The Onion A.V. Club’s blogger, Steve Hyden, has a nomination…but, man, that’s a subjective question if there ever was one.
So what’s your pick…?
Here are his rules:
1. It came out between 1955 and 1980.
2. It has to be bluesy, but not too bluesy.
3. It can’t be a classic rock radio staple.
4. It must make you drive at least 10 mph faster within the first 60 seconds and/or make doing the dishes fun.
5. You know it when you hear it.
And…GO!
At long last, the debut from the Holloways, So This Is Great Britain?, drops on these here shores. I was particularly excited about hearing the rest of the album, as my July 10 love letter for their song “Generator” will attest. Well, I finally heard it, and…sigh.
Let me be clear about that sigh. There is actually some magnificent stuff on the album. They just can’t keep up the pace for the entire record. But the stuff that’s good is damn good, like this little ditty called “Dancefloor.” Plus, the video is about as Bullz-Eye friendly as they come.
Ahhh, the joys of fuzzed-out garage punk. Guys paying homage to 1980s postpunk retro maniacs like Mudhoney who themselves were paying homage to 1960s do-it-yourselfers like the Sonics. While such a swirling mishmash of influences might sound complicated, it’s really not. Think lo-tech. Think basic rock. Think pre-Sgt. Pepper.
It’s rock, unvarnished, and it’s awesome. Energetic hard-bashed drums, guitar with distortion turned to “11,” little if any keyboards, and no production values whatsoever. Think “Dirty Water” by the Standells. Think “Baby Please Don’t Go” by the Amboy Dukes. Think “Smells Like Teen Spirit” playing over a not-quite-tuned-in AM radio station.
It adds up to The Ultra Twist, an Italian punk band not quite a year old, who features all of the above, and a little (OK, a lot) of punk attitude.
The only high-tech digital artifacts detectable in the Ultra Twist’s Tracks–at least at MySpace sampling rates–is the deliberately added vinyl-like hiss and pop at the beginnings of the tracks. It’s a cheap trick, but hey, it shows the world where their priorities are, somewhere far south of Nelly Furtado’s quality control standards. And it’s good.
Warning: Flag-waving Amur-kans aren’t necessarily going to agree with all their sentiments–although, scratch that: Polls indicate that even staunch patriots are parting ways with our president, and the band’s anti-Bush rant is classic punk: An instrumental punctuated by three words. Albeit three incendiary words, to some folks.
Most punk fans would find it hard to disagree with The Ultra Twist’s main anthem, “No Beer No Fun,” so the band offers an opportunity for us to all set politics aside and mosh until our noses bleed, and our sinuses are finally cleared of all that Furtado. Anyway, dig the tunes and no, don’t adjust your speakers–it’s supposed to sound that nasty.
Welcome to a the inaugural installment of Ruby Tuesday, where we discuss a hidden or lost gem from music’s past. Yes, we’re very clever with our titles. Stayed up for days coming up with it. Seriously.
Our first subject is Bradford, England’s Tasmin Archer, a soul popster from the early ’90s who, thanks to her UK #1 smash “Sleeping Satellite,” was quickly dubbed the Female Seal. She was not the Female Seal, of course — anyone who bought the album that spawned “Satellite,” 1993’s Great Expressions, learned that lesson the hard way — but there is no denying that “Satellite” could easily pass for the twin sister of “Crazy.” Both songs have an airy quality to them, and both have dance-ish beats but aren’t exactly danceable. It was an apt, and as favorable, a comparison as Archer was likely to find.
The hit parade for Archer ended quickly. She scored one more Top 20 hit in the UK with “In Your Care,” though one could argue that its chart success owed more to its B-side — a remix of “Sleeping Satellite” — than the song on the cover. A few more singles crawled their way into the UK Top 40, but she never dented the US charts again. She continues to make music, but I personally have not seen anything of hers in the CD racks since the 1994 Shipbuilding EP, where she covered a handful of Elvis Costello tunes.
Such is the fate for far more musicians than you would think. Knock the one-hit wonder all you want, but at least people remember their big hit. Archer, on the other hand, has practically been erased from the history books. Which is why I would like to submit “Sleeping Satellite” — yep, it’s the remixed version from that single for “In Your Care” — as the first ruby. Enjoy.
And to that we can all sigh a giant “duh.” But yes, ” [A] study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population.” It’s a good thing, though, that rock and roll is generally dead these days, so those who were previously prone to checking out early can get into some other line of business and live good, long lives. After all, who doesn’t want ICP around forever?
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