We wrap up 1988 with an all-time classic Christmas song and a couple of lesser-known artists who briefly found a bit of fame on 120 Minutes.
And welcome back to 120 months. We are dancing our way through 120 minute MTVs, 120 minutes, that is, one month at a time. I am here with Scott Mobley and Keith Porterfield, and we are in the month of December, 1988.
So we are finishing up our 2nd year of a 10 year project. When we 1st started this. I don’t know how we thought this was going to go, but here we are, man, like a 5th of the way through.
We’re learning stuff. We are discovering bands we never heard of. We’re discovering songs we’ve never heard of.
We are debating a lot of interesting things that come up about these bands. So it’s been a lot of fun. Looking forward to 1989, but 1st we must cap off December of 1988.
And so since we’re at the end of the year, there actually are into the year MTV top 100 lists, so we can kind of look now at what MTV played throughout the year. They don’t break it down month by month. So we’ve been kind of looking at like the top 40 or whatever.
And honestly, we’ve talked about all these songs before. So like the top songs from the year on MTV where Guns N’ Rose is a sweet child of mine, Def Leppard, pour some sugar on me. If you watched MTV in the late 80s, that should not be any surprise to you at all.
Uh, NXS needs you tonight. Aerosmith Ragdoll, Michael Jackson, Man in the Mirror. The Escape Club, Wild, Wild West, which I actually was surprised by.
I knew that they played the heck out of that, but being number 6 for the year was actually a little surprising. Because, I mean, that wasn’t like a massive hit or anything. I mean, it was, but, you know, looking at these, like, a song like, well, like, number 7 is Bon Jovi bad medicine.
That played continuously on MTV, so I absolutely believe it was number 7 on MTV, but I, I, I didn’t look it up, but I don’t think that was like, it certainly wasn’t like a number one top 40 hit. So there is this difference between what MTV was really pushing in what top 40 radio was pushing. There was a lot of crossover, obviously, but they definitely lean more towards like the the glam rock bands and the hair bands and stuff.
George Harrison, number eight, got my mindset on you. Great song. Number nine, Robert Palmer, simply resistible, which again, to me is more almost more about the video than the song, I think, in that case.
Uh, and George Michael father figure. So, I mean, that’s kind of the landscape. That’s why 120 minutes exist.
There still wasn’t a lot of room on mainstream MTV rotation for most of the music we’re talking about. certainly not of the ones that are on the episode today. We’ve got some really obscure stuff today because I am going in blind, like big time. Three of these songs were absolutely new to me.
The only song I actually knew was the one that I picked, so I learned a lot. We’ve got Yeah, it’s a varied, uh, we’ve got like a Matt Dillon appearance in one of the videos. There was one point where I was pretty sure it was Jerry Seinfeld until I looked closely and found out that it wasn’t Jerry Seinfeld in another video, but we’ll talk about that when we get to it.
It’s an interesting, it’s an interesting look. So, here we go. December of 1988.
I’m going to start off with a Christmas song. It seems appropriate, even though this is probably going to air in a week or two, so probably in July. So we’ll say Christmas in July, but we are going to talk about one of my, actually one of my favorite Christmas songs.
I really do like the song, and that is the Pogues fairy tales of New York. So not true, swinging All the jump swing, we’re swinging, we can start the corner, then dance through the night. The boys of the envoy, we’re singing, going by.
And the bows are ringing out for Christmas Day… a lot of good story about the song, about the video about the band, so I’m gonna try to keep it relatively short and stay focused, because you really could talk a lot about the pogues, and they’re an interesting band. They’ve got an interesting story. And so I’m probably going to sell them a little bit short on this particular episode.
So if you don’t know of the post. I’m trying to think. So they’re defined as a Celtic punk band.
And I’m trying to think of the Vinn diagram of people who are into Celtic punk, but would not have already heard of the pogues. I’m guessing that’s like, like a small group, but maybe you haven’t. So if you haven’t checked out the pogues, I’m not sure punk.
I’ve listened to a fair amount of the of the pogue stuff, but not a ton of it. I don’t know that punk. I think they’re just like a Celtic band.
I’m not sure punk, like punk works its way in. They rock it up. the attitude. Yeah, but it’s not like punk.
Yeah, punk like the way, there are other Celtic punk bands that are more… Thank you. Flogging Molly.
Yeah, there’s a great example. That’s more a straight up punk band with Irish flavor. Well, this is an Irish band with punk attitude.
It absolutely is. Oddly enough, formed in London, by Shane McGowan, who is the lead singer, and I would argue that kind of like the heart and soul of the pogues. Spider Stacy and Jim Finer in 1982 formed the band.
Uh, they later added uh, Jamie Fernley and Kate O’Reordan. Their original name was Pogue Mahon, which was an Anglesized version of the Irish phrase for Kiss My Ass. So if you are wondering where the pogues are coming from, idealistically, you know, ideologically, uh, attitude wise, that might give you a little bit of a hint, this particular song, uh, it also features a female vocalist named Kirsty McCall, so we’ll talk a little bit about her as well.
She was actually more of like a pop singer in the 80s and 90s. She wrote a song that I think you guys might be familiar with called They Don’t Know, which was covered by Tracy Ullman in the late 80s and became like a pretty big top 40 hit. That was actually written by Kirsty McCall and recorded by her, but it didn’t really do much on her recording.
She appeared on this particular song, Fairy Tale of New York because her husband, Steve Lilly White, produced the song. Kirsty also was involved with Elvis Costello for a while, I believe. Kirsty also recorded a song that did have some success in the UK.
It’s one of my favorite titles of all time. It’s called There’s a guy who works down the chip shop, swears he’s Elvis. And it’s, it’s a great, great song.
It’s actually like a country song. What’s that song about? It’s about a guy.
And the line. If I remember right, the course is basically like, there’s a guy who works down the chip shop, swears he’s Elvis, he’s a liar and I’m not so sure about you. I think is the chorus, so, like, it’s a great, like, she’s comparing this guy to the guy she’s actually singing about, but so that’s a good time.
She is also kind of famous for, for, and not to be a downer, but she actually died like a very odd death in Mexico. She was hit by a speedboat. She was like swimming with her children, uh, and they were swimming in like a protected area and just like swimming and diving and doing their thing, and, and the guy who owns like the biggest Mexican supermarket chain comes like roaring through in like a speedboat, apparently, and she pushes her child out of the way and is hit by the speedboat and basically killed instantly.
So like that, that story just absolutely blew me away. Like, she’s kind of a hero, ended up being a big deal, like lawsuit wise, of course, because this was like possibly one of the richest men in Mexico that was involved in this, and there’s a whole, uh, speaking of rabbit holes, you can go down that rabbit hole and read all about it. But yeah, real bummer.
She seemed like a very well-liked and really good singer actually as well. Not the most Christmassy story, but, you know, this isn’t the most Christmassy song, except for the fact that it continually mentions Christmas, because it’s got lines like, uh, you’re a slut, you’re a drunk, You scumbag, you maggot, uh, they rhyme maggot with another word that I won’t repeat here, but it’s even worse, I suppose, now as like a slur, and all of that isn’t a Christmas song, and probably for the 1st and last time, I’m guessing. I don’t know of many other Christmas songs that go there.
So that’s kind of interesting, I think. It was a song that took them like 2 years to kind of write and record and get out there into the world. It was actually written because Elvis Costello, who produced some music for them in 85, literally just challenged them like, hey, do you think you guys could write a Christmas song?
It would become a hit, and they took him up on it, and wrote the song, tried to kind of record it with Kate O’Reardan, who was in the band, doing the female vocals, and it just didn’t seem to work out. And so they kind of put it on the back burner and then it came back around in 87 and the new producer, Steve Lillywhite, suggested his wife, Kirsty, and that’s how the song got recorded. Um, this song is, we’ve talked about the UK number one at Christmas being like a big deal.
Whatever song is number one, for the week of Christmas is kind of like a special thing in the UK. The song did not make it to the Christmas number one. It was actually number 2 behind the Pet Shop Boys, always on my mind, which fair enough.
And it never came back around and became like a Christmas number one in later years. That said, it is unbelievably extremely popular in the UK. It has 3600000 sales, which is sextupple platinum in the UK because platinum is 500,000 sales in the UK.
So one of the best-selling singles of all time. 22 times, 22 separate times, it’s been in the top 20 of the UK. So like every year, it kind of continually comes back. It is the most played Christmas song of the 21st century in the UK and is frequently chosen as the best Christmas song of all time by the residents of the UK.
So it is as iconic a Christmas song in the UK as it gets. I mean, it’s right up there with like Mariah Carey in the US, I think, as just like every year they return to it. Again, it’s kind of funny because it’s, you know, it’s a song about, it was written about an Irish American couple who live in New York.
They work on Broadway and they’re kind of basically reminiscing slash arguing about the life they’ve built and whether they want to continue that life together. It’s not particularly romantic. It doesn’t have a particularly happy ending by any stretch.
It starts out with the guy in the drunk take. It has, you know, the, the, you slut, you maggot, you scumbag lines that I talked about. So it is far from a traditional, um, Christmas, about as far from a a traditional Christmas song as you can get.
The one line that I think is an absolute Alzheimer is, uh, so it’s a back and forth duet. It kind of like the human league, you know, don’t you want me? It’s the man, the woman, and they’re coming back and forth.
So the one line that really caught my eye was him saying, I could have been someone, and she said, well, well, so could anyone. What a great, like, what a great line. The video was uh, directed by Peter Doherty, who, this is, this is great, who co-created Yo MTV raps.
Now, who had that on their bingo card? He he directed the video. He also directed Beastie Boys, Hold It Now, Hit It, which makes more sense than this one.
I don’t know if he’s the one that got Matt Dillon to do it or if Matt Dillon was just friends with the band. They didn’t I wasn’t able to find an explanation of how Matt Dillon ends up in this video, but he’s right at the beginning, as he plays a cop, and then you don’t really see him again. I don’t think after that.
There was so much information in my head, and I didn’t organize my notes, that that’s kind of almost like a stream of consciousness about the song. So maybe you guys can make more sense of it. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it or not.
It’s one that I hear over here in Europe a lot, even not in the UK. Like, it is very popular in Europe. It’s obviously, you know, a smash Christmas hit in the UK.
Going into this, I don’t know if you guys have ever heard it, if it’s one of your favorites. So I’m like, where on the spectrum, you guys are on the Pogues. I had never heard it.
And I’m kind of surprised. You know, the pokes are one of those bands that I’ve always been sort of aware of. Maybe not when this came out, but shortly after that, like, you know, when I 1st got to college, I knew people that liked them.
I’d heard of them, all of that, you know, I know what they do. I’m certainly familiar with the notoriety of Shay McGowan and all of that, you know, I’ve always been aware of these guys, but I never really took the time to sit down and listen to them. Uh, even knowing that I’d probably like it because I’m a big fan of, of, you know, you mentioned flogging Molly.
I’m a big fan of that, of bands that take sort of a traditional folk music and rock it up or punk it up a little bit, you know? I like I love liking mine. like you said, I love Gogol Birdello, you know, stuff like that. I really enjoy.
So I don’t know how I never took the time to sit down and actually listen to these guys. So I started this video, and man, I loved every single 2nd of this. I mean, this is just really like, it’s just a straight up folk song.
I mean, you mentioned that, you know, maybe punk is a strong word for this. Um, but I do think it’s more about the attitude, but yeah, it’s just, you know, this is a straight up Irish folk song. It’s not so traditional lyrics, obviously, but everything about it just worked for me.
I love that the song starts. like this, kind of mellow, you know, with the piano and just him singing, and then it kind of kicks it up a little bit. I think the band is fantastic. I don’t know how to describe this because this guy isn’t Sinatra or anything, but these vocals are just perfect for whatever this is.
You know, it’s it’s a song. The song is like a drunken Irish bar song, and you have the poster child for drunken Irish bar guys singing it, and, you know, doing the best he can, and just everything about it works. I loved everything about it.
So, and the video was great too. I thought it really worked for the song. There’s lots of things I loved about it.
But my favorite thing was the beginning, McGowan’s singing and playing the piano and that kind of mellow part at the beginning. And then they cut to the band and they’re just standing there and this sea of cigarette smoke, just waiting to rock out. Like, you know, you know they’re about to, but they’re just kind of sitting there just staring at him doing this thing.
I just I loved it. So yeah, this man is one of my shameful blind spots. They should have been on my radar for a long time.
They just haven’t been, but I’ll, I, I’ll do my best to fix that. But yeah, I just, I loved everything about this. Yeah, I’d heard of the pogues.
I knew what they did. I’ve heard some of their stuff. I can’t say I’m a big fan.
So, you know, I hadn’t heard this song when I went in to listen to it the 1st time. Um, and it is, it’s really good for what it is. not something I want to listen to. I just, I don’t like the pogues particularly.
You know, I don’t have anything against them. I just don’t particularly like what they do. And this didn’t change my mind on that.
So, you know, I can’t really, you know, see any set of circumstances that ends with me at Christmas time wanting to listen to this particular song. Um, but I do think it’s good for what it is. Um, and I will say, you know what?
I’m a believer that, you know, of the theory that in an infinity universe, all versions of us are out there. So there’s probably a version of Keith out there that, that does want to hear this song at Christmas time, but that version of Keith probably likes musicals too, and that version ain’t me, because I don’t like either of those things, so. So yeah, like I said, I, uh, I think it is good for what it is.
It’s well executed. The video is cool. All of that.
It’s just not something that I’m ever going to really want to listen to, but I will say that, you know, having a modern classic like that, uh, uh, you know, in the UK, um, you never know what kind of song is going to take that on, not just on like a Christmas song, but even like just a regular song that kind of comes out of nowhere and becomes a real classic that people return to over and over again. I think it’s a real feather in the cap for the pogues that they did that. And especially for Shane McGowan as a songwriter, that they achieved that, and, you know, that they’ve had the success, and it’s become what it has been for them in the UK.
I think all that’s really cool. And like I said, I enjoyed the video. I think it’s well done, but am I ever going to listen to the song again?
Probably not. I mean that’s fair. Like, the pogues is not for everybody.
I don’t think, you know. It’s definitely of a thing. And if that thing isn’t for you, then, you know, that’s but that kind of stuff has always worked on me.
The folk music that’s just, you know, kicked in the ass a little bit. I always, it always kind of wins me over and it certainly did hear. I’m kind of with you, Keith, in the fact that, like, the pogues are not in my playlist or anything like that.
I don’t go out of my way to listen to, you know, Irish folk music or anything, but when I hear it, I like it. you know, if it’s well done, well executed, um, and Christmas is the one time of year where, like, I feel like genres kind of fall away and you’re willing to open yourself up to genres of music that you would never listen to just in your daily course, but it’s like, I mean, there’s a, you know, there’s an Angela Lansbury song from Meet Me in St. Louis as one of my favorite Christmas songs of all time, but I don’t have freaking Angela Lansbury in my playlist either. you know what I mean? Like, I don’t crank her up on a Tuesday, but at Christmas time, you know, hell yeah, like, that song rocks.
And yeah, it’s it’s interesting to see, um, in the UK, and, I mean, I guess this happens in every country, but like the UK, there’s a song that I discovered by a, uh, a singer called Jonah Louis. I dont know if I’m pronouncing that right. The song’s called Stop the Calvary, and it is not absolutely not a Christmas song.
It’s a war song, but it became a Christmas song and it’s like you were saying, it’s like this modern classic that gets played every Christmas. The reason I heard it is because at Christmas time I was in, I think I was in Germany and I was in a coffee shop and heard it, and I was like, I got to know what this is, and I Shazammed it, and, like, looked into it, because it’s kind of a, it’s like a, it’s more like a warm March kind of song. And it’s really interesting.
It’s just very, it’s kind of ineffable as like what songs are going to catch on and there aren’t a lot of modern Christmas songs that become absolute classics. I mean, a lot of people talk about the Mariah Carey song as being one of the last modern songs that really fall into like the canon of Christmas music and it’s hard to crack that nut to really become, you know, people put out Christmas albums every year. There’s dozens and dozens and dozens, but like, how many really, truly become part of the canon?
I was kind of thinking about it, and maybe I should have done a deeper dive to see if I could come up with more, but the 2 that I thought of are this one, the Pogues, and the Mariah Carey song, you know, in terms of being recorded in the last 30 years or so. I’m sure there’s a couple others, but I mean, in terms of being truly part of the Christmas Canon that… That Mariah Carey song was written to be a Christmas song.
Like, it’s a straight up. You know, this is more like kind of tangentially Christmassy. that, you know? I think that’s cooler that it sort of found, like you were talking about with that other song.
It sort of sort of found its way to being a Christmas song, um, in an indirect route, whereas the, the Mariah Carey song, somebody sat down and said, I’m going to write a Christmas song, you know, and that’s that’s what that is, you know? it’s fine. And boy, did they?
I was going to say, they created a monster, but yeah, they did. But you know, the one thing you can be sure of, maybe those 2 are the only ones that have come recently in the last, you know, 10, 20 years or whatever that, but there will be another, and it’ll come out of left field, will be somebody you’re not expecting to have a big Christmas song. We’ll fart one out and then we’ll have another classic of Christmas, you know, it will happen.
Yeah, yeah, it’s almost inevitable, but it is interesting, and we’re kind of going long on this, but I, I do think that there’s a, it’s an interesting phenomenon that, especially in America, I think maybe a little bit less so in Europe, uh, our Christmas canon largely comes from like the 40s to the 60s. Like we’ve established this, this body of music that, that year after year, those songs are gonna get either played by the original artist, sometimes they’ll be covered and put on new Christmas albums, but there is like a Christmas cannon, but it was very, uh, limited to like the, the post-warriors, and that it hasn’t evolved as much as, as, as any other genre of music. I mean, I don’t know if you want to consider Christmas music a genre, but it almost is like we took this snapshot of what Christmas in like, say 1965 would have been like where you have songs from the 40s, 50s, and 60s that get played.
And it really hasn’t changed that much. You know, you still listen to like Bing Crosby and some of those classics every single year, uh, and only like just the tiniest fraction kind of breakthrough and break into that. But like you said, inevitably, another one will at some point.
I think. That’s the that’s the comfort food aspect of it. You know, you want to hear you want to hear these songs, you know.
And you can hear them done differently and, you know, covered in whatever version of it, but it’s, it’s, it, that’s the part of Christmas. I think people like is the, you know, oh, I remember that song. Of course. nature of that.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we have talked enough about Christmas, even though it is December of 1988. We were going to move on.
I don’t think we have any other Christmas even tangential songs. But these are all new to me. From here on out, I am kind of uh, uh, in the walking in the wilderness a little bit on these songs.
So, where are we going next, Mr. Porterfield? All right. Well, we’ve had a weird thing happen for me here lately.
These last, like, 3 or 4 episodes, we hit this weird little pocket of songs that obviously came out, you know, at this time in the late 80s, but that I never heard until I got to KTXT. And, you know, the last episodes who’s in the banshees was that way, the cowboy junkie song was that way. There were a couple of songs you guys picked that were that way for me.
So it’s been odd to me that I’ve hit this weird little pocket. And sure enough, that continues today. But this one, this one is one of my all-time favorites of those kinds of songs, not just in this little pocket I’ve found of 88, but in all of the songs that I discovered at KTXT.
This is one of my all-time favorites. Um, and it didn’t, it didn’t get me to follow up on the band a whole lot, so I was learning about the band for the 1st time this time as well, just like, like you guys will be. Um, but this is a song that I’ve returned to over and over again over the years.
So today we’re going to talk about a song called The Whole of the Moon by the Waterboys. I You saw the moon The whole of the moon And I mainly want to talk about the song itself, but I will give you a little bit of background on the band, which is what I looked up here. They were formed in London in 1983 by a Scottish singer and guitarist named Mike Scott.
Um, he has been the only permanent member of the band. Um, throughout their history. And what’s funny is that they I looked it up.
They’ve got 8 current members of the band. Mike Scott says that he thinks his band has had more former members than any other band out there. The 2 that got compared to him were Santana.
And the fall, who we’ve talked about at one time. But I went down the list of past members encountered them. And I was doing it fast, so this might not be a 100% accurate count.
But I counted 88 former members of the Water Boys. So this guy has played with a few musicians over the years. And maybe that’s…
I think I was at Waterboys at one time. Yeah, it could have been, yeah. Yeah, I think I accidentally recorded some background vocals for those guys back in 85.
So they’ve been around this entire time. They took a few years off in the 90s, but they reformed and back in 2000 and are still active. Um, they’ve had 16 studio albums.
The most recent one came out last year, so they are still an ongoing project. Um, they’ve kind of jumped genres over the years. They’ve been punk, folk, noise rock, country, all those things have been attached to their name over the years.
This song comes from a 1985 album called This is the Sea. And this is part of what was known as their big music, quote, unquote, period. Um, basically kind of known for big sound, big bombastic courses, that kind of thing and a lot of themes of nature in the lyrics.
So this was album was the last one that was supposed to have been from their big music period. So, after that, I think they went more folk. And then like I said, they kind of dabbled in a lot of different genres over the years.
The album, this is the Sea Reach, number 37 on the UK albums chart. This song got to number 28 on the singles chart. It was rereleased in 1991 and made its way all the way up to number 3 on that occasion.
It has been successful for him. It’s one of the more successful songs they’ve had. They are one of these bands that, you know, does well enough that they can keep going and keep cranking out records, but I’ve never been a big chart copping type band or anything like that.
Um, this song pretty much is, you know, the biggest song that they that they’ve ever had. So I will get to the video here in a 2nd because I think it’s worth mentioning it too, but I really want to talk about the song itself because like I said, I absolutely love this song. Um, and I think it’s a real kind of masterclass in the way that you can put elements into and out of a song and kind of mix your instrumentation, um, and your arrangement up as you go along to kind of hit like neat highlights within the song.
So when it starts off, the song starts. It’s just an acoustic guitar, there’s a little bit of electric in there, piano keyboards, and Mike Scott’s vocals. And that goes for a couple of a couple of verses.
And this song doesn’t really have a traditional chorus per se. Um, he gets to a part where he, you know, he talks about, there is kind of like a repeated refrain that kind of serves as the chorus, but the song doesn’t really change as far as chorus. So it just kind of stays, you know, does the same thing throughout.
But the 3rd time through, you’ll notice that the base changes a little bit, the guy starts throwing some fills in there and it kind of picks up what he’s doing and gets a little more of a melodic groove going into the base. Um, right about the time that the 3rd kind of chorus, again, quote unquote. It’s not really the chorus, but where he hits the part where he says, too far, too soon, you saw the hole of the moon.
At that point, some trumpets kick in and they bounce back and forth between the left and the right channel. And they’re kind of playing mirroring parts, but there are a little bit of differences in there. Really, really cool, just the way those trumpets kick in there.
Right after that, then a female backing vocal comes in, that hasn’t been in through the rest of the song at all. Um, and it really, really adds something uh, to that particular verse where she 1st comes in, uh, really, really fantastic. The next time through on the 5th run through, additional backing vocal comes in, a male backing vocal.
So now you’ve got the trumpets added. You’ve got the bass doing an extra thing. You’ve got backing vocals that come in that weren’t there before.
Um, the trumpets kind of come out for a little while, then come back in. All of that’s going. And then on top of that, on the 6th run through there, they add some additional percussion.
And then right about that time, the saxophone comes in. And at this point, Keith Porterfield is in bliss. This is like the buildup has been fantastic.
Uh, we get to the part where the sacks comes in and, man, I, you know, you guys 2 grew up in the 80s. As you guys well know, saxophone and rock and roll was a thing in the 80s. I mean, rock songs were dripping with sacks back in those days.
Love it. I am a huge fan of saxophone and rock and roll. And really all of the woodwinds.
I think all of the woodwinds are kind of underappreciated instruments. And even in the poke song. We just talked about in what’s it called?
fairy tale of New York. There’s a piccolo in there. Woodwinds and particularly sacks in rock songs is always going to do it for me.
So yeah, that saxophone kicks in toward the end. It starts wailing. And yeah, that’s that is just about it.
You know, 1st time I heard that, my head explodes at that point. I’m just in love with this song. Um, and like I said, I have gone back and revisited this song over and over again through the years, you know, um, it’s just, to me, it’s just, it’s just perfect.
Really, everything about it. I like the vocal, I like the lyric. Um, the lyric, he’s kind of, it’s like a song where he’s singing to someone that he like looks up to.
Um, and so it everything is, you know, I I did this minor thing, but then you did this incredible thing after it. And so like the main part of it is I saw the crescent, but you saw the whole of the moon. And so the, yeah, the whole thing, the lyric, the song, the music, all of it.
I just love it. This is this is one of my favorite finds from KTXT. The video is a real, briefly, I’ll touch on it.
It’s a performance video. The only thing I think that’s kind of cool about this video is that Mike Scott did not want to lip sync the vocals. And so the song on the video is some of it was tracked, some of it was played live, and it’s kind of a kind of an amalgam of those things, but the vocals were all done live.
There’s a violin in the version of the song in the video that actually isn’t in the recorded version, but that violin is picking up some of the keyboard parts on the recorded version. So that was done live. I think the horns were done live, but a lot of it was tracked.
So if you listen to the album version of the song and watch the video, you’ll notice that they’re slightly different, and that was strictly because Mike Scott did not want to lip sync his vocals. He wanted to actually sing the vocals. And so, yeah, it’s just a performance video.
It was done at the Lyceum Theater in London. It’s actually pretty cool. I think the light and shadow aspects of it and the way it’s edited together are cool and there’s some deals where like he’s singing and then kind of in a superimposed image of like the trumpet player when he starts kicking in comes in there.
So it’s a pretty neat video, but largely just a performance video. But man, this video could have been just, you know, 4 minutes of a white screen. And as long as it was this song play, and I was going to be cool with it.
I had never seen this video before, but I’m not going to get my hopes up the way I did with Balaam and the Angel on this one because I had them dashed at that point. But I absolutely love this song, and so I’m interested to see what you guys, what you guys thought about it. So yeah, that’s the whole of the moon by the water boys.
They fall in the category of bands that I absolutely know the name of. I’m sure I played him on KTXT, and I’m sure that’s where I know the name from. I did not know a single song by them or, you know, could pick it out of a lineup or, you know, even tell you, you know, what their what their top song was.
So this was brand new and I loved it. Yeah, I love this song. This is a great song.
Oh, man, why don’t more people play horns and songs anymore? Like, where did we go wrong? I mean, I love electronic music.
You guys know me. I used to be a DJ. I love electronic music.
I love keyboards. I love scents, all good. Like, nothing wrong with, uh, you know, using a machine to make music if that’s what you want to do.
But, oh my god, I love it when someone pulls out a sax or a trumpet, or even better, both, or like an entire horn section and just jams on a rock song, because it works so well. Every time, like, it’s almost hard to do it wrong. I’m sure people have done it wrong, but man, there’s so many songs where the horns kick in and you’re just like, oh, yes, like, it’s amazing.
Um, so I was so happy. And also, I didn’t realize that this wasn’t part of the song from, to begin with, but I love watching someone who plays a violin rocking out to a rock song. Like, it’s just one of the, like, because it’s such a genteel instrument that, you know, you see violinist and it’s such a, and then you see somebody on stage like rocking out to one and, you know, I’m thinking of like, uh, you know, Dave Matthews band, I think famously, uh, uses violin, arcade fire slightly more recently, although they’ve, you know, been around for like 20 something years now, but, um, this was a revelation to see another band that that integrated a violinist, although I guess maybe they’re not as integrated as I thought they were.
But so I love that. But yeah, it was just super happy to see when the trumpet came in because it just, it’s just something that I think is missing from a lot of music today. And maybe there are, and maybe in the comments, people can tell me what they, who they are, but like bands that are still making that type of music where, you know, you’re rocking along, you’re digging it, and all of a sudden the sex guy steps up to the mic and just blows you away and you’re just like, nah, yes.
Um, I’m also thinking, and that, uh, an example of that is like in excess, uh, never tear us apart where, uh, you’re already deep into that song and you’re like, this is such a good song, and then all of a sudden that sacks hits and you’re just like, oh, you know. In excess, have like a full-time sex guy, like, they don’t, yeah, they have a… yeah Yeah, well, he’s a… multi-instrumentalist. He played a little guitar and keys too, but he did play a lot of sacks for them.
Yeah. Yeah, it was integrated into their music, and I think that’s just something that we’ve lost, so that’s a shame. Yeah, video, I didn’t really have any anything on except that the, he’s playing my dream guitar as a teenager.
As a teenager. I wanted a ovation, a black ovation cutaway, shallow body guitar. That was my dream guitar.
Those guitars are at that time, they were probably $1,500 easy. You could buy like a knockoff for less, but I never did get one. And these days, I think people kind of clown on the ovations, but when I saw him play that guitar, I was like, okay, I’m going to like this guy already because I was absolutely in love with that exact model of guitar.
Um, so that part of the video, I was like, ah, cool. Okay, this is good. But otherwise, yeah, just a performance video, nothing special.
I did have the violinist rocking out, which I do recommend, but love the song, and we’ll probably dig a little bit deeper into the Waterboys catalog in the future, yeah. Yeah, so I’m in the same boat. When this 1st popped up, it could have been a mystery song as far as my knowledge of this band went.
Doing a little digging. Things started to look familiar. That said, the closest I got to a memory was, I was looking at the album covers, the album after this one, which I think is called like Fisherman’s Blues or something like that, somebody I know had that album because that album cover, like, sparked something in my head.
I still don’t think I ever heard it. You know, it was just a memorable cover. I don’t think I ever heard anything.
I certainly didn’t remember anything on it. So this was a brand new thing for me. I gotta say, I really, really liked this.
It’s a great little folksy jam. I liked the vocals. I liked the instrumentation.
It’s catchy. You know, we talked with the pogues about, you know, bands that sort of have a traditional folky sound, but it’s just amped up a little bit. This is not maybe the greatest example of that.
But there’s definitely a UK Scottish flavor to this that you sort of comes through it, and I liked that. Even though he delivers those, like, slightly shouted lines, like, they’re not quite shouted, but there’s a rhythm to the way he delivers some of those verses that is Scottish irish. Yeah, it’s got, even though it, like, lyrically, it’s not this, and musically, it’s not stupid.
It has that sort of pub drinking song feel to it that always wins me over. So that’s going to work on me every single time. You know, the video is performance video and like you mentioned, I didn’t know the vocals were live. kind of cool.
They looked cool and the video works for the song and everything. I don’t have a whole lot to add other than to say, you know, we’ve stumbled across yet another band that I probably should have been into when they were around and I just never found them. So it seems to be happening a lot lately.
It’s kind of a shame on me situation. But yeah, I dug this a ton. I loved it.
You mentioned the violinist in the video. Again, one of the the 88 people who have played with Mike Scott, he was playing at one time or another. But apparently they had just hired him to be part of the band.
And so I guess when they went into play it live, they decided to put some of the keyboard parts over onto the violin so that he would have something to do there on stage, but yeah, that was why you don’t hear it on the record and do see it on the video because apparently he was member number of Kunos 23 out of the of the 88 or whatever that had just got hired by the band. That was an excellent, uh, excellent decision to bring in the violinist. It just adds, it just adds another layer to that that I really enjoyed.
Yeah, I think that they do a good job even of in that kind of semi-live version of like layering it up and like having the elements come in and out like they do on the record that works really well too. Yeah, it’s really good. This is definitely one of those where I do think we can kind of legitimately say, like, there probably are a lot of people who aren’t familiar with the Water Boys.
And so, yeah, where sometimes it’s not like we’re not exactly breaking new ground with certain bands and everybody’s heard them and everybody already loves them. This is one where it’s like, I don’t know how many people actually really know the Water Boys. So they have my recommendation, and Keith, you have redeemed yourself for the whole below, I’m in the angel madness.
I would add, if you like this this current thing that’s happening where people are sort of doing more traditional folky music, I’m the band that popped in my head was the decemberists, if you like that sort of thing, I think you’ll love this. So check it out. That’s not a bad comp, yeah.
All right, let’s move on to even more mysterious band for me. So at least I had heard of the Water Boys. Now we’re into seriously uncharted territory.
I’d never heard the band, never heard the song, but I can’t wait to learn more. So keeping with our folk music theme, just kidding. My pick this week is the song The Great Commandment by camouflage.
The great… Chose to come the time between the world and their embarrassing thing. the go Read them reading. Realize the man who says anything, the great commandion.
Uh, I picked it for a fairly specific reason. I remember liking this song when it came out, even though electronic music really wasn’t my thing yet. I bought this song as a 12 inch single, which I very clearly remember being the 1st time I had ever done that.
And I was gonna, I was gonna dig it out of my stacks and hold it up here and show you, but I didn’t get a chance to do that. I just wanted to take the opportunity to revisit this song. I hadn’t really thought about it in years when I saw it pop up.
So I would have been willing to bet a fairly substantial amount of money that this was one of those project songs, you know, a couple of DJs cranked out a single and were never heard from again, that kind of thing. Sure glad I didn’t make that bet because not only is camouflage a working band with albums and singles and videos and such. They are still a working band to this day.
To be fair, this is their only US hit. The rest of their success has been in their home country of Germany. I was still pretty shocked to see that, you know, on their wiki page, their history says 1984 to present, and they have 8 studio albums.
I would never guessed any of that. So camouflage is 3 guys, and apologies to our German friends for my pronunciations. They are Heiko Myla, Oliver Krisig, and Marcus Maine.
They formed in 1984 in Germany, from the dust of another band. And they were discovered when a friend submitted the demo for this song to a radio contest. They were signed to a German label.
They rerecorded the song and a few others. They released their debut album in September of 87. It was a huge hit in Germany.
So in 88, they were flown over to the U.S. They signed to Atlantic Records in America and then released the Great Commandment in November of 88. So about a month before this. It was released as a single.
By early 89. This song is number 59 on the Hot 100. Here’s the impressive part.
Number 3 on the alternative music chart, and number one on the U.S. dance chart for 4 weeks. They would never have another single in the U.S. again. In Germany, they’ve had several minor hits and over the years.
They are still a thing. So this song, I mentioned that I picked it because I remember being pretty fond of it back in 1988, which I was, and listening to it now, you can really kind of tell just how little dance music I was listening to at the time. And I don’t say that as a diss on this song.
I still think it’s really good, but it just sounds like so many other things that someone who was into dance music at the time would have noticed, and I just didn’t. It sounded new and fresh and interesting to me. So, I’m not sure where I would have heard it.
Some radio station must have played it. But it really impressed me back then. It certainly isn’t groundbreaking and it’s not all that original, but listening to it again this week.
I’ll stand by it. I think it’s a pretty good tune. I do think I saw this video back in the day.
I didn’t remember anything about it except that I remembered a guy, in my mind, he was standing at a podium yelling at people. So I was close watching it again. What the video is, is there’s like this, this spokesman and he’s sort of barking orders at a bunch of children in a factory. of the kids realizes there’s a switch that like turns him off and does that and he falls apart.
Turns out he’s a robot. The kids laugh, the band steps in and looks cool. It’s all in this very sort of Orwellian black and white, you know, mode.
It’s a pretty sharp video, especially compared to some of the stuff we’ve been seeing. I thought it was pretty well done. So I know that was a little bit short and sweet.
But anyone out there who’s interested in this band, I would encourage you doing a little digging. I don’t want to go into it all, but because to me, these guys were one hit wonders, but they have a pretty interesting history. Now, to be fair, you will see the world’s words failed project and bad decision and misstep a lot.
But nonetheless, camouflage has been hammering out music for the better part of 45 years, and they just keep chugging along. So if you like this song, like I do, there might be something in all of that that might interest you. So, from what I gathered, you guys really, this was an ice cold, listen for you.
So I’m really curious to hear what you thought of it. Um, not for me. I knew this one.
But 1st let me just say that description of the video, uh, and I can’t remember exactly how you put it right then, uh, was as good a description as I could have ever come up with for that video. That is exactly what that video is right there. The only other thing that I put down was that it was given off some serious Wizard of Oz vibes when we had the… sepia tone.
Something about it, yeah. colors are very beginning of Wizard Lodge, right? Yeah, when he gets, you know, knocked over and you see that he’s actually a robot or anything, that was the 1st thing that came into my mind. So, but I did know this song. and I remembered it.
I don’t know where I 1st heard it, but I’d heard it many times. I was familiar with it. It’s fine.
It’s a pretty good interest into this genre. I will say, I don’t haven’t heard anything else by camouflage, but just based on this song. These guys would really, really like to be Depeche Mode.
But they are not. They’re just not quite there. But I do think that this is a is a pretty good, you know, entrant into that genre of of electro, you know, synth pop that you were getting back in those days, kind of the darker synth pop of those days.
So, I won’t say anything bad about the song. It’s not necessarily one of my favorites or anything that I, you know, going to want to listen to a whole lot. Um, but I’ve always, you know, I don’t turn it off when it comes on or whatever.
And like I said, I had heard it many times. I just, I’ve been thinking about it. I just can’t remember where I initially heard that before. kind of where I was.
Yeah, I’m not sure. You know, and you mentioned that they kind of sound like Depeche Mode. that’s kind of what I was saying is, you know, if I had been really into Depeche Mode when this came out, I would have heard it immediately. Um, but I wasn’t.
I think the only Depeche Mode song I knew at this moment was probably like people are people, which this is not. But if I had heard master of, master and servant at this time, I would have heard it, you know, and I just, I just didn’t, I’m listening to it now, I 100% agree with you. I’m like, these guys thought they wanted to be Depeche Mode.
The funny thing about that, though, is that at this point, you know, this is 88, you know, music for the masses came out in 87, and we talked about that when we talked about never let me down again of how Depeche Mode at that point was starting to move into a little more of using actual instruments, guitars, and getting away from the strictly electronic stuff. Well, camouflage at this point is just an electronic band, just straight up, you know? Well, to be fair to camouflage.
This was recorded in 1984. It didn’t make its way over here till 88. So they were, you know, maybe not ahead of the game, but they weren’t as behind it as maybe it feels like they were.
Yeah, that information does change my feelings a little bit because it does sound it is kind of derivative, but if it was an 84, not as derivative as it would have been an 88. You know, they were maybe a little bit more ahead of their time than I was giving them credit for. It’s a perfectly good song.
I think it’s it’s kind of, it’s a little repetitive. It doesn’t necessarily kind of go to that next level. I think they needed some horns, maybe a violin.
Would it maybe done it? A little saxophone solo, and then we’re there. But no, it just, it didn’t quite kind of go over the top.
It just kind of comes along, you know, for what it is. Uh, but it isn’t bad and you definitely can hear all those influences in their, everything you guys, you know, have already said, I think, is, uh, is absolutely true. I think I would have, if I had discovered this around the time I probably would have really dug it because I wasn’t as well versed in maybe some of the bands who do this better, like Depeche Mode.
So I might have been really into it. They might possibly be the best looking band of all time. Apologies to Duran Duran, but these are some very, very good looking gentlemen that are making this music.
I’m just going to go ahead and say that right now. The video, I legitimately, I was like, that guy looks a lot like Jerry Seinfeld initially. The guy at the podium looks a lot like Jerry Seinfeld.
Oh, yeah, I can kind of say that too. until his hat came off. When his hat came off, I was like, nope, it’s not him. But when he was had the hat on, it was bar.
I was like, kind of looks like Tim Roth. Interesting. And initially, I was like, he’s yelling at a very young Matt Damon, but then that kind of falls apart once you kind of really see the other guy.
My thought definitely went to Wizard of Oz because of the kind of like her going behind the curtain and discovering the controls. And then, you know, when he falls over, he’s like, he’s a robot, but he’s made of straw too, or like his lower half was straw, or maybe he was popped up on straw. I’m not exactly sure where the straw comes in because wasn’t very well thought out.
Yeah, the Wizard of Oz metaphor gets a little mixed if the Wizard is made of straw. I think that’s how that works, but yeah, I was kind of trying to piece together exactly what they were going for. I mean, I understand what they were going for, but I probably should have watched it maybe one more time through just to really try to get the through story of what they were trying to say.
But yeah, I think you guys covered it. Like, it’s, I don’t know. I mean, they must be doing something right if they’ve been around for 45 years.
I mean, they’re, you know, they’re, they obviously have brother stuff. I didn’t dig any deeper into their catalog because I spent all my research time digging into the next band we’re going to talk about because I was really fascinated by where that was going to go. But I am kind of curious to hear some of their other stuff because it is, you know, it’s a genre that I like.
I love 80s dance music and Depeche Mode and stuff. So it might be interesting to dig a little deeper. Interesting discovery for me.
Like I said, I was coming in. This might as well have been the mystery song and it was it was kind of a revelation. In a non-overwhelmingly, you know, wildly exciting way, but kind of cool just to, it’s always fun to like discover a band that was doing something back then that you didn’t realize was even doing it.
And, man, number one on the dance charge for 4 weeks, by the way, blows my mind. I did not see that coming. Yeah, this was a hit.
I mean, it’s, they never had another, and, you know, they, but for what it, whatever it’s worth, this song was pretty big for a minute. Speaking of bands who never had hits. Here we go.
It’s time for the mystery song, folks. And we’ve had a mixed bag lately. We were on a run of like some wildly entertaining stuff that we were really excited to get into, and then we hit a little run of stuff that maybe we weren’t quite as excited about.
I don’t know where this is going to fall. I’m going to tell you right now. I think this might be one of the most polarizing mystery songs, and I don’t even know how you guys feel yet.
I personally am polarized by this song. I can’t decide how I feel exactly about this song or this band once I dug a little deeper. So, we are going to talk about the band Rude Buddha, and the song is no more gravy. make me’s gonna make me Working a time, my hands behind, my macintosh, in the front.
First of all, my research was thwarted by the fact that there is an Andy Sandberg SNL sketch called Rude Buddha, and there is another band called Rude Buddha that exists in the late 2 or the 2000s era, kind of more of like a frat boy style band. So if you listen to Rude Buddha, a song called like Miss California and you’re like, this doesn’t sound anything like what I thought those guys were talking about, that’s the wrong band. This band is from the 80s.
They were formed, 1984, 85-ish, I think. The amount of information about these guys is very, very low. There’s not a Wikipedia.
Yeah, they are very, so I had to do some digging, but what I discovered, is they were formed in the mid 80s, let’s say, in Charlottesville, Virginia, Brian Daly, Jim Greer, Dan Fisherman, and I think we can probably all assume the star of the show is the female bass player and vocalist named Virginia Wade, who would go on to be in some other bands, later on Timber and Vodka and the Swans. I think she was in all those bands. So they formed in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is the home of University of Virginia, UVA, the alma mater of my lovely wife and editor of the podcast, Tracy.
And then they moved to New York, and I guess kind of became a thing there a little bit. I mean, they played CBGBs multiple times. That’s that seems to come up in a lot of the conversations about them.
They were described as having early on an artie wall of sound attack that then came, became a more structured art funk thing. I think the song is in the art funk era of what they were doing. There’s comparisons to David Byrne and talking heads.
You kind of, I guess, if you squint your eyes and maybe stretch it. Yeah, stretch it out a little bit. You can get there.
I saw a few comments on a Facebook post about them and it said one of them was about Jenny starting the bands. I think I’ve already kind of covered that. And, uh, another one said they they put out an album or two.
They became semi-regulars at CBGBs, but they were the most hip thing that was happening at UVA during the 80s. Everybody had a crush on Jenny Wade. So it almost sounds like they were a little bit like, like the pylon or the love tractor of, you know, the of the UVA scene, like they were, like those guys were in Athens, I would argue that Pylon and Love Tractor are both better than these guys, but they were kind of that, they were in a college town.
They were obviously like kind of an art band. They were doing some more out there type stuff. And apparently it worked fairly well at the time in Charlottesville.
I mean, it got him to New York. It got him on 120 minutes. Now, the song.
When I picked the song Rude Buddha, no more gravy. First of all, this is the 1st time I think I picked a mystery song based on the title of the song more than the band. I really thought it was going to be like a stupid novelty, maybe like a punky kind of thing.
I didn’t know, I don’t know what I was going to expect. I was expecting, but it absolutely was not what this is. It took a wild turn right from the beginning with the instrumental.
And then when she comes in on the vocals, I don’t think anybody’s expecting that. I mean, the vocals are unique to a fault. let’s say. Um, and I will say, I’ve dug into their catalog and that’s not really what she sounds like.
Most of her vocals on her other tracks are different from this or more tradition. I mean, more traditional relative to this one. None of them would be considered probably traditional in terms of, you know, what a what a band or like a singer, but she’s she’s a better singer than you would think from this, and she doesn’t have kind of the weirder affectations that she takes on in this song.
I don’t know the story behind why the vocal delivery is what it is. I just wasn’t able to find a lot of information about that. But, you know, the backing track is a little art funk, I think, sums it up pretty well.
It’s kind of a funky backing track. I don’t know, maybe you guys will help me describe that vocal delivery. I don’t even cartoonish, maybe.
I don’t know. We’ll get there when I’ll let you guys have your turn. You can tell me what you think, but I wasn’t able to put my finger on it.
The video is essentially unwatchable in the form that we have it, I would say. It’s an era where these guys are making cheap video, so you’ve got cheap video camera. You’ve got really frenetic editing.
It was then recorded on VHS off of probably MTV or M2 at some point, and then goes through the YouTube compression, and by the time it gets to us at this point, I really had a hard time watching it, it’s just all over the place and there’s not, it’s a mess. Yeah, it’s really, really difficult to watch. So I don’t have a lot to say about the video.
Like I said, I did dig into the band a little further. They have a couple songs that I liked significantly more than I liked this one. There’s moments that are very, very good, uh, but then they’ll kind of swing back into the, as many art bands do.
They’ll have like a good hook, but then they’ll kind of maybe push the art side of it a little bit too much and take you in a direction maybe that you weren’t expecting or don’t want to go. So there’s like, there’s 2 or 3 songs that I was like, ooh, okay, maybe I can, and then it’ll take a left curve and you’ll be like, oh, well, well, maybe not. You know, like, there’s just a lot of songs that are like that.
So I’m not going to put my stamp of approval on rude Buddha, but I do think that they are interesting enough that maybe if you wanted to dig into them and listen to a couple tracks. Maybe if you’re a talking heads fan, I don’t necessarily see that connection as being super strong, but I don’t know what another good comp would be. again, maybe you guys will tell me. So I’m super curious to find out what you thought about it.
My opinion is still kind of up in the air a little bit. I really don’t know. I think I’m kind of with you, and I really liked how you said that this was like internally divisive for you because that’s exactly what it was for me.
I gave this a listen. I thought, fine. You know, it’s a little weird.
It’s a little quirky, it’s fairly harmless and kind of insignificant. Um, so I tried to do a little digging. You did way better than I did.
All I really found was this band was fronted by I saw the name Jenny Wade, which I guess, you know, it’s the nickname for Virginia, but I searched Jenny Wade, and I found nothing. I found like this actress who’s using that name now. She was born in 1992, so it’s not her.
So you found more on her than I did. And then I saw this was a staple of 120 minutes, but really no follow-up information on that. Like nothing else that says why or, you know, how it sort of became a thing.
And then that there was a 2nd band called Rude Buddha that formed in like 99. I didn’t really look into them, but it’s almost like once they came into existence. This man got wiped off the internet or something.
I don’t know, like it’s very hard to find information on them. So, I was slightly intrigued by this. I won’t say I loved it or anything.
But I did think it was solidly okay enough to take a look at the band. There just wasn’t much out there to find. I was kind of interested to find out why this was popular in the 1st place because, like I said, it’s it’s fine, but it’s not, it’s not like it reaches out and grabs you or, you know, it has no real hook or anything.
It’s not, it’s not really groundbreaking. It’s not really all that original. So I’ll say that I liked it and I didn’t love it.
And since there wasn’t much else to discover. I guess I have to leave it right there. I really don’t have a whole lot to say.
It was solidly okey-dokey. It’s funny, we all have had similar experiences with this. My trying to go down the rabbit hole and getting stymied involved, uh, trying to find their their uh, discography.
I went to discogs, DISCOGS.com and looked there. And the video that says that this, or, you know, where the album would be, you know, there’s the song title, and then below that, they’ll usually put the album name. It said downtown NYC.
I tried that too. Yeah, they don’t have an album called… Yeah, exactly.
And so I clicked through all of the albums they do have to look at the track listing, and this song is not on any of them, and it’s not listed as being a single. So at the top of the Discog’s page. It says, you know, that no more gravy was like their biggest song, but then you go look at all of the stuff they’ve got listed for them, and they don’t have no more gravy listed as being on any of their releases, or even hasn’t been released as a single.
So yeah, the whole thing was mysterious to me as well. Um, I didn’t really care for this. I think you guys gave it more of a chance than I did maybe.
It was okay, I guess. Um, It’s kind of what, it reminded me of the, uh, what was the one we did that was, that was so bad that I, I described it as being, you know, the intro to a song, but without an actual song on it? I can’t remember now the band.
Possibly 17 pygmies. I don’t know. was pretty bad. one. It kind of struck me in the same way as like, there’s the beginnings of a good song here, but you need to do something with it.
You need to change it up or, you know, throw a change in here or there, do something different. It just, I don’t know, it just doesn’t really seem to go anywhere for me. And then the vocals were weird, like you mentioned.
Um, yeah, I can’t say that this did much for me. The video, you know, it’s got some shots of like, you know, outside like marquise at the theater and stuff like that. The one thing it kind of reminded me of was the concrete blonde video for still in Hollywood just nowhere near as good, like, you know, downgraded by, you know, 6 or 7 levels from where that one is.
So yeah, the video was fine, but not great. The song was fine, but I felt like it kind of needed a little more somewhere to get it over the top. So, yeah, I mean, I can’t can’t say that I’m at all interested in checking out any more rude Buddha.
Yeah, I just didn’t do a whole lot for me. I feel like there’s there’s the kernel of, and this is true of a couple of the other songs, too. There’s a kernel that could be taken in a different direction and really turn into a really cool song because I kind of liked the, what I guess is kind of the chorus where she’s like talking about like, sit, like, I forget the line exactly, but the sit and squirm part, you know, where it’s kind of, it’s kind of aggressive.
And I was like, man, if you did that over like a punk, like just a more straight punk backing track instead of the art funk, and then you changed up the verse, lose the kind of weird cartoonist vocal, then I think I could have really got into it. And that was true of a couple other songs. There’s like, and it wasn’t always the course.
Sometimes it was the verse where it’s like, okay, they’re onto something with that. Like they could run with that and make it. But then it always just doesn’t go the direction it needs to go to win me over.
I had the exact same reaction. I was like, it’s punky, but not punky enough. It’s artsy but not artsy enough.
It’s weird, but it’s not weird enough. Like it’s, it’s all these, these sprinklings of things that if it was just a little bit more of them, it might be better, but it just kind of, it’s just kind of a neutral hum the way it is now, you know, and I didn’t listen to anything else by these guys. So I don’t know if I’d have the same reaction to all of that.
But that was my reaction to this. It’s like, it’s almost a bunch of stuff and it ends up being none of it. Yeah.
Yeah, they could have gone a punk route. This is a weird comparison, but I think maybe just because of the weird vocals, like maybe they could have gone like a ween type of route and gone way artsy with it and weird and then it kind of becomes a different thing that you can be like, ah, yeah, that’s super weird, but I kind of dig it. But it’s like they, they kind of try to play both sides of the street.
I guess maybe too much. It just ends up doing nothing. It just, yeah, it ends up doing that.
It’s wildly ineffable to, like, try to get your head around… Like, what they were thinking, what they were going for, whether it, whether maybe it does work, and we’re just, we’re just all 3 not getting it, and it, it’s exactly, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know.
I will say that I’m glad that another band, I don’t know anything about that band, but I’m glad that another man took this name because it is a really good name for a band. So when this band disappeared, I’m glad someone else was able to swing in and steal that name. And an SNL sketch apparently, which I did not want.
I didn’t know that either. I do like Andy Sandberg, but yeah, I guess it came from the idea of, you know, the Buddha is associated with like an awakening of consciousness and so a rude awakening rude Buddha. That’s not that’s not the direction the SNL skit picks.
I think that’s how I think it’s a little more literal in the SNL sketch, but I think they were going for like kind of a higher connection that they were trying to make, but, you know, I should have written down the name of the other song, just to suggest to people, like, if for some reason, you did want to go down this rabbit hole. But if you do want to find it, Jenny Wade, known as Virginia Wade, but I think Jenny Wade may be the more common name because I did see that referenced. Ginny Wade has a YouTube channel that she has uploaded a bunch of songs from all her bands.
So there’s 10 rude Buddha songs on her channel. The, there’s not, they don’t get a lot of views. She only has like 79 subscribers.
It’s like a very hidden thing, but if you searched for the Jenny Wade channel on YouTube, you might then get to her, you know, personal where she’s personally uploaded all these songs. And so you at least can listen to like 10 rebuda songs, if you if you wanted to do such a thing. But it was, yeah, it was, it was a stretch.
I was, I mean, when I go on Facebook to find information. I have hit the bottom of the barrel at that, like, I, there is no lower for me to go in research than to be on Facebook looking at post being like, I gotta get something to find out where the, these people came from. So I had to go, that’s where I had to get to just to kind of piece together where they were from and what was going on.
But, I mean, certainly an interesting band. And Jenny Wade has her followers, for sure, I guess she was quite the, uh, the it girl in in 1980s Charlottesville in that world. So there you go.
Who knew? All right, there you have it. December of 1988, a Schmorgas board of weird and wonderful music, really.
I mean, going from the pogues through, like, camouflage, and then I, I mean, I will say the highlight for me was definitely discovering the Water Boys, so shout out to Keith. That was a really good choice. Um, you know, I already knew fairy tale of New York, and I do think that I think that that is an absolute, like, all timer classic.
Both just as a song and as a Christmas song, you know, I love it. But the Waterboys really was a revelation. I didn’t know what to expect.
I guess I was thinking of it was going to be a little more. I don’t like using this word, but it does kind of fit sometimes in, especially when you’re talking about Scottish and music, but I thought it was going to be a little more chewy than it was. Um, but they they rocked a little harder and then, yeah, bringing in the horns and stuff, just like chef’s kiss.
I really enjoyed it. Camouflage was interesting just as a discovery that that that existed, that they were that big for at least that short amount of time. Um, brought the best video of the four, I think, by a long stretch, although the the pokes video is pretty good, but camouflage probably had the best video.
Again, not to keep belaboring this point, but by far the best looking band of the 4 and possibly the best looking band we’ve talked about in this entire time. It’s not hard to be better looking than the pogues, to be fair. No, no.
Shane McGowan is a lot, I should say was. He has unfortunately passed away. He was a lot of things, but good looking was not one of them.
He was actually sort of famous for being not good looking. Kind of kind of famously not good looking. Yeah, unfortunately, but man, the right guy for that band and for that song 100%.
So, yeah, if I’m if I’m recommending, as I often do at the end of these episodes, you know, for Christmas time, go get the Pogues Fairy Tale of New York. If you like that, you might want to go deeper into their catalog if you’re into the Celtic punk or Irish folk or however you want to describe them. But I think the find is probably the Water Boys, if you aren’t familiar with the Water Boys, but you love.
I mean, I don’t know the genre. Late 80s alternative rock, I guess. I mean, they’re they’re not, you know, they’re not doing anything like so super special that they kind of have a very specific genre that they fit in.
They just, they just make really good music. and there’s a saxophone. So check it out. Uh, we’re gonna take a little break.
So it might be a couple weeks before we come back, but we are jumping back in with 1989 sooner than later, so we will return. We’ll give you a little break from us for just a couple weeks, but I’m looking forward to it. We’ve already, I think, chosen most of our bands for 1989 and songs and there’s a lot of good stuff that’s coming up.
There’s some challenges for us because we try not to repeat stuff as much as possible, but I think we all are repeating at least one thing or in 1989 and then it’s going to get increasingly difficult for us to find mystery songs as well. So that’ll be interesting. But yeah, we’ll be back in a couple weeks of January 1989.
So thanks for tuning in. We appreciate it. If you haven’t checked out 35,000 watts.
Story of college radio. It’s a film about college radio and a lot of these bands that we talk about on this podcast are also discussed in the college radio world. So that film might be of interest to you.
It’s on Tubi, uh, if you want to go check that out. We’d appreciate it. Thanks to Keith, thanks to Scott.
That’s a wrap on 1988, and we’ll see you next time for January of 1989 right here on 120 Months!