Song Of the Day: May 6, 2005
We're not that impressed with guys who can play lightning-fast torrents of notes. There are plenty of social retards down at the guitar shop with their fat asses perched on the tops of amps doing just that, annoying innocent customers who are standing in line to buy strings. No, what we like is guys who can mash into chords with a speed that seems nearly inhuman; we dig the early Wedding Present singles, the Feelies, feedtime, stuff like that. The C86 scene that crossed the classic UK post-punk bands with the Smiths produced a bunch of bands who took a machine-gun approach to brittle chords that would have been funky in the right hands. Bands like the Wolfhounds, Bodines, Big Flame, and many, many others made wonderful singles that are not yet attracting much interest from unwashed record collectors with stained sweatshirts, so get 'em while you can.
2 Comments:
I thought it said "Bodeans" when I first pulled up the page and I was like- "Is there something I should know?" And the Wolfhounds "Anti-Midas Touch" is my personal rock anthem.
Another pricelessly obscure little gem from the vaults of Little Hits. This song is totally emblematic of "that sound." The sound of the new Brit-invasion that only lasted about five minutes, but gave us truckloads of records to ponder.I recall the first Aztec Camera record being the one that broke through commercially in the states. I went to see Big COuntry at the Eagles Ballroom in MIlwaukee in '83 and a friend and I met these two college girls who told us about seeing Aztedc Camera open for Elvis Costello and what a transcendent experince it was. You can hear that kind of airiness in a song like this. The melody line, the vocals, the guitars and production conspire to recapture that bygone era before the major labels discovered "other" kinds of music. We used to think we had forever and that we had a future. How quickly that all went away, and we found ourselves living in this brave new world of ever-greater consumption. Music like this had a sophisticated innocence in it's time. The art and politcs of it were not so naive anymore, having evolved from the punk explosion, but the sense that we were still just kids in our 20s and that it was still our eternal spring disappeared as time went on and corporate consciousness took over every aspect of human existence. Thanks for giving us a chance to hear this music again. You will surely be rewarded if there's a Heaven somewhere.
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