120 Months – January 1989 – Modern English, The Dead Milkmen, Front 242

We’re continuing our journey through MTV’s 120 Minutes by kicking off 1989 with a smash hit, an underground favorite and a lesser-known track from a trio of college radio favorites.

Welcome back to 120 months. We’re starting a whole new year. We’ve made it through 24 episodes, 2 years of our 10-year journey through 120 minutes, which is MTV’s kind of underground indie alternative show.

We’ve done 1987. We’ve done 1988. If you haven’t listened to those shows.

They’re available right now, and you just check them out because there’s a lot of great stuff. And now we’re into 1989, which I think puts all 3 of us squarely in high school, if I’m not mistaken. I was a freshman.

You guys are probably like sophomores or juniors in high school at this point. So we were all kind of in that groove of probably listen to a lot of music and I think knowing all of our trajectories, we’re all starting to dabble more and more into this like Indian alternative. I think we’re all on slightly different trajectories.

I was just starting to go beyond like top 40 music at this point. So my depth of knowledge on, you know, what was going on in the 89 underground scene is not super deep from personal or like, you know, experience from the time, but we’re getting close to that as we go through the years. But, uh, yeah, they get kind of more and more interesting as we as we move through this and get deeper into like when we were kind of more personally involved in the music scene, especially working in college radio and stuff as opposed to, like 87 and 88, I kind of knew really more in hindsight, and I learned a lot of that music much later on, whereas now we’re at least dabbling in stuff that I knew at the time.

So that’ll be fun. You know, MTV at this point is, like we’ve talked about, they’re playing Bon Jovi, they’re playing Def Leppard. They’re playing essentially top 40 music with a little bit of like a pop rock kind of twist.

So 120 minutes still in 89 was very much an outlier and a lot of these songs were songs you weren’t gonna hear on top 40 radio for sure. And that’s kind of why we’re digging into it. Maybe one of the songs this week is a little bit of an exception to that because I think, I think we have a breakout song on our, on our episode this week, and I think it actually is the 1st one up.

So we’ll kick it off with Mr. Keith Borfield. Before we get started with our tour of 89. I did want to take a quick minute to acknowledge the passing of Dave Kendall, who died a couple of weeks ago.

Dave was the guy that pitched the idea to the producers at MTV to have a show that concentrated on music that wasn’t getting played anywhere else. And, you know, we kind of talked a little bit as we’ve gone through this about kind of the eclectic nature. Um, of 120 minutes in these early days.

And that was actually his idea. That was exactly what he wanted. You know, he’s went to them and said, there’s there’s punk out there and post punk, and synth pop, and new wave and industrial, and all this stuff that’s not getting played anywhere else, and we should give that a platform.

And so that was the show that ended up becoming 120 minutes. He also hosted the show for a few years. And for me personally, I certainly remember him as the as the host.

I remember when Matt Penfield took the show over. And I was still watching it at that time and still watching it occasionally, you know, whenever I was free on a Sunday night, but there was a time in my life where 120 minutes was appointment viewing for me and that was squarely in the Dave Kendall era. Um, you know, I remember him interviewing some of my favorite artists like Robert Smith and Peter Murphy.

I remember making a lot of Monday trips to the record store after I got out of class to go, you know, pick up stuff that I had heard Dave play on 120 minutes the night before. You know, we’ve also talked a little bit about musical influences and where we were discovering new music. There was a time in my life where 120 minutes was where I was discovering a lot of my new music.

And so a lot of the things I ended up buying and bands I ended up getting behind. You know, I learned about watching Dave Kendall on 120 minutes. So, like you said, I just wanted to take a quick moment to acknowledge his passing, say, you know, rest in peace, Dave, and also acknowledge that we wouldn’t be doing this show here today.

That we are, if it wasn’t for him and the work that he did. So, again, you know, rest easy, Dave, and thanks for all the work you did out there, getting us to this point. I definitely appreciate it.

To get into the music today. We’re starting our tour of 1989 and to my mind anyway. We’re coming out of the gates really strong here with what is, to my mind, like I said, an absolute classic.

I guess we’ll see if you guys agree with that or not. But today we’re going to talk about the song I Melt with He by Modern End. the world with you You’ve seen the difference and it’s getting better all the time. There’s nothing you and I won’t do I’ll stop the world I’m melting in…

This is an interesting song. It’s… We recorded three different times by this band, originally on their 1982 album called After the Snow.

It was rerecorded again in almost exactly the same manner for their 1990 album Pillow Lips. They didn’t really change anything at all there. And then they recorded it again in 2010 for a movie of the same name.

I met with you. And apparently did a radically altered version of the song on that occasion. I haven’t actually heard that version, so I couldn’t speak to that one.

But the 1st two, you know, if you hear one of them, you heard the other, they’re essentially the exact same song. I kind of feel like there was probably a record company executive out there that said something to the effect of, remember that hit you guys had back in 1982? We should do that again.

And they’re like, okay, well we’ll try to write another one. And he says, no, no, no. I mean, we should do that hit again.

The one that you had back in 1982 because it is the exact same song. And it’s kind of funny, you know, uh, because I was thinking about this. I do consider this song to be a real class.

And I think part of the reason for that is, is, I remember when it got re-released as a single again in 1990 at that time thinking, you know, um, wow, this is, this is an old classic that they brought back, you know, uh, they, they recorded this classic song that they did before, and here it is again. So I kind of feel like this song, like, was the 1st ever nostalgia trip that I had back in the day, you know, thinking about a song from an earlier time coming back into my, into my mind again. So, you know, I’m in my 50s now, so I have like regularly scheduled nostalgia trips like every hour on the hour these days, but man, back then I was 18, 19 years old.

That was the 1st time that had ever happened to me. So, um, I kind of feel like maybe that’s the reason that this song seems like a classic to me, but, uh, anyway, the band Modern English, they were formed in Colchester, Essex, England, in 1979. Um, the original lineup that recorded the song the 1st time was Robbie Gray on Volks.

Vocals, I should say, Gary McDowell on guitar, Michael Conroy on bass, Richard Brown on drums, and Stephen Welker on keyboards. They have over the years broke up a couple of times, but they’ve gotten back together most recently and got back together in 1995 and have been a working act ever since then. The current lineup features all of the original members except for one, Brown, the drummer is gone.

But the other 4 originals are all back in the band now as it exists these days. This song, I said, it 1st came out in 1982. It went to, it was successful.

They went to number seven on the billboard mainstream rock chart, number 78 on the hot 100 and number 60 on what was at that time called the Dance Disco Top 80 chart. And it was also included on the soundtrack to a movie called Valley Girl, which I don’t know if you guys remember from back in the 80s. but got kind of a 2nd set of legs even further on that original release being on the soundtrack there. And when it got rereleased in 1990, it charted again, went to number 76, this time on the hot 100, number 25 on the dance charts.

This has been easily their most successful song. You know, they’ve had some other singles, but nothing that’s come close to what this song did for them. The song itself is, like I said, it’s fantastic to my mind.

My favorite quote about it that I read was they called it a dreamy, acoustic edged rocker. Yeah, that sounds about right. That is a dreamy, acoustic edged doctor.

It’s got a fast, um, strummed acoustic guitar in there, um, with some electric over the top of it. A nice keyboard part that comes in on the chorus, kind of big bombastic sing-along style chorus, you know, electric guitar in the background and on the solo. Just a great little rock song.

Nothing really earth shattering going on here. Kind of another example of those where, you know, the hole is greater than the sum of the parts or whatever. But man, I love this song and have loved it.

Loved it when it 1st came out of 92. Loved it again in 1990. Love it again this week, listening to it a lot.

So, yeah, I absolutely love this song. And I played it on the retro radio back when I was doing that show. at KTXT. So I’m really familiar with this one.

I imagine you guys are too. And like I said, not only, you know, I do, like I said, have considered always considered it to be a classic, but I’m not the only one. It routinely makes, you know, like best of 80s lists here and there.

So I got, I get the feeling that, you know, everybody that is, is good listening to this probably is going to know this song and be familiar with it, but man, take the time to revisit it because it’s a great one. The video from it, I wondered about whether or not there was a 2nd video made when they rerecorded in 1990. they didn’t. So if you watch a video of this song, you’re seeing the original 1982 video.

And it absolutely appears to be a new video that was recorded back in 1982. Like, it is a very, very 80s video. There’s a lot of, a lot of it’s kind of dark, which is kind of like stabs of light that are hitting the band.

The clothes that they’re wearing are very 80s, like the guitar players, a very, very cool flock of seagirls style haircut going on. Uh, the, uh, the singers wearing like the, the police cap with like that same pair of uh, plastic black 80s shades that everybody had back in 1982. And then my favorite part of it, just to like date it to the 80s.

When it 1st starts off, the keyboard player is not doing anything. It’s kind of a little bit of a wider shot of the band, and you can see the keyboard player behind his keyboard back there, and he is doing the most 80s dance in the histories of 80s dances to start this video off. So, yeah, this video could not have happened at any other time other than 1982.

I mean, it’s it might as well have a timestamp on it, man. It is very much an early 80s video. Um, the one thing I think is kind of cool about it, though, is that there are, at the very beginning, there are a couple that are set up like they’re dancing on man and woman, um, and they’re, they’re just holding the pose.

They’re not moving like they’re mannequins. And then as the song gets going, they start actually dancing and they kind of dance around through the song. And then there’s at times where they’ll stop again and kind of do the mannequin thing and then they’re dancing again as it goes through and the camera’s on them.

So then it kind of goes to the band zone. Like you said, it’s a very 80s video, largely just a performance video, but it totally works for the song. I think it’s a good one that I really enjoyed revisiting again this time.

So that’s about it. I don’t have like a huge deep dive on this song or anything. Like I said, I figure most of our listeners are probably familiar with it.

It is, again, to my mind, an absolute classic and a really, really strong way to be starting off 1989. So that’s, I melt with you, modern English. So yeah, this is a classic for sure.

If this isn’t a classic, I don’t really know what that word means. I mean, honestly, it’s that big of a song. It’s one of those that it just feels like anybody that was alive in the 80s or 90s, at any, you know, listen to music in any capacity, probably knows this track.

And for good reason. It’s it’s great. It’s simple.

It’s not, like you said, it’s not doing a lot. It’s not so incredibly unique or so incredibly forward. You know, we’re not talking about like Radiohead or something that where they’re just breaking all this ground.

It’s just a really well put together song, well executed, right time, right place kind of situation. It’s one of those songs that I actually do remember from even when it 1st came out, which, you know, I was 10 years oldish when this came out, but I had older brothers and sisters. And even though we were kind of isolated in Colorado, the Valley Girl movement, definitely got to us there, like the Valley Girl thing, you know, the Frank Zappa song, the movie, all of that did hit even in that little tiny ski town in Colorado.

Like we were aware of that. And I remember the movie. If I remember right, the songs at the end of the movie, maybe even over the end credits or like at the last scene of the movie, I haven’t seen it in a long time, but if I remember right, it’s kind of like the outgoing song in the movie, and it stuck with me even then as a 10 year old, that it was like a really good jam.

And so I kind of had that same experience of view of when it came out again in the 90s and kind of got that resurgence of nostalgia, I was feeling nostalgia for a song, again, being an 18, 19 year old and being nostalgic about something as hilarious, but I absolutely was, because it reminded me of, you know, 10 years earlier and kind of being with my older brothers and sisters and hanging out. The video, you know, pretty straightforward. I guess kind of a little bit of a Bohemian Rhapsody shout out at the end where they they put the whole band in like the 4 but they have the extra guy kind of up in the corner because there’s 5 of them, but they do the vocals like in that Bohemian Rhapsody style.

I’m guessing that has to be a little at least a little bit of a nod to that video because this is such a well-known song and because everybody knows it and there’s probably not a lot that we can say that hasn’t been said. I was really trying to think of something unique to say about it. And I did notice that in the, uh, I think in the 2nd bridge where it really breaks down and it’s basically just the bass guitar and like the, the vocal, you know, kind of breaks down to that to it before they, they get into the last bit of it.

The baseline is like a little bit offbeat. It’s really interesting. You don’t usually hear, you know, usually the bass and the drums are really locked on.

And, um, I realize like the bass actually kind of misses on one of the one of the real, and, you know, it’s really prominent because it’s really just like the bass and the vocal at that point. But the bass kind of misses, but it made me realize like, you know, these guys are recording in 82. They’re playing real instruments.

They don’t have pro tools and all these digital tools. And so like, those little things really are what make, uh, that type of music. I think more interesting to our ears.

Like, I’ve had some experience with, as you know, Keith, like recording music and then doing what they call quantizing it, where all of a sudden you make everything perfect, right? Like everything’s exactly on beat and it all lines up and it all syncs up. And it ends up being very sterile.

The same way that, like, having everything exactly in tune all the time sometimes can make things sterile. And we have a great example coming up of a very out of tune guitar that I think Scott’s going to talk about here a little bit on the guitar. So I love like, how do you use those imperfections to your advantage or, or even in this case, not getting all been out of shape because the bass player wasn’t 100% in the pocket?

It’s those… I mean, hell, there’s entire genres built around. I mean, swing music is built on the idea of not, you know, necessarily being right on the beat all the time.

It’s those it’s letting a song breathe and letting it, you know, kind of fall in and out of rhythm that makes those types of songs interesting. And it was, you know, it’s not even really super applicable to this song. The song is really on point the entire way through and it’s just this little moment where it’s not.

But it did remind me of, you know, there was a time when these guys had to get in and play these instruments and and do it in one take or not necessarily that they only had one chance at it, but they had to get one really good take because they couldn’t just piece it together super easily digitally. You know, they were recording on sometimes an 8 track, maybe a 16 track that couldn’t just be sliced and diced and edited. It may kind of appreciate more some of the musicianship from back in the day with songs like this that are ostensibly really simple, but really have a lot of musicianship that just goes into the ability to walk into a studio and knock out a song like this to have it sound so good.

Like it really speaks to how good these musicians are. And it makes me wonder, overall, if musicianship is really at that level anymore or if we’re gotten to a point where it’s a lot more rare to have, you know, 4 or 5 guys who can just walk in and and play a song and have it really work in a studio format. But I digress.

I was really, I was just kind of stretching for something to talk about because again, we’ve, we know the song. We love it. I assume we love this song.

Uh, and I’m sure it’s been done to death, but it’s such a, it’s just worth bringing up one more time, I think, in this context because it really did lay the groundwork for me in a way to start tuning my ear to stuff that wasn’t always, you know, played on top 40 over and over again, although the song did have some success, but and also the nostalgia of it all is pretty strong on this one. So I enjoyed digging back into it and hearing it again. It’s funny that you mentioned the title I melt with you.

I meant to mention this while I was talking about the song originally. They have said that this song is about a couple making love while an atomic bomb is being dropped. And so that’s what I melt with you is that they’re, they’re in the, in the act of making love when the atomic bomb comes down and apparently he and his gal get reduced to a pool of viscous goo in the middle.

And if the video doesn’t scream 80s to you, that description should. Right? That’s so 80s.

So I don’t have a ton to add here because you guys pretty much nailed it. And every time we get one of these where I go 3rd and the song is an obvious, like, all timer. I just want to come on so bad and go, ah, sucked, you know, but I can’t do this song.

Um, this is just an absolute all timer. I was going to say, I knew it was on a big 80s soundtrack, and I didn’t get a chance to look it up, and I couldn’t place it. It makes sense that it’s Valley Girl because Valley Girl is one of those soundtracks that is full, you know, Chocablock full of great 80s songs.

Unfortunately for all the other songs on the soundtrack. One of those songs is a 1000000 miles away by the Plimsolls. So I always forget that there’s other songs on that soundtrack because that song is so effing good.

The only other thought I had watching this was before watching it again, I think 30 years removed, I could have storyboarded this video for you. I remembered it like I saw it yesterday. And I don’t know why, because I wasn’t like super duper into this song at the time.

I always liked it. And, you know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t like it was a video that was, you know, constantly in rotation in my life or anything, but man, I remembered every single thing about this video. The couple dancing, the floating heads, the look of the lead singer and the guitarist, and I love the fact that, like, the lead singer looks like he does, and the guitarist looks like he does, and the other guys just look like regular Joes.

Like they didn’t bother to put the costumes on like those 2 guys did. But yeah, it’s not like I was obsessed with the summer video or anything. I just remembered everything about it.

But yeah, this is just one of those undeniable 80s hits that I think hasn’t aged badly at all. And I think it’s because it doesn’t have any of that like super 80s synthy production or anything else that would like totally pigeonhole it to the early 80s. It’s a great pop song, always has been.

I didn’t realize that this band put out a sort of different version of it in the 90s because this song has been covered a ton. One of those covers was in 2001. Um, there was a movie called Not another teen movie.

It was like a spoof of the John Hughes movies or whatever. They had all these like modern alternative bands cover 80s classics and the band Messed, did this song for that soundtrack and it’s a really, really good cover. Um, that would have been too far after this band covered it itself.

So that’s something to listen to. If you like this song. They did a really nice version of it.

I said the song doesn’t really place itself in the 80s, but this video. Wow. If someone asked me, what did the 80s look like?

Like, you need to look no further than right here. Super 80s video concept, super 80s looks. It was fun to watch again for sure.

But I will reiterate that this song has not aged badly at all. It sounds just as good now as it did in the early 80s. The video, unfortunately, has aged pretty badly, but it’s still worth a watch because it’s kind of fun.

But yeah, great, great song. Fun video to rewatch. I loved everything about this.

It ages about as good as music can age. I mean, honestly, like as good as pop music can age from, you know, there’s so many songs that from the 80s that sound very 80s and they’re still great, you know, songs that I love by even groups like Erasure or whatever that you might say, well, that sounds really dated because of, you know, the production or whatever, I still love them. This one really doesn’t suffer from that at all.

It just it just works. It works then, it works now. Until this listen this week, I don’t think I would have thought that.

I think if someone said to me, you know, modern English, I’m out with you, I’d have been like, 0 yeah, that’s like a super 80s. Sorry, it’s really not. It’s kind of just a straight up pop song.

It doesn’t have all that super glossy 80s production that we associate with that time in music. And in my head, it probably did, but just listening to it again. It doesn’t.

And it and it just it just hasn’t aged badly at all. Speaking of songs with super glossy production. Here’s one that doesn’t have that.

But that doesn’t make it, well, we’ll see how everybody feels about it. I won’t spoil it. Let’s just let Scott take over from you.

All right, so my pick this week is punk rock girl, by the dead milkman. On Saturday, I took a walk, zipper head. I met a girl, there it’s young, there’s not me dead.

Oh, girl, please look at me What do you see? Let’s travel around the world Just you and me, Punk Rock, girl? Those who have listened to this show for a while, might remember?

Uh, we talked about these guys before. I called them my secret shame. They are certainly that.

And what I mean by that is that I, personally, love this band. I always have, but I’m not going to spend any time trying to convince anyone else to like them. If someone says they are silly, or they lack talent, or they can’t sing, or they’re juvenile, or anything else that you probably will read about these guys if you explore them.

I’m not going to fight you. This is, they very well might be all of those things, but I always have a great time listening to them. I think as punk, rockabilly outfits go.

They are wildly underrated. So just a little history. The Dead Milkman formed in 1983 in Philadelphia.

The original lineup is the lineup that you hear here. They are Rodney Anonymous on keyboards and vocals. Joe Jack Talcum on guitars and vocals.

Dave Blood on bass and Dean Clean on drums. They obviously are not using their real names. If you’re dying to know that real names they’re easy to find.

They record their 1st album in 1985, it’s called Big Lizard in my backyard. They were almost immediately embraced by college radio. That album had a song on it called Bitch and Camaro that was in those circles, a monster hit.

That album is very punk. It’s, you know, really short songs, it’s fast, it’s loud, it’s silly. But it’s honestly like one of the best rockabilly punk albums probably of all time.

So we cut to 1988. They have 2 more albums under their belt, a couple of mild college radio hits, each album getting a little more polished, a little more less raw, and they released Beelzebubba, which is considered by many, including myself, to be their masterpiece, and it was led by this single, punk rock girl. This song is just fantastic.

It’s simple and sloppy and but it’s ridiculously catchy and fun. I think that’s a fair description of almost all of the Miltman’s music, but this song just nails their spirit and energy in a big way. So punk rock girl was a hit.

Um, it went to number nine, uh, number 11 on the modern rock chart. It stayed on that chart for months. The video was in heavy rotation on MTV.

The band was making appearances all over MTV, including guest hosting Club MTV with downtown Julie Brown, and no, I’m not making that up. What I find interesting about all of that is that this thing that made them more famous and kind of put them in the spotlight was ultimately, I think, what sort of ended them. The singing duties in this band were always kind of split between Rodney Anonymous and Joe Jack Talcum.

Joe Jack is the one singing this song. But Rodney was the one. He’s the one in the video that’s like reading the paper and kind of wandering around and talking in people’s ears or whatever.

He didn’t have much to do on this song. But he was probably doing the vocals on 75% of their song. Most of the time he would have been the one singing.

So in this video, he’s just kind of screwing around. So the milkmen get their 1st big hit. And it’s certainly a fair representation of what they do, but it’s not everything that they do.

And I think there was pressure on them after this song to, one, have Joe Jack sing more songs. And two, to keep cranking out hits. And neither one of those things were really in the cards for this band.

So they tried. They signed to a major label. They put out 2 albums that both failed wildly.

They failed to give the world another hit, and they sort of faded away. They broke up in 1995. They have since lost one member.

Dave Blood, the bassist, died of a drug overdose in 2004. They have sporadically sort of gotten back together. They have put out a few more albums, the most recent one in 2023, but it’s sort of become a side project for most of the guys now.

So I don’t want to hog all the time here, so I’m not going to go too deep into the video except to say that this video is just an absolute delight. I love everything about it. I love that it’s sloppy, just like the song.

I love that they leave the bloopers in. Just the whole thing is great. It fits the song, brilliantly.

So a fun, silly song, and a fun, silly video, and that’s punk rock girl by the guiltiest of all my pleasures, the dead milkman. We did talk about these guys before. I had never really dug into them at all.

And I listened to that album and I’m now trying to remember what, what was the album that we listened to before? Metaphysical graffiti, which is the album. right after Beelzebub. Yeah, that was the one we listened to for an earlier episode.

And I liked some of it and I didn’t like some of it. You know, I remember kind of my take on it being, you know, I like kind of what they do, but it’s really not something I want to listen to a whole lot or whatever. This was the one song about them that I knew going into that even.

This was the one Dead Milkman song that I knew was punk rock girl and probably the one Dead Milkman song that most people know. Man, fantastic song. Absolutely fantastic.

I used to play it on retro radio. I had seen this video before, but it had been a long time, but yeah, I love the song. The lyrics are hilarious.

My favorite is when they go to the record store and ask for Mojo Nixon and the guy says, oh, he don’t work here. And the replies, well, if you ain’t got Mojo Nixon, then your store could use some fixing. Yeah, just love that line.

Cracks me up every time. And then the video again, yeah, exactly what you want it to be from these guys, just, you know, ragged and rough. I did like, you know, you mentioned the one guy with the newspaper.

I like the fact that they apparently had a guy whose instrument was newspaper for that video. Yeah, they also like switched instruments throughout it and, you know, yeah. Yeah, a little bit of that.

Yeah, yeah. Man, I got nothing bad to say about this video, nothing bad to say about this song. So much fun.

Um, yeah, if you if you somehow are not familiar with the song. get the YouTube, a listening device now and play you some punk rock girl because it’s just fantastic. Nothing wrong going on here at all. Yeah, the dead milkmen are just such an interesting case than like clearly talented and also clearly not interested in really necessarily using that talent to to like try to prove a point in a way like, you know, they’re content to just kind of make the kind of music they want to make.

And I think it’s, it feels like they could do other things if they wanted to, but they just, they don’t. They stay true to kind of what they want to do and their sense of humor and, you know, who knows over the years as they’ve as they’ve changed and, you know, have different thoughts about it. They’re obviously kind of young at this stage of their career and they’re having a blast and you can tell, you know, it’s just such a fun song.

And all their music is. I mean, from that era, it’s hard to find a song you wouldn’t describe as like, you know, fun or hilarious or upbeat or whatever. Um, this song got me, this, this one.

I also remember from when it came out. Um, you know, we were talking about kind of starting to barely dip my toes into that era of I actually remember this from the original time and not, you know, in kind of like a hindsight, I learned it when I got to college radio kind of vibe. This song kind of broke containment a little bit, I think, out of 120 minutes and got a little bit into MTV’s rotation.

It must have, because I don’t feel like I was religiously watching 120 minutes at this and so I would have, I think it would have had to have showed up in regular rotation for me to know it. But I knew it fairly well. Uh, and it actually, uh, inspired me to kind of seek it out and I ended up with a copy.

I think I may have borrowed it from somebody or copied it from somebody, but I ended up with a copy of Big Lizard in my backyard. So I kind of developed this weird interest in Dead Milkman and was kind of a fan of them before I even realized. Kind of, I don’t know, like what that represented or what that meant, you know, in terms of like liking a band that wasn’t on a major label or liking a band that wasn’t necessarily trying to be on the top 40, that those are all new concepts to me at that point.

It just seemed like everybody, you know, you work your way up, you get on a big label, you try to get as many people to listen to it as possible, you want a big hit. I don’t think any of that really applies to the dead milkman, even if they were getting some pressure from their record label. You wouldn’t listen to this song and be like, oh, these guys really sold out.

Like, if this is them selling out, then, you know, that happens a couple albums later, the sellout, but it, yeah, they put out an album that was mostly this vocalist singing, the songs were more serious, well, as serious as these guys are ever going to get, but they tried to make a mainstream pop rock record and it just is, it’s real bad. Like these, these guys are good at being silly and funny. Yeah, they should have just kept doing that because they were really, really good at it for 5 albums.

And then they let a record label. Yeah, they let a record label talk them into trying to sell more records, which was a mistake. They have a boatload, a boatload of songs.

These guys were never going to be a big mainstream rock band. I was never going to be on the cards for them. And the fact that some, because this song hit.

Somebody at record label said, well, we’ve got our next big band. You know, it’s they are not that, and they never were going to be, you know. They were much better being kind of goofy and fun and in the background a little bit.

Yeah, totally agree. Going back to my earlier comments about being, you know, a little offbeat or like kind of purposely being, in this case, out of tune, like the guitar solo is essentially out of tune. And it works.

And I think it’s another an example of how you don’t have to have everything perfectly in the pocket, perfectly synced up perfectly to the point where songs sounds sterile. Like, this is the opposite of that. The guitar solo, it’s just enough that it’s not grading, but it absolutely kind of, you know, makes your ear kind of perk up or twist a little bit because it’s, you know, it’s a little off.

It’s not what you maybe are expecting from a guitar solo, but it’s a great example of how to use that to your advantage and it works so well in the context of this song. It’s kind of brilliant in a way that they did that. I can’t speak to, if that was their intention or not.

But what these guys were really good at is making these songs that sound shaggy and ragged and done in one take and, you know, out of tune and off a little bit. I wonder how much of that was done intentionally. Like, you know, the, how they, this, was this song, was that guitar solo written that way and performed that way on purpose or did they just do it?

And that’s how it came out? I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that.

But I’d be, I almost want to believe that it is intentional. Like, they got in the studio and probably maybe they might have done 10 takes of that guitar solo, and this is the one we got on the album, you know, and it’s sloppy, and it’s messy, and it’s out of tune, and it’s off the beat, and even in the video, he looks like he’s struggling to play it, and it’s very simple, you know? But it’s, it’s just, I wonder, I, I’ve always kind of wondered if that was done on purpose or if they really just were kind of, you know, shuffling their way through all of this.

I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s interesting. It’s fine line between clever and stupid. Right, exactly.

And, you know, I, as far as, like, this band, like, the way they caught me, was Big Lizard in my backyard. And I think one of the things I liked about it, we talked a while back about the Ramones and how, you know, they kind of brought the Prague thing back down to earth. I think that was this was that for me.

Um, at that time. You know, I was listening to Rush and Van Halen and all these very technical, intricate musicians, you know. And then I heard Big Wizard in my backyard and I went, oh, you can just do that too.

You know, you can just, you just have some fun and play minute long stupid songs about, you know, your bitch and Camaro or whatever. Um, and that was a kind of a awakening for me. And I think that’s part of the reason I’ve always loved this band so much is because they kind of found me at the right time.

I think a good example of what you’re talking about, Mike, is the band New Order, a band, like, within their career, uh, exemplifies both sides of that, because the early new order stuff is pretty ragged. you know, even though it’s got a lot of the electronics on it. Like some of the playing, the vocals that go along with it are pretty ragged, and that stuff is fantastic. And then when order gets to the more polished back half of their career, you get the sterile stuff, the stuff that doesn’t have the life that the early stuff does, you know?

So I think that’s a good example of within one band’s career where you can kind of get to that, that what you’re talking about, that little bit of kind of messy, you know, just not quite, you know, not everything just being picture perfect, actually works better than having the stuff that is just everything right on exactly how it’s supposed to be. You know? I think that little bit of an extra wiggle room gives the song some life that it might not otherwise have.

I agree. Yeah, I think sometimes it’s something you might, it’s kind of ineffable. You don’t always notice it, you know, up, it’s not something that’s like front of mind where you’re like, oh, I, I, you know, this is, this sounds this way because of this or this, but you feel it. you know, same way like swing music.

You feel a rhythm and you don’t really understand that it’s because the musicians are letting the song breathe. They’re finding the rhythms and kind of like ease in and out of out of pocket, but it evokes a feeling in you. And I think it’s the same thing with this.

Like, you get the sense that these guys are actually, I mean, on what level, just you get the sense that these are actual humans playing instruments, you know, I mean, that’s that’s like the, I guess, the baseline of it. You don’t want to hear the polished version of this song. I mean, this song is great because of how it sounds, you know, it’s one of the things that’s great about it.

So in case I didn’t say it, I love the song. Yeah, I love Zed Milkman. Love this song.

The video. It’s funny. You guys both said this exact phrase in my notes for this video as video is exactly what you want.

I think you guys both said that. perfect for it. perfect video. Um, it, you know, it makes you want to go and hang out with these dudes for a little while and just and like have a beer and listen to them jam because they just seem like, you know, goofballs and it’s great. So everything about it.

Two thumbs up. I will say if you want to check out the dead milkman, they do have a pretty good compilation album. I think it’s Death ride’s a pale cow.

That’s a good that’s a good way to intro into it. You get a, you know, all the cream and some of the lesser album tracks that you may end up liking if you, you know, want to do that deeper dive, but Death Rides of Pale Cow gives you, like, all the good stuff right off the top and you will probably, if you like punk rock girl and maybe you never, you know, dove into Dead Milkman, I think you’d probably like a good portion of that compilation because it’s fine. It’s just really fun.

Yeah, that’s a very good, very good starting place. All right. So a little bit of a turn now.

We’re going into what I would, you know, consider electronic, like industrial music, it turns out these guys had a name for their music that I had never heard before. We’ll talk about that in a minute, but we’re going to dive into a band called Front 242. song is quite unusual. broke. That way the morning broke was fun, I will say, I…

But, you know, I was gonna start by saying I’m a fan of Front 242, but I think that might be a little strong after I’ve, like, dabbled through their catalog a little bit. I’m a fan of a couple of their songs. And honestly, some of their other stuff is not as great as I remember it.

I didn’t do like a super deep diver, you know, like I said, I didn’t go through their entire catalog doing my research for this one episode, but I did go back and listen because, well, because I didn’t particularly care for this song. And I was like, is it possible that maybe, you know, they’re not as good as I remember? Or, you know, what’s the deal?

Why am I not liking this one? And I vaguely remember the song. I may not even remember the song at all.

I don’t know if I did it here it back in the day. It wasn’t a lot. And I went back and listened to like Headhunter.

I went back and listened to welcome to Paradise. They are as good as I remember. They are fantastic.

Never Stop is great. There’s a couple other ones that still fall in the category of really, really good 80s industrial music, but this song, you know, for me isn’t one of them. So this is one of those takes and we’ve all done this on these shows before of like, I want to kind of talk about the band, you know, as a whole more than just this song.

So if you are new to front 242, this is not the starting point, I don’t think for you. But let’s back it up. We’ll talk a little bit about front 242.

They formed in 1981 in Belgium. Uh, Daniel Bresanuti and Dirk Bergen both started the band as a duo, the front part of the name comes from just the idea of being like an organized popular uprising, and they are fairly political and aggressive in their music in that way. Uh, they joined uh, 2 more folks, Patrick, uh, Codanice, these names are all, are very difficult, and Jean-Luc Des Meyer.

Those 2 guys had separately formed a group called Underviewer and had submitted to music to Daniel. And Daniel really liked him and was like, hey, do you want to just join Front 242? So they kind of joined up and became a band at that point.

If none of those names sound familiar, and if you’re thinking to yourself, you know, I’ve listened to front 242 a lot, and I couldn’t picture any of these guys. They really have really leaned into kind of the anonymous side of things. Some rock stars, you know, want to be out front and want their face everywhere and some don’t, and these guys most definitely don’t.

They, you know, often are wearing sunglasses. They kind of had these like militaristic uniforms that made them all look the same. Bresanuti even went so far as to not perform on stage when he when front 242 toured.

He would actually be back of house, like running the sound and stuff. He didn’t like even want to be on stage. He wasn’t in a lot of their videos until like the mid 90s.

So all the classic front 242 videos that you may have seen don’t actually include him at all. And he’s kind of my spirit animal. Like that.

I get that, man, do I get that? Like, I feel like I maybe was like one of the only 18 to 20 year olds who, like, wanted to be a rock star, but absolutely did not want to be famous. I wanted like the Inya kind of route where like you make music and people know it, but like you live in a castle and nobody ever knows who you are or whatever, like that was kind of throughout I wanted to take to rock stardom.

I totally get Mr. Daniel Bresanudi is, yeah, I get where he’s coming from, but he did, I guess, loosen up in his later on in the 90s, he started, like, appearing on stage and stuff, but I really kind of appreciate that about him. They called their music. This is really interesting.

Electronic body music. And all 3 of us being DJs. I know we’ve all heard every name for every genre of music that you thought you’ve ever heard before, you know, particularly dance music can be broken down into like a 100 different genres.

Uh, that’s when I had not heard before. That is when they kind of made up. It’s supposed to kind of represent like a fusion of industrial synth punk and dance, which is actually a good description of front of 242.

If I was trying to describe them to someone, I think, industrial, matched up with synth punk and a little dance sounds pretty good. I think telling him that it’s electronic body music would mean absolutely nothing to anybody and would not connote anything. So, you know, not a great way to describe it.

I guess they were trying to make that happen and it didn’t, but so it goes. So, you know, they formed an 81. They kicked around during the 80s.

They put out a lot of singles. Nothing ever really just like took hold or caught fire, got on wax tracks in the States, and opened up for ministry on a tour in 1984. They continued to put out music.

They ended up opening for Depeche Mode in 1987 on a UK and European tour, and that was when things kind of started to take off. That is when they released official version, which is their 3rd studio album, and that is where the song that we are talking about today. Quite unusual comes from.

But it was really a year later that they kind of, you know, quote unquote, hit the big time as far as, as far as they would ever hit, um, when they released front by front in the in 88, which had Headhunter and Welcome to Paradise on it, which were both hits in the UK. And in the U.S. actually hit head enter, actually at 13 on the billboard dance chart. So for being an industrial synth puck song to get to number 13 on the dance charts, which at that time were pretty well dominated by like house music and kind of like your information societies, your EMFs, that style of dance music.

I think for them to kind of break through with this is interesting. I know there was some other stuff going on, like ministry. Uh, Nine Inch Nails would have just been, um, starting to maybe, you know, kick around around this time.

I think, uh, pretty hate machine comes out later in 89. So, um, you know, that that isn’t an unknown thing, but I do think that Headhunter was kind of one of the one of the breakout hits for that genre of music and kind of started to introduce people to it. Certainly introduced me to it.

I remember, I think I told a story before, but going to a nightclub for the 1st time when I was like 19 years old, and I actually heard Welcome to Paradise by front 242, and that song, along with James Brown is dead by LA style, the 2 songs that I remember from the club wanting to like find afterwards, because I was just so taken by it. So, um, you know, front 242 for, if they got to me in Lubbock, Texas back then, they must have had something going on because they, you know, they they weren’t just in the New York or like LA or Chicago scenes, they did have some popularity with that next album. But again, this song, quite unusual.

Um, from their studio album in 87 is not, is not that, it’s not hit hunter, it’s not welcome to paradise. It’s not as beat driven. It’s not as dance forward as those songs are.

It sounds, it kind of reminded me of the Great Commandment that we listen to in the last episode or the episode before, a little bit, um, with that, the style of music is different. It’s more, more of him singing, you know, more of it being like a chorus versus chorus structure than some of their other stuff. And it’s just not their best work, you know, in my opinion.

Um, I don’t know if if front 242 fans have favorites or if there’s albums that they think are really wonderful that maybe I’m not aware of, but me personally, this is this is not their best stuff. Um, and then the video really quickly, I think, is a little prescient with the whole drone chasing the dude and the guy like driving the drone with the 1st person perspective. That’s something you can actually do now.

I don’t think that was particularly prevalent. I think in 89 that was impossible. In fact, if I remember right, those helicopters were really, really hard to fly, you know, back in the day before they had all the computer controls.

So, I don’t think that, I think that was all made up, but very forward thinking, because that is of, in fact, a thing now. Seeing them jumping around on what I’m assuming were trampolines was a little odd as well. That seemed a little frivolous for what was going on.

I’m not sure how that fit exactly with the, because it kind of seems like, you know, they’re being chased or persecuted by this helicopter, which is being piloted by a dude in the background or, you know, behind the curtain with like his thing. And then they’re trying to evade it or perhaps even attack it by jumping on trampolines. I think the trampolines aren’t actually shown, but you can tell that’s what they’re doing.

Um, it really kind of took away from the video because I was going to say the video is kind of the best part of this. It really was like this futuristic thing that they were right about. So that part was really impressive.

And then the jumping thing starts and I was just like, ah, man, that killed it for me. So, It’s not a ring endorsement for this song or the video, but man, I do love front 242 headhunter and welcome to Paradise. So if for some reason you don’t know the band, those are the ones I would recommend.

I didn’t care for this one. I think you guys, you know, knowing you guys somewhat, I, I, uh, how you feel about Front 2 for 2. I think you’re probably in the same boat with Headhunter and Welcome to Paradise being, you know, great tracks, but I don’t know how you feel about this.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this before, and I’m curious how this would hit you. Before I dive in, I wanted to mention that this is the, actually the 2nd time we have heard the term electronic body music. It came up during Knights of Reb.

And at that time, I kind of blew off the term as being a little silly, but after reading it on this, I guess it was a thing. However, this still just sounds like industrial dance music to me. So whatever electronic body music is, fine.

But yeah, this is this has come up before. So I would consider myself a fan of Front 242. I’ve been one of the big defenders of this kind of music on this podcast.

Well, I’m not a completist by any means. I think I’ve heard enough of these guys to call myself a fan. So that said, I heard this song for the 1st time this week.

There might be a chance I heard it somewhere before, but I didn’t remember it, and after listening to it a couple times, I think I know why. This is the most boring front 242 song I’ve ever heard. It’s just droning and pointless and it doesn’t have a hook and or a chorus or anything.

You know, you compared it to the camouflage song. And I guess I kind of see where you’re going with like the beaten stuff, but that camouflage song at least has a hook. It has a like a keyboard riff you can latch onto.

This doesn’t have that. I actually disliked this to the point where I kind of finished it and went, am I a fan of front 242? And and then I listened to tyranny for you and and always forgiven.

That’s the album of theirs. I really like. It’s the one right after the one that has Headhunter on it and stuff.

But yeah, this did absolutely nothing for me. I was really excited when I saw we were going to talk about these guys, but this was a letdown. So, uh, to anyone out there doesn’t know for 242.

Please don’t start here. I mentioned Tyranny for you. That’s their 1991 album.

I think it’s great. But pick up a greatest hits thing or something and really hear what these guys can do because this ain’t a good sampling of it. The video was fine.

It’s pretty typical, like, industrial looking video, like, a lot of whatever that imagery is, it has a lot of that in there. I did enjoy the part where the band is kind of like on the run or whatever it was, but the singer still wearing his headset microphone. Uh, got us keep rocking no matter what.

I will also mention that I saw these guys live not too long ago, like less than 2 years ago. It was actually them and Knights of Reb performing together. And 3 guys walked out on stage and made music for an hour, and the crowd was indifferent over whether or not we were actually seeing front 242 or whoever was currently calling themselves front 242 or whatever.

So the thing you were saying about kind of being in the foreground, not being in the foreground of this band is probably very, very true. So, yeah, this was just an absolute letdown for me. From a band that I do like, but this song was just done, but just nothing.

I didn’t realize you saw a show on the electric body music tour. I did. I saw all the greats of electronic body music performing live together.

Well, I would not have had this on my bingo card, but I loved everything about this. I loved this song. I loved the video, and I’m not a front 2 42 fan.

I know a few other songs. I like them all. Headhunter is an absolute classic.

I liked this song. I mean, is it my favorite front 242 song? No, but I thought it was representative of what they did, at least as far as what I know of them.

And yeah, I liked it. The video, though, I loved this video. I thought this was fantastic.

My 1st experience of it, though. I do have to throw out there. I clipped through to it on YouTube and for some reason I had the closed captioning option turned on.

And watching YouTube’s closed captioning AI or whatever it was, tried to deal with the lyrics of this song in real time, was a show in and of itself. Like, there were times where it would just throw like a single word out there, and then a lot of it, there was just like the word music with parentheses around it, and then it would try to spit out a phrase. And at one point, the word waiting came up, and I’m not sure if it was actually in the song or if the algorithm was waiting for something to happen.

So that it could latch onto it or whatever. Yeah, so if you ever get a chance, go watch this video with YouTube’s closed captioning, option turned on and just kind of get ready for the fun of that in and of itself. But man, I love the video.

I thought it was awesome. Like, they’re chained up in this warehouse, like dance rock and relentlessly while the dude piloting the little drone helicopter watches them. And at some point, they’re dance rocking so hard that they break free.

And then, yeah, they’re leaping around. The thought that came to mind mind was like they were the beast from the X-Men movies, like leaping around through the air. I don’t know if they’re trying to attack the little helicopter or what they’re doing.

Then they escape. There’s a moment where it cuts to the dude with a headset and he’s like aghast to that front 242 has broken containment. And then helicopter 242 comes flying out of nowhere to pick them up as they’re running away from the warehouse.

Man, this video was fantastic. I liked everything about it. Uh, and I liked the song too.

So yeah, I cannot believe that that we’re having this discussion right now where I’m, I’m the one who’s talking about the greatness of front 242 and everything. And you guys did not care for this song. That was not what I had on my Mama Binger card coming into this one.

But man, I liked it. I liked the song. Loved, loved the video.

Yeah, this was this was a lot of fun for me. For what it’s worth, this was one of, like, this was released as a single, obviously, there’s a video for it, whatever, and it was like the lead single on the album it’s on. And so, I mean, I think maybe Mike and I are in the minority here that we didn’t love this one because maybe their fans are into it.

I don’t know. Yeah, I would love to know what the, you know, yeah, what the, what the fandom says about it. I’m sure they like it more than we do.

Well, more than you and I do, Scott. The video was going really well. And just, I just want to say, I loved the video up until the jumping part, but I just, they lost me on the jumping because, because like you said, it wasn’t clear.

Are they attacking the helicopter? Are they evading the helicopter? Uh, that part is where they lost me a little bit and like, uh, German red foreman that was trying to like get him with the, uh, the helicopter was I thought that was like really cool.

Like I was pretty into it until, uh, until the jumping. So I will, I will, um, I will allow that the video is really not that bad if you can get past the jumping part of it, but I can’t sign off on the song. I will also say that musically.

I think what I didn’t like about this song. This may not be true for you, Mike, but for me, it is. What I like about this kind of music is the aggression of it, and this song is in no way aggressive.

It’s, you know, um, I like, like the comparing this song to Headhunter. Headhunter has that that beat underneath it that is just savage. And what it’s doing on top of that is not that dissimilar from this, but it’s the aggression of that beat that that makes that song grab me.

This song just doesn’t have that. It’s just kind of, it’s more drony, and I just, I don’t know. I, if I, if we were listening to craft work, that would have been fine, but I wanted front 242 and that, it just didn’t grab me that way.

Maybe on a few more listens, I might find something to like about this when I’m not expecting it to be something, but I was, it just really was a letdown in what I was wanting it to be, I guess. Yeah, and maybe, you know, maybe I don’t know their catalog well enough, but, uh, I mean, I think that’s why I drew that, that uh, line to camouflage. Camouflage is obviously a much more polished, softer version of this, but I feel like if you drew a spectrum from the camouflage song through Headhunter, this song falls in the middle and maybe leans even more towards the camouflage side of things where it’s, it doesn’t have that just that driving beat and the really great synth line, and of course, welcome to Paradise, which is one of my favorite songs, has the samples.

That’s all missing from this. It’s, it’s all the stuff that I, I don’t know if I’m expressing it correctly, but it’s, it’s missing the things I love about front 242. I think that’s what it is for me too, is that this type of music is going to turn into 9 inch nails and ministry and those bands, they all claim to be inspired by front 242.

I doubt any of them were inspired by this song. You know, there’s just, the, what you think of when you think 9 inch nails or ministry is a much more aggressive sounding song that this just isn’t. And, you know, that’s that’s probably more on me than it is on them, but I just that’s that’s just why I didn’t like it.

I wanted it to be the band that inspired 9 inch nails, and that’s not what this is. I’m wondering if the reason I liked it more was because I didn’t have the kind of expectations going into it that you guys did. Very possibly.

Bigger front 242 fans may have been looking at it through a lens that I wasn’t looking at it through and maybe that’s why I liked it better. But for me, you know, anyone out there who wants to give front 2 forward to a try, this is a perfectly reasonable place to start as far as as I’m concerned anyway. And this song is on their greatest hits album, I just verify that.

So if you, if you pick up, if you pick up the best of front 242, you will have access to this song. First, Mystery Song of 1989 is up next. This has been, um, it’s, it’s always such a mixed bag with these, man.

You really just never know what you’re going to get. Video wise, music wise. This one, I think, is going to be fun to talk about.

I’m super curious where we all land on this because it’s one that I think could go either way. I have a feeling I know where it’s going to go, but let’s find out. I think Keith has it lined up for us.

I do. And I think, you know, over the last, at least from my perspective, I think over the last 4 or 5 episodes, we’ve been in a little bit of a slump as far as our mystery songs go, it just hasn’t hasn’t been a real great collection lately. To my mind, slump busted.

Absolutely busted. I love this. So today we’re going to be talking about a song called Away by the band, The Fields.

Send me on fire. Fancy my mind up. Blowing my mind out Blowing me away your way away away away away This band, the Files, they were formed in Halliden, New Jersey, in 1976.

They broke up in ’92, but have since gotten back together and released a couple more albums, they’ve had a few members early in the band when they first, you know, got together, but they settled on this lineup that has been the lineup pretty early on in their history. And that is Glenn Mercer on league vocals and guitar, Bill Million on guitar and backing vocals. And by the way, I love the name Bill Million.

And I have always just, as an aside, always thought that someone out there ought to call themselves one million. Like, that just seems like a no-brainer to me. Like somebody out there ought to be one million, but they aren’t.

So, anyway, uh, Bill million, and is the guitar player for the Feelies. And then we have Brenda Sauter on bass, Dan Domesky on drums and percussion and Dave Weckerman on percussion and drums. This is a band that has 2 drummers.

Listen to these guys, tell me why they need 2 drummers. You’ll be ahead of the game because I have no idea. I’m sure they need one.

Exactly, right? But they do have 2 drums. Uh, they are uh, called the Felix. band is named after the Aldous Huxley book, Brand New World.

There was an entertainment in the book called The Feelies. I think, and it’s been a long time since I read Brand New World, but I think, like, the talkings to silent movies, the Feeles were supposed to be to the talkings or whatever, but anyway, great name for a band. Um, and it had been cited by bands, uh, like REM as being an influence.

So I didn’t know the feelings, but apparently other people out there did. This song away is off the 1988 album called Only Life. It’s a rocker, and it’s a really good rocker to my mind.

Um, like I said, I not only did I like this song, I went and listened to some other feeling stuff after this. I liked everything I heard from them. I actually went and downloaded one of their albums.

I got an album called Time for a Witness, listened to it last night. I loved it. It’s good.

Um, there’s a song called Doing It Again on there that uh, is even better than this one better than a way that I, I liked a lot. Like these guys, the, uh, Bill Million, the, uh, rhythm guitarist has a real like, uh, kind of almost frenetic, like fast, strong style, um, and Mercer has a very, well, probably kind of surprisingly fleet fingered, like, uh, guitar style, like, heap slings are pretty mean guitar. Uh, you know, for being kind of what’s a jangle pot band.

And then his vocals I really like. Some of them were kind of like kind of punk inflected. Some of it reminded me a little bit of the guy from the wedding present.

I don’t remember his name now that’s escaping me. But it’s a pretty unique vocal delivery. Man, I loved it.

I love this song. I liked that album that I bought and listened to. Yeah, really, really enjoyed these guys, and surprised that I never ran across them before.

Um, so I highly recommend checking them out if you if you never have. The video for this is a performance video, pretty straightforward. The interesting thing about it is that it is shot by Jonathan Demi, who not only directed to a bunch of feature films, but also directed some other videos, I directed the talking heads concert movie, stopped making sense, among other things.

It’s, like I said, a pretty straightforward performance video, but one thing I did think was cool about it is there’s a kind of a deal that he does where he’ll start the camera kind of off to the side and then like zoom in and then like move around so that you’re getting closer to the side and then you’re around to the front of the guy’s face. And he did that like, every new verse. So the verse starts with the camera off to the left, and then it comes forward and zooms around, and then the next verse starts with the camera off to the left, and it comes forward and zooms around, and then the 3rd verse starts with the camera off to the left, it comes forward and zooms around, and he does that from a couple of different angles at a cover a couple of different times during the video.

It’s a real simple trick, but I thought it worked really, really well. I thought it was the one thing that kind of set this video apart, was that one little camera move that he does occasionally throughout the video. So yeah, for me, like I said, our slump has been busted as far as I’m concerned, I loved this band.

I went and got more of their music and loved everything I heard, else I heard from them. This song is fantastic. The video is good.

On my side over here, I think I kind of turned this into a love fest this week. I’ve loved everything that we’ve done so far. And this one is no exception.

I loved everything about this. Yeah, 2 thumbs up for this one for sure. I’m surprised we didn’t know this already and or, you know, play.

I forgot to check the KTXT playlist to see if they were on it. I’d be shocked if they weren’t, because it sounds like a college rock home run, you know, from, from what I heard, this song, in particular, is a great entry point, I think, because it grabbed me right away. I was like, oh yeah, I love this.

I don’t know if you heard the album version of it, but it actually has a longer intro before they, you know, the video just kind of starts with the with the slower bit in about 10 or 15 seconds, it kind of ramps up. The album version of the song actually takes about a minute and 15 seconds to kind of work through that progression and then it kicks into the up-tempo. So it’s got even more kind of tension to it, which I really like.

One of my notes about the video was before I even forget, the repeating shot that Jonathan Demi does that you described perfectly is Chef’s Kiss. I’ve never seen that done before. Never seen it done since.

It’s it’s such a easy. Well, it’s not easy. It looks simple.

Probably wasn’t simple to actually execute, but it’s very effective and very unique shot, just really, really brings home that like you don’t need computer graphics or all these, you know, bells and whistles to create something unique. He just used a camera move and repeated it in a way that really worked in the context of a music video. That probably wouldn’t even work. you know, making a movie or a TV show or like, where would you use that?

It’s just, it’s kind of specific to that use because it really drives some of the rhythm of the song and like the repetitive first, just really smart. Really love that. Yeah, so the 2 drummers thing, this brings me back to my theme for the episode, which is when that 2nd drummer comes in on that snare, it’s not on beat half the time.

It’s really offbeat, but it works in the context of the song. Once again, this is a band of humans playing music and they’re not always exactly in the pocket. They’re very good and you can tell that they are pretty much in the pocket.

But then they add him in and he’s kind of just banging that snare drum at almost, not random, but it’s, it’s not, you know, right exactly where you want those beats or you, you’re kind of wants those beats to be, but it works. And so it just kind of fit in with my theme for the episode of those little moments where things aren’t exactly synced up. But yeah, why they needed the 2nd drummer.

I’m not clear on. I didn’t listen to as many songs as you did, but I did listen to some other stuff. They don’t seem like the band that needs 2 drummers, but that’s not for us to say, I suppose.

I saw that Peter Buck actually had produced one of their albums, which definitely fits the Jangle Pop guitar style that you hear. It makes sense that they would reach out to him or he would reach out to them or that they somehow connected, um, for sure. The last thing, I did listen to the very 1st track that I picked kind of at random.

I listened to it. And as I was listening to it, I was like, this definitely sounds familiar, like this has a, this sounds like another band, but I was having trouble putting my finger on it. And then in the side of YouTube, I saw that they actually recorded, I think, an entire album of Velvet Underground covers, if I’m not mistaken.

And I realized the song I was listened to sounded so much like the velvet underground that then I was like, wait, is this song off that album and I checked and it wasn’t, because I don’t know the velvet underground catalog well enough to know right off top of my head. It was written by Glenn Mercer, so it was one of their originals, but they really liked the Velvet Underground a lot. You could tell in their music and then obviously, that’s correct because they went on to cover, you know, do an entire album of covers of it.

But so they’re heavily influenced by them. They also sounded a little like Yola Tengo to me. There’s a little of that in there as well, which I like, they can’t can’t beat that.

Like, I love Yola Tango and I love this. So, yeah, I think our, in my opinion, our streak is broken now. Scott will have to weigh in with his vote, but this is one of the best mystery songs we’ve had in a long time, as far as I’m concerned.

Uh-oh. kidding. I want to do that so bad, but then we pick these really good songs. This is a good one, yeah.

Yeah. You know, somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought maybe I had heard of these guys before. The name sounded like vaguely familiar, so I listened to this, a few other songs.

I don’t think I’d ever heard them. You know, we’ve talked a lot on this podcast about the jangle pop sound, and this might be the jangliest jangle pop song that ever jangled. It’s just, it’s almost, it’s almost like it’s racing itself, you know?

I’d say that with a slight caveat. It’s almost like it’s too jangly. Like, it sounds like it’s speeding up throughout the runtime.

You know, you mentioned the the album version has a blogger intro. That makes perfect sense to me because this song sounds like the way it is in the video that, you know, you’re standing at the top of a hill with a big, like, boulder and you just push it and it starts rolling really fast. Like, you just takes off out the gate, like, right off the bat.

But the fact that there’s an intro to it that kind of leads into that makes a lot more sense. But that’s really a slight nitpick at best because I really enjoyed this. I’m a total sucker for this sound.

There’s a perfectly good version of it. The video was really great, and I think it’s great in a very subtle way, you know, you mentioned some of the interesting camera shots and stuff like that. And all that’s great.

Shout out to Jonathan Demi. Stop making sense, the Talking Heads concert film is arguably the greatest concert film of all time. And it is because 50% the talking heads are putting on a great show, but the other 50% is what Demi does with the camera and the lighting and all the other things and editing that make that movie what it is.

So, you know, to see him at work here in a sort of simpler and easier format, but doing the same kind of fantastic camera work and and, you know, mood creation is really, really great to see. I also love the shots of the drummer in this video. I don’t know which drummer, one of the 2 drummers.

But one of them, he’s, um, he’s like holding those jingle bells and he’s just kind of staring at them like, like, like they’re supposed to do something and they’re not. And then there’s a shot where he’s like holding a stick like right above the snare drum, like, it’s almost my turn to go. It’s almost my turn to go, you know?

Oh, I loved everything about that. But yeah, this is a fun song. I really enjoyed it.

I listened to about 4 more songs from these guys. I liked everything I heard. In fact, I think I liked this one maybe the least of the 4 or 5 songs I listened to.

Um, I can see why this band wasn’t a huge success, but as this kind of music goes, they’re really, really good at it. The only other thing I wanted to touch on, you know, you mentioned that their obvious love of the velvet underground. I didn’t catch that when I was digging around, but that’s interesting to me because a lot of these bands, REM included, are huge fans of the Velvet Underground.

And Velvet Underground was not a Jangle Pop band at all, but they certainly influenced a lot of it. So I don’t know. I’d be curious to kind of see where that connection is, but finding out that these like late 80s jangle pop bands love the velvet underground is not uncommon.

So I’m kind of curious to see what that connection is. But yeah, love this. I agree.

Slum broken. I really like your description of the song as racing itself. I think if you like that quality of it, you’re really going to like these guys, because like I said, that a lot of what the rhythm guitarist, Bill Million, a lot of what he does is really fast, really fast strummed background acoustic guitar. on a lot of their songs.

It’s like, not everything, but a lot of their songs, or at least the ones I listen to are that way. I think if you, if you like that, that aspect of it, you’ll like just about anything that these guys do, or at least what I’ve heard anyway. Yeah, well, and it’s it’s not common.

That’s an interesting sort of difference, you know, that may separate these guys from the back because it’s a really interesting sound. Yeah, and the velvet underground connection is interesting because like you said, REM doesn’t really have any songs that would particularly point you directly at that. Whereas the very 1st song I chose from these guys.

It was like, oh, these guys liked velvet. like it was very clear. So depending on which one you pick, yeah, depending on which one you pick, and it’s mostly in his vocal delivery, I think is, is he, he definitely gave it that, um, that Lou Reed style kind of delivery and, and there was one other song I listened to that also, not quite as strongly. I think part of it was I just happened to pick one that really, really screamed it because not all of them do, but it could be as simple as, you know, what the what the real influence of the velvet underground was. you know, we talked about how these bands, they don’t, they don’t need to be polished and they don’t need to be the world’s best musicians and all of that.

All that’s what the Velvet Underground’s influence is, that, you know, basically, they sort of set the standard that anyone can do this. And so maybe that’s all it is. But yeah, but you see their name brought up a lot with these kind of bands.

Absolutely, yeah. So I did bring up the KTXD playlist. We actually had 8 Feely songs in rotation at KTXT.

So they were a solid college rock band. I’m guessing that, yeah, that they were all over other stations as well, if we had that many in rotation, several of which were in Rec Plus and Rec One, so that they weren’t just, you know, reconciled to the 8000 song Rec 2 pile where it would get played like once a year. Like they actually were in fair.

So I imagine all 3 of us probably played a feely song at some point. Um, although the 3 of us had got, we probably didn’t, we probably got off script a lot more than the average KTXT because we had a little, all 3 of us had a little rope. I also think once we had been there. played it, though, to be honest.

I don’t think it did because I think I would have remembered it. I’d be interested to see that list you got if there are a couple of songs, both on the album that I bought, one of them called Doing It Again, one called Sooner or Later, that were just fantastic. I was wondering if we were playing either of those.

Both on the list, yeah. I’m not surprised. Yeah, absolutely.

If I had been the music director, we would have been pushing those 2 songs like nobody’s businessman. Yeah, these guys are great. And they, I mean, to me, they scream college radio.

Like, I think they could have maybe even gone a little further than that in terms of getting a little bit of mainstream airplay, but absolutely fit, like a glove on college radio, so not at all shocking that we had him on KTXT. I am shock that the 3 of us were not familiar, you know, with them. But there’s a lot of music out there.

Like, there’s just a lot. Like, you can’t know everybody, and even, you know, when you have 3 people who all, you know, listen to music absolutely constantly at this point in their lives, somehow we didn’t run across them, and that’s just, it’s just how it goes sometimes, but, yeah, this is probably one of the 1st ones where I’m like, I really am shocked that I, like you said, like that I don’t remember them or that I didn’t, that it didn’t catch my ear at some point. Um, but so it goes.

It’s never too late, though. They’re out there. Those songs are all available.

They have quite a few albums, if I remember right. I mean, there’s multiple albums. Yeah, it’s like 5 or 6, I think.

Yeah, from them available. So like, it’s one of those where, on the one hand, you’re like, ah, I wish I had listened to these guys earlier. I wish I’d known about them when I was, you know, in college radio, I would have pushed them, but then there’s also the joy of discovering a new band who have 6 albums worth of material that’s all brand new to you.

And so now, you know, as a 50 something year old, you get to dive into an entirely new band that, you know, has a great catalog and that’s that’s also fun. So I think all 3 of us would put our stamp of approval on doing just that, if you want to check out the Feeles. Highly recommend.

And really, I mean, I recommend everything. Like, look, modern English, if you don’t, if you don’t know that song, I don’t even know what you’re doing here, that, that would be insane, but, um, if, yeah, I’m not even going to say, go listen to it. Of course you’ve heard it.

Dead Milkman, maybe this is the one song you’ve heard by Dead Milkman. You know, that’s a good possibility. This is probably it.

They go way deeper than this. I mean, there’s at least 20 songs that I think are very listenable, very fun, really easily accessible. You know, then it starts to get into like a deeper dive and you need to obviously be a little bit of a fan, maybe to appreciate some of the songs that are like the album tracks and stuff.

But, yeah, if you listen to Death Rides of Pale Cal. I feel like there’s a good 15 to 20 songs that are all just, just clever, funny. Um, they’re punk, but I like that you use the term rockabilly punk because it’s not, you know, punk like Sex Pistols punk or Green Day punk. a different take on punk.

It was described on one of the pages I went to as country punk, which I find very interesting, but rockabilly is the right. Rockabilly is the right term. So check them out.

Front 242. Hey, Keith says quite unusual is a perfectly good place to start with him, so I’m going to take his word for it. Maybe that’s the entry and then you get into the more aggressive, more popular dance stuff.

You know, headhunter for sure. Welcome to Paradise for sure, or never stop. So, you know, those 2 are the ones I’d recommend, but official version.

Uh, the studio album right before those 2 might be the place to start. I think that’s the sweet spot for their career, for sure, is from like 87 to 92. So those 3 albums, I think it’s safe to say, probably cover, you know, the bulk of of their best stuff.

But, um, yeah, if you’re in the mood for something a little more kind of aggressive and industrial front 242 is your band. But I have to say, I think the feelers are kind of the takeaway from this episode. Like this is a band that doesn’t feel like they’re super well known.

I’m sure someone on Facebook or YouTube is going to comment and be like, oh man, we played the hell out of these guys on college radio. We love it, you guys. You know it’s coming, but and it should.

I’m embarrassed that we deserve it. Yeah, yeah. In this case, I think it’s well-deserved that you can throw a little shade at us for not knowing it, but yeah, they’ve got a deep catalog.

I, it feels like almost any, anywhere you enter into their catalog is probably safe because they are a pretty consistent band just for my sampling of them. Um, go check them out. The Feel is definitely worthwhile.

Folks, that’s it. January of 1989. We’ve got a new year started.

I think it’ll be interesting to see how this year goes because we’re at that stage where Indian alternative music is just going to kind of start becoming more and more in people’s regular rotation and more into the mainstream. So it feels like we’re right at the cusp of something that’s going to kind of really blossom over the next couple years of episode time. hopefully we’ll get to them a little sooner than that. But, but 89, 90, 91.

I think is going to be an interesting kind of transitional period for this type of music. So it’ll be fun to see where this takes us. We will do February of 89 next episodes.

So please check it out. Don’t forget 35,000 watts. The story of college radio is a documentary film that’s available to watch right now on Tubi.

You can also find it on YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Google Play if you’re interested. That is, it’s a perfectly good watch. Sure, I’m the one that made it, but I still think it’s safe to say that it’s fun to watch.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s not fun. Maybe that’s that.

Maybe that’s… I’ll vouch for you. Okay, go watch it.

It’s free. Come on. What are you gonna do?

Watch an ad. Everybody makes money. Everybody’s happy.

Go check it out. 35,000 watts. story of college radio available now and come back and join us for February of 1989 on 120 months