|
|
|---|
Um..That thing that Colleen just said? That.
So my roommates are off Thanksgivinging with their family, and I'm here by my lonesome, watching the MythBusters Marathon(nerdiest of the many available marathons on cable today), and trying to come up with something to write so as to make relatively constructive use of my day.
(I also seem to be developing some weird variation of Dyslexia--I keep having to re-edit what I write and remove improperly placed spaces, and capitalize or uncapitalize letters. It's darned unsettling)
I was going to write a long overdue new entry in my long-running series: A FIELD GUIDE TO COMMON FANFIC AUTHORS. Folks seem to like that. But re-reading the fics that my new entry addresses was too depressing for what is ostensibly a holiday, so I thought I'd instead share with you peoples some music. I'll do the field guide tomorrow--it'll be a nice accent to Abraxas' planned nugget of FF joy.
That's right! The Destroyer himself will be filling the void left by Mr. Bricken's holiday break and bringing us a fic!
Ok, on with the show!
I pulled five of my favorite videos from my Youtube channel for to share with you (those that aren't DEVO, that is--they get their own articles, as you've seen). I'd be quite surprised if many of you were familiar with these songs or even have heard of these bands: That's ok, I'm used to it.
On the other hand, I am playing to an international community here--three of the bands I'll be featuring, though they never amounted to much stateside, were (and for all I know, still are) pretty well-known in England, and another had a respectable following in their native Ireland.
Understand, I'm not writing the bios of these groups here--rather, my intention is to share a bit of the soundtrack of my misspent youth(not that my adulthood is particularly well spent, but I digress)
This is the music I first got into at the age of 12. Now, unless teenagers have changed drastically in 20 years, High School and Junior High kids tend to form cliques around their shared musical tastes: The Metalheads over here, the Rap/Hip-Hop fans over there, The Pop/Top 40 crowd elsewhere, and so forth.
But the time period I'm concerned with (circa 1989-1990) was a transitional phase for Rock music: Punk and New Wave were all but dead as popular movements, and Alternative (which the music I love would eventually be lumped in with, justly or not) had yet to emerge. In between was a short lived movement known alternately as Post Modern or Post Punk, or simply Modern Rock. Often, such music would be described simply by citing where it was most commonly played and called "College Radio".
This was, and to a great extent still is, my music.
Now I don't mean to imply that back then this music didn't have a following, or that such fans were absent from my community. They were there, but I was a hundredfold shyer at this period in my life than I am now, and I never had the nerve to introduce myself to this crowd and share my music with those who could appreciate it. My own circle of friends were either Metalheads, indifferent to music, or listened to whatever was popular.
I didn't meet people who really shared my musical tastes until after High School--and the few I knew during my school years were much older and outside of school.
I used to hate it when a friendly, well-meaning individual would ask me what I listen to--often I'd try to change the subject as I was so weary of the blank stares I'd get when listing my favorite bands. It got worse in the mid-90s: I could've simply told people I was into Alternative, but that meaningless umbrella term encompassed a great deal of music I found abhorrent--and I had no real interest in explaining how the music I liked was different.
What's the point of this rambling? Music has always been, for me, an intensely personal and solitary pursuit. I just wanted that understood before I presented my selections.
I wanted it known to all what these songs mean to me--They're not simply entertainment, they are dear old friends.
Come with me and meet them, after the jump...
(off-topic note: after several months with no reply from her site, I've decided to post THE CATHEDRAL OF YAYA. If asked to by her I'll certainly take it down, but seeing how I'm not making any kind of profit from posting her images, I really don't think she'd mind--somehow I doubt every site that's posted her pics has gotten her express permission. So feel free to visit and worship Divine Grace made Flesh)
We'll start with "For Love", by British Shoegazing outfit Lush ("Shoegazing" being a term for a short lived subgenre so-called for its extensive use of effects pedals, resulting in guitarists spending a lot of time looking down at their shoes) the only thing more gorgeous than the song are they who sing and perform it:
That's Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson--they look even better in the video (how can a nerd not melt at the sight of a smokin' hot half-Japanese British girl with dyed hair?)
Next is "Sensitize" by the oddly named That Petrol Emotion. This is one of the most upbeat tunes I've ever heard, and a guaranteed mood-lifter.
Here's what an Irish band NOT run by a self-important douche sounds like:
Guadacanal Diary is the only American band I'm featuring today. A relatively unknown group, they were part of a critically accclaimed, if not commercially successful movement of Modern Rock acts from the American South. They hail from Athens, Georgia--a college town known to music buffs as the home of REM and the B-52's. This is probably their most well-known tune--and a really nifty video: "Always Saturday"
This one, "You Keep It All In" by The Beautiful South, another Brit act, was off probably the last cassette tape I ever purchased--1990's "Welcome To The Beautiful South"(though I bought it a decade later on clearance--best quarter I ever spent!). The album, and this song in particular, is catchy as hell and features some of the cleverest and most darkly humourous songwriting I've ever heard.
And finally, one more Anglo outfit: The Primitives with "Secrets". Sort of a poppier, British version of Blondie, The Primitives were a fixture on the UK charts--but never quite made it in the colonies, all they're really remembered for over here is the song "Crash" as it was featured on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack. This is another of my personal feel-good tunes, and if the song itself wasn't enough to perk up my spirits--gazing upon lead singer Tracy Tracy and sighing certainly helps:
(sigh)
I was born in the wrong country--I so very much should've been British!
Ok, that's about enough for one day--time to go figure out what I'm gonna be eating tonight.
And Remember: 7:00 PM Central Standard Time, Tonight: MST3K Night of the Blood Beast--Turkey Day Edition! Be there! find it at my youtube channel in the Favorites, then come to the blog for chat and commentary.
See ya there
DJ Scoot
