In this episode, we’re diving into two of the most influential bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s – Pere Ubu and Joy Division. We’re also dipping our toes into some 70s funk with an 80s twist: a cover of Get Down Tonight by Shriekback.
And welcome back to 120 months. My name is Michael Millard. I am here with Keith Porterfield and Scott Mobley, and we are traipsing through 120 minutes, the MTV’s alternative indie rock show.
We’re going month by month. We each pick a song that song and video that we liked. Maybe the one that we didn’t like.
Maybe the one we didn’t know much about. One that we want to talk about, either the song or the video or sometimes both. And we were currently in the month of September, 1988, which is actually the month that I started high school.
So I am now a freshman in high school at this point. I have freshly moved to Texas from my tiny little mountain town in Colorado, so I now have cable TV. So I now have access to MTV.
So we are firmly in my MTV years. I’m a little bit more informed now of what was going on in the world of MTV than I was in 87 when I was still sequestered away in Colorado, so that’ll be fun to kind of, I was not watching 120 minutes, though, at this point, I don’t think. Um, if I was, it was kind of in passing, so it’s kind of interesting.
So looking at September of 88. Uh, just briefly, songs that were really big on the mainstream part of MTV, um, like dial MTV and during the day and basically anytime. One of the specialty shows wasn’t on Bad Medicine by Bon Jovi.
Nice little number. Don’t let you get, don’t know what you got till it’s gone, Cinderella. Also, still holds up fairly well.
Oddly enough, I heard that the other day and it wasn’t bad. Kokomo by the Beach Boys, gotten so much airplay. Wow.
Wow. I mean, that song just, who knows how it got as big as it did, but, well, cocktail helped probably a little bit. It was in the movie Cocktail, if you remember that one, but…
You know all those things where they talk about like the worst songs of all time and like starships we built this city always seems to top that list. has to be in that conversation. That song is so bad. That is exactly what I was going to say.
It’s in the same league with, like, how did Jefferson Airplane and Starship, same band record, you know, White Rabbit, and, uh, we built the city. My gosh, how did how did that happen too? How did…
And then the Beach Boys. Yeah, how did the band that recorded pet sounds end up recording Kokomo? Who knows?
But anyway. Guessing Brian Wilson probably didn’t have a lot to do with Kokomo. That’s probably that’s probably answer number one to that.
Speaking of songs that got a ton of airplay at this time, I know this was all over the place, and you rarely hear anybody talk about it. Wild Wild West by the escape club. You guys remember that one?
Yep. That’s jam. It is a jam.
I actually heard that one the other day. I always had trouble with it in the club playing it because it’s way too fast, but it’s like 145 beats minute. So there’s like nothing to work it into or come out of it with.
But yeah, it’s a good it’s a good tune. All of these are a little bit nostalgic because it was, like I said, I just moved to Texas. and so I was really like exposed to top 40 radio for the 1st time, MTV for the 1st time. So a lot of these songs are kind of nostalgic because they take me back to that, those 1st couple months of high school.
But a couple more Phil Collins groovy kind of love, Poison, Fallen, Angel, New Edition, if it isn’t love, and a classic video. I mean, all time classic video, Robert Palmer, simply irresistible, was just starting to get airplay. I never really loved the song, but the song’s okay, but yeah, the video is the headline on that one.
I will also say that groovy kind of love is actually my favorite Phil Collins song. That’s not saying a lot because I don’t have a lot of favorite Phil song, Phil Collins songs, but I do like movie kind of love. So glad that that one was on there.
I am a closet Phil Collins fan. I’m not in a closet. I’m an out and proud Phil Collins.
I like Phil Collins. Grey kind of love is a cover, right? I believe it is a cover, yeah.
And also in heavy rotation on MTV and number one on the billboard charts in September of 1988, Bobby McFarren, don’t worry, be happy. So that’s the mainstream world that we’re talking about in September 1988, and of course, 120 minutes was designed and programmed to kind of counteract that. I think they played off college radio a lot.
I think, especially early on, maybe more and more later on. They’ve kind of found their own way a little bit, but I do think that they took some cues from what was playing on college radio to see, you know, what was kind of bubbling in the underground, what might work, at least on MTV. I mean, even by getting on 120 minutes, you were already getting a little bit into the mainstream, if you were a college radio artist.
So, uh, I think it’s kind of interesting to see what they were playing in September of 88. So we will start with my choice for the month, which is a band called Shrek Back. And a song called Get Down Tonight.
It’s time tonight. To a little dance, make a little love. It’s town tonight Get down tonight.
You might surmise from that title that it is a cover of a KC and Sunshine Band song, and you would surmise correctly. It is, in fact, a cover of Get Down Tonight. And, um, you know, not a bad one for what it is, but we’ll talk about that in a minute.
We’ll talk 1st about Shrek Back. So they were a band that was formed in 1981. Uh, the 2 kind of headlining members that that, uh, you might recognize at least by their previous bands or Barry Andrews, who was formerly of XTC.
And Dave Allen, who was formerly from a band called Gang of Four. So those two, you know, bands were obviously pretty big in the early 80s. And those guys, along with a rotating cast of characters make up Shriek Back for the majority of their run, which really was just through the 80s, but I mean, they’re, you know, it’s one of those bands that they’re still a band.
They still record, they still tour. It’s really just Barry Andrews. I think is kind of, at this point, you can just pretty much say like he’s, he is shriek back, but they certainly had a, a, a rotating cast of characters around him that influence their sound, which does change somewhat throughout their, their recording career.
I liked this quote from Wikipedia to kind of sum up the band. The early music was funk influenced version of New Wave and post-punk. later moving towards art rock, and always featuring insidiously weird vocals. Um, I would agree with most of that.
When I listen to it, I listen to like 5 or 6 other songs besides get down tonight, because that’s not really a good representation, obviously, of what they do, I think they’re they’re very in line with what was going on with the goth in in 1980s. Now, you know, whether or not you want to call them a goth band and where you draw that line. But I mean, they sound a lot like several of the other bands that we’ve talked about on this podcast that, you know, were categorized as goths.
So I think you could throw goth in the mix there too. But they were a little bit funkier than the average goth band, maybe certainly in this cover, like shows that they’ve got that in them. New Wave and Postpunk.
I think, you know, you can hear that in art rock as well. But I, yeah, I think maybe goth might be predominantly what I hear when I listen to a lot of Shrekback songs. And I’ll say right off the bat, like, I did not know mini Shrek Back songs.
I always assumed that Nemesis was kind of like their big hit, and that was what they were known for, because that was how I knew them. And that still is how I think they probably should be known because it’s by far their best song, for what I’ve heard. But, uh, that song actually didn’t chart really anywhere.
Um, it was like 94 on the UK singles chart. didn’t do anything in the US. The best song they had was, I mean, this one did a number, was number 20 on the US dance chart, this cover of get down tonight. And they had a song called, I want to say, hold on to my heart.
It’s not exactly that, but it’s something like that. Uh, that maybe made it into like the top 100 in the UK, but they really didn’t have any big hits. But Nemesis, the one that I kind of assumed was the one that everybody knew Shreak Back 4, maybe isn’t, what everybody knows Shreak Back 4?
Who knows? I would say if you want to listen to Shrink Back, go listen to Nemesis first. It’s, I think, the standout track in there.
Catalog. If you want to hear an interesting, pretty straight down the pipe cover of get down tonight with like an 80s goth twist with the with the vocal deliveries. This is your jam.
And I will say this also, if you have ever, if you have a friend or a coworker or someone you share music with a lot, say you if some of one of those people that you like send songs to, you’re like, hey, check this song out. And you’ve always wondered, do they listen to the whole song? Do they actually listen to the song, send this song to them, and if they come back to you and say, ah, that’s a pretty cool, like, straight up the pipe cover of, get down tonight.
And they don’t mention anything else about the song? I can promise you, they did not get it past the 2 minute mark of this track, because the 1st 2 minutes are absolutely a very, very capable credible cover of Casey and the Sunshine band. Get down tonight.
And then right around 2 minutes and 2 seconds, I think, is exactly where this happens. It takes a hard, hard left turn into some real bad 80s rap, and it is shocking is not maybe exactly the word I’m going for, but it is, it’s, it’s quite a curveball. So if you share this song with someone and they don’t bring that up, they did not listen.
There’s no way they listened to the song without bringing that up because it was so unexpected because, you know, if that had been the 1st 30 seconds of the song, then I’d been like, okay, that’s that’s how we’re going to do this. Okay, great, fine. I’m along for the ride.
But by 2 minutes in, I’m like, oh, man, they’re just like gonna just play this pretty straight. And he’s, you know, Barry Andrews has a pretty distinct delivery, so that’s part of it, but, uh, by the time you’ve got to the 2 minute mark, you’re kind of just in the groove and like you’re thinking it’s just going to go down that way and wow, it is, it is a poorly conceived poorly executed break in the song that I, I think, brings the whole thing down a notch, but it is what it is. It’s a it’s a pretty good cover.
The video is, is, it’s kind of like a cover of a 70s video. I mean, they’re basically dancing in a disco. There’s not anything to it really beyond that.
Nothing wrong with it. Perfectly good, but it’s just, you know, a generic kind of what you would expect for someone that covered get down tonight and recorded a video. So that’s my take on it.
Uh, if, uh, I’ll again, put in my my vote for Nemesis being the song from Shreek Back, that you really should probably check out, but I wanted to talk about the band and actually learn a little bit more about them because I didn’t know a ton about them. So I took this opportunity and drug you guys into it. And so I’m curious to see what your experience was like, jam into this one.
Well, my favorite thing about my Shriek back experience for this episode was going back and listening to Nemesis again, because it’s been a lot of years since I’d heard that. So, yes, I agree. That’s a good place to jump in on these guys.
But coming into this, that was the only Shrek Back song that I knew. So I didn’t realize this was a cover until I started listening to it. And then, yeah, pretty much right off the bat, you know what’s going on.
I will say for the video, this looks like it was a hell of a lot of fun to make. I bet these guys had a blast, making it, if nothing else, you know, it may not be the most fun to watch, but it sure did look fun to make. And not knowing anything about these guys.
I had always just kind of thought of them as being like a dance rock band. And so to find out that they had members of XTC and Gang of Four, which I don’t actually know much about Gang of Four, but to my mind, I would never have put treat back in XTC in the same basket. I’m surprised to find out that, you know, those are 2 bands that share a member between them.
That’s really surprising. And I don’t have a whole lot else on this. I liked it.
Uh, you know, uh, it’s it’s get down tonight. It’s hard to mess that up, even if you throw a bad rap right into the middle of it, still get down tonight, you know, you’d have to work pretty hard to not do a good cover of that song. So, so I liked it.
The rap thing, though, is an odd choice. To me, it didn’t take away from it too much. Because, you know, after that go, it goes right back into the song and it jams out toward the end and it’s all good.
And I guess give them a little bit of credit for not just doing it completely straight down the pipe for throwing something in there that’s a little bit of a curveball, but did they hit it? Yeah, I’m not sure they did. So, I don’t know.
But yeah, I liked it. you know, it’s a fun song. And like I said, if you’re going to cover the song, unless you’re, you are really trying to mess it up, you’re probably going to do a pretty good job of it because it’s just a hard song to, to mess up. So, yeah, I like this.
But it didn’t make me, you know, want to go listen to any more street back or anything. So that was my take on it. I enjoyed listening to Nemesis again, and the cover is pretty good too.
So. I think I knew this band’s name. I don’t know if I know the song Nemesis, although since you guys are both big fans of it, I’ve probably heard it, I’ll assume.
But I didn’t know it. I didn’t know anything about this band. So I throw them through some of the top songs.
I didn’t see anything rang a bell. So I hit play on the video, and it was fine. This video has a really cool energy.
And I like the look of these guys. Um, I like the little kids of what they were doing. I like the disco party thing.
I really liked what the lead guitarist is doing in this cover. He’s like kind of noodling through the whole thing and then he has a pretty good solo that gets completely wiped out by that rap. But, you know, there’s there’s some good stuff going on here.
As covers go, it’s a perfectly fine one. So then I started playing some Shrek Back songs. Basically from the top of their song list on Apple Music.
I kinda just let it go. I liked none of the songs that I heard. And, you know, it’s funny because, you know, you mentioned that there’s a member of XTC in this band.
There’s a member of Gang of 4 in this band. I like both of those bands. I’m going to paraphrase my friend and cohort Keith here.
So a few months ago, I heard a band, a new band called Wednesday, and I was listening to it and I thought, man, Keith’s going to love this. I’m going to recommend it to Keith. And Keith said something along the lines of everything about this says that I should like it, and I just don’t.
And that’s kind of how I felt about Shrek Back. Like, it sounds like something I would like, but I just didn’t. And it just seems like there’s, it’s like a pale limitation of some other bands who are doing it better.
Like, you know, it’s like the, the, if Matt Johnson just kind of phoned it in. It seems kind of lazy. I don’t know.
I just it just really just didn’t do anything. None of their stuff did anything for me, but I will say, you mentioned the nemesis wasn’t a big hit for them. I probably listened to the 1st 10 or 12 songs on their top songs on Apple Music and that one did not come up.
Yeah, I kind of wanted to like these guys and I just didn’t. So that’s as much as I can say. My mind is blown that nemesis is not was not like the number one thing that came up on YouTube.
It was not the number one thing. Like you said, that I was on their Apple Music. Uh, it did not chart as highly as, I think, 6 or 7 of their other songs, at least kind of made these odd appearances on, like, the bottom of the singles charts or maybe on the dance charts or they were, I’m not going to say they were big in New Zealand, but they’d got some play in New Zealand and hit some charts.
I can’t explain it because Nemesis somehow came to me and it was just, to me, it was like, well, this is, this is the Shriek Back song. And, I mean, I did also dig, like you, into their catalog, and Nemesis is the Shrek Back song. It is it.
That’s it is head and shoulders above anything else they have done. fairly confident I had to have heard it. I just did, that one just doesn’t ring them back. And I didn’t come up and when I was listed.
But if I had gotten down to that one, maybe I would go, oh, yeah, that’s on, but… All right, we are moving on, and we are continuing our journey through September of 1988, and it’s gonna, we’re going to kick it over to Keith for this one. I think all 3 of us at this point have kind of used the podcast as a way to jump in and check out bands that we had never really and maybe had heard of, but didn’t know anything about.
So I did that this week. So today we’re going to talk about Per Ubu and the song, We have the Technology. We have the technology.
We have the technology, a thing off, and poets on the past. Oh, no, we have to. And so, as I’ve mentioned before, the first thing I like to do on these is just go straight to the video and check things out and kind of get, like, a Vivy first take on things.
So the first thing I thought when I put this video on was that I didn’t know that Paul Bearer had ever been in a band. I don’t know if you guys remember 1980s pro wrestling, the undertaker had a manager called Paul Bearer, spelled P-A-U-L, Bearer, and the guy from Per Ubu, to my mind, looked exactly like Paul Bear. So apparently he was in a band.
And then the 2nd thing I thought it was, Paul Bear must have attended the same dance academy as Ian Curtis and Peter Garrett, because this guy’s spazging all over the place. It turns out that pallbearer is actually David Thomas is the name of the singer of this band and really the only constant member of the band. He was the only guy that’s been in it the entire time.
He actually passed away last year, um, but they were active up until that and he, they actually put a new album out in 2023. And members of the current, his current band have said that there was another album, the cans, that was going to get released posthumously. I don’t think that that’s come out yet, at least reading the Wiki page. doesn’t look like that.
But there may be another pair of Ubu album out there before it’s all said and done. This is a band that formed in Cleveland in 1975. And like I said, they’ve had a lot of different members, but David Thomas was the singer and the main guy, and he’s the guy that was the only constant through the band throughout.
Um, You know, it’s funny because I’ve heard the name Per Uba before, and like I said, never really checked in on them up until this point, but I was reading through some stuff and looking at some of the bands that name check these guys as being an influence. It was crazy. Joy Division, the Pixies, Hooskerdoo, Henry Rollins, guided by voices, REM, Sisters of Mercy, Peter Murphy, all of these guys have checked, name checked, Per Ubu as being an influential band for them.
So even though I wasn’t, you know, real up on them or anything. It turns out a lot of bands that I listened to and really enjoyed were pair Ubu fans. The name of the band, Per Ubu, apparently is a name of a character in an avant-garde French play called Ubu Roi, R-O-Y.
I’m not sure exactly how you would pronounce that in French. That play came out in 1896. So apparently David Thomas is a little bit of an old literature fan.
But that’s where they got the name. It’s French per ubu. They were really prolific, released 19 studio albums before their career was done.
And if you happen to want to hear these guys live, you are absolutely in luck. If you count digital download live albums, they have 33 live albums. So if you want to hear a pair of Ubu concert, no problem, it’s out there, you can go find it.
You’re not going to have any issue there. As far as the song itself, I really like this. I like this song a lot.
I went through and listened to several more of their songs. I liked all of it. The ones I liked the most were called Waiting for Mary was one of them.
Another one was called, I hear they smoke the barbecue, which, I don’t know who the they is in that situation, but I’d like to visit them, see if maybe they got some brisket they want to hand out. But yeah, man, I really liked these guys. And I think, you know, if you’re into kind of, uh, you know, just kind of guitar pop kind of post-punky guitar pop, uh, kind of stuff.
I think that you will you will like the music, my experience with these guys, I think it’s going to come down to, if you like them or not, is going to come down to David Thomas’s voice. And, you know, he’s got a very unique voice. It’s a little high pitched.
It’s just kind of different from anything else that you’re, you know, or a lot of other things you’re going to hear. For me personally, my favorite band is The Cure. Last episode.
I spent a long time talking about Richard Butler from the Psychedelic Furs. Unique singing voices. Do not bother me.
I can usually get behind a unique singing voice and not have it get on my nerves or anything. So I enjoyed this and had no issue with David Thomas’s voice, but I really kind of think your fandom of per Uber may or may not hinge on what you think about his voice. It is unique and it’s not something you’re going to hear in a lot of like mainstream rock songs for sure.
The video on this is fairly generic aside from David Thomas’s weird dancing. He’s kind of up on a stage. It looks like kind of like a high school play stage.
There’s like a painted back dropped behind him and he’s singing the song and dancing around and, you know, there’s some interstitial footage cut in of like industrial scenes, you know, and they’re talking about, you know, the technology we have technology and all this. So that’s not a fantastic video, but not a bad video either. just kind of kind of straight down the pipe and a little generic, but not bad. And that’s really about all I have.
The one other thing I did want to mention. I thought was actually kind of cool about this, is that trying to put bands in a categorical box, you know, it’s a metal band or, you know, it’s a rap band or whatever. We’ve come across some kind of interesting tags or categories that people get put in, sophisticop being the one that we’ve talked about a lot at one point.
One of the things I liked about this on their Wiki page. They were listed through a lot of different genres, but one of them was avant garage. I like that.
That’s, you know, and listening to them. I think that’s a pretty good description. I think this is an avant garage band.
And so I would recommend checking them out. You know, like I said, I think it’s going to hinge on what you think about David Thomas’s vocals, but as for myself, turns out, I actually really like Per Ubu. So we just got done talking about a band that I only knew by name.
We have another one here. You know, I heard this name before. They were just completely off my radar.
It’s one of those names I’ve always heard about. didn’t know anything about them. You know, and while the last one I can’t can say was pretty solidly up, no me gusta. Man, I goosed the hell out of this.
I loved the weirdness of it. I loved the music. I loved the lyrics.
I loved everything. The whole time I was listening to this. I kept thinking about the music that I do know that this had to be an influence on, and I jotted down a couple of names before I went and looked it up.
The 2 names I wrote down were Pixies and Hooskerdoo. And if you go to that list on Wikipedia, they’re number 2 and number three, number one on that list, we’re going to talk about in just a minute. Also, I just love this video. you know, not knowing the band.
I didn’t know if that dude that was dancing in this video was the singer or not. I don’t know if it was like just, you know, sometimes they put another person in there or whatever. When I found out it was him.
I just really loved that. This guy, being an influential rock star, just brings me a great deal of delight. Like, he’s so such an anti-rock star.
You know, I’m not sure what all this video meant. I know there’s some technology stuff in it. I just I loved him performing.
Of course, you know, I love black and white stock footage, so that was a lot of that in there. Yeah, just, I mean, everything about this just worked for me. I also took a little bit deeper dive into these guys, and I really liked just about everything I heard.
I mean, this was a delight from beginning to end. So, you know, this is one of those things I’m kind of mad at myself for not finding sooner. I know I had to play this at KTXT.
I know they were on the playlist there back in the day because that’s where I would have heard the name. And based on my taste, I should have absolutely found these guys. They should have absolutely been on my radar.
But somehow, you know, I was, I was this week years old when I found it, but, but man, what a, what a fantastic little find for me. You know, I just I just really, really loved this. I think it’s interesting that, you know, that David Thomas, as a front man, he’s a, he’s a charismatic dude, you know, and and you have to be to be a front man.
And you’re right, you know, he’s he’s kind of a heavy guy. He’s always wearing a suit and tie, like every video that I watched. He had a suit on, not always a tie, but almost always a suit.
Yeah, very much kind of an anti-rock star, but he’s got that that charisma. He’s a guy that, you know, can command your attention and it just works. You know, the other band that didn’t make the list of bands that call these guys an influence that popped in my head was LCD sound system.
And I know that’s kind of different musically, but sort of the aesthetic of it is very similar. Like, you have this one lead guy who’s kind of a nerd and, you know, kind of runs the show on everything. And, you know, sort of the, um, I don’t know, there was just something about not so much like the sound of it, but like the energy of it that said LCD sound system to me.
I was not expecting this. So it’s funny, we’re all 3 in the same boat. We clearly both all recognize the name.
It’s one of those names that kind of sticks in your head more than just like a generic name. So I’m sure we all saw it on the KTXT playlist. We probably played them once or twice.
I think in my head, I had them as a completely different kind of band. If you think they were world music? Yeah.
Yeah, like I was I was picturing like a bossa nova type of jam, like coming up. We used to play a lot of world music at KTXD, and when that name popped up, that’s what I had in my head was that. Yep, I had completely mentally boxed them in the wrong box.
Didn’t know what they looked like, what to expect. I had the same reaction in the 1st 30 seconds of the video. I was like, oh, is this actually the singer?
Is it like an actor, you know, being the singer? and then I saw the thumbnail on the side. was like, oh, nope, that’s that’s the singer. I did not have the same reaction as you did, Scott, in terms of liking this particular song in this particular video.
The vocal delivery on this one did not grab me. It kind of just didn’t land. It kind of reminded me a little bit of David Byrne in a way, just like just the quirkiness and the kind of atonality of it.
Um, and the charisma of it. I’m not a huge talking heads fan. I like them kind of, I don’t want us to even say in spite of David Byrne because David Byrne kind of is like at the heart of talking heads, but like, I like talking heads in spite of the fact that I don’t always love his vocal delivery, if that makes sense, but I had this feeling of like, maybe I need to dig deeper and give these guys a better chance.
So I did. And the 1st the next song I listened to, I also didn’t, but it was waiting for Mary that I was like, okay, now I kind of see where this ties into their influence. I can see why people would get into this because it’s a much more to me, that’s just a much more listenable, accessible song.
I think it’s not as quite as challenging as this one. He’s still quirky and he still has a very, very specific delivery that is his and his alone, which is fine. That’s that’s fine.
Um, it’s just, I think it works better in certain songs and then maybe not as much in this in this particular one. So yeah, I was a little worried. I like that I was just not going to like them at all.
And I knew that it’s, once I kind of was going down the rabbit hole a little bit, I was like, I guess I probably should like these guys more than I do. But then as I started digging deeper, I did find something that I liked. I bet if I found, if I kept going, I would probably end up liking more than I didn’t like.
But, um, so yeah, that was, I, I, this particular specific track didn’t grab me and the video maybe grab me more than the song just because, like you said, he’s very charismatic. very interesting to watch. I’m a sucker for you know, the black and white. It reminded me of the swinging machines video a little bit.
Is that the name of this of that band, just the industrial aspect of it all mixed in? And the message of the song, too, you know, like we have all the technology and everything was, that was interesting to me. But so yeah, it was a really good introduction to the band, I think, um, not knowing them and not being a fan.
I don’t feel qualified to be like, oh, you should listen to this and not this. Again, for me, waiting for Mary is a more accessible way, maybe to get into it, but your mileage may vary, you might just fall in love with him right off of this song. So I don’t know.
But it was really cool to finally figure out who these guys were, what they were all about, put them in the right box instead of the wrong box. So they have moved from the world music box into really kind of their own box, I guess, but I mean, they’re much more in line with, you know, indie rock and some of that type stuff than I, than I would have thought they were just from, from my complete misconception of them. So thank you, Keith, for clearing that up, and now I have a whole new set of knowledge about Perubu.
It’s interesting to me, because, Scott, you said before you even looked at lists that, you know, Huskerdoo and the Pixies jumped into your head, you know, Mike you said, immediately talking heads, jumped into your head, listening to these guys, pretty disparate, you know, musical acts. I mean, you know, between those those 2 kind of polar opposites there. Well, not opposites, but you know, different.
And yeah, I think that’s not a bad comp, actually. His delivery and David Byrne. I mean, they’re not exactly the same, but just the kind of kind of off kilter way in which David Burns sings is kind of reminiscent to me anyway, a little bit of what Thomas does.
So yeah, that’s interesting. That’s not one I had thought of, but I think it’s a good comp. This song in particular, maybe less so, you know, in some of their other catalog, but this one definitely had like golf kilter, I think is a good way.
Quirky. It would be how I kind of describe the vocal delivery on that. I think maybe the common thread there is that all the bands we’ve mentioned as being influenced by these guys are all kind of bands that do things just a little different from, you know, the mainstream.
And I think that’s the influence maybe, is that, you know, this guy being a little different. And, you know, not your typical, you know, this, he’s Mick Jagger, you know? Um, this is, it inspired people. to maybe push the boundaries of what they were doing.
And I think that’s maybe where the inspiration of this comes from. But especially since this guy was doing this like in the mid to late 70s. I mean, this had to be very, very strange music for that time.
And so I think that’s maybe where the influence lies. It’s not necessarily like they listened to this music and said, I want to do that, but they looked at this band and listened to it and said, they’re doing something different and I want to do something different. And I think maybe that’s where the influence comes from.
And David Thomas just clearly just being himself and not feeling like he needed to fit himself into a into some sort of box into what a rock singer should be. Yeah, there is 0 pretension here. I mean, this guy is exactly what you get.
All right, we are moving from 2 bands that maybe we didn’t know a lot about to a band that I feel fairly comfortable saying all 3 of us know quite a bit about. I think I may maybe I’m putting words in your mouth, but I think that I think that’s correct. And we’re going to hear about them from Scott Mobley.
So after a one-week hiatus, I am back to talking about one of my favorite bands. This week, I’ve got Joy Division. The song is Atmosphere.
See the danger Always danger And was talking Life rebuilding Don’t walk away So, just a little history on Joy Division, this band forms in 1976. They were one of the mini, mini bands that formed after a very famous Sex Pistol show. Um, I, there were, apparently, you know, that legend in the U.S. where everybody who bought the Velvet Underground’s 1st album, form demand, England’s version of that is this Sex Pistol show that happened in in 76 or so, and everybody formed a band that was there.
Guitarist Bernard Sumner and bassist Peter Hook were at that show and they started this man. They were later joined by singer Ian Curtis and drummer Stephen Morris. From 77 to 80.
They only recorded 2 studio albums, and a pretty good number of singles, and they were becoming increasingly successful in England. Ian Curtis, the singer, was plagued with huge mental health issues, a failing marriage. He suffered from epilepsy.
And in May of 1980, he took his own life on what the eve of what was to be Joy Division’s 1st tour of the United States. Many people believe that this would have been their launch into stardom. And although I think that’s debatable, you know, only in the fact that I don’t know that this was ever going to be mainstream music, but we can talk about that in a little bit.
So the remaining members of Joy Division continued on as New Order, they continued to be hugely influential and inspirational band in the years that followed. So this song, Atmosphere, has been released as a single a few times, much like New Order, the release of singles and albums and compilations and all of that requires a giant board with thumbtacks and yarn going everywhere. You know, it’s pretty complicated.
But this was one that was put out as a single originally in March of 1980. Then again, as a 12 inch in May of 1980. It did very well on the UK indie charts.
It was never on a proper Joy Division album, which is the case of a lot of Joy Division’s most popular songs. This video was likely being played on MTV on 120 minutes in 1988 to promote the release of substance, which was one of the mini, mini Joy Division compilations. Honestly, it’s a very good one.
It has all the early punk stuff on it and all the singles that never made it to one of their 2 albums. For the uninitiated. a pretty good place to start. So this video is obviously something that was thrown together in 1988. has a lot of still photos of the band.
It has some dudes in these white and black cloaks kind of wandering around. It doesn’t make a ton of sense, but it makes exactly as much sense as any new order video. So I certainly think it evokes the mood of the song pretty well.
Um, and, you know, it’s a little creepy. It’s a little dark. So I think it works for this song.
Most of the videos we have for Joy Division are just live cuts, and they weren’t made with a lot of money or sound or video. So this was actually pretty cool to watch. I just love this song.
I think it perfectly captures the style and sound of Joy Division. I think it’s a perfect place to start if you never heard these guys. I found it interesting that this is about the time of 1988 or so that I discovered Joy Division, but I didn’t have substance until much later.
I don’t know if I saw this or not. But what I do have a clear memory of is being in a record store and seeing the album cover for their final album closer and buying it, knowing nothing about it other than I just loved that cover. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an incredible album cover.
Most people will stand behind unknown pleasures as their best album. I’ve always kind of preferred closer. I’m not gonna stand on the hill and preach about that, but it’s probably just because I heard it first.
I think both of their albums are great. The good news about Joy Division is you could check it all out in a relatively short period of time. You need 3 things.
You need unknown pleasures, you need closer, and you need substance. If you get those 3 things, you’ll hear just about everything you need to from these guys. I would also recommend avoiding any of the live albums that have been put out over the years.
It’s not that they weren’t a good live band, for all I know they were, but the recordings are just awful. If there’s a good one, I haven’t I haven’t found it. So we talked earlier, you know, a minute ago about Perubu being hugely influential in a lot of musicians.
They certainly were, including this one. But do yourself a favor sometime, and look up the bands that call Joy Division and influence. I can almost guarantee that the music, if you’re into the music that we’re into.
Your favorite band is on that list. We’ve talked before about bands that had a ton of influence with minimal amount of output, and while, you know, there’s a lot of those worth talking about. I don’t think you can have that conversation without mentioning Joy Division.
Before I pass this along, I just wanted to offer this up for anyone that wants to see a little bit more about this story. There are 2 fantastic movies that will help you do that. The 1st one is 24 hour party people, which is sort of a biopic of Tony Wilson.
He’s the guy that founded factory records. Joy Division is a character in it. It’s just a really funny and clever movie and just a ton of fun to watch and a, you know, a kind of a twist on the biopic.
The other one is control, which is the official Ian Curtis Joy Division biopic. And it is just a fantastic movie. It never got much run here in the U.S. I think that’s probably because Joy Division never got much run here in the US, but it is a superb film.
I can’t speak to its accuracy. You know, these biopic movies usually go kind of off the rails with that. But I think it has to be pretty close based on what I do know.
Both of these movies are absolutely worth your time. So if you’re a Phantom Joy Division or you want to be a fan of Joy Division, or even if you don’t give 2 craps about Joy Division, they’re both really, really good movies. So I know I know you guys like this band.
I’m curious to see what you thought about this particular thing. I love Joey Division, but no notes on that. Like, they are, I, you know, probably in my top five.
I don’t know that I’ve ever really gone through that exercise and tried to like figure that out, but I mean, off the top of my head, Joy Division slash new order is very, very near the top of my list of, you know, Mount Rushmore type bands. And this song is definitely not any exception to that. Like, it’s right there at the top, but I, I, Joy Division is one of those bands where, for me, you know, the things you mentioned, like, you could listen to unknown pleasures and closer in substance, and just get a good, a good experience front to back.
Like, I don’t, I don’t really necessarily have one or 2 Joy Division songs that I like that much more than the other ones, and it’s not that I don’t like any. I like all of them at like all of them are like a 10 for me. You know what I mean?
Like they’re all so good. Joy Division may not be for you. Look, they are they are dark, they are gloomy.
They, um, you know, we just talked about quirky vocals. Ian Curtis is not your traditional rock singer by any stretch of the imagination. He might not even be a good singer by any stretch of the imagination, but he is the perfect singer for Joy Division because he just, that’s the kind of band they are.
They are just that thing. They are that thing that they are putting out into the world, um, as a package. You know, the way the music flows, the the, um, the production from Martin Hammett, I believe, is his name?
It’s just a package. They all go together. They all work together perfectly, and there really isn’t a lot of low lights in that in that run of the 2 albums in the singles collection.
So atmosphere is no exception. It is a beautiful and atmospheric. I mean, it does have like an atmospheric vibe to it.
It’s sad and yet kind of touching, and almost yet sad yet inspiring in a way, if that’s possible. And I like the video too. I actually really dig the video.
Like, it’s it’s kind of creepy, kind of weird, but like, if you look at it as kind of a tribute to Ian Curtis and also as a way to visualize what this song is embodying and trying to say, they work, it really works for me. It does work for the song. Yeah.
Yeah. In another in another context, it might be cliche or, you know, stupid or whatever, you might, how you might feel about it. But in the context of listening to the song, it just absolutely works.
And I don’t even think, you know, the tributes to Ian Curtis don’t feel wrong or cliched or odd in that context either. Like, it just all works for me. So maybe that’s too much.
Maybe I’m, you know, being too light on Joy Division and I’m not a music critic by any stretch. I will say if I don’t like something, and I’ll say if I do, and I like everything these guys have done. Like, I just don’t really have anything bad to say about them.
So that’s kind of where I stand on it. If you, oh, and I will also cosign. I have not seen the documentary you mentioned, but I will absolutely co-sign 24 hour party people as, even if you do not give a rat’s ass about Joy Division or New Order or Happy Mondays who also appear in that movie.
The movie is super entertaining. It is very unlike any biopics that have come out recently. of all this string of crappy biopics. like this is not that. It’s real good.
It’s uh, and just to be clear, that control, the other movie I mentioned, is not a documentary. It’s a narrative film, but like… Oh, it’s also narrative looking.
It’s obviously the darker side of this. You know, 24 hour party people is a blast. And the goal is not that, but it’s very, very, very good.
The young man, I forget his name. The young man that plays Ian Curtis and it is fantastic. You make a very good point.
And that is, you know, I mentioned that, you know, if you talk to people who are casual fans of Joy Division, they’re going to know, you know, a few songs. None of those songs are on these albums. Like, you know, level tear us apart is not on an album.
This song is not on an album. Dead Souls is not on an album. Like, those are the songs that people know by these guys.
But, you know, you kind of mentioned that, you know, they kind of do a thing. And I think that’s really what their appeal is, is that these albums, as a whole, are just these fantastic mood pieces. They, they, they sink you into this world and just kind of put their arms around you and take you on this journey that’s really just all about mood, you know?
Unknown pleasures is, is, uh, I think the reason people like that album more is because it’s got a little bit of brightness in it, kind of like this song, how there’s that that sort of bright little keyboard part that comes up under all this misery that’s going on over the top of it. Closer is not that. People have referred to Nirvana’s in utero as a 45 minute suicide note.
Well, I’ve got news for you. Closer is that times a 100. It is you are listening to a man tell you he is going to kill himself.
And so it is dark and it is very, very depressing to listen to, but it’s also kind of beautiful in its own way. But I really think, you know, you kind of nailed it in that if you like one Joy Division song, you’re going to like them all. And if you don’t like one, you’re not going to like any of them.
It is of a thing. And then maybe that’s because they were so short-lived. you know, maybe if Ian Curtis doesn’t kill himself, you know, does he become the lead singer of what we know as new order? You know, we don’t know the answer to that.
So, but I think as a collection of 3 years of music, this is just about as good as it gets, this is just a wonderful band and hugely influential. I love this song. Love the band.
My guys probably already know. My introduction to Joy Division was substance. Like I had that before I had either of the albums, all of those songs that you mentioned or songs that I knew before.
I knew any of the stuff on the other albums. I went and checked that stuff out later. Um, one thing I really do like about this song.
You know, we kind of covered a lot about the song. I won’t go too in-depth into it. But it does have Joy Division had started doing this, and it was something that New Order would continue on with a lot as they went forward, which was using a synth base for the low part of the song, and then having Peter Hook play his part higher over the top of it.
Now that happened in Joy Division. And in some of their songs, like I’m thinking of, she lost control here, there are actually 2 baselines, there’s a lower baseline and a higher baseline. Um, and so he would do, you know, both of those parts, and I’m not sure how he, he did that live.
But, uh, you know, a lot of their stuff, you know, as they started to start using synthesizers, that started happening a little more, but new order, that was a trick that was in their bag from the beginning and throughout their entire career, was to use the synth base to to provide the low end for the song and to have Peter Hooks bass part actually be more of a melodic part over the top of that. And so this was kind of an early shot at that and it just works. It just really, really, really great.
So unique. Yeah, yeah, it is, exactly. So I’ll talk a little more about the video.
Since, you know, like I said, I think you guys covered the song pretty well. My 1st thought was that, you know, it’s a good thing that George Lucas allowed the Joy Division to borrow the Jawa outfits from Star Wars to clothe all the people running around in the video, but I did like the fact that, and it’s directed by Anton Corbin. I know if we mentioned that before or not.
I mean, so we’ve seen some of his videos in other spots as well. He’s always does a good job. But I thought what was interesting.
One of the things I liked about the video is that, you know, some of the characters are wearing black robes, some of them are wearing white robes, they’ve got a plus on the backside of the of the white ones, a minus on the backside of the black ones, kind of my take on it, this video, for me, for my take was that it is strictly a tribute to Ian Curtis. That’s what the video is. And you get all the signs and or the pictures that the little guys are carrying around of him.
There’s some with the rest of the band, but a lot of it is just Ian Curtis. And I feel like, you know, as a tribute to him. The video has a tribute to him.
You kind of take that, the light and the dark, the positive and negative that each person has in them, and Ian Curtis obviously had that, because, you know, he had tremendous talent that he put into the music, um, that, you know, that we get to hear and listen to, and you can tell that that’s that was the positive one. But there was a lot of negative energy there too. I mean, he was, this was not a happy guy.
This was a guy that, you know, despite the fact that he’s in a rock band and and, you know, seems like he ought to be living a, you know, his best life. He was extremely depressed and the epilepsy really weighed on him. And he was just not a happy dude.
And I think the kind of the light in the dark, deposited the negative in that video is a good way to pay tribute to every side of Ian Curtis. You can’t have the end without the yang. You know, you need both of those to make the entire person.
And I think that that imagery speaks to that and says, you know, there was this incredible lightness to this guy where he made this this fantastic music. But at the same time, he was dealing with this incredible darkness that dragged him down and that he could never escape from. And you have to acknowledge both of those things to acknowledge the entire person that was Ian Curtis.
And I kind of think maybe, you know, I mean, this is just me. I am not in Anton Corbin’s head, but that was what I took from the video is that as a tribute to Ian Curtis, it was an acknowledgment that both sides of him existed in balance in parallel. I say in balance, it turns out the negative wins in the end for this guy.
But I think that’s that was what I took away from the video anyway. But yeah, man, I love this song. That’s a really solid interpretation of that video, I think.
I didn’t quite think about it that deeply, but that’s probably right. It’s probably hitting the nail right on the head. I really think that’s a that’s a great interpretation of the video.
You know, when those Java costumes 1st popped up at the beginning, they almost look like clan outfits and this band has a little bit of history with that stuff, it’s kind of not to go too much into it. But the name Joy Division, the name New Order, or both references to Nazi propaganda, their 1st little EP, Joy Division 1st EP, had a picture of a Hitler Youth kid on it. You know, so they have a little history of that.
Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner have always said they did all of that sort of to mock the Nazis after the end of, you know, World War II. They lived in England during reconstruction and all of that. And they kind of, you know, thought they were they were poking fun at it.
But people, some people have pointed out issues with it over the years. So yeah, I saw those Klan. What I thought were clan outfits, and then I went, oh, no.
But it turned out not to be that at all. I also wanted to just real quickly mention you. He talked about Ian Curse’s vocals a little bit, and they are a little off.
You know, we talked about off kilter vocals and maybe not in the most beautiful. His voice could not be more perfect for what this is. I mean, there is there is a pain in his voice that just comes pouring out of your speakers when you listen to this.
And he’s just, he is the right guy for, for this, you know, and I, uh, I think, I also think, you know, that part of this is very influential too. You know, I don’t know if we get Robert Smith without Ian Curtis. So, you know, I think I think there’s a, there’s really somebody might listen to this and say, oh, well, this guy’s vocals are kind of weird.
Trust me that it’s the right thing for this, you know. All right, we are moving on to what is normally one of our favorite parts of the episode. I say normally because I don’t think that’s going to be the case today.
I chose the mystery song, and if you listen to these episodes, you know that generally we go in completely cold and just pick a song that none of us have heard before, that was the case with this one, the playlists were a little light, so there were only a couple that we didn’t know, and this one intrigued me because of the name of the band, which is 17 pygmies, and the name of the song is crossing the river. Crossing the river. In a glassbows, moonlight reflected, tracks the sand.
Let’s talk about being first. So, this is, like, a lot of the mystery bands that we’ve talked about a side project, and it’s a side project of a dude named Philip Drucker, who was also known as Jackson Del Rey and Robert Lovelace. They were members of a band named Savage Republic out of LA.
Savage Republic is a post-punk rock band. They tended towards mostly instrumentals, but also with some pretty really, I mean, they’re listed as post-punk, but I would say the vocals on a lot of their tracks are just punk. I mean, they’re, you know, very kind of shouty, relatively aggressive, but a lot of their songs are kind of more of the long, drony guitars and long instrumental type things.
I would say of the songs I’ve listened to, Savage Republic is the better of the 2 of the 2 bands, 17 Pygmies is probably a weaker band overall than Savage Republic, but as a side project, maybe that’s to be expected. So those 2 guys formed. Oh, also another Brad Laner is also a guy from Savage Republic, he went on to form medicine.
So Savage Republic did actually spawn a few different side projects and medicine actually turned out to be probably the best of the whole group. But anyway, this particular song, Crossing the River, is from their 3rd studio album. They also had an EP that kicked off their recording career, but then 3 studio albums.
This one is named Welcome. It was actually the soundtrack to a theatrical production that featured the aforementioned Brad Lanier, who ended up being in forming medicine. So there’s not there’s not a lot of information out there.
I can’t give you a ton more information about that, but apparently Brad had put on this theatrical deal and and 17 Pygmies created this soundtrack to go along with it. So, the song. Uh, we have talked about, uh, just in the last couple minutes, quirky vocals, people who maybe don’t sing particularly well, but yet their charisma or their attitude or whatever kind of carries the day and you kind of look past their the quality of their vocals.
Not everybody needs to be, you know, American Idol. And at least, I would say, almost all the bands that we’ve talked about today, but certainly like David Thomas, certainly Ian Curtis, would never have made it on American Idol, much less one American Idol. And yet they are revered as being, you know, the lead vocalist for their respective groups.
And as we’ve talked about, has influenced dozens and dozens and dozens of other people who ended up, you know, being quirky lead singers or whatever. So I don’t think it’s fair to necessarily just be like, well, this person can’t sing and they shouldn’t, you know, be recording music. That said, there are also times when someone can’t.
There are also times when someone can’t sing and maybe really shouldn’t be recording music. And this is this is that. Um, so these guys, they, this side project, they don’t really sing on.
They worked with a lot of kind of a rotating cast of different vocalists when they weren’t just recording instrumentals. There are a lot of instrumentals in their catalog as well. Most of them are female led vocalists, and some of them are much, much better than this particular track.
I did dive a little bit more into 17 pygmies. I’m not even going to begin to convince you that you should do the same, but there are songs in this catalog that are much, much better than this one. I don’t know what they were thinking with this one.
This song is terrible. It’s not good. I mean, it’s just not good.
It’s there’s nothing interesting going on instrumentally, which these guys are usually fairly good at. There are several songs just in the brief dive I took on both Savage Republic and 17 Pygmies that made me think that they can make really interesting instrumentals. And there are a couple in the 17 Pygmies, Pygmies catalog where they found a vocalist who was able to kind of carry the day and make a pretty interesting song.
Again, I’m not going to tell you that you should go seek them out. They’re not that great, but they are significantly better than this one. I just how this one got on 120 minutes, why this one got on 120 minutes.
Um, you know, was this a single, that was hard for me to figure out. I can’t imagine that they would have chosen this based on some of the other songs on the album being significantly better. I can’t wait to hear what you guys have to say about it, but before I pass the baton, I will say also, the music video is just a standard 1988 era indie rock alternative thing.
It’s got like the 8 millimeter, 16 millimeter film. It’s all very abstract, it all kind of like cross dissolves into each other. There’s, you know, a few effects thrown in here or there.
There’s just, I can’t even really describe it better because it just washed right over me and right out of, I mean, the song did too, honestly. Just like in one ear, out the other, the video just kind of, I don’t really remember much about it, but just thinking like, oh, yeah. 1988 sounds about right for this. It’s, you know, grab a film camera and shoot some stuff and cut it together really quick, which I’m sure is exactly what they did.
There’s just not much going on. The one quote that I did find on an Italian website, oddly enough, that wrote about these guys, talking about Philip Drucker, who came from Savage Republic and was a founding member of 17 Pygmies. Drucker is fundamentally a failed singer-songwriter.
In Savage Republic, he had been forced to limit his writing personality and Vent as an arranger, but even with 17 pygmies, he proved skilled as an arranger, but as a writer, he remained an amateur. Uh, I’m not going to be that tough on Philip Drucker. He’s written and recorded more songs than I have, uh, and gotten them out to more people than I have, so I cannot, um, I’m not going to pass judgment on his career like that, but I do think there’s some truth probably to that.
There was nothing in their catalog that really jumped out as just being like, oh, this is fantastic, which is probably why I was guessing that you guys have not heard of. I know you haven’t heard of 17 Pygmies. I’m guessing you maybe barely have heard of Savage Republic, if at all.
And I think there’s a reason for that. You know, there’s a reason for that. So sorry I picked this one, I guess, is my takeaway?
sorry. Yeah, sorry. Oops.
I was thinking it was going to be something really fun and delightful like many of our mystery songs have been, but this was not that. Before I get heavily into talking about the song, and I don’t really have a whole lot to say. pretty much covered it pretty well there. But you were mentioned in the vocals here and not being able to sing and we talked about in this episode, you know, both David Thomas and Ian Curtis.
I’ve mentioned Robert Smith and Richard Butler, all have unique voices. It brings up, to my mind, there’s a kind of a difference. There’s a, I don’t know, what you want to call it, a deal where there’s there are 2 different things.
There’s a difference between not being able to sing and not having a good voice. Like, the guys we just mentioned, like Robert Smith, Richard Butler, Ian Curtis, those guys can all really sing, but they do not have good voices. They don’t have, like nobody’s going to listen to those guys and say, man, I really wish I sounded like this person.
There’s there’s a difference there. You know, just because you don’t have a great voice doesn’t mean you can’t carry a tune, hit the right notes and all that. So I do think that there’s a little bit of a, you know, a gap between the not being able to sing and not having a good voice.
I also think you’re right in this situation that this singer cannot sing and does not have a good voice. And so we end up with the worst of both worlds there. But I just, I do think that’s kind of an interesting, uh, difference there that I, you know, I thought was interesting to bring up.
As far as this goes. Yes, this is terrible. It’s not good at all.
Like, um, like, yeah, how is this a single? Why is there a video for this? I mean, is everything on this album like this?
I mean, this doesn’t sound like a song to me. It sounds like an intro along like 2 minute intro into before the song actually hits before something actually… something better. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, there’s there’s not much going on. Yeah, it’s just kind of that keyboard part with her doing her thing over the top of it. And yeah, I just, I don’t know.
I don’t understand anything about this. I don’t know why this got recorded as a single piece, why it’s not just, like I said, the intro to something longer and more actually fleshed out. I don’t know why it was picked as a single.
I don’t know why a video got made for this. I don’t know anything about it. Why somebody put it on 120?
Yeah, exactly. Somebody programmed it. Yeah, I, yeah.
No, nothing about this did anything for me, so move on, I suppose. Well, I know I’m usually the one that’s coming here and defend the weird stuff, but oof. I just, I had a real what the hell am I watching during all of this.
Also tried to dig a little into this project. I didn’t have much luck. You had way more than I did.
But I did see that the brainchild behind this. In addition to all the other things you mentioned, is a friend and cohort of Captain Beefheart, which may answer a lot of questions. I think that’s all you need to know if you know if you want to watch this or not.
I mean, if you’re one of those people that thinks Captain Beefheart is some kind of genius, you may find something to like here. But I, if you’re like me and you just don’t get it. I think that’s going to where you’re going to land on this too.
If anybody who doesn’t know Captain Beefheart, He was a avant-garde jazz musician in the late 60s who would basically get a whole bunch of insanely talented people in a room and then do all the drugs and then record an album. It’s to me, it’s unlistenable noise, but some people think it’s brilliant. But yeah, as far as 17 pygmies goes.
Your song is bad and you should feel bad. Yeah, music criticism is subjective. And what you like is subjective and there is no right or wrong answer, but I sometimes you just got to call balls and strikes, right?
Well, I think what you said, Keith, is right. Like, if this was the intro to some other thing, it would be fine. It’s just like this, there’s nothing going on here.
It’s just a giant zero. It’s like these sort of, you know, a rhythmical atonal vocals going on over nothing musically. It’s like, you know, like a drone keyboard part.
There’s just nothing here. There’s nothing to latch onto, I don’t think, you know? And I don’t know how someone at MTV said.
Oh, yeah, get this on the air right away. You know, I don’t know. It’s wild because they have better stuff.
Again, is it great? that I didn’t dig into. I didn’t go any further down the rabbit hole, because honestly, I was afraid of what I might find.
But, um, I mean, I see, and I didn’t find the connection to medicine. Medicine is a man I can I can back up. I don’t understand how you get finished with this little 2 minute piece and think, well, that’s it.
We got us a song. I mean, yeah, I don’t get it. get it at all. Sorry, 17 pygmies.
And for all, 17, 50s fans out there, you know, we hope you enjoy your band, but yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, hey, jump in the comments and point us in the right direction because I, you know, I didn’t spend all day listening to, like, they’ve got 5 studio albums at least.
And I, I wasn’t going to subject myself to that, to be perfectly honest, but, um, I mean, the ones I listened, everything I listened to was better than this one, which is why I’m just bum fuzzled as to how this was got onto 120 minutes or why the video was made. But point is, you know, if there’s a song that you’re like, no, this is, you know, this is the song. Because, I mean, look, Shriek Back is kind of the same. like nemesis is is head and shoulders above anything else I’ve ever heard by Shrek Back.
So there may be a nemesis hiding in 17 Pygmies catalog and I could, and I would be like, oh, okay, I get that, at least. As it stands, this was the song we were presented with, and this is the one we have to talk about. And yeah, I think I think we can go 3 thumbs.
Also, shame on them for wasting a really good band name on this music. Yeah, I mean, that’s what enticed me. I was like, I thought this was gonna be…
Well, I don’t know what I thought it was going to be. Not this. Not this, but…
I feel like 17 Pygmies is a is like a pop punk name. Like, I hear that and I want to hear some… There’s a fun band.
Yeah, called 17 Pygmies. And these guys stole their name. Yeah, and they, their music is not fun.
Yeah, even beyond this song. Fun is not a word I would use to describe this band, but be that as it may. They can all be winners.
That’s why they’re mystery songs, right? Like if they were always good, people would start to get suspicious that like, oh, no, you guys are, you guys are checking these out ahead of time and making sure. So I can assure you, we did not check this one out ahead of time or I would have probably put the kibosh on it, but it is what it is.
That said, the rest of this episode has been delightful. Joy Division, come on. come on. You can’t go wrong with Joy Division.
That fantastic. If if someone’s listening to this podcast and hasn’t heard Geordie Vision, I would be gobsmacked, but if that’s the case, you have your roadmap, just got already laid it out for you, how you need to go about it, go listen to it. The other 2 bands are probably going to be a little more hit or miss.
Per Ubu, I think probably the better of the two, obviously, just much more influential. Based on, you know, all of us did like a tiny, deeper dive on it. It sounds like we all, you know, kind of started getting into it.
I bet if we continue that deep dive, we would probably see even more of, oh, yeah, I totally get why these guys were influential and probably even, you know, start to be fans. Uh, certainly, like, there was, there was waiting for Mary and one other track where I was like, okay, yeah, I can see where these guys are going with this. This is pretty good.
Shriek back, just go listen to Nemesis. And then I think you’re done. You good.
Well, you can listen to get down tonight, too, if you want it, you know, but he’s already familiar with that song. It’s a solid cover. Uh, but yeah, if you have missed Shrek back Nemesis, and based on their charting and everything I’ve learned, you might have.
I honestly thought that song was bigger than it was, check it out. It’s real fun. Real, real, real fun.
Like, that’s a great song. All right, we’ll do it again in a couple weeks, folks. October of 1988 is up next.
I haven’t looked ahead to see what’s coming down the pipe, but I’m sure there are going to be some fun songs and then there’s always the mystery song that could take us in any possible direction. So tune in for that. Don’t forget about 35,000 watts.
The story of college radio. It is a documentary about college radio, and it is available to watch right now on Tubi, so go check that out. And we’ve got, hey, like 20 something episodes already in the can.
So if you’re just finding us now, we started in 1987, so you can go all the way back to January of 1987 and work your way through all of the podcast episodes and, you know, we would love you if you did that. We’d appreciate a lot. Don’t forget to, you know, comment on the YouTube or on Facebook or wherever you might have seen as post and tell us what you think about.
Tell us what you think about 17 Pygmies. We can’t wait to find out. Um, and we will maybe we’ll address that in a future episode.
But tune in next time for October of 1988 right here on 120 months.