 80's had to offer, I didn't think at the time (2002) that I was missing anything.  Once I heard the song, "Between Something and Nothing" I was hooked.  I immediately wanted to get my hands on everything the band ever produced.  That repetitive guitar hook never stops being amazing no matter how many times its repeated. The Ocean Blue is definitely under the radar as far as good late 80's\early 90's bands go, so you should check them out.

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"