19 April 2013 - Pixies - Here Comes Your Man

24 years ago yesterday, the Pixies 2nd full length album, Doolittle, was released.

This song, the 2nd single from that album, was by far the biggest hit the band ever had.  They were - still are - a clearly underground band, so hits were not their driver of success.  However, this song.... this song was a little poppy, and a lot of fun.  I dare you not to sing along.

They had fun with the video, too - even doing a little Talk Talk tribute (the whole "we'll just open our mouths instead of lipsync" thing), and making the video with a fisheye lense and stretch imagery.

18 April 2013 - The Lightning Seeds - Pure

Well here's a flash from the Alternative Nation past. I get this song stuck in my head A LOT. Not sure why, but it could certainly be a lot worse (I don't even want to name a bad song here for fear of getting it into my head . . . and yours too . . . I suppose). Oddly, I kind of hated Pure when it was all over MTV's 120 Minutes. Obviously, as the years progressed I got over it (I actually picked up Cloudcuckooland and their second album Sense which featured The Life of Riley . . . another 120 Minutes back-in-the-day mainstay). So sit back, pretend Dave Kendall just gave some long-winded and over-dramatic introduction and click on that play button.

17 April 2013 - Frida - I Know There's Something Going On

Anni-Frid Lyndstad was one of the A's in ABBA.  She more commonly went by Frida.  She still does, I suppose - she's not dead.

She also had one of the biggest post-ABBA solo hits of anyone from the group.  Clearly, she made a clear break from ABBA by finding a harder rock sound.... with the help of Phil Collins.... which probably explains the heavy drums.  Frida, to her credit, had a huge voice and could easily carry the rock sound just as well as she harmonized with her former bandmates.


As a bonus, here is Frida... er, "live"... performing the song on Swedish television from 1982.  I tried to find an actual live performance, but all I could find was lipsynched. Enjoy.

16 April 2013 - Moby w/Gwen Stefani - Southside

I haven't heard this song off of Moby's mainstream breakthrough album in quite some time. I may have to dig out Play this weekend and relive the summer of 99 when I listened to it non-stop. I actually saw him play a modern rock festival shortly after this record broke. He put on a killer show which was made even more fun for me because he was acting kind of surly about the frathouse mentality of the pit (it was at a college with Green Day, Disturbed and Good Charlotte playing, what did he expect?).

15 April 2013 - Public Enemy - He Got Game & Bring The Noise (both versions)

Heavily sampling the Buffalo Springfield classic "For What It's Worth", Chuck D and Flavor Flav bring us a song on the slow tip.  From the 1998 movie of the same name, the song represented a comeback of sorts.  Sure, it wasn't as angry sounding as earlier PE tunes, but lyrically, it still packed a bite.

And yes, that is Stephen Stills - of Crosby, Still & Nash (and Young), and, of course, Buffalo Springfield - reprising his vocal in this video and on the single.



In contrast, here is one of their earlier songs - "Bring The Noise" - which has a lot more energy..... and a lot of anger.  This is the original version, with just Chuck D and Flavor Flav on the vocals....  mostly Chuck D, but Flav is so full of energy and amped up the volume.

A lot of people see Flavor Flav as just a goofy guy.  He is far more than that.  He was the energy of the group - a yin to the yang that was Chuck D's intelligent hip hop.



Of course, once Anthrax got involved, the volume went waaaaaaaaay up.  This is the version most people know.  It's not bad, but it isn't my favorite version.  The collaboration grew out of the New York city metal and hip hop scenes, which were closer than a lot of people thought they were.... I mean, until Aerosmith met Run DMC.... but that's a story for another day.

12 April 2013 - The Primitives - Crash & Rattle My Cage & Lose The Reason

In 1988, music changed for me.  I had been listening to music at the fringe of mainstream for a couple of years, but that year, the year I turned 16, so many of my favorite albums of all time were released.  One of these days I'll chronicle all of those - probably somewhere else, because most of them are decidedly guilt-free.

The single that defined that year for me was released by Coventy, UK band The Primitives.  The lead single from their great album Lovely, it was a #5 hit there, and a #3 Modern Rock hit in the US.  The band was sadly defined by its lead vocalist, Tracy Cattell (who went by Tracy Tracy at the time), mostly because of her blonde hair and its similarity to the hair color of Andrea Lewis (The Darling Buds, who released my favorite album of 1990 and who were featured here last May) and Wendy James (Transvision Vamp, who released my favorite album of 1989 and who I have planned for an epic post in the near future) - excellent bands in their own right, but unfairly lumped together.

I mean, any band with a blonde female lead vocalist and a power pop sound MUST be ripping off Debbie Harry, right?  God forbid that the hair color choices (in Andrea's case, I'm pretty sure it was natural) of these women be separate from their musical influences.

In 1995, it got an awful remix for the movie Dumb and Dumber, which I did not enjoy (the movie OR the remix), featuring musicians and vocalists who were not and never were members of The Primitives.  Here is the original version, in all its power pop goodness.

(edit: the original video is gone, so here's a video of the band lipsyncing to the song when it was new for a TV show in Spain)

 

(edit: 14 Jan 2021):  The video is back. 

Happily, The Primitives are back together.  And still play this little song.

They're even making new music!  Here was their first comeback single, released in 2011.  They've become a tighter band, truly embracing the power pop sound that was their strength.  It has fast become one of my favorite songs...

.

....and here's their latest single.  PJ Court shares the lead vocal with Tracy on this one - they never really harmonized like this in the past, although PJ took lead on some earlier songs.  I hope they don't stop - they're brilliant together.  And this video - very self-effacing, complete with a nice S.A.W. reference.

11 April 2013 - The Outfield - Your Love

I swore I posted a video by The Outfield recently for 80s Thursday. But it was The Hooters. I guess the 80s were a lot like the 00s. Lots of "The" bands that all kind of sound the same. All kidding aside, I always liked this song when I was a youngin' shooting hoops in the driveway. What? You expected me to say playing baseball. Yeah, just when you think I'm gonna zig, I zag.