The podcast crew finishes off 1987 with a couple of big name artists in Violent Femmes and The Smiths, along with a track from the unexpected later stage of Wire’s excellent catalog.
And welcome back to 120 Months. My name is Michael Millard, here with Keith Porterfield and Scott Mobley. We are doing a little deep dive on MTV’s 120 minutes.
Month by month. We’re going to pick songs from each month that we enjoy bands that we like. Maybe even bands we don’t like.
I don’t know. we’ve really taken that path yet, but we’ve got a long way to go, so who knows? And at the end of the episode, we do a mystery song that is new to all 3 of us and talk about what that’s all about. So interesting lineup this week.
And we’ll just jump right into it. I’m going to kick things off this week with a definitely a college radio classic band, definitely as I’ll say that this podcast is associated with 35,000 watts, Story of College Radio, which is a documentary about college radio, and when we were talking to people, One of the questions that we would ask is like, what do you think of as the iconic college radio band? What’s a college radio band that like immediately comes to mind when you think about college radio music?
And REM was usually number one. Pixies were usually up there. But in at least the top, like, 4 or 5 bands that people would mention is violent films, which I think is interesting because they aren’t one of the more long…
Well, they’re still around. So they are a long-lived band. They have had a long career, but I think they’re…
I mean, is it fair to say that they’re mostly associated with their debut album? I think probably like most of the songs that you know from them come from that album. So it’s interesting how much of a shadow they kind of cast on college radio and how much influence they had on like a ton of indie rock bands. even though they they really did, you know, just kind of they had kind of a brief moment in the sun.
And then they’ve just kind of kept chugging along ever since. And, you know, I think that’s just fine. Like their debut album is amazing.
Song that we’re going to talk about is Violent Films, Gone, Daddy, Gone. Gone, daddy, gone. Love is gone, daddy gone.
Love is gone. It’s gone, daddy gone. Love is gone, is gone, daddy gone.
Love is gone away. So it is off their debut album, which was recorded in 83. They formed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 81, founded by bassist Brian Richie, percussionist Victor De Lorenzo.
And then shortly after there after that, Gordon Gano joined the band, who’s the lead vocalist and the guitarist. They are best described as folk punk, I guess. Wikipedia has said that.
I kind of agree. I don’t really… I was thinking when I was listening to this, I was like, how do you describe violent films and they’ve they’ve kind of taken different directions since then.
They’ve become like alt country in some ways they’ve become kind of more pure folk sometimes. Like, they move around a lot. But the debut album, I think folk punk actually kind of fits because it’s, it’s got like the rhythms and the speed and the tempos and even kind of some of the attitude, if you will, of punk, but it’s, I mean, it’s more acoustic, this Gone Daddy Gone, heavily features a xylophone, which is not normally an instrument that’s associated with punk, shall we say, but if you, when you hear it, I mean, you definitely can hear some some roots of punk in there, some influence of punk, shall we say, in there.
But the instrumentation is wrong. Some of the, you know, they probably use more than 3 chords more often than like a lot of punk bands do. So I kind of like the folk punk thing.
I think that’s a good as good a description as any for what for what they were doing on their debut album. And again, they kind of stretch out later on. Speaking of later on, they’ve actually done 10 studio albums.
And 19 singles, I gotta tell you, I’m not super familiar with many of those beyond the debut album. I, and I should say, I’m not like a huge violent films fan. I’m not maybe the best person to be representing them on this podcast, but they have a loyal following.
They certainly still draw crowds, like, to this day, to their live show, and they still, you know, play the songs off the debut on, you probably know, Blister in the Sun, obviously, Gone Daddy Gone, and then another one called Added Up, which I think is probably infamous in college radio for having some fair amount of lyrical cussing and swearing going on that you may or may not have been allowed to play, depending on your station and where you were at time slot, you know, playing it at noon, maybe not so much. Maybe you could get away with it overnight. But I feel like that song is one of those kind of infamous songs that you kind of tried to get away with playing in college radio.
I think Keith had his own method for that. The old sensor on the fly type thing that I was too. I was never brave enough to try that.
And, I mean, the debut album is fantastic. And Gone Daddy Yon is actually, I think my favorite song on the album. Added Up is great.
Blister and Sun is great. There are a couple other songs on there that are also really good, but I really like Gondetti gone. I mean, the xylophone alone, like, come on, they’re rocking it.
It works. It’s unique. I love it.
The video I really don’t even have any notes on, to be perfectly honest, this video is very just kind of right down the pipe in terms of an 80s video and maybe you guys will have more of a take on that. I was really kind of focusing more on the band and the song in this case. So the video really didn’t make like a huge impact on me.
And so I’m curious what you guys think. The one thing I will say that came to my mind when I was listening to Violent Fimms is why is why are they kind of just known for the debut album? They’re obviously super talented.
They had everything going for them. Like they had, if not, like huge commercial success. They certainly had huge college radio success coming off the debut album.
So what happened? Why, why don’t they really have much more that they were known for? And I have a theory, and it’s that, so like, Hallowed ground is the next album.
They take a real turn into country music on that one. It’s very, you know, alt country if you want to be kind of specific because it’s a little different lyrically than country music and obviously it wasn’t like recorded in Nashville or anything, but it definitely sounds very country-ish. The other, I think other song that I really think hit particularly big later on for them was American music, which came out in 91, it’s kind of like a 60s shuffle type track and definitely I think goes some influence to like velvet underground in terms of taking like 60s music and kind of updating it and playing with those tropes and putting them out there.
But that album is also unique for it’s the genres that they kind of dip their toe in it. And so my theory about the violent thims is that they, they kind of dipped their toe into these different genres and they became too tied to them in a way, like the songs, the songs on hallowed grounds sound very by the numbers, like country music in a lot of ways, like the chord choices, the way they’re in, the instrumentals, stuff off their later albums tends to, it’s, I guess it’s just not as unique as the debut album. The debut album, almost like invincible genre of folk punk, and that’s why it’s so hard to talk about it and, like, tie it down to a particular genre because they kind of, it’s just the violent films.
Like it just, it’s unique to them. Like who the fuck uses a violent xylophone? Like, that’s crazy to me.
I don’t think they really hit that mark again. I think the other stuff feels more like the violet films doing country. The violent films doing 60s shuffle, the violent films doing a genre, as opposed to them kind of just doing their thing and literally inventing a genre.
I don’t know if that theory holds weight. I’m not enough of an expert on the violent films to make that declarative statement, but that was kind of the theory that I came up with as I was listening to them because I was like, they’re so good. So many people love them.
How is it that they really just have the one huge album and then and then just kind of like the small career after that. I don’t know. That’s a theory.
Curious to hear what you guys think. I think your theory’s close to something there. I think you’re onto something.
I have something else that might get us there. But I just wanted to start by saying that I love this song. I’ve always loved the vinyl fems.
They’re just one of those bands, though, that’s, they’re so unique, and it’s, it’s the instrumentation, it’s the minimalist sort of nature of it. It’s Gano’s voice. It just, it makes this man like instantly recognizable, and I really do like what they do.
That said, I can only take about 2 or 3 songs in a row from these guys before it starts to kind of rake on me a little bit, right? Over the years, I’ve bought. I think I’ve bought 3 of their albums.
I was going to say 3 or four, but I’m pretty sure it’s three. I know I had the, obviously the debut album, and then I had the album three, which is their 3rd album. And then I had another one later on.
And, you know, I’ll give the props to the 1st album. It is fantastic, and that’s what the song is, obviously. And it, you know, but it’s short enough to listen to the whole thing.
It’s like a crisp 35 minutes and it’s out the door. But even at that, it starts to, starts to wear on you a little bit for me anyway. The other interesting thing.
I was just going to say was that I noticed that this was the only single released off this album. Um, you know, I’m sure that this wasn’t getting a ton of radio play, so they probably just went with the one single. But when this album started to get popular in my world, was probably a few years after it came out, like when I was in high school.
And you heard everybody talking about added up. Obviously, that song appeals to the juvenile mind of high schooler. And then Blister in the Sun was a huge song.
I don’t remember anybody ever talking about this song, but and so I would have bet money, the blister of the sun was a single, but I guess it apparently wasn’t. So here’s my my theory on why this band never really got much bigger than that 1st album. Their sound is so unique that you can only do that so many times before it all starts to sound the same.
And I think that’s kind of where it is. If you listen to any violent fan song, it sounds like every other violent theme song. And when your debut album comes out and you’re doing something so original and so unique, you know, and have a big xylophone solo in the middle of your single, that breaks up people’s ears and says, you know, here’s something new.
Here’s something unique. And then when you do it again for 10 more albums, it just kind of, you know, I’ll make a comparison. I was trying to think of a band to compare it to.
These guys would probably slap me across the mouth if they heard me comparing them to this band. But what came to my mind was the band cake. When you 1st heard cake, that was so unique and so original, this guy’s talking his way through the song.
And then the 2nd singer, you’re like, oh, it’s cake again. But the 3rd single was like, oh, that’s a cake song. And I think that’s kind of what happened with these guys.
It just starts to all sound the same after a little while. The video, I think, was interesting. It’s just a lot of iBey stuff. what any of that has to do with anything.
You know, the girl dancing around and, and the, this grunt old family sitting at the table. It’s all just kind of a mood piece, which is we’re seeing a lot of that right now in these videos, but yeah, I just didn’t really stick out for me. But yeah, I think, you know, this is a song I dig a lot, a band I dig a lot, and I just think, though, that, you know, they’re, they are better in small doses.
If you’re listening to a college radio station and you hear blister in the sun or this song or whatever, you’re going to be like, yes, violent films. Got it. Listen to a whole album of it.
And by track nine, you’re going to be going, okay, I got it. You know, I think that’s kind of what it is. I think that’s fair.
Yeah that’s absolutely fair. And I did find my one note on the video, which was lots of uncomfortable staring right into the camera. And there definitely is, there’s a lot of that that goes on.
I think there’s there must be a connection with like the dad of the family kind of drifting away and he’s like, you know, intrigued by this woman that’s dancing on on, you know, a stage and there’s a strobe light. So I guess there’s a little bit of a theme, you know, and certainly like the rest of the family is kind of left behind, I guess. There is no dad at the table.
I just realized that. Yeah, yeah. The dad is off.
And it’s mainly them performing. That’s just kind of like the interstitial that’s kind of thrown in there and it’s relatively inconsequential. But, I mean, it’s nice, it’s a nice black and white shot, like that’s nicely shot, I suppose, but I didn’t have a lot on the video, but, you know, what did you think, Keith?
First of all, basically you can go into your computer and cut and paste Scotty’s bit and put it into my spot there because I feel the exact same way. A little bit of violent films goes a long way for me, like 2 or 3 songs by them and I’ve had enough. The thing about this song, you mentioned it too, Mike, was is the xylophone.
I love the xylophone. How many times do you get to say, this rock song has a ripping xylophone solo in it, but this one does. And so it’s pretty cool.
So yeah, that I thought that was neat. I’ve always liked that part of this song. Like I said, a little bit of violent films goes a long way for me.
And I think also that you’re probably right, Scott, in that they haven’t gotten bigger because if you’ve heard one violent theme song, you’ve kind of heard them all. And like Mike said, they do a little bit different things. They go to the country route on some and kind of, like you said, the 60 shuffle on some, but it sounds like the violent films doing country.
And it sounds like the violent films doing 60 shuffle. And I think if you’re if you’re like me and and don’t need a whole lot of Gordon Gano in your life that, you know, you’re just not going to be a huge fan. So that’s kind of where I land with the violent films in general.
This is one of my favorite of their songs, though, Blistering the Sun, you’re never going to beat Blister in the Sun, but this song is really great and definitely one of my favorites by them. About the video, the only couple of notes I took one was at the family sitting at the dinner table was remind me not to eat with these people because it doesn’t look like they wiped their table down in the past year and a half . I’m not going to dinner at those folks house.
And then, yeah, I think that that is what was kind of going on there, was that the, you know, you had the empty seat at the table, and then you cut to the, I guess it’s like it was supposed to be a strip club or whatever with the guy sitting at the table, you know, and all the empty bottles and glasses around him, like he’s been there, and it’s the one girl dancing, and he seems to be kind of, you know, lusting away after her, whatever. The girl, though, at one point, she looks at the camera and has just this wild eyed look in her eye that is just insane. I am 100% certain that there was some cocaain involved in the shooting of that video.
The only moment in the video where they use that flashing effect. Like, it’s just, all of a sudden, there’s like this weird, you know, bang that happened in that video. Yeah, that was the moment I wrote lots of uncomfortable staring into it because it was very, she, I mean, it’s not just her staring into the camera.
And if you have epilepsy, do not watch this video. Because like you say, when that strobe effect hits right there, it’s going to kill you. It just like they’re not doing that at all. then all of a sudden, bang, you know.
Yeah, I like the video like the song. It’s all good, but yeah, violent film’s not one of my favorites, so. I wanted to see real two.
I forgot to say this, that I like also like the term punk country. I think that’s really great. I, you know, punk, the word punk is, you know, one of those things where you hear it and you think of this certain thing, but it really is more about the attitude of it, I think. this really fits that pretty well.
I mean, these guys are rocking all acoustic instruments, you know, like we said, they have a mean xylophone solo in the middle of this jam, but it definitely has a punk attitude. And I think that’s that’s cool. And I think that’s why people like these guys so much for a minute.
It’s funny that we all we all mentioned Blister of the Sun, which is a fantastic song. It is track one on their debut album. It’s like, and then that’s what you’re gonna get from these guys, you know?
Yeah, I mean, you can’t accuse them of not giving you what you want, right? Like if you like the violent films, you’re going to get the violent films pretty much all throughout their career, you know? I also think the albums tend to have a lot of songs on them and the quality is real hit or miss just from the what I, you know, I try to do a little more research on this than I normally do.
So I actually listen to went back and listen to more than I normally would on some of these bands, especially ones that I don’t know as well. And I have to say, like, for every American music, which is like a very listenable, great song, there is there’s some real, like, oh, man, it would be a real slog to, like, go through the entire catalog. Yeah, it is, for me, their ballads are not good.
They’re slower songs are not good because it’s all his voice and there’s not the, the shuffling drums and the, you know, the hard plucked upright bass and all that stuff. You take all that out and it’s just this guy, seeing like ballad over an acoustic guitar and that just has nothing for me, but… All right, violin films, college radio icons, regardless, and, and again, a debut album for the A. I mean, one of the better debut albums of the 80s probably for in terms of college rock icons.
Now, we have another college rock icon, with a little bit of a deeper catalog that we’re going to dive into and one of my favorite songs by them. in fact. Yeah, so today, I am going to talk about the song, How soon is now? by the Smiths.
Bishop, your mouth, I can be fun. I thought about things the wrong way I’m here, mine, I’m back here to belong Just like everybody else now. This is 1987, December 1987, that we’re talking about the episode of 120 minutes that we’re talking about here today.
Should note right off the bat that in 87, like at about this time, they have just broken up, the Smiths, but strange ways, here we come. The last of their albums has just come out, and the current single at this time is, stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before. And it actually plays in this month.
There’s a couple of episodes in December of 87 that video played on. The last episode of the month. However, they did play How soon is Now instead.
And so for me, I was thinking, you know, since they’ve broken up, we’re probably not going to have a whole lot of opportunity to talk about the Smiths anymore going forward. So I kind of wanted to throw them in there for that reason. But then also, how soon is now is a really classic Smith songs.
I mean, in a much bigger song, I think, in their, you know, catalog and kind of in the story of the band, then stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before. So I was glad to see it come up there. I was happy it was there just because it gives us a chance, like I said, to talk about the Smiths a little bit, but also to talk about one of their better songs and a song that really sounds absolutely nothing like anything else in their catalog.
It’s very unique for them. And in fact, Johnny Marr has actually said he thinks that this is the Smith’s most Smith’s fans favorite song by them. And so, I don’t know if it’s my absolute favorite, but it certainly is on up there with me.
I won’t go heavily into the Smith’s background. I figure probably most of the people listening to this podcast know about the Smiths, but they are Manchester band formed in 82. We’re only active for a little over 5 years.
It’s Morrissey on vocals, Johnny Maher on guitar, Andy Rourke on bass and Mike Joyce on drums. They split up, like I said, in 87, right about the time their last album is coming out. You know, lots of stories about exactly why that was, but I think basically it comes down to personality clashes between Morrissey and Mar, those guys just did not, at the end of their partnership, were not getting along particularly well.
They did. I didn’t know this until I was doing a little work on this. At one point, all of the members of the band who are not Johnny Marr got together with a different guitarist and tried to record a little bit, but it was all shelved.
I guess it just didn’t go well for him. A guy named Evor Perry, who was a guitarist for a different band at one point or another. But anyway, I had no idea that that had ever happened.
So yeah, imagine trying to make a Smith song without Johnny Maher and guitar. So anyway, over the years, there have been rumors about them getting back together. They’ve always said no, they’ve always turned it down, no matter how much money’s offered to them.
And so it just doesn’t really seem like anybody’s interested in that. And then Andy Rourke actually passed away in 2023 from pancreatic cancer. So, um, even if they were to get back together now, it would be without Andy Rourke.
And I should mention real quick before we get into this song a whole lot. You know, you hear about Morrissey Amar a lot. Man, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce are a fantastic rhythm section.
Those guys are very much the backbone of the Smiths, and I don’t know that that band is exactly what it is without those guys. So everybody knows Morrisey Mar, but let’s give Roark and Joyce a little bit of props here too, because I think that they were indeed an integral part of that band. So this song, how soon is now, was not originally on an album, it was actually originally a B side.
It was on the single to William. It was really nothing. And they took the song to rough trade, took, how soon is now in, to rough trade records, which was their British label at the time.
And their owner, the rough trade owner, didn’t like it. didn’t think it was good enough or representative enough of what they did to actually be released as a single on its own. And so he said, you know, the only way we’ll let you put it out is if you want to do it as a B side, continuing a great run of record exec decisions like the guy that apparently didn’t think INXS is kick album was going to hit big because who was that going to appeal to? And then the guy that turned down Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, one of the greatest albums of all time.
Yeah. A long, long line of record company execs making bad decisions, the choice to put how soon is now on a B side probably ranks right up there with some of the best ones out there. But with, in like, you know, great tradition, as happens with a lot of these songs, DJs started picking up, heard it off the big side, started playing it, and eventually it got popular enough that it was released as a single in the U.S. in late 84 and in the UK in 85, just before their 2nd album, Mita’s Murder came out.
And then the original pressing of Mee’s murder didn’t have that on there. But subsequent pressings in both in the UK, or not in the UK, in the US, and then Australia, Canada, several other countries, most of the places around the world, except for the UK, they tacked how soon is now onto meet as murder. So for me, like when I 1st bought Mita’s murder back in the day, how soon is now is on there.
But if you go now and buy the remastered version of it, you won’t get that track. At least you won’t get it in the runtime of the original album. It may be like among the additional tracks and all that stuff on the remastered version.
I’m really not sure I don’t have that remastered. So, but I do know that when they did the put the ring bastard version of the album out, they did take that out of the track list, make it run the way the original album did. The thing about this song.
I said before, it is very different than anything else that the Smiths have usually done. It’s long, the original version of the song is nearly 7 minutes long, kind of transient almost. And it did get some club play.
And I thought I’d ask you, Mike, you were more of a club DJ than I was. Did you did you ever play this song in clubs? Yeah, I actually did.
Yeah, the beat and everything is holds up really well in a club so you could get away with it, yeah. Did you have to speed it up at all? Yeah, you’d probably coming out of, depending on what I was coming out of, probably, yeah, +2 or +4, but I was wondering about that.
It is kind of dancy, but by the same time, not real fast paced, so… I think the signature thing about this song, or one of the signature things about it anyway, is the guitar sound in the background, it’s got this real kind of like, I don’t even know how to describe it, kind of like a liquidy, flowing, like ebbing and flowing kind of guitar sound in the background that’s going on, and that was produced by running Johnny Marr’s bass guitar track through 3 different reverb amps with each one of those amps set to different settings. And then they tried to sync them up.
And Johnny Maher and a producer named John Porter would, in real time, by hand adjust the settings to try to keep everything in rhythm. And they were really only able to get like about 102nd bursts of keeping it all together for the recording before they would kind of lose it and then have to kind of start over again and start with it. So the background guitar part was recorded in a bunch of little chunks and then put together as they were trying to keep the weird effect on the guitar going as it went, you know, through the song.
And then the other kind of signature part of the song is the kind of that sireny, kind of, nah, guitar part comes in and out throughout. And that was done with a slide guitar running through a harmonizer and they ran that through a harmonizer multiple times and then kind of put those tracks together to get those weird sounds that come out of it. Like I said, it doesn’t have like kind of the jangly guitar pop feel that a lot of the Smiths stuff do.
It’s long and drony and kind of transy. It doesn’t have a whole lot of lyric to it. They sent the song to Morrissey.
He used some lyrics that he had from other things in his songbook and just kind of mashed them together and apparently put the lyrics together over the course of one night and came in the next day and recorded the vocals. So, you know, you don’t get kind of the Morrissey story that you really get in the lyrics of a lot of their songs, you know? It is definitely kind of the mopey lyrics you expect from Morrissey, but just not as much of it and kind of pieced together to put it together.
It was an unlikely song to become, I think, as big for them as it did, given that the record company didn’t like it at first. It’s very different from everything else that the Smiths do, but it’s just an undeniably great song. There’s and I don’t know that there’s really anything else out there that sounds like it at all.
It’s just kind of its own thing. It’s very, very unique. Very, very good.
Yeah, really one of my favorite Smith songs, if not my absolute favorite. But yeah, yeah, just that’s the thing, I think that stands out to me about it, is just how different it is from everything else they do. And yet it still sounds like the Smiths, and a lot of that, you know, has to do with Morrissey’s voice, but yeah, just a classic Smith song that doesn’t sound like a classic Smith song.
The only thing I will tell you about the video is when I was watching it, the 1st thing I thought was, this looks like it was done without any input from the band at all. And so then I went to go read about it and this video was done without any input from the band at all. And they apparently didn’t like it either after they saw it.
They were not real pleased by that. But by that time it was already out there, so there wasn’t a whole lot they could do. So it’s largely, uh, some scenes of like, like an industrial park with like, you know, smoke coming out of the big chimneys of like an industrial plant or whatever, and then there’s some footage of them playing, but obviously not playing this song, and then there’s some footage of a girl dancing, and it’s all just kind of stuck together.
And so it’s not a great video. I dont think it’s as terrible as these Smiths themselves seem to think it was, but it’s not a great video and nothing to write home about. So the video you could skip or take or leave on your own.
But definitely, if you never have. And I really feel like most of our listeners have, but if you have never checked out the song, how soon is now by the Smiths, go listen to it, and then go listen to some other Smiths stuff, and yeah, just think about the fact that, yeah, this is just a really bizarre track for these guys, but man, one of their best in the entire catalog, at least in my opinion. So see what you guys think about it.
Yeah, obviously, I love this track. It’s as good as 80s music gets. I mean, it’s up there in the top tier of 80s music for sure.
The video, it’s funny. My thought on the video in the note that I took was how many little indie kids learned how to dance from this video. Because the one thing you do get is like Morrissey Dancing.
And then for the for the women folk, you have like a very, you know, stylish girl who’s just, you know, doing dance moves, but it’s like, if you’ve never seen that before and you don’t know how to dance and be cool. Like, that’s kind of, like, that was probably a template for a lot of girls growing up, like, watching that Smith view and being like, oh, and she has, she’s not, like, dressed all, you know, like, clubby or sex. She’s just got on this like cute little sweater.
She’s just, you know, and she’s just like doing like some 80s dancing. I’m like, I bet that influenced a lot, a lot, a lot of people growing up. So maybe it did have a good effect in that way.
It’s not a great video, but, I mean, does this song need any help? It’s so good and so well known. and so I kind of, I’m not even sure what to add. I think you broke down all the all the parts, like the guitar riff, obviously, is the star of the show.
And it is very unlike most of the Smiths catalog, but anything that Morrissey sings on is going to instantly be either, you know, Smiths or some of, obviously, he did some solo work after that. But, well, I love hearing the story about how they arrived at the guitar sounds because, you know, these days you can, you know, plug into logic and load up as many plug-ins as you want to do all that kind of stuff. And it’s super easy and doing an analog style is a very, very, very different thing, particularly locking onto tempo and being able to hold a riff across an entire song, digitally is trivial and analog, it’s not.
You have people tweak the knobs and try to figure it out. And like you said, maybe they can hold tempo for like one or 2 bars and then they have to cut and then you have to, so that’s kind of cool. I mean, the fact that they hit on that and manage to make it work.
And man, make it just as iconic as guitarists come from the indie rock world at least. has gotta be up there. Yeah, you know, I think there’s a conversation to be had about why the Smiths aren’t even bigger than they are. They still sometimes feel like a little bit of an underground band or like a lot of, like they never really got to where the average person knows the Smiths.
And if they do, it’s probably this song. And I don’t know. I think that’s a bigger conversation than we could tackle, but that’s the other thing I kind of thought about because I was just enjoying listening to the song and like wondering, why aren’t these guys even more well-known and more in a, I don’t know.
It always has felt like the Smiths were, like, the king of the indie rock scene as opposed to just being the kings of the pop world or whatever, but their music, I mean, they have, what, 20 something songs that all could easily be, you know, feel like they could be top 40 tracks, particularly in the UK, but even in America, because they’re accessible, they’re catchy, whatever, I mean, if I had to quickly throw out a guess, my guess is that Morrissey, turns off a lot of people for various reasons, and maybe that’s why they didn’t break a little bigger, but I don’t know, that’s, again, a different conversation, but it just speaks to how good they are that that was the thought that came to my head is like they’re huge and they are, you know, they have a huge fan base they’re well thought of by a lot of people, but why aren’t they even bigger because they really they really should be. They have so such a deep catalog. I mean, besides the Beatles, I don’t know of a lot of bands that have such a short window of recording time where they hit.
I mean, their batting average for that short 5 or 6 years is just as good as almost any band besides the Beatles that I that I can think of. So yeah, I mean, what can I say? It the Smiths. how soon is now if somehow, somehow you haven’t heard the song.
By all means. Check it out There’s not much more for me to add here. I love the song. you guys know this is one of my favorite bands.
You know, this probably isn’t in my top, maybe 5 Smith songs. And I think the reason for that is just because of how many times I’ve heard it. It’s just one of those overplayed 80s jams that, you know, I just kind of, I’d rather hear something else by the Smiths.
But what I will add is that if you have never heard this song, and I doubt that person is within the sound of my voice right now. But if you haven’t, don’t watch this. This shortened version of this song is ridiculous, for one thing.
What makes this song great is, like, Keith mentioned, it’s a drone. It goes on and on and on. And it’s supposed to be evoking walking home from a club after you got rejected by everybody there and feeling lonely and depressed.
And that, that 7 minutes of da, da, da, and the, like, that whining guitar over the top of it. All of that is what makes this song what it is. Whacking it off at 3 minutes like that is ridiculous.
It made me so mad. I was like, what is happening right now? This video is terrible.
It’s obviously somebody at the studio went, oh my god, this one’s going to be a hit. Get me a video, you know, like, that, that girl doesn’t know who the Smiths are, and she’s in their video, you know, it’s just, it’s so random and so pieced together, and so sloppy, and then they do this hard fade at 3.5 minutes. If you are one of the people that do not know this song, by God, do not start here.
Like, pick up a copy of the 2nd edition of Mita’s murderer or find it on a greatest hits thing or something. Listen to this song in its entirety. That’s my advice to you.
But yeah, other than that, I think housing is now in and of itself is a fantastic song by a fantastic band. Get into it if you’re not. And then I, you know, if you do want to hear more smiths, I highly recommend me to this murder.
I highly recommend the queen is dead. I highly recommend louder than bombs, which is kind of a hotgepodge of everything that was left over after they broke up, but it’s fantastic. This is just not the place to start with the Smiths.
But other than that, I agree with everything you guys said. If you are looking for how soon is now. Like I said, I don’t know if it’s on the remaster, I should have looked that up to see if it’s like an…
I think it’s a bonus track on it. They always had those like 10 extra songs at the bottom. I think it’s.
You can also find it on a compilation called Hat Full of Hollow, which is an older one. It was a compilation that they did back in the in the 80s, but if you can find a copy of that, it’s on there as well. And then the last thing I wanted to mention, Mike, you talked about a little bit about the behind the scenes stuff and the analog recording process of getting a song like this and how much easier it would be to do digitally.
Even Johnny Marr has given the producer, I got man named John Porter, I think I mentioned him a minute ago, a lot of credit for helping him out in the studio on this. So, yeah, I think, you know, the production side of it was a real collaboration between those 2 guys. And yeah, who knows how they arrived at that sound or the idea to try to get something like that.
But as much as the Smiths deserve a lot of credit for that. I think this guy, John Porter, the producer, deserves some credit too, because even Marr has said that he was instrumental in putting it together, you know, while they were assembling the track in the studio. It’s probably a small group of people that also would recognize that guitar riff if they don’t already know it’s from the Smiths from a song called Hippie Chick by Soho.
I forgot to mention this. You talk about mixing this in a club. That’s what I couldn’t do it, but there was a guy I worked with that could mix hippie chick and how soon is now back and forth, like coming back and forth, and then he would mix, um, Eric B. and Rakim paid in full into the middle of it. was incredible.
That was one. And I also, just by when I was looking this up and kind of remembering going on the Soho journey, they did a cover of Whisper to a Scream that ended up on the Scream soundtrack. And I remember on the October podcast, Scott, that was your pick, and you said this song should have been on a soundtrack on the original, I don’t think, Soho, of all people, the people who brought us Hippie Chick, did a cover, not as good as the original, but okay, faithful cover, that did, in fact, appear on a soundtrack.
So there you go. Don’t sleep on Hippie Jake either. That sounds fantastic.
Yeah, yeah, also a good thing. Yeah, as sampled, you know, stuff goes, it’s man, it’s good. All right.
Violent films, Smiths, college radio icons. I think this group probably should have been a bigger college radio icon than they really were. I came to this group late.
I don’t know as much about them and even the things I thought I knew, I didn’t know as I did more research today on them. I think Scott may have had the same experience as he went down the rabbit hole, so let’s find out what he learned. The song I picked is ahead by wire.
I remember… Making the money such. I remember, I remember Making the body slush.
And I’m gonna start with the personal story part of this, because I’m about to have to admit, a staggering amount of ignorance. And maybe this story will help me cope with that or at least explain why it happened. So I left Lubbock, Texas, moved to Amarillo, Texas in 1996.
You know, that’s like scooting down one cushion on your couch, but I moved and went to Amarillo. About that time is when I was starting to get into sort of the foundations of bunk. I had never really gone down the rabbit hole and found like some of the original bands and the bands people haven’t really heard of.
And that’s something I like to do. I like to study influence. So I found this used record store in Amarillo and I started digging for early punk bands.
There was this old punk dude there and he noticed kind of how much I was shopping for that kind of music and he started talking to me and trying to help me. I admitted to him that even though I was, you know, getting fairly versed in American bug. I really hadn’t really tapped into the Brits yet.
I knew the Sex Pistols, obviously. I knew the Buzzcox, but I really didn’t know much about British punk. So he remediately runs over to the stacks and grabs this album and hands it to me and he goes, British punk starts right here. is where you start.
That album was pink flag by Wire, which, admittedly, if you look at the cover of it, it doesn’t, it looks like a Depeche Mode album, not a punk album, but I was like, okay, whatever. I bought it. I went home and listened to it, and man, this guy was not kidding.
That album is incredible. Pink flag by wire is one of the best punk albums of all time. Its influence on punk is immeasurable and especially hardcore punk.
Here’s the part where I get stupid. So the same dude sold me their 2nd record. It’s called Chairs Missing, and when he gave it to me, What he probably said to me was, if you liked Pink Flag, there’s some stuff on here you’re going to like, and after this wire goes in kind of a totally different direction, and it may not really be what you’re interested in.
What I heard was, this is why our 2nd album and there’s nothing after this. And I lived with that for a long time. In fact, until this week.
So I saw a wire pop up on the 120 minutes list for this month. I assumed that MTV played a video for one of those 1st 2 albums. I didn’t recognize the title, but there’s about 60 tracks on those 2 albums.
Yeah, their stars are very short, especially, you know. So, yeah, so I didn’t recognize the title. I not too upset about that.
But I thought it was just one I didn’t remember from one of those 2 albums. And then I put the video on. And I realized right away that this was not the wire that I thought I knew.
This is a totally different thing. So I went to look it up and man, not only did these guys not stop making music in 1979 or 1980. They have never stopped.
They’ve gone on a couple of hiatuses over the years, but they have recorded albums as recently as 2020. Their sound has kind of morphed throughout the years. They’ve changed guitarist time or two, but basically the 3 core guys in the band are still there.
It’s a guy named Colin Newman is the vocalist, league guitar, and I think their main songwriter. Graham Lewis is a bassist and the drummer is Robert Gray. These guys have been rocking together since 1976.
They really haven’t changed much. They’ve had a couple of good, like I said, a couple of rhythm guitars come and go. These guys have been doing it a long time, and in my defense, though, this band never took off in America.
Like even Pink Flag was not a big hit in America. And, you know, so and that’s their masterpiece. So, you know, it’s rarely mentioned in the States, unless you’re reading one of those, you know, greatest album of all times from the critics kind of things.
But with the public, they just never really took off. So that brings us to this song. Yeah, it’s called ahead.
This was the lead singer from their 4th album. That album is called the ideal copy. It was recorded after they took a little hiatus, like about 4 years.
They had experimented with some electronic instruments and sequencing on those 1st 2 albums, but they never really dove into it until they got here. This is when they really start doing that kind of stuff. Critically, at the time, they were heavily compared to new order.
You can definitely hear that here. I really did like this song, but I will say as much as I liked it. It does kind of have a sound that’s very signature of this time and place. like, meaning that I, I, I prefer these guys, I think, when they were a little more unique and innovative when they were doing the punk stuff than that’s just me, but, and there’s nothing wrong with what’s going on here.
It’s just kind of sounds like, well, you would hear if you put 80s British electro pocket and pop into an AI, you know, and this is kind of the sound that I think would come out of that. And it’s kind of the same story with the video. It’s performance footage, granny black and white.
We’re getting used to seeing a lot at this time, like I said before. It does work for the song. So I really, I don’t want to sound like I’m putting this down at all.
I really did like it. I’m just expecting something different when I picked wire. And, and so this was a little surprising at it, but I will say this, if you, you know, it made me really want to start digging into what these guys have done since I broke them up in my head in 1979.
Um, you know, I think they’re really interesting band. And then one, we probably just don’t talk about enough, but I’m, I have a feeling at least one of you really, really liked this. I’m curious to see what what you guys thought.
Well, once again, you can kind of copy and paste Scotty’s part right there right into my spot here. Yeah, I kind of actually went on a very similar journey. I didn’t know wire at all.
This was the 1st song by wire that I’d ever heard when I put this video on and watched it, and I loved it. Yeah, fantastic song. But…
Yeah, not at all what I was expecting, though. And so I went and listened to some other stuff. I listened to a song called Mannequin.
I listened to a song called The 15th. I think both of those are on one of the earlier albums. They were both 70 songs.
Closer to what I thought I was going to get. I was expecting more like pure punk. Even those songs were a little more like melodic than I was giving these guys credit for.
In my head, wire was just a straight up punk band. And so I was expecting something like the Sex Pistols or something like that. So even those songs were a little more melodic than I thought they were going to be.
And then I went ahead and listened to a song called Invivo, which I was off a later album, which is much more like ahead is. And so I guess that’s just kind of the way it went. they started off a little punkier and then kind of got into the post-punk stuff. I do think New Order is a good comp for this song.
The cure, psychedelic furs. Anything, like you say, this was very, this sound is kind of emblematic of a lot of stuff that was coming out of England about that time, or written about that time. Yeah, I really liked it.
It just was not at all what I was expecting. And like I said, even the earlier stuff wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. So I liked every song I listened to.
I liked this one. I liked the other stuff. I went back and heard as well.
So I feel like this is a band that I should maybe explore a little more and try to get into, because I do think that I would like a lot of the stuff based on what I’ve heard. But yeah, when it 1st came on, 1st hit play on the video and started watching it, I was like, this is not even a little bit what I thought it was going to be. This is the most influential British punk band of all time.
That’s not what I thought I was going to get. But I liked it. I liked it a lot.
And so, yeah, I think this may be a jumping off point for me to check these guys out a little more. I compare the way that they are called like the forefathers of punk in England is the same way that television is considered a forefather of punk in America. If you listen to Marquee Moon by television, it is not a punk album. in and of itself, but it inspired a lot of punk music moving forward.
And I think that’s what wire was in England. Pink flag is, it’s pretty, it’s pretty raw is the difference between that album and something like this, is that, you know, this is getting a little more produced, a little more polished, whatever. Their earlier stuff is much more raw.
And that’s the part, I think, that influenced punk bands moving forward. The album in and of itself may not. You might not listen to it and immediately think punk, but it’s almost like, like punk before punk in the way that television’s Marquee Moon is is post-punk before there was even punk.
You know, they invented a genre that hadn’t even come around yet, you know? And so I think that’s kind of where that, you know, if you if you want to make a comparison. That kind of what it is.
It’s, you listen to it now and you go, well, this isn’t punk music, you know, and it, it kind of is, and it kind of isn’t, but you can hear where all the British punk after that kind of kind of stemmed out of it. And I think that’s why it’s considered so influential. So, I mean, I guess it’s for 3 out of three.
I have the same view in my head of what I thought Wire’s career would like and what, you know, they were about. was excited that I assumed that the song was off one of the 1st 2 albums, because, again, there’s probably 30 or 40 total on those albums, and I don’t know them all by heart. And so when I put it on, like my 1st instinct was like, ugh, I don’t know about this. So I listened to this more than I think I’ve ever listened to a song doing research.
I must have listened to this 4 times total because I listened to like I listened to it twice on YouTube. And then I was like, I want to hear this on Apple Music because the production quality isn’t or the actual recording quality isn’t great on YouTube. It is not a great copy of it.
Sounds really good on Apple Music. Like the production quality, really jumps out at you on Apple Music and what’s going on. Some of those synth lines and stuff are a little better than average, I think, for a British, like, you know, a Brit pop electropop band or whatever at this time, there’s something else going on that I liked a little more that just kind of caught my ear.
So I still think they were operating at like a higher level than maybe a lot of other bands were. But they were doing something I wasn’t expecting. So yeah, it caught me off guard at first.
As I got into like the 34th listen, this one definitely grew on me. It’s not perfect. It’s not as good as, as like, I mean, to me, mannequin off of Pink Flag is just as good as British punk gets.
I mean, it is just such a perfectly great amazing song. I don’t think that about a head, obviously, but it is really, it is good. And it made me interested to hear some more from them from this era.
What I was able to listen to in the time that I had was hit or miss. You know, it’s not something I’m super into going back into and doing a deep, deep dive on the way I did when I 1st heard stuff off a pink flag. like, oh, I need to listen to this entire album and find out what these guys are all about. I didn’t necessarily feel that way when I heard this, but I do like it a lot.
The video is really unremarkable. It’s hard to even decipher what’s going on a lot of the time, but I’m a real sucker for the CRT effect where it’s like a, it’s like you’re using a camera and doing a close-up on a CRT television, so it has a very unique style of distortion that I just dig that style, so they already, you know, so I’m going to give them a pass on that for sure. I guess I would, the other thing that crossed my mind, and I assumed that you would hit on this and you kind of did.
So, uh, I won’t go deep on it, but is that they kind of followed a path that Joy Division and then later New Order did, or, in my mind, Devo. Did where they start as a pure punk band, you know, Divo’s 1st album, Are We Not Men, is entirely guitar based. I think there’s very little, if any, electro electronics going on on any of the songs.
And then by, you know, the 2nd or 3rd album, you know, Devo was almost solely synthetic for the most part, and they seem to have followed kind of a similar path in terms of like the instrumentation and songwriting stuff, which is cool. I mean, we just talked about the violent films doing the same thing over and over again to the point where it just, you know, to diminishing return. So what’s the alternative?
It’s it’s doing something different. I’m not going to knock wire for doing something different when I just knocked violet films for not doing something different or different enough, I guess. That said, did I want pink flag volume two?
I mean, probably, I guess, I was hoping that maybe that that, you know, would sound like that. And the 2nd album is interesting because it does serve as a little bit of a connection. It’s a bridge.
It’s got a lot of songs on it that sound like pink flag and a lot that don’t. Like, it’s, you can hear them moving away from it at that point. Yeah, they already were starting to push, which I, you know, I thought is interesting.
So, yeah, I think, again, you guys cover the everything that needs to be covered, but I would say if you’re wanting to try out wire, and, you know, I think I’d start with pink flag simply because it’s, you know, even just chronologically speaking, it’s the 1st one. So why not start there, find out what their roots were. If you’re a fan of punk, particularly British punk, then definitely for sure start there.
Yeah, stick with them and see where it goes if you’re also a fan of New Order, the Cure Depeche Mode, or whatever, you might like the direction they take, and they put a different spin on it. I do think it is a little bit unique in that space, just the songs that I listened to were unique enough that I didn’t feel like it was just cookie cutter stuff that was coming out in like 87, 88. So, yeah, yeah.
I was surprised, but and I wouldn’t say delighted necessarily, but I definitely wasn’t just like, ugh. I think it was 8 out of 10 maybe, 7 out of 10, somewhere in that, somewhere in that range. really did like it a lot. I just not what I wanted to hear when I pushed play on a song that was by wire.
But, you know, that said, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I liked it, and then I went back and listened to pink flag again, and it was just fine. So it’s an interesting an interesting band because, you know, like I said, they just had no foothold here in America at all.
So I was I was convinced these guys recorded 2 albums and bounced. And there they are still out there rocking along and doing some pretty good music, you know, it’s, it’s interesting to me when stuff like that happens because I mean, I’ve said this before. I consider myself somebody that likes to kind of keep my ear to the ground with stuff like this and know what the bands I like are doing.
And the fact that there’s this band whose debut album I adore, and in my mind, they were, you know, playing video games somewhere in England. When they’ve been rocking out this whole time. They never stopped rocking.
Never stopped their own game. Moving on to a band that did stock rocking. Right around 1988, in fact.
Right after this video, unfortunately for the, we’re going to move on to our mystery band. It was my turn this week to pick, as you may or may not know, I tend to pick just based on the name of the artist. I pick something I’ve never heard before I commit to it before I even listen to it.
I didn’t know what to expect this time. This one could have gone a bunch of different ways. We’re going to listen to or watch a video by divine horsemen, snake handling.
I’m a nippy man. I’m a workless woman. I must shake him up.
I must say camera. I must be together. Ben, kind of unremarkable.
It’s a couple members of a punk band from L.A. called The Flesh Eaters. which, by the way, is actually the more interesting band. I dug in a little bit at that and way more, way more fun to listen to to them. So if you haven’t heard the flesh eaters, maybe go check them out.
If you like some, like, LA hardcore punk, that’s kind of what the vibe they’re in, as you might have guessed from the name, Flesh Eaters. One of the members of Flesh Eaters, and then his wife formed Divine Horseman. They got some other instrumentalists and stuff around them.
I’m not sure that any of that’s really critical information for you to have. They formed a band. They recorded a few albums, founded in 83, broke up in 88.
So they were another one of, like, a lot of the bands that we’ve talked about, and usually a lot of the mystery bands we’ve talked about where they, you know, got a record contract, put out a couple albums, had a small following, never quite a broke through, got that one song on 120 minutes, which is why they’re on this podcast. And then just kind of, don’t know what happened to him. So who knows?
I have a few theories based on this song. What hit me 1st was that this song is like 2 sides of the same coin with the cucumber song from last episode, where it’s like the style of 80s rock that didn’t really survive into the 90s and was already starting to be a little bit played out of this, it’s kind of rock. It’s a little pop.
It’s the kind of music that I feel like really appealed to the generation right before us. Guys that were like 5 or 10 years older than us. I think really dug this style of music, particularly this song, like just screams that, I don’t know what it is.
It’s like a little bit… I really was struggling. Maybe you guys will help me when you guys sound off on it. of like, there’s, there is a particular, because this band is not a 1000000 miles away from REM.
They’re not a 1000000 miles away from some other really great bands, but there’s a certain style and a certain affectation to like the vocal that was kind of popular in the ladies that I never really latched onto, and I always felt like those songs were meant for guys who were 5 or 10 years older than me. And I say guys and I think I specifically mean guys in this. I, not meaning to exclude women, but I don’t feel like this band would necessarily appeal.
Maybe, maybe it would. I don’t know. But in my head, there’s a certain kind of guy who likes this kind of music and it’s not me and I didn’t particularly care for this song, I’ll be perfectly honest.
But it is interesting. A few of the things I ran across besides just like the basics. There’s not a lot about this band out there.
There’s more about the flesh eaters and rightfully. So the video is directed by Kevin Kerslaki, who’ve directed videos for every single 90s band you’ve ever heard of, did documentaries about a dozen bands that you’ve also heard of, did advertising for a lot of major and major brands who you absolutely have heard of. Like this guy ended up being a massive, just like Anton Corbin from last episode.
We talked about. This guy was a foundation of music videos in the 90s and late 80s, but it started right around this time and you wouldn’t really know it from watching this video, to be perfectly honest. This was pretty straightforward and it’s pretty literal.
But yeah, that so that’s kind of noteworthy about it. And the other thing that I really loved is that it gave me an opportunity to appreciate the internet again for a brief moment. The internet, for me, has always been something that, like, I’ve always thought could be really great and really hopeful, and I’ve just seen it and shitify to the point that it’s really depresses me most of the time.
But in this moment, I went to YouTube. I was starting to watch the video. I went down to the comments and the very 1st comment about this video snake handler, which prominently features a snake, spoiler alert.
The very 1st comment is, hey, I remember this shoot. That’s my snake. I was just like, that’s awesome.
That’s what the Internet should be for. This guy is cruising through YouTube and sees it and it’s like, oh, remember that time I lent my snake to those guys who shot that video? And here it is.
It’s on YouTube. We can all glory in that moment. We could ask this guy a question if we wanted to.
We could converse with him. like that’s the beauty of the internet. The internet really shines in moments like that. So I did like that, that this guy managed to get to see his snake again starring in this video.
It’s awesome now that we’ve, we’ve had the, the guy that owned the snake in this video and the person whose house, the 10,000 Maniacs video, was recorded, both chime in on the comments on these videos. So, yeah, absolutely. seeing this stuff. They’re seeing their their property in their places, pets show up.
They’re pets. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So, you know what? I think I’ll just leave it there. I’m curious to see what you guys thought about it.
You know, but the video starts on this. There’s a bunch of title cards in the front of it, and I saw that these guys were on SST records. So I got a little excited because SST was a big punk label in the 80s.
Yeah, like black flag, descendants, who’s Curdoo, Sonic Q, they were all on SSD at one point or another. So I kind of got excited. And then, um, then this song started.
How long did that last? Yeah. About 18 seconds.
You know, so I thought there was going to be a punch game. I did not do any research on it before I watched the video, which is how I kind of liked to do this. So I did not know that this was the guy from the Flesh Eaters, which is a band I am familiar with.
Flesh Eaters is one of those bands that if you’re in LA and you’re in a punk band, at one point or another, you are in the flesh eaters, they’re like this, this revolving door of musicians, it kind of comes and goes, and they’ve had a couple of core guys, the lead singer of this band being one of them. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And like you said, they’re a way more interesting band than this.
This was kind of a thing at the time, you know, it’s it’s kind of punk, and it’s kind of not, and it’s it’s got that. that country flavored punk that was kind of getting hot at this time. Like, maybe it’s it’s rockabilly, but but not rockabilly. Like Mojo Nixon kind of does this kind of stuff, you know, like the sort of, yeah, but better, you know, and maybe a little more satirically than this, but that’s kind of kind of what it is.
So it’s hard to put a label on, and I don’t even really want to try because I didn’t, you know, I didn’t love it that much. I did kind of enjoy this for what it was. It had a good riff, and it was kind of funny, and whatever, and it’s, but it’s, you know, I’m never going to listen to it again.
But you’re right about this sound being something at the time that just, it never got to me either. And it’s, I don’t know what it is. It’s, you know, you had trouble putting a label on it.
I certainly can’t put a label on it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s, it just, it was just kind of a thing for a minute, and maybe it’s the, the female vocal being there too. Maybe that’s part of it.
Like, um, you know, Timbukt 3 was around at this time and they had kind of the male-female vocal thing with the kind of country flavored alternative rock, you know, sort of thing going on. You did mention the video, sort of having, the guy who did the video sort of became a 90s icon. You see a lot of that here, like the desert scape, the washed out colors, and sort of graininess.
That’s a signature of not a lot of 90s videos and you do see that here. So that, I noticed that as well. Yeah, overall, just, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with this song, but there’s just not that much right with it either.
It’s just kind of it’s just kind of there, you know, and it’s it’s catching enough. Watch it once, get a kick out of it and then move on with your life. I totally understand what these guys did not become a big thing after this.
I think I liked this better than both of you guys did, then I’m not going to run out and buy the single or anything like that, but I liked the song. I thought of it more as just kind of a late 80s hard rock song. Like, you know, I, that’s, you know, we keep trying to put our finger on it and not like glam metal like that.
But there was, to me, a lot of kind of harder rock that sounded a lot like this in the late 80s. And so that’s what it reminded me of anyway. But I did like it, not great, but pretty good.
The video, I had actually more thoughts on the video. I enjoyed the video quite a bit. For one thing, it seemed to have literally been shot on the wrong side of the tracks, like there were actual trains and train tracks in it.
And then after that, they appear to be in what maybe is a trailer park or something, you know, like the little swimming pool, the, you know, inflatable swimming pool and out in the front yard and all that kind of stuff going on. So I thought that was kind of cool. The other thing, though, with the singer, and I can’t remember, I don’t know if you mentioned his name or not, Mike, I don’t remember it, if you did, but I got very serious Lenny and Squiggy vibes off this guy from the old Laverne and Shirley TV show, sitcom from back in the day.
Like, I saw this dude and I was like, hey, that’s Lydia Squiggy right there. So if you’ve never seen old episodes of Laverne and Shirley. go check some of them out and then see if you if you agree with me, but yeah, that was absolutely the vibe I got off this guy when I was watching the videos. Like, yeah, he could have replaced either one of those actors and been that dude on Laverne and Shirley way back in the day.
But yeah, I actually liked the song. I thought it was pretty good. So I think I enjoyed it more than you guys did.
The other thing I didn’t mention that I should have this. If you want to read something interesting, do a little dive on the woman in this song, her name is Julie Christiansen, she was the wife of the lead singer, and she’s the one singing on the song. She had an incredible career after this.
Like, she was a background singer for Leonard Cohen. She’s recorded like 12 albums and she’s worked with Todd Rundgren, Iggy Pop, Public Image Limited, X, Katie Lang. Like, she’s a kind of a deal.
I had no idea. And I wasn’t particularly blown away by her vocals either. So I think it’s kind of interesting, like, all these people were able to use her for different, you know, vocal projects when you wouldn’t listen to this and go, oh man, we got to get that voice on our record, you know, it’s not that, but there’s something about her.
She’s quite a story if you if you want to do some digging. Yeah, she went on to bigger and better things. The director of the video went on to better, the big, big, bigger and better things.
The lead singer went back to the Fly Feeders and is still there. So yeah, I think the lead singer kind of went back. I guess they tried to pull the divine horsemen back together in 2021, but they, I mean, that didn’t really, really go anywhere.
So lead singer, he goes by Chris D. His last name is Des Jardins or Christie would be his name. It’s funny, I was looking at the Wikipedia page in it. It’s one of those that has no citations and it’s written in such a way that I’m 95% sure that Chris wrote it himself.
Not that it, not that it’s overly like self, you know, praising, but a little different. He does mention an awful lot about how brilliant he is. It does.
Yeah, more so than Wikipedia usually allows, and I think this one is just kind of… He is one of those guys that’s sort of like been in the scene forever and everybody knows him. And, you know, he’s he’s known for like his punk poetry and all that kind of stuff.
But yeah, I read that wiki page too. And I was like, this is maybe higher praise than this guy deserves, but… Yeah, I think the lack of citations kind of speaks to, and just, yeah, it doesn’t have that Wikipedia neutral tone too.
He has a, I need to write this about it. But anyway, you know, these guys also suffer from the fact that apparently there’s a documentary called Divine Horsemen out there. So now even like trying to Google search for them is tough, so they don’t even get that, like, people, you know, randomly searching for them and finding them on Google search kind of love because 99% of the results are about the documentary.
So they really, yeah, I don’t I don’t think they, I think they, they were right to to maybe go back to the previous projects or move on to other projects, perhaps, but it’s a perfectly harmless song, but not, uh, anywhere near the top favorites of uh, all the mystery songs that we’ve gone through so far, put it that way. Which is, I guess, is kind of a good time to think about. Like we’re wrapping up 1987.
We’ve gone through 12 episodes. I should have done like a compilation of the mystery songs so we could have remembered like what our favorite one was. I’m thinking is probably swinging pistons, that one’s up there.
That one was a lot of fun. That’s definitely mine with a bullet. Yeah, there was one or 2 that we I remember. a few others I really liked.
We had a great… Swinging Pistons was by far the best video. By far, the best, yeah.
Yeah, we had a really good batting average there for a while. And I feel like the mystery songs are falling off a little bit, so we’ll see how they how we see how that works in 1988, but yeah, that wraps it up December of 87 and that wraps up the year 87. We are going to take a short hiatus and we’ll be back.
Well, you know we may not even take a hiatus. We are going to take a hiatus from recording, but as far as you guys out there listening, you may not even know, it may just be, I haven’t done the math on the dates yet of how it’ll work out. So maybe there’s a hiatus or maybe not, but we will be back very soon. with January of 1988.
Thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget about 35,000 watts, story college radio available right now on Amazon Prime on Tubi, on Google Play, and now also available on YouTube for free. So you can go check it out.
Just search 35,000 watts on YouTube and you will be able to watch that anytime you like. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks to Keith.
Thanks to Scott. Have a great end of the year. You’re probably listening to this actually in 2026, because again, I didn’t do the research on when this would actually air is probably early 2026, so I hope you’re having a great beginning of the new year, and we’ll see you on the next episode of 120 Months.