Having had the good fortune to speak to The Cult’s lead singer, Ian Astbury, earlier this afternoon (I’d originally been scheduled to talk with guitarist Billy Duffy, but, what, like talking to Astbury instead is complaint-worthy?), I thought I’d favor ESDM’s readers with a video from the album he declares to be his favorite of all the band’s works. As is so often the case, it turned out to be one of their least successful, but one should always be true to oneself. I mean, the label won’t buy into it, but, still, you’ll feel better in the long run.
Category: Songs (Page 47 of 96)
Picture the Lightning Seeds if they covered a Buzzcocks record. Can U Dig it?
“Get Down.” Watch the dancing bunnies multiply and take over the studio!
Talk about star-crossed bands. Ft. Worth quintet Sugarbomb freaking rocked, dude. They could sing, they could play, and most importantly, they could write. The only thing they couldn’t do, it appears, was win the love of their label, RCA. After receiving instructions from the label to dumb their music down, Sugarbomb singer and main songwriter Les Farrington gave them “Hello,” a Vertical Horizon-ish slice of generic pop/rock. “You want dumb? Here you go!” Les said.
The label loved it. Uh oh.
The song was a minor hit, popping up on a couple soundtracks, but it was not at all indicative of how talented Sugarbomb really were. Worse, the song gave RCA an idea of how to sell the band, but it would mean turning Sugarbomb into something they were most decidedly not: a generic pop band. Soon after the album was released, RCA dropped the band (the album came out two weeks after 9/11, so RCA was cleaning house). Infighting soon followed, and a few months later, Sugarbomb were finished. Tragic.
Submitted for your approval is “After All,” the final track on the band’s fabulous album Bully (you can find it for a couple bucks on Half.com) and as grand a tribute to Queen as you’re likely to find outside of “Knights of Cydonia.” The last I heard, Sugarbomb singer Les Farrington was playing at piano bars. Why he doesn’t have a MySpace page, I’ll never understand.
The Barenaked Ladies thought they were being funny when, on their 1992 debut, Gordon, they sang these lines: “Maybe it’s a lack of inspiration that makes me stoop, or maybe it’s a lack of remuneration – I can’t recoup – but if you want it, folks, you got it: it’s all right here in my box set.” While the song, “Box Set,” might keep BNL from releasing a multi-disc career-spanning collection (mostly because they would never, ever hear the end of it), plenty of other artists have dipped into the vaults and put together compilations which mix their best-known material with heretofore-unheard tracks. In some cases, however, artists dispense of previously-released material altogether, cull together all the rarities they can find, and make it an affair strictly for the fans. All told, there are so many such releases in existence that we here at Bullz-Eye didn’t even try to do a formal “Best Ever Box Sets” list. Instead, the writers put together lists of their personal favorites, and we separated out the various-artists collections into their own separate list, just to make it a little less confusing. The musical genres are decidedly across the board, but with the holidays coming up, if you’ve got a friend or family member who’s a full-fledged music geek, we might just have a few ideas for you to consider as gifts.
Here’s an example…
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Live/1975-1985 (Columbia) “Ladies and gentlemen…Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” the calm voice of a faceless PA announcer breathes, as the opening piano notes of “Thunder Road” begin the incredible retrospective journey that is Live/1975-85. From intimate clubs like The Roxy in 1975, where Springsteen plays “Thunder Road” solo on a piano, to Meadowlands Arena in 1981 for a full-on band assault of “Cadillac Ranch” and “Candy’s Room” to the mega Born In The U.S.A. tour in 1985 and nearly every hit finding the LA Coliseum stage that year, Jon Landau mastered a beauty here. The Boss tells stories (“Growin’ Up”), opens his diary (“Because the Night”), and simply rocks out with the force of 100 men (“Born to Run”), all to wild applause of fans from coast to coast over a decade of non-stop touring. It’s a box set like no other: all live, all real, and with all albums (up to the release date) well represented. Covers of Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl” and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” are impeccably-done, if unexpected, nuggets that sound as fresh as any original. This was the perfect Christmas gift for a pimply-faced kid in working class America back in 1986 who would have otherwise had to work two weeks for enough money to buy a 3-album set, and it remains indispensable in 2007. – Red Rocker
…and here’s the rest of the piece.
Did we miss any of your favorites?
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