Tag: The La’s

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Best albums of 1990: Albums #10 through #6

A couple of posts ago, I initiated a new mini-series focusing on my favourite albums of 1990. I shared some words on the concept, the fact that 1990 was the year with which I started out this blog, focusing then, on its best tunes, and finally, providing a handful of album honourable mentions. So I’ll not blather on too much today for preamble. If you’re interested where I was musically and in life in general that year, have a looky-loo here. Otherwise, I’ll dig right into albums 10 through 6 of my list of top albums for 1990*.

Enjoy!

#10 The Northern Pikes “Snow in June”

The Pikes’ third and best-selling record feels inextricably tied to my DNA sometimes. It’s not one I listen to often anymore but whenever I do, it instantly transports me back to my teenaged bedroom, where listened to this cassette tape on repeat, constantly flipping sides, while playing hours upon hours of ‘Pool of radiance’ on my C64. It’s way more than just the ubiquitous CanCon classic, “She ain’t pretty“. There’s thirteen solid rock tracks that are tempered by folk leanings and varied in sound according to which of the three vocalists wrote and led the singing on each. Perhaps the nostalgia is strong here but I stand by my love for this album. It’s unfortunate that the Saskatchewan-based quartet couldn’t keep the momentum up for their next album.

#9 Jane’s Addiction “Ritual de lo habitual”

Jane’s Addiction’s second proper studio album was handed to me on cassette tape by a friend and fellow new initiate to the alternative music scene, calling it industrial and comparing the group to Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, both bands I was just getting into. Of course, Jane’s weren’t really industrial but they had that similar rage and wild sound and perhaps even more so in a sense. There’s so many great tracks on ‘Ritual’ and I’ve always thought that what set them so apart was that the songs are all slightly unhinged, as if the whole ship could all fall apart at any moment. This orchestrated chaos was what made the American quartet led by Perry Farrell so great but it was also their undoing**. They broke up at the end of the tour for the album, the finale of which also saw the group headlining the very first Lollapalooza festival.

#8 Sinéad O’Connor “I do not want what I haven’t got”

I remember buying this album on cassette tape as part of Columbia House’s 9 albums for a penny, way back in the day, and for the longest time, only listening to “Nothing compares 2 u” because that was the song I knew from my weekly viewing of the Chum FM 30. Once I moved past that one tune, though, I grew to appreciate Sinéad’s other material. I later migrated away from listening to her, not because of her infamous photo burning appearance on SNL or her outspokenness on many topics, but because my tastes took me in a different direction. However, I’ve since returned to this album many times over the last couple of decades. Sinéad was a great songwriter. Not just a lyricist but also in the way she created a sound, sometimes infusing Celtic folk sounds with funky drum beats and sometimes leaving it all bare, singing a capella and including her inhalations of breathe as another tool in her tool belt. Such a legendary voice and polarizing persona.

#7 The La’s “The La’s”

You’ve heard about one hit wonders, right? Well, how about one album wonders? The La’s were a five-piece Liverpool-based rock act led by Lee Mavers that were active from 1983 to 1992. They released a handful of singles throughout that time, including one of my favourite one hit wonders, “There she goes”, but only ever managed the one studio album before disbanding***. But what a great album it was. The self-titled debut is filled with short and jangly rock gems that dig their way into your head and root themselves in there for good measure, much like another act from that same England town. It’s another one of those great rock ‘what if’ stories. Who knows what a second record would have meant to the band and perhaps rock music as a whole.

#6 Concrete Blonde “Bloodletting”

Concrete Blonde’s third album was oh-so-close to breaking into my top five for 1990. Previously, the sound of the Hollywood-based, indie rock trio led by Johnette Napolitano was mostly pedestrian rock and yet, their following was meagre, being picked up mostly by the college radio kids. With “Bloodletting”, they ventured into gothic rock territory and surprisingly, found commercial success for the first time. I remember listening to this album around my wife at one point early on in our relationship and she was surprised that I was listening to a band that she knew. But this album is so much more than “Joey“. Every track is dark and haunting and full of soul and drenched with meaning for me. I could listen to this album all night long.

*With each album in this post, I’ve tried to choose a representative track that was not featured on my Best tunes list for 1990, partly to show the breadth of each and partly to avoid being repetitive.

**I’ve often thought that it could have been Jane’s and not Nirvana that broke alternative to the mainstream, had they managed to survive the touring cycle for this album.

***There were a number of attempts at reforming over the years but none have really stuck up to now.

Stay tuned for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

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Tunes

100 best covers: #64 The Boo Radleys “There she goes”

<< #65    |    #63 >>

While looking for something to listen to on Spotify recently, I rediscovered that Alan Cross’s amazing radio show, “The ongoing history of new music”, is available on there as a podcast. I may be one of the only people that I know that never got into the concept of podcasts, always preferring to listen to music whenever the opportunity is afforded to listen to something, whether it be in the car, at work, or just puttering around the house. However, I always loved listening to Alan Cross’s radio show back when I was younger and living in Toronto, where his show was originally broadcasted on CFNY, and I decided to give the podcast a try. I’ve now listened to and enjoyed a few episodes (of course, Cross is still as interesting and engaging as ever) and can now see myself checking it out on the regular.

I mention this because in a weird coincidence the theme on the very first podcast episode to which I listened had for its theme, one-hit wonders of the 1990s, and in the middle of the show, Cross called The La’s’ “There she goes”, ‘the perfect pop song’. I myself included this very track and ranked it number one when I did a post on my top five one-hit wonders of the 1980s* a few years ago. In that post, I also referred to it as a perfect pop song, to the ‘jangly guitars that shimmer in the sunlight’ and how ‘Lee Mavers’ vocals alternate between rough and soft’.

This balance and counterpoint and the compact song structure and length is likely why so many artists have covered it and have had success with it. Indeed, “There she goes” has been covered by The Wombats, Robbie Williams, and by an American a cappella act called The Kingsmen. Perhaps most famously, Sixpence None The Richer covered it and released it as the second single off their self-titled album in 1999, the follow up to the ubiquitous hit, “Kiss me”. Their slowed down, acoustic focused version did quite well and sure, it’s lovely enough, but in my opinion, it completely dispenses with any of the edge on the original.

The cover version that I prefer is the one by British contemporaries, The Boo Radleys, and this can be attributed to the fact that I discovered it at the same time and place as I did the original. Both versions are featured on the soundtrack for the film, “So I married an axe murderer”** and the two together are, in a sense, a de fact theme song for the film. They book-end the album, the cover opening the proceedings and the original having the final word. I used to think they were pretty much the same but on closer inspection recently, I managed to separate the intricacies.

The Boo Radleys ease off a bit on the jangle by replacing the iconic arpeggio guitar intro with horns and they unbelievably one-up the original in peppiness by increasing the tempo, adding handclaps, and vocal harmonies. In another ‘how did they do it’ facet, The Boo Radleys’ version even managed to come out thirty seconds shorter than Lee Mavers’ perfect pop song length in the original.

Is the cover better? You won’t catch me answering the affirmative here – the original is so good – but I do enjoy both.

Thoughts?

Cover:

The original:

*”There she goes” was originally released as a single in 1988 but was re-released a couple of times in the 1990s. Hence, it being attributed to both the 1980s and the 1990s.
**It’s a great soundtrack, much better than the film for which it was put together. For a bit more on both, have a peek on my post on Suede’s “My insatiable one”, another track that appeared on the soundtrack.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Top five tunes: 1980’s one-hit wonders

I was involved in a collaborative, cross blog effort on Bob Dylan back in December with a community of bloggers of which I have happily found myself a part. It went so well that immediately afterwards, emails were flying about with ideas of future collaborations. The theme that seemed to catch the most immediate traction was “one-hit wonders”, an idea I thought particularly compelling. And so here we are, just over a month later, talking about exactly that subject.

For the rest of the One-hit Wonder posts by my fellow bloggers, click here.

The context:

We’ve all heard the term, of course, but I would think that most of us have differing opinions on what constitutes a “one-hit wonder” and would probably argue which bands or artists should be (or not be) termed as such.

Wikipedia defines the term “as any entity that achieves mainstream popularity and success for a very short period of time, often for only one piece of work, and becomes known among the general public solely for that momentary success”. I prefer this explanation over the one coined by Wayne Jancik for his Billboard sponsored book on the theme that proffers the term to any artist that has only made the top 40 list once. Under his definition, our man Beck would be considered a one-hit wonder!

I find the whole idea a rather difficult one to navigate because you have instances where a band or singer could be huge in their own country and nowhere else (or perhaps even the opposite could be true). I’ve seen bands like the The Verve on some lists for “Bittersweet symphony”, for instance, and you have Soft Cell, who is probably on every one-hit wonder list ever for “Tainted love”, but had a number of other hits in England at the time. Then, you’ve got bands who had a few hits at a certain time (like A-Ha) or never had any real hits (if you term “hits” by songs that have landed on charts) but are only remembered for the one song. It’s this last bit that forms the basis of my own personal definition of the term.

For the purposes of this post, I’m going with any artist who released a song for which they are best known (whether a hit or no) and which has, for better or worse, overshadowed all of their other output. And to make things easier on myself, I’ve decided to limit this top five list to songs from only one decade. In this case, I’ve chosen the 1980s, an easy target since the decade seemed to be rife with one-hit wonders.

Oh and just one more thing before I get into my list: it’s of interest to note that each of the following five songs is the only song I have ever heard by each band in the list to this day.

Right. Let’s do this.

The top five:

#5: “Mexican radio” by Wall of Voodoo (1982)

Wall Of Voodoo came about when aspiring film score composer Stan Ridgway began jamming with LA punk scene guitarist Marc Moreland in the late 1970s. “Mexican radio” appears on the band’s second and biggest selling album, 1982’s “Call of the wild”. Apparently, their other material mixes elements of post-punk, new wave, and spaghetti western cinema soundtracks but as I eluded to above, I can neither confirm or deny, having never heard any of it besides this one track. I believe I first heard the song when I went on a retro eighties compilation CD buying spree at the end of the 1990s and picked up an album called, “Rare & brilliant: Retro 80s volume 2”. It’s a ridiculous song, really, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It plays just this side of kitsch with random synths and sound effects played against a discordant rhythm, and of course, there’s Ridgway’s sing/speak vocals, blathering about barbecued iguanas and not understanding the DJ on a border blaster, Mexican radio station. Obviously, I was hooked from the beginning, it not sounding anything like the other new wave I had been previously listening to in the 1980s. And of course, I’ll never forget shortly after discovering it, going out to a retro night with my old roommate, Ryan, and this being played by the DJ. Oh we danced and sang along loudly: “I’m on a Mexican radio, oh-woah.”

#4: “88 lines about 44 women” by The Nails (1981, 1984)

The Nails, originally called The Ravers, formed in Boulder, Colorado in 1978, later moving to New York City, where they took up their new name after coming across another band with a similar name on the club circuit. An early version of “88 lines about women” was released on the 1981 EP, “Hotel for women”, where it caught the attention of RCA, who signed them to a record deal. It was then re-recorded and released on their debut long player, “Mood swing”, in 1984. Despite its sexual references, it received regular radio airplay and has appeared on numerous 80s compilations. I feel like I first came across the song on a very successful Mazda television commercial for which it was used in the 1990s. Then, my friend Zed never let me forget it, always seeming to have it on in his Jeep when he picked me up to go out. It’s easy to see why it was so successful and why my friend Zed, who loves to laugh, loves it so much. It’s quite the ear worm with its mechanical rhythms and even more robotic vocals, the only warmth coming from the humming between verses, and of course, its hilarity. The lyrics are made up of 44 couplets, each depicting, as the title suggests, a different woman and perhaps, their sexual preferences or proclivities. Just try not laugh as you listen to the lyrics and try getting that beat out of your head once the tune ends.

#3: “The promise” by When in Rome (1987)

When In Rome were a new wave dance trio that formed in Manchester in 1987. “The promise” was the first single off their one and only album, a self-titled release that gave way to one other single that didn’t make as near as much noise. There were the obvious comparisons to New Order but I would liken “The promise” more to OMD’s more commercial work, in particular 1986’s “If you leave”. It has the same deep and romantic vocal harmonies and prom dancefloor ready beats. The song hit all the dance charts at the time and had a brief revival when it appeared during the final scene of the 2004 cult classic, “Napoleon Dynamite”. It hit my radar with the same compilation CD that delivered the number five song above. But now, whenever I hear it, I think of a scene in the short-lived Canadian television series, “JPod”, based on the Douglas Coupland book of the same name, in which one of the male characters stands out under the window of a female character holding a boombox, playing this song, a parody of the famous John Cusack boombox scene from “Say anything”. But even without this memory, “The promise” is a track that stirs up feelings of longing and thoughts of dancing solo on a near empty dancefloor, only a disco ball to keep you company.

#2: “I melt with you” by Modern English (1982)

“I’ll stop the world and melt with you.” Man, what a line. The image it presents is that of raw emotion and the irrational notion of being completely in love. Even the knowledge that it was inspired by the idea of making love while an atomic bomb is dropped (“I saw the world crashing all around your face”) doesn’t take away any of its purity. “I melt with you” was released as the second single off the Colchester, England new wave band’s second album, 1982’s “After the snow”. Perhaps not a one-hit wonder in the classic sense in that this tune wasn’t even Modern English’s highest charting song in England but I dare any of you to name one of their songs that was more important as this one. Or now that I’m at, can you name another one at all? I couldn’t tell you when I first heard this song. Indeed, I feel like I’ve always known it. The jangle and the beat, it’s pure ecstasy and joy. I wasn’t at all surprised when I read while writing this post that they were heavily influenced by Joy Division in their early work. I feel like “I melt with you” is like the more cheerful and optimistic younger brother to “Love will tear us apart”. It does have that dark and claustrophobic production and ghostly synths and violent guitar strumming, but here the guitar is more jangly and the outlook on love more positive. And of course, it’s a sweet hop on the retro dance floor.

#1: “There she goes” by The La’s (1988)

So here’s a special case in many ways. Like most of the songs on this list, “There she goes” was not a huge hit in the commercially successful sense of the word. It was originally released as a single in 1988, the Liverpool-based quartet’s second, but it received more attention when it was remixed and re-released as part of The La’s one and only album, 1990’s self-titled (apparent) masterpiece. And maybe it’s partly because of the fact that I know that they have a rather limited catalogue but this band of the five here on this list is the only one I have any serious interest in further investigating. Also, “There she goes” is a rocking good tune that sticks with you. Jangly guitars that shimmer in the sunlight, Lee Mavers’ vocals alternate between rough and soft, a dream and a longing, a universal wish. It’s almost too brief in its perfect pop song structure, a sneak attack on your soul. I’ll never forget hearing it first in the background of the Mike Meyers’ movie, “So I married an axe murderer”, a film for whom its soundtrack was better and more successful, featuring both the original of this song and a faithful cover of it by The Boo Radleys. The song hooked me and I immediately was on the lookout for it but I didn’t have to search for long. I received a mixed tape from a friend not long after and this song was on it. Like it was meant to be. Magical, just like the song.

I welcome all of you to suggest other one hit wonders from the 1980s that should’ve appeared here or even to comment on whether you disagree with my own definition above.

For other top five lists in this series, click here.