In the spring of 1987, MTV’s 120 Minutes was starting to bring college radio and indie favorites into the mainstream with national TV exposure. This week, we look at three songs that got airplay in March of that year, with a classic ’80s track and a couple of iconic college radio bands.
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Episode 3- March 1987 (153 downloads )TRANSCRIPT
And welcome back to 120 months. We’re doing a month by-by-month retrospective on MTV’s 120 minutes. Everybody’s favorite video show from back in the day.
I’m here with my co-host Scott Mobley and Keith Porterfield. So what we do, we each pick a song from a particular month. We’re starting in 1987, and this is episode three, so we’re looking at March of 1987.
And then we’ve got a fun mystery song at the end that none of us had ever heard before that we’re going to weigh in on. And this episode is another kind of fun one. So, and actually, I’ll say going into it before we get into the songs.
So this is only episode three, so it’s early to be saying this, but like this is my favorite episode so far in terms of the music that we’ve chosen. Probably the one that I know the songs the best. Honestly, going into the last two episodes, I really didn’t know any of the songs we were talking about that well.
And then on this one, I, the two that you guys picked in particular are two that I have always loved and have loved really since almost the time they came out. So very excited to get into it. We’re kicking off this episode with Mr. Keith Porterfield.
All right. Well, for this week, I have chosen a song called I Go Crazy by the band Flesh for Lulu. And Flesh for Lulu was an English band.
They put out four albums between 1984 and 1989. And that was their heyday. They had a couple of other things come out over the years after that, but that was really the bulk of their career was that run right there.
This song, I Go Crazy, was on the 1987 album, which is called Long Live the New Flesh, which I think is a great album title for a band called Flesh Belulu. I go crazy When I here I go crazy When I’ without Fle’s main guy involved in that is a guy named Nick Marsh. He’s the only guy that was in the band for every iteration that it had.
He sang songs, played guitar. Unfortunately, Nick Marsh had passed away from cancer back in 2015, so he’s no longer with us. In looking doing a little research going into this, he formed a version of the band again in 2013 that was active until his passing in 2015.
So I like to think that he got to there at the end, kind of relive his rock and roll glory, you know, before before the cancer kind of took him. So I don’t know for sure that that’s exactly what was going on there, but it does my heart good to think that he got one last shot at being a rocker before the cancer took him. But as far as this song goes, it’s a really good one, in my opinion, kind of an upbeat glam rocker, got kind of a loping basseline, a really killer lead guitar part, and then also kind of a background, synth part that runs throughout the whole thing that fleshes it out that I think actually really, really works.
So really good song. Me personally, I know this song from doing the 80s retro show back at KTXT, the retro radio. This is a song that I would play on there occasionally.
And it’s funny in doing this, I would have bet you cash Money bills that I had this song on a compilation CD. Because during that retro show, those 80s compilations like, Rock of the 80s, just Can’t get enough New Wave hits of the 80s Living in Oblivion, Richard Blade’s flashback favorites. Like those collections were God send to me, man, because not only could I have a lot of a lot of music, a lot of songs on one CD instead of having to carry like 12 or 15 different albums around, but man, those things were an awesome crash course on just a lot of 80s music.
I mean, I thought going into doing that show that I knew 80s music. Well, once you start doing a show like that, you realize pretty quickly that there’s a lot of stuff out there that you don’t know. And those hot compilation CDs were a godsend for me. as far as like, just like I said, a crash course and learning a lot of stuff that I would get requests for that I didn’t know or that I wasn’t sure what it was.
And those things saved me on multiple nonconsecutive occasions. But I would have told you with 100% certitude that that’s where I had had this song. That’s where I’d heard it.
Well, I pulled all those CDs out the other day when I was getting ready to do this and look through them. And this song isn’t not on any of them. So I’m not even 100% sure where I had this, where I was playing this from.
I don’t think we had the full-length album because I think if we had had it, I would have would have searched through it and tried to find some other stuff that I could have played on it. And to my knowledge, this is the only flush for Lulu song that I have ever heard. So I don’t really know for sure where I had this.
I know, Mike, you did the show before I did. Is this a song that you played when you were doing retro radio? I don’t think that I did play this a lot.
I’m definitely familiar with the track. And it was on the soundtrack. I think That’s what I was going to some kind of wonderful song soundtrack.
Some kind of wonderful soundtrack. Exactly. That’s.
I was going to say, I think we must have had some kind of wonderful soundtrack in the stacks at the station because I don’t know where else I would have been playing this. And to be honest, with you, now that I know that you weren’t playing it on your version of the show, I’m not sure where I ever heard it the first time, but I did like to play this song, and I did it for a lot of the reason doing that show, it was very, very request heavy.. And about, you know, 10% of those requests were interesting things that I had never heard before or that I had to look for.
But about 90% of the requests were the same songs over and over again every week. There was no way I was going to get through that show without having to play Safety dance by Men Without Hats or Tainted Love by Soft Sell. I mean, those songs got requested every single time I did that show.
And so songs like this, like I go crazy were songs that I would throw into the show just so I could hear something that wasn’t the same old stuff that was getting requests all the time. And I think once I started playing it, I did get requests for it. But that’s interesting to know that you weren’t playing it.
I don’t have the slightest idea where I first heard this song, how I decided it should be on retro radio, but that’s where I was playing it. So that’s how I know it is from that show. Like I said, good track, a lot of fun.
The video itself is another performance video on a soundstage with the guys, you know, who’s running around playing the song, some special effects thrown in to kind of spice it up a little bit. Pretty generic video, but not bad, you know, good 80s video. The funny thing about this to me is that when we went into doing this, like in my head, every 80s video is like Hungry like the Wolf by Duran Duran or she Blinded me with Science by Thomas Adolby, you know, like some kind of story video with lots of, you know, different elements going on in it.
And then we get here and we’re doing this show and watching these videos and almost all of them so far have been performance videos. So I guess my take on videos in the 80s. I assume when you say, like Thomas Dobby, she blinded me with the sense, you mean perfect and wonderful?
Exactly, right. Yeah, the 80s were the absolute heyday for videos. This, not one of the best ones ever, but it’s not bad.
The one thing I will say about this video, I got to give Nick Marsh some credit because he’s wearing a Batman t-shirt in the video, and this was before the Michael Keaton Batman movie came out. So this was before it was cool to be running around with a superhero shirt on. And as a bit of a comic book nerd myself, I’m going to send him a shout out for being wearing his Batman shirt at a time where it wasn’t particularly cool to be wearing a Batman shirt.
So where to go, Nick? Not only did you come out with a great song, your fashion choices were awesome as well. So anyway, that’s it.
I don’t have a whole lot more on this one. Awesome song. I really enjoy it.
I think you guys obviously did too. So that is I Go Crazy by Flesh for Lulu. Yeah, I liked this song a lot, and I think I knew it before.
I wanted to talk real quick about some kind of wonderful soundtrack because, you know, some kind of wonderful, if you don’t remember, was sort of was the film that came out of the John Hughes canon post Pretty in Pink. And he did not direct it, but he wrote it. And when it came out, it was accused of being a pale limp ripoff of Pretty and Pink, which it is.
And the soundtrack kind of is the same thing. Like the Pretty and Pink soundtrack has OMD and the Smiths and Psychedelic Furs, and just some kind of wonderful soundtrack has Blush for Lulu. And not a whole lot else.
Like this is the signature song off that soundtrack, I think, as far as popularity goes, nothing else on on that soundtrack really took off. And there’s a Jesus and Mary Chains song on it, but it’s not a particularly good one. So there’s some kind of wonderful soundtrack was, you know, considered sort of, you know, the, the bad offspring of Pretty In Pink and it was.
And so I think that’s maybe why this song kind of got lost in the shuffle, but it is it is a really, really good song. I knew one other Flesh for Lulu song, and I only realized it this week when I was looking into this because the song Postcards from Paradise, which I guess according to their bio was a mild hit for them, I knew the Paul Westerberg version of that song. I didn’t realize it was a cover, but I went back and listened to Flesh for Lulu do it and I get why Paul Westerberg covered it.
It kind of sounds like a Paul Westerberg song the way they did it too. Yeah, but I really, I got a kick out of this one. I knew the song.
I’d heard it before, but it had been a long time. And I pretty much forgotten about it, but I enjoyed hearing it again. And yeah, cool video, cool song.
I liked it. I had totally forgotten about it, and I really liked this song. I always have, kind of like Keith, I don’t remember where I first would have come across it.
I’m assuming KTXT, maybe in regular rotation or whatever. Keith, did you look, did it chart at all, like on the billboard charts? It did not.
I don’t know the number. I don’t remember the number. It charted on the modern rock tracks, I think, but not terribly high.
But no, it didn’t chart on anything else aside from modern rock tracks. Because, I mean, in 87, like, I still, I didn’t even have MTV in 87. So I don’t, I think this would have had to have been something I picked up later, you know, just in, again, probably at KTXT, but I’ve always really liked it.
My first take from the video was the Batman shirt, like, holy shit, this guy’s ahead of his time because, yeah, that was not a thing in 87. Like he was definitely, and particularly in the way he’s wearing, I mean, he’s otherwisewise dressed as like kind of, like in a standard punk rock kind of get up, I would say kind of an LA style. Yeah, like a shiny punk rock, not like the really super gritty type, but, you know, the leather jackets and stuff, which doesn’t really match the tone of the song at all.
Well, again, not knowing anything else about them, that album came out on Beg’s Banquet. A lot of their albums all came out on like different labels. They were kind of pretty much jumping from label to label.
But that one came out on Begar’s Banquet. And that’s actually where I have it. I have it in my music collection from a box set called A Life Less Lived, which is the Gothic rock box set.
And it had a bunch of beggars’s banquet stuff in it too. So I didn’t really think of these guys as being gotic myself, especially not this particular song. But yeah, this song did actually come out on Begar’s Banquet.
I was going to say, were they considered goth back in the day or as their other? I I didn’t dig any deeper into their catalog and I probably should have just because I I’m guessing this song maybe isn’t like super representative of exactly what they do, but but I don’t know. Yeah, again, about them.
Yeah, I’m not sure. I only know the one other song, which it’s called Postcards from Paradise, but it’s a little bit more of a rocker. It’s a little more guitar crunchy than this song.
But, I mean, it probably still has a flavor of that. Everything in the 80s had that synthy, you know, laying over to whatever. But that sounds a little crunchier than this one.
But that’s as deep as I go too, so I can’t really speak to that. But yeah, I can just say from these two songs that one of them is a little bit more guitar heavy than than this one is. Got too.
Yeah, this isn’t a million miles away from a lot of, you know, billboard, friendly pop music in in that time. Like it’s, I mean, this would have, I feel like, fit perfectly well on the billboard charts in 1987. Well, and I, my reaction was, with just putting it on and listening to it, I, you know, it triggered that I knew it from somewhere.
But my first thought was, this had to be in a John Hughes movie, and I was right. It was. It just sounds like that.
It sounds like that era John Hughes movie soundtrack song. It may have been that if it had come out of the world earlier, if it had come out in 84 rather than 87, it might have been a huge song, because by the time you get to 87, you’re starting to drift war towards the glam medal, you know, in the top 40. So, maybe Yeah, well, if it had made the from theian Pink soundtrack, it may have been more popular than it was.
Pretty in Pink was huge. You know, this movie wasn’t. Yeah, that’s another, I was going to just kind of in passing mention that I consider myself a, I mean, I don’t know that I’d say like I’m a John Hughes fan, in the sense that like I know everything about him and, and study his, you know, his, uh, his works or whatever.
But like, I mean, I’ve always enjoyed John Hughes movies and obviously they were a part of my growing up, just like you guys, but uh, I, I don’t kind of put some kind of wonderful in that same bucket with, with like the Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink and in 16 Candles. Like it just doesn’t, I don’t think of it when I think of John Hughes really. And I guess he didn’t direct it, so maybe that’s.
He didn’t direct it. But it’s interesting that if you look at the John Hughes Ouvre, you know, now that he’s he’s done dead or whatever and the era has passed, he really only made like maybe four movies that I would call like those signature John Hughes movies. 16 Candles, obviously The Breakfast Club is the kingpin of those.
Pretty and Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and then maybe you could throw weird science in there. But then you also have like vacation and some kind of wonderful. And then he does the Home Alone movies.
You know, it’s not, he’s, he’s not as much that as he gets labeled as. You know, People say John Hughes, you immediately think of, oh, that guy made 100 movies like The Breakfast Club. He really didn’t.
He was he kind of did that from 83 to 88, and then he stopped, and he wasn’t doing that before that either. That’s kind of interesting. that he gets kind of lumped in with that. He did create an entire genre, so I guess that you get credit for that.
But he really was more than, for good or bad, he was more than those teen comedy movies. The man could put together a soundtrack, that’s for sure. Yeah.
St. Elsmo’s fire was not one of his. Not him.
No, that was a. Yeah, done in the spirit, but not. Gotcha.
And St. Elmo’s Fire, you know, to be fair, those people are too old to be in a John Hughes movie. Like that movie’s set in college..
He never messed with college. He was a high school guy. Interesting.
Yeah, I guess I guess I don’t know as much about John Hughes as I thought I did. Yeah, and that’s the thing. If you really look at his filmography, it’s, there’s really only, I mean, I see, and I wouldn’t even put weird science in there because it’s so different from all the others.
It’s really four movies, 16teen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty and Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That’s it. And he created an entire world, you know, that people give him full credit for off those four films.
All right. Great song. I was going to say classic song, but maybe not necessarily a classic classic, but it I don’t know.
I I have always liked the song. I wish I knew kind of where I first ran across it, but for some reason you haven’t heard it. Check it out.
Next up is one that I kind of would consider like a college radio classic for sure. For me, it was. This may be more just personal because it’s kind of one of those first songs that I remember discovering in college radio, but Scott, take us through it.
So for my song, I chose, Could You Be the One by Whoosker Doo? What you one you be the one Cut’ one that’s I wanted to just pretend for a second that nobody’s ever heard of Wharoo, or you’re hearing this for the first time, just because that person might be out there. So I’ll give you a little bit of background.
Because this song, I think, you know, maybe is not as representative of them as some others could be, but it’s still a pretty great song. So if you, if you’ve never heard these guys and you pull up their Wikipedia page or any bio of them, whatever, you’re going to see the term pioneers of punk quite often. And if you listen to this song, it’s the first thing you ever hear, you’re going to go, what?
Because it really isn’t that punky at all. It’s a little bit. But, so Hooskeroo are considered major pioneers of punk, but it’s for the stuff they did kind of before this.
So this band forms 1979. They’re from St. Paul, Minneapolis, Minnesota area.
Three members, uh, that stayed in the band the entire time. They were pretty short-lived, but, you know, they kept the three same guys for the entire time. guy named Greg Norton on bass. Bob Mould is their lead singer and guitarist and primary songwriter.
And then the drummer’s name was Grant Hart. He also was a vocalist and songwriter for much of the first part of their career. So they get their start in 79.
In 83, they put out their first album. It’s called Everything Falls Apart. And it’s been re-released since with a bunch of EPs and live stuff from that same era called Everything Falls Apart and Much More or something like that.
Then in 84, they release an album called Zen Arcade. Zen Arcade is considered one of the masterpieces of punk rock. It is certainly arguable.
I’m sure that, you know, if you ask punk rock fans, they’re going to come up with 20 different albums that would be considered the pinnacle of that genre. But Zen Arcade is certainly in that conversation. I know that it’s been at the top of many, many lists of the greatest punk albums of all time.
It was a bold, big, double album of punk, which was not done at that time. And although I do find it funny that it’s a double album and it still only runs like an hour and five minutes. In fact, they were on SST Records, and them putting out a double album inspired the Minutemen to put out Double nickels on the Dime, which is another album that gets brought up in these conversations about the greatest part bunk albums of all time.
It’s also a double album. So the story behind that album is it’s coming out, the record label panics. They say, you know, there’s no way we can sell a doubleLP of this music.
It’s just not going to happen. And Hookeroo and other bands keep telling them, no, this is going to work. This album’s great.
It’s going to go, blah, blah, blah. They panic anyway. They only produce 3,500 copies of it for its initial run.
It sells out immediately, and it becomes this legendary thing where Hoos Goo’s got this fantastic album out. The critics are going nuts for it. Everyone’s talking about it, and you can’t buy it.
And so it sort of becomes this legendary thing. If anyone out there has a vinyl copy of the first pressing of Zen Arcade, it is worth double its weight in gold, apparently, because they were so rare. So I say all that to lead it into, in 85, they signed with Warner Brothers records.
At this time, Grant Hart stops as a vocalist pretty much. He’s on a couple of songs here and there. They record two albums for Warner Brothers.
This is the second one. The album is called Warehouse Songs and Stories, and this song was the lead single off of it. So at this time, Hooker Doo is in major turmoil.
Grant Grant H is upset that he’s getting kind of pushed out. Bob Mould has taken over and sort of it’s sort of become his band. Immediately after this album comes out, they break up.
Bob Mull goes on to do some solo work. He ends up forming some new bands and stuff like that. So that giant rainbow kind of has its apex right here.
We go from being a hardcore punk band, noise rock band, shifting a little bit more to power pop, a little bit more into poppy sounds. And then Bob Mool’s solo stuff is very poppy. And then he forms the band Sugar, which is insanely poppy.
And that’s kind of where we end up. So if you draw that as a big rainbow from the starter Hookerdoo to sugar, this is the top of that rainbow. This is where the punk sounds of Hooskeroo and the pop aesthetics of Bob Moulds sort of meet in the middle.
And it’s a wonderful song. It really is. I mean, this is as close to a hit as Hooker Doo ever had, I think, and it’s a really great little sort of rockin’ pop song.
That said, depending on your reaction to this song, I could tell you to go one of two ways. If you heard it and said, man, I wish that was noisier and grungier and more punk, go backwards and listen to things like Zen Arcade. If you said, man, this would be great if it would produced a little slicker or a little more polished, buy sugar’s copper blue.
And then one of those two things is going to be the answer to where you want to be. This is right there in the middle of both of those things. So that’s who’s for do?
Could you be the one? Man, I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love this song. Like, I really, I mean, this is the sweet spot for me between, I, and it’s funny that you put put it that way of kind of where it fits in Bob Mould’s career because it’s exactly the sweet spot.
I think for, not that I don’t love the stuff that came before it and I particularly like sugar because I do lean a little bit more probably towards the the more melodic pop stuff that he does later, but it’s all good. But this is that I feel like, yeah, it’s the peak it’s the sweet spot. It’s the right mix of the two things.
It’s always good like when the original guys have been together for a while and they’ve really got their groove, even even when they’re having internal struggles, like they’re they’re hitting on all cylinders for the whole album. But yeah, just, it’s, it’s as good as mid-80s guitar rock gets, if you want to call it that. It is a blueprint for a lot of what’s going to happen in the late 80s and 90s on college radio and then alternative radio.
I don’t I hate to throw out a number, but 80% of every artist on rock radio in the 90s probably name checked who’s K do at some point as a influence because why wouldn’t you? I mean, they’re everything that you love about, about loud, you know, loud guitar rock, but with some songwriting chops and with some, some sensibilities for making it listenable. Like it’s got that, that, the right mix of ingredients in that sense as well.
It’s just, yeah, there’s a reason that’s so many bands that you probably love looked up to these guys, uh, including the pixies, including Nirvana, like, you know, the Bedrock bands of the 90s movement, they trace back to who do and I’m sure you could trace it back, you know, from them. But if you have maybe recently discovered or maybe you’re kind of just getting into like 90s grunge and you’re starting to discover that type of music and from watching YouTube, I see that a lot of like Gen Z and millennial kids are just now discovering that. This is that this is another step back if you want to kind of look and see where that came from.
Man, I’s I’m hard depressed to think of anybody that represents that sound any better than Hoosker do. They did it as good as anybody ever did. The closest thing I can give you is the replacements.
And they kind of have the same trajector and they start out more as a punk band. They get a little popier as they go and then their lead singer breaks off and does even more sort of mainstreamy type stuff. I am confident I’m about to get raked over the Cols for saying this, but I believe that Bob Mould is a much better songwriter than Paul Westerberg.
And it’s his tunesm ability. Bob M songs have an undeniable melodic hook that, you know, gets in your brain and stays there. And even the hardcore punky stuff is still very catchy.
And it gets even more so as he gets produced better later on. But, and I look, I love the replacements and I love Paul Westerberg, but I just think, you know, people talk about Paul Westerberg being this fantastic songwriter and he is I’m not going to take anything away from him. I just think Mool has a much better sensibility when it comes to writing a tune.
But so, yeah, I think that’s the best parallel you could make. in the fact that you have a singer-songwriter who is very political and very good at writing, you know, catchy pop tunes and their style sort of morphs over the years from one thing into another. But yeah, that’s a good parallel if you, you, if you’re looking for something similar to Hooker Doo. But what you said is absolutely true.
Most of the early 90s punk slash grunge slash hard rock bands absolutely cite Hooskeroo as their as their influence and rightfully so they were a fantastic band for as short- livedived as they were. I’m glad you mentioned Paul Asterberg in the replacements because I really liked this Hooskeroo song, and I was afraid my longstanding tradition of Hate and not Scotty’s picks was going to go away, but such a slagged off Paul Letberg. I’ve got something I can hate on now.
And you didn’t slog Paul Eberg. I’ll admit to that. You’d give him his pops.
I’m not taking away. Yeah, you know how I feel about the replacements of Paul Westerberg. So we’ll leave that alone.
Let me just say that I disagree with her with that particular statement. But yeah, you know, it’s funny because you mentioned somebody who might not have heard who’s could do or whatever. I was that guy. knowing Bob Mold has had a long and you know, prosperous career with a lot of different chapters in it.
I have to admit, the only time I ever really checked into him was the Sugar albums. You know, I’ve got Copper Blue and Fall Under E Easy Listening, and both of which are fantastic. But for whatever reason, I never really checked out his solo career.
I never really went back and checked out Whokeroo. And so when I first heard the song, or you know, knew that you were picking a Who’skeroo song, when I went to listen to it, I was expecting something a lot more punky. I was not expecting something quite this melodic and poppy and really good.
I loved this song. This is fantastic. I thought it was really great.
And it does a little bit point forward to what Sugar’s going to do. Like this song could have been on either of the Sugar albums and it would not have been out of place even a little bit. There is a particular change in there that The structure of the song is a little weird in that there’s kind of a bridge between the verse and the chorus.
The change out of the verse into that little bridge part before it gets to the chorus just really, really, really lands for me. I don’t know exactly what it is about the way those notes progress, but you know, you talk about good songwriting and catchy moments. The change it right there from theore or from the verse into that little bridge into the chorus really, really hits me really well.
So, yeah, I got nothing bad to say about this song. I thoroughly enjoyed it and kind of feel like now I need to go back and maybe check out more Who’s Koo. I think I. Well, as you say, I guess the earlier stuff was more punky than this is, but I think maybe I just had a different impression of what they did than what they were actually doing, maybe.
I’m not sure. I would say to go backwards because there early stuff is just. Zenecade is a masterpiece of punk, but it is punk, and it’s it’s, you know, the difference being the vocals are a little more screamy.
Production’s a little more raw and it edgy. But the ability that Bob Mold has to write a tune is still there. You can still hear the melodiousness of his writing in those songs.
They’re just a little dirtier production-wise. But you can definitely go back, you know, this is the last Hoosker do album, the one before it, that’s also on Warner Brothers, and I forget the name of it. I think it’s got Cherry something in the title, is also just like this.
Like if you like this song, you’re going to like anything on this album, you’re going to like anything on the album before it, any of the Warner Brothers stuff. Going further back than that, it may be a little too, too nasty for you. I don’t know.
You should definitely check out some of Bob old solo stuff. It’s really, really good. And especially, you know, if you like sugar.
And I know, I think we’re all in agreement that sugar was fantastic, particularly Copper blue. I like both albums a lot, too, but Cper Blue to me is just a wall to wall masterpiece. And if you like that stuff, Bob M solo stuff is probably more up your alley.
But there is something for you on the early Who’sker do stuff. You just had to kind of have to go into it knowing that, you know, you’re going to hear a little less of the polish, a little more of the noise, but the core of it, the songwriting at the core of it is still there. Yeah, I’ll definitely have to check it out to him.
Like I said, I I was not only surprised by by this song, but really pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this song. Yeah, just a jam. It’s so good.
It is so good. It’s one of the, one of the, like one of those just underrated songs that should be, should have gotten way bigger. I’ll also throw out.
So the album you were talking about, Scott Candy Apple Gray is the one right before this. The song, Don’t want to know if you are Lonely, which is actually apparently I’m looking right now written by Grant Hart and not by Bob Mld is also one of my favorite Huskerdoo songs. It’s another really, I mean, they’re all so solid, but like that’s another really standout track.
Yeah, folks, if you have not listened to Hoo Kardoo, like, or Sugar or Bob Mold, for that matter, yeah, you, you’re really missing out. If you’re a fan of 90s music, particularly Grunge and things like the Bixies, who’s Koo is your favorite band’s favorite band? So listen to them.
You know, they give yourself a trait.. It’s one of those situations, and man, you just don’t hear anybody talking about sugar in particular. I just, I feel like Sugar and Bob Mold just don’t come up in conversation a lot or online or even like some best of lists.
Who’sker do I think, does get a little more credit because they were kind of more like the progenitors of a lot of stuff. And maybe that’s why Sugar was more of a contemporary with some of those bands and isn’t considered as much of a of an influence, but man, yeah, just take Scott’s advice, you know, based on what you, what, whether you lean punk or pop as to how you want to approach your scroo, but but definitely check it out. There’s something for both sets of ears.
I was going to say, you do hear a little bit about Zen Arcade. I’ve seen that one show up in like best of lists and that kind of thing, but really, that’s about the only thing I ever, ever see or hear about Who’s Kroo. Zen Arcade is a fantastic album.
Like I said. There’s not a lot on it that sounds like this song. So it’s it is it is pretty raw and pretty nasty.
It’s good. And it’s, like I said, you can still hear the songwriting abilities of these guys in the songs. It’s just the, you know, the production is just a little more raw.
But if you, if you’re a punk fan, especially early punk, like, you know, early 80s, I wouldn’t use the term hardcore because, you know, it doesn’t sound like black flag or anything like that, but it’s it’s definitely a harder edge sort of punk than some of the stuff that was going on around it. And I think it sort of led into what they started calling melodic punk bands like The Descendants and things like that. You know, I think Huskaru was a big influence on that too, because they were able to be punk and raw and edgy and still have these really catchy, you know, underlying tunes in their songs.
So, yeah, Zen Arcade is definitely worth listening to. It may not be for everybody, but it’s a damn fine album. Speaking of another kind ofndersung band, undersung, is that a band that I think deserves more credit is my choice for the week, which is Love Tractor.
The song that got played on 120 Minutes in March was party Train, which is actually a cover of the Gap bands. Everybody’s got to be on time So you won’t have to stand in line Damn! Whoo!
So, Love Tractor, first of all, we were able to interview Mike Richmond for the film, 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio. So if you’re wanting to know more about Love Tractor and some of the Athens bands and college radio in general, you can go watch that film. It’s a nice little film that I ded.
So I might be a little biased, but it’s available now on Amazon Prime or Tubi or Google Play and you can see, I mean we talked to Mitch Easter, who actually produced one of Love Tractor’s albums. Again, we talked to Mike Richman, who’s the lead vocalist and guitarist for Love Tractor, and he has a lot of cool things to say about the Athens music scene around that time, as well as like Mark Mothersbau and Joyce Santiago from Pixie. So go check it out. 35,000 watts Story of College radio available right now to watch on Amazon Prime 2B or Google Play.
So Love Tractor, they formed in 19800. All the members went to the University of Georgia in Athens. And if you can imagine being in Athens, Georgia in 1980 meant that you were surrounded by a burgeoning music scene that still kind of stands as like one of the iconic music scenes in the United States of all times of it’s right up there with like the grunching in Seattle in the 90s.
I mean, there was was just this thing that was happening in Athens. And I talked to, you know, so we interviewed Love Tractor for that. We interviewed a Pylon for that.
We interviewed, you know, mid Mitch Easter, who produced REM and who also was in Let’s Active. We talked to Burt Downs, who is the manager of RM and still lives in Athens to this day and like kind of asked like what was happening, what was it going on in Athens that caused this kind of thing to blow? Like what is the what is the difference between Athens in another college town?
Well, like Lubbock, let’s say, because they’re not that different. Like Athens, there wasn’tt anything special on the surface of Athens that would make you think, oh, well, that’s, yeah, of course, that’s why these huge bands like the B-52s and REM blew up and came out of Athens. It wasn’t, it was just kind of, it just kind of happened.
There was there was a scene that kind of built around actually the art department at the University of Georgia, which is where like Michael Steipe and a lot of people came from visual arts and kind of moved into the music scene in Athens. So there was kind of a nucleus around that. There was, of course, an amazing college radio station, WUOG and that as like like always a huge piece of the puzzle.
When you’ talking about a music scene, you had the 40 Watt Club, which is like a, at that time, especially, just one of those clubs that would, you know, you could get 10 people in maybe on a certain night and the band would still play and everybody would still have a good time. So you had a venue for these bands to kind of learn how to play live and learn how to get a crowd and learn how to grow. And then you had a really good record scene with W Street Records.
So that was kind of like a theme that I ran into a couple times while I was making the film was this like, all the ingredients that you need in a town to really make things happen. You need a really great venue. You need a good college radio station.
You need a good record store and then you need like this nucleus of kids who are going to college. They all are written these like cheap ass apartments in the same part of town so they kind of interact with each other and they cross-pollinate. And the next thing you know, you have this scene where you’ve got first the B-52’s, I think they, they really did kind of come first.
But then around the same time, Pylon, REM, Love Tractor, oh okay, the side Effects, all these other bands really were contemporaries of each other. They weren’t really riding each other’s coattails. They didn’t even really ride the B-52s coattails that much, but I think the B-52s did help crack the door open a little bit.
I know Berta specifically talked about R.E.M., like having a little bit of an entree into the New York music scene because of the B-52s. But really, it was just this really cool thing happening in this town. Love Tractor was a really big part of that.
They started out recording mostly instrumental rock, which was really unusual. I mean, really in the history of music, like in the history of pop music, there’s not that many bands that were doing instrumental rock that still caught on and that still sold a lot of albums. I mean, there are exceptions to that rule, but largely speaking, certainly unlike the billboard charts and stuff, an instrumental track is going to be like the exception to the rule, very, very rare thing.
But they were they were doing their, I think their first album was almost entirely instrumental and then slowly, but surely they do start working vocals into some some of the songs become like full on produced, you know, with like a full vocal track. Sometimes they have, I don’t know, kind of like laid back vocal tracks that almost feel like just another instrument that’s getting layered on. And that that’s kind of what Love Tractor did is they would do these songs that just kind of would layer the instruments and they would build and they’d get a little louder.
And then pretty soon they’d kind of build to this crescendo and they were the masters of that. They were they were doing really deep dance rock is what, like from what I understand, people would go see them in Athens and they were dancing to that, you know, and you obviously had New wave and dance rock and dance music starting to take off at that same time. But like, when you think about it in 1980, 81, 82, going to see a band and dancing to him wasn’t as kind of foreign as maybe it is to us now.
I mean, everybody loves to, you know, kind of pop around. But like really thinking of a rock band as like a dance rock band is, is very much of that time, I feel like. I feel like that’s not really a turn that gets thrown around.
But Love Tractor really, truly was like a dance rock band in the best sense in the best sense of the word to the point where they record Party Train, which is a cover of the Gap band, who is absolutely like a dance funk band. The song is a really cool interpretation of the gap Rock version. I think it’s it takes it doesn’t lose like all of the funkiness of the original.
It certainly defunctifies it a little bit and like southern rocks it up a little bit. So like you have these elements of like, it’s almost like you can kind of hear REM mixing in, you know, because there is that jangle right thing going on. There is a Lovetractor, if nothing else, were fantastic musicians.
So there’s this very tight, you know, rhythm section that’s that does justice to this song, I think. Yeah, I’m curious to hear what you guys think about it. I It’s not my favorite Love Tractor song.
I don’t know that this song really represents the best of Love Tractor, but it’s, I wasn’t sure if another Love trackor song was going to pop up later on. I haven’t really been looking ahead on the 120 minutes playlist to see if I could have maybe chosen another Love tractor song later on. So I wanted to jump on.
I wanted to jump on the love tractor. I wanted to jump on the party train. Right right now and choose this song.
So would I say this is the most best representative song of Love Tractor No? Is it a little weird that they’re covering a gap band song and is it perfectly faithful to the original or whatever? Not necessarily, but it’s still kind of funky.
It’s still certainly danceable. It still highlights what Love Tractor does really well, which is again, just tight musicianship. And the video is kind of unremarkable.
They’re kind of just tooling around town. I honestly was really focused on the music of this and didn’t focus too much on the video and I don’t think there’s anything super remarkable about the video to remark on. But yeah, I don’t, I don’t know.
I’ve been kind of immersed more in Love Tractor because they were in the film and so I know more about them than I did back in the day when I I didn’t know as much about Love Tractor. And so I don’t know where you guys are coming in on the Love Tractor party train, but let’s find out. I have a few things.
I have thoughts. I have thoughts. No, okay.
First of all, I love the Gap band. They are one of my favorite bands of that era, and I have a good story about that that I’ll throw in here and you can use it or not. When I first saw this come up, I didn’t know much about Love Tractor.
I knew their name and I knew Bill B played drums for them for a minute. Somehow I had that in the back of my head somewhere. But I didn’t know much of their tune.
So after this, I did go dig a little bit deeper. And you’re right. They are just a fantastic collective of musicians.
They just really are tight and a really good band.. And they definitely have that sort of Athens sound. And that’s going to be my next thing.
But so this song is, you know, for being a cover of a remarkably funky jam, it’s good in that it’s just as funky as four white boys from Georgia need to be. It’s. Yeah, right.
It’s not too funky and it certainly doesn’t feel like cultural appropriation or anything like that. The video may be another story with that, but it’s perfect. It’s just a nice little, you know, here we are, this little band from Georgia, who definitely have the sort of REM jangle pop Americana sort of sound, taking on a funk classic, and doing a damn fine job of it.
I really did enjoy the song quite a bit. It did make me dig a little further into Love Tractor. And I like these guys.
I didn’t They were kind of off my radar. I knew the name, like I said, and I had a little history of them, but I did not know much about them, and I hadn’t heard a lot of their music. I have now, and I really enjoyed a lot of it.
I wanted to, well, let me tell my Gap Band story first, because it’s funny. So this would have been about 2004. I went to see a concert at Reliance Stadium in Houston.
So 70,000 people there to see what I can only describe as the Dr. Dre All- Stars. It was like, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem, Mary J. Bige, and The Gap Band.
So this is 70,000 young hip hop fans in Houston, Texas, fairly aggressive market for hip hop, and out comes the Gap band. And they’re the first bill of the day. They are wearing their matching cowboy outfits with the tassels.
And, you know, at this point, they’re all in their 60s, I believe. They walked on stage and you could hear the laughter coming out of the crowd. Like you could hear everybody going, what the hell is this?
Three minutes into their first song, that had completely changed. They owned that stadium. They had that place bumping.
And later in the show, I think it was Snoop Dogg, brought them out because he sampled one of their songs or something. You would have thought the original lineup of NWA walked out on that stage. Like that place erupted.
So I was very happy that day that a young generation got to hear the wonder and amazement that is the Gapman. They are fantastic. But anyway, so that’s my Gatman story.
So I wanted to talk you, you were talking about the Athens scene, and you I’m glad you kind of know way more about it than I do when we’re able to address that a little bit because every time you hear about the Athens music scene, somebody has to mention the B-52s. And I’ve always been like, you know, you have all these bands that came out of Athens. They all all kind of sound of a theme.
You know, they all kind of have, you have REM and then you have a bunch of bands that sound like REM. And then on the outskirts of that, you have the B-52’s. And, you know, REM starts getting popular in like 82.
Some of these other bands are like right after that. The B-52’s first album is in 1979. So I always had the opinion that, yes, the B-52s are from Athens, and that’s where they formed, but then they bounced and went to New York, and, you know, they were a CBGB band and all that stuff.
So I find it interesting that they are sort of considered maybe the connection from New York to Athens. Like, you know, they went to New York and, but they never forgot their roots and went back and helped some of these bands get maybe representation or producers or whatever. So kudos to the B-52s for that because I’ve never quite understood I never quite understood how they fit into this.
And let them open for them on tour, like Love Tractor open for the B-52s on the tour, things like that. Yeah. Okay, so they were they were giving opportunities to the bands that came out for them, and that’s, they deserve all the credit in the world for that.
Because I’ve never been able to really place the B-52s in this scene, but that that makes a lot of sense, you. I would also argue that Love Tractor is a, if you’re not familiar with Love Tractor, it helps connect the dots from B-52s musically to some of the other bands because if you really start listening to like, say if I were a millionaire, I think is the name of the track, if I was a millionaire, by Love Tractor, it’s, it’s got almost like a four on the floor dancing. I mean, it is like the B-52s dance rock.
And that was a thing that was happening in Athens that gets lost because of bands like RE.M. And but like Pylon and Love Tractor and B-52s were making dance music that just happened to be rock oriented, I think. And that is another way that it kind of connects. And RM did not do that.
There’s another interesting connection in that, you know, if you listen to the early, early B-52s, you know, I’ I’m not talking about like the Love Shack era. I’m talking about rock lobster. You know, the B-52s were basically doing surf guitar music.
And surf guitar music is heavily instrumental a lot of times, and Lovetractor does a lot of instrumental tracks. And you’re right. That sort of that sort of, you know, party rock thing is there in both bands as well.
So that’s, yeah, that’s really interesting. interesting. I mean, I don’t know. I’m glad you connected those dots for me because in my head I’ve always been like, okay, so there’s REM and then there’s these, you know, all these other, you know, sort of jangly pop, you know, and then rock blow stop, you know, that’s not,’s never connected for me, you know, but that that makes a lot of sense.
So, yeah. So thank you for that. I was kind of in the same boat, actually.
And part of that is because I am not familiar, wasn’t familiar at all with Love Tractor until listening to this song and not at all familiar with Pylon either. So to me, the B feature 2s have always kind of stuck out like a sore thumb from the other bands of that scene that I was aware of. You know, I’ve heard heard the name pylon before, but I never really checked into them.
So yeah, that is that’s definitely interesting. As far as this song goes, I did not know this was a cover, to be perfectly honest with you. I didn’t know this was a Gat band cover.
I was laughing a little bit about the song because there’s all about like maybe 12 individual words in it. Like, you know, don’t miss the party train. Very typical of the Gap band.
Yeah. And so then I looked and I was reading through and it was like, they largely did instrumental rock. I was, well, okay, that makes sense because when they are writing lyrics, they’re only writing like 10 or 12 words.
Yeah, so I was just wrong on that. I didn’t realize that that was a cover, but I guess it does kind of fit in with what they do if it does’t have a whole lot of lyric to it.. I really liked this song.
Yeah, I thought, you know, it’s got the kind of the main guitar lick that runs throughout it is, you know, kind of crunchy and killer. And then the electronic, there’s little kind of the electronics and niggling in through here and there, throughout it, a little keyboard part kind of after the main kind of chorus part. And then there’s also where you might think there would be a guitar solo.
There’s that little jangly part in there where he’s playing over the top of the more crunchy guitar part toward the end that I really liked as well. So musically speaking, like everything about this song, I really, really enjoyed. I thought it was really well done.
You know, like I said, I did kind of get a laugh out of the lyrics, but now I understand that a little better. Maybe that makes a little more sense. The video itself, I enjoy too.
You say maybe there’s a little cultural appropriation in there, possibly, because at the club, you know, the scene where they’re at the club at the end. But largely, I thought it was a pretty fun video and there’s a part in it early on where there’s a shot of him like head on, Mike Richman and he’s singing, but he’s not really like getting into it. He’s not like doing the lip sync thing where you’re really trying to look like you’re singing real hard and everything.
And all of a sudden he lets loose with a whoo and like, really moves his lips at all when he makes that little noise. And that every time I watch this video like four or five times and literally cracked up out loud laughing every single time I saw it, I just went, the very little light just kind of purses his mouth just a little bit, and then you get woo out of that. It just, yeah, every time I watched that, that little bit cracked me up.
But yeah, I liked everything about this. I liked the video, I liked the song. Yeah, really great.
Mike is such a getting to interview him with was just a delight. Like he invited us into his house. He is he’s super soft- spoken and just super chill guy.
So, like seeing him do the woos and just even just being a rock star, like having met him, you know, in the present day for the first time, like he doesn’t, you see, he doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t have that like, oh, I’m a rock star kind of attitude when you meet him, but man, he’s such a good guitarist and like those guys are just so tight when they play together. Really, really enjoyable. This is a good band to dig into if you haven’t.
They’re really good. I did not know much about them, but man, they kind of blew me away. I really liked them.
I thank you because I like them as people having met them. And so it’s cool to like kind of introduce people to them. And also they’re it’s just good good stuff.
Like, and pylon’s the same. I think, I think we’ll have the opportunity to talk about Pylon in a future episode because I’m sure they, they hit 120 minutes during this, this era, although it’s a, you know, this is, I wouldn’t say this is past, you know, their prime, but Love Tractor and pylon, and of course, REM were still very much in their prime during the like 87, 888, but hopefully we’ll hit a pylon song. So we can talk about them.
But the song I wanted to point out is I misquoted it. It’s Buy me a million dollars is the name of the Love track. It’s off the self-titled album, very first track, Buy me a million dollars.
If you’re one of those people that just kind of like wants to sample a new artist and you don’t really know where to start, I’m going to just start you off, buy me a million dollars, buyy Love Tractor off the album of the same name. If you like that, then just keep going on that album and and then you can kind of start getting into some of their other stuff around that same time. But that’s a really great place to start.
It’s a perfect example of what they do. It’s one of my favorites. There’s also a song on that album called Chili Willie, which is also amazing.
And by the way, I will go ahead and say Pylon, if you don’t know about Pylon and you’re in Apple Music or Spotify and you’re listening to stuff, listen to Pylon Cool is the name of the song. It’s their very first single. If you, A, if you don’t like Pylon Cool, then I don’t know what you’re doing listening to music at all.
It’s just freaking cool. It’s such a good song. It’ll also help draw the connection from B-52s to some of these other bands.
Like it is very much of that vibe. It’s a dance rock track. It is incredibly cool.
It’s It’s also a little weirder and more eclectic than Love Tractor. Pylon definitely was kind of the weirder of the two bands. But yeah, if you’re, I don’t know, if you’re fan of H music, if you’re a fan of R.EM. and the Athens scene, but haven’t gone back and dug into those bands, highly recommend it.
Those are some good starting points. You definitely can’t go wrong. And having met those people, they’re all, they’re all really good people and they’re worth they’re worth the time to check out for sure.
I also really like, I got to keep, I know we’re going to end up talking about Pylon in the future, so I should stop. But Pylon still tours or still does shows around Athens and kind of does min tours, but they, and they have a lot of their original members still, but they tour at as Pylon Reenactment Society, which I think is the coolest name for like a band that is kind of has changed their membership like a little bit and they’ve gotten maybe on in years, but they’re still out there doing shows. I really like that they build themselves as pylon reenactment society just really cracks me up.
I don’t know much about pylon. I’m going to have to dig into them a little bit. I don’t know.
Man, when we get when we get off the podcast, listen to cool. Name of the track is cool. It is it is an abundantly cool track.
It’s amazing. And you’ll be sucked in from there. And if it connects everything to the B5, I love the B-52s.
I unabashedly love those guys, and I know they’re silly, but I love them. And so anything that connects that, you know, if that’s the line between, if the line goes between the B52s and REM, I’m in. I I think so.
I mean, I think Pylon coo definitely. If you listen to it, you’ll be like, oh, I can see how they came from kind of the same scene as the B-52s and maybe like went to a B-52 show and kind of got of like you could can see it. I think you can see it listening to cool and a couple of their other tracks, obviously, as well.
But we, we will likely dive into that more in another episode, so I’ll quit talking about Pylon, but go check out Love Tractor for sure. Great people, great bands. and they’ve actually got a fairly good catalog to dig into. So if you, if you like it, there there’s a lot there to dig into.
And they’ve even released some, some relatively recent music as well. And if you live in the Athens area, like they do occasionally do still shows with Pylon Enenactment Society and some of those other guys. So check them out.
All right. So those are the songs that we each chose, some man, just three really good tracks. I liked everything that we talked about today.
So now we are doing our mystery tracks. So each episode, we choose a song that none of us had heard of before, I think in general, the artist as well. Like until we get into the 90s, I think we should be able to choose both bands and songs that we don’t know anything about.
And I, this episode, we absolutely were able to do that. I think we had multiple choices. So, Keith, what did we end up landing on for our mystery song this week?
This week we’re going with one by a band called The Huxton Creepers, and the song is called I Wers Persuade You. But that is because life goes on without me I will persuade you I will you It’s so far away from you You’re so far away First things first, let me just say we have talked on earlier episodes about great band names. I am going to go ahead and nominate the Huxton Cepers for induction into the band name Hall of Fame.
And the funny thing about that is to me, if it was just the creepers, it would not work. It’s not the same thing. And I looked up online, I tried to go and find out what Huxton was.
Is it a city or something in Australia? These are guys are an Australian band. Yeah, I could not find anything about it.
So I don’t know where that comes from. I don’t know what Huxton is. Like I said, if it was just the creepers, probably not.
But something about Huxton Cepers just really, really works. So, yeah, officially nominated for the the band named Hall of Fame. It’s awesome.
But these guys are an Australian band. They formed in 1984. They put out three albums before it was all said and done.
This song, I will Persuade You, is off their first album, which is called Twelve Days to Paris. I like the fact that their second album is called So This is Paris. So first you get the first album, 12 Days to Paris, and then you get.
So this is Paris. What do we call that in Australia one. when it got released in the U.S. and Canada, it had a different name on it. So I don’t know why they did that because that’s such a great progression of album names there. yeah, so if you’re looking for some Hugton Creeper stuff, you know, Google P and Hugton Creepers together, and there’ll be a couple of different albums that’ll pop up for you.
But this song is basically just a guitar rocker. There’s not a whole lot going on here that’s really special, but it’s a good guitar rocker. I really liked it.
Video same way, not a whole lot to really recommend it. It’s another performance video, but it’s not bad. The one thing I really, really liked about this song is kind of the a little more ragged, like not real slickly produced vocal harmonies that these guys do together.
There’s a lot of like, kind of, I don’t want to say, you know, I hate to say beach boys-ish because these guys certainly do not sing like the Beach Boys, but kind of a little kind of moments in this song where they’re doing some kind of vocal harmonizing together and it’s a little loose and a little ragged and it just completely worked well for me. I like the vocal styling on this. a little bit in the actual song to the actual lyrics. But yeah, I don’t have a whole lot on this.
I looked them up. There’s not a whole lot of information out there about them. They weren’t together for very long.
But, man, they did persuade me that we went 4 for four this week and great songs. I liked this one quite a bit as well. Yeah, I liked it.
I found it a little vaguely threatening. I don’t know if that.. like just like it’s a little intense and a weird. In the every breath you take kind of way.
Yeah. Yeah. Like catchy, but what?
Yeah Yeah. It was like, and I was wondering, like, am I letting the band name influence my thoughts? But no, the song is just a little vaguely weird.
It’s something about his delivery. Maybe it’s got a little of that just like, yeah, I just felt vaguely threatened watching. I watched it like twice through and by the end of it, I felt a little uncomfortable.
Like I kind of wanted to shut my laptop so he wasn’t able to like look at me anymore. Like I didn’t want to, I didn’t want him like peering into my soul any longer, but but no, otherwise, yeah, I think Keith nailed it like great harmonies, a nice solid track. I don’t know that I’ll probably dig much deeper into the Hucks and Creepers and I don’t, it doesn’t seem like they have a lot to do.
I don’t think you can. Yeah. But yeah, again, like for just a mystery song that we, that we plucked, you know, off the playlist solely by name, yeah, nothing wrong with it.
And great. Yeah, the band name is good. And I I, I also was kind of curious where that came from and Wikipedia was no help as they were not with most of the information you might wish to know about this band.
You’re pretty much on your own, trying to figure it out. Yeah, besides feeling just, just, again, vaguely upsetting, watching it just from just a vibe standpoint. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Yeah. So I, yeah, I, we’re four for four this week. This song slaps.
I loved it. I mean, I like you said, I’m not going to run out of buy all the Huck and Creepers albums or anything, but this song was a rocker. I liked it.
I really think I was trying to dig around because you look at like their charts and stuff like that. I don’t think these guys made it out of Australia at all. Like I think this might have been their one touch on American soil was being on 120 minutes, a time or two, you know?
So it really didn’t get out of Australia. So I think really thinks this was our only exposure. You know, when I first watched the song, watched the video, my one note I wrote down was Iggy Pop question mark.
And when I dug into these guys a little bit, it turns out that the Stooges and Iggy Pop were a major influence on them. You hear it in the lead singer’s vocals. He kind of has this Iggy pop thing.
And then underneath it, you have the other guys doing these sort of clean harmony vocals or whatever. And then I think musically, if you take all the vocals out, musically, the guitar riff and sort of like the feel of the song kind of has an early midnight oil kind of thing going on. All those things put in the blankender and stirred up, made for just a really fun song.
I really, really liked this one. So, yeah, we did good this week, guys. We picked some really, we picked some jammy jams.
Yeah, I’m surprised these guys didn’t do more, do something else? I don’t I don’t know. I mean, it seems like they’re good enough.
Yeah, they just didn’t. I mean, I don’t know how long you can be popular just in Australia and and, you know, have a career because the record labels are not going to keep putting out records for you if you’re not selling anywhere else but there. It’s not a very big place, you know, you either you have to turn into NXS or Midnight Oil or ACDC or you have to go away, you know, I guess.
I’m totally guessing. I don’t know that that’s how it works, but it just seems to me like being limited to a country that small, you know, maybe the internet would have helped these guys, you know, they would have gotten out a little more. One thing I thought was funny was, if you read their bios, you know, after this band was only together for a few years and then they broke up.
And one of the guys, I forget which one it is, is now a high school teacher. He teaches Indonesian to Australian high school students, which, as job descriptions go, that’s a’s a homeing.er. If you get on the comments on YouTube, there’s like 10 or 12 of them.
They’re like, hey, that’s my Indonesian teacher. How cool would that be? That’s awesome..
I got to get out of that dude. He scares me a little bit, but he rocks. I’m not totally off base with that.
That is like a little, there’s a little bit of an undertone to this song. Yeah, I mean, like I said, it’s it’s like the every breath you take, like the first time you hear every breath you take by the police, you’re like, oh, yeah, that’s kind of jams. And then really listen to the lyrics of that song.
It’s creepy AF. And so, and this is kind of the same thing. It’s like, you know, I will persuade you.
Okay.. But then if you really start looking at these guys, it’s like, I will persuade you. It It’s like you looking over there reading glasses, you know?
Yeah, okay. I wasn’t sure if maybe it was just me. I guess I was not as quite as minister by them as you guys were, but…
I’ll get back to watch it again and see if I can let them creep me out a little worse. The lead singer also has a little bit of a Dave Perner thing going on. Not He does.
Not vocally, but but visually, aesthetically. Visually, yeah. Yeah, I guess this will be a running theme with particularly our mystery songs of people that were like, man, these guys are pretty good.
Why didn’t they get any further? And the answer is always going to be, I man, who knows?. It’s just, it’s like, you know, we we talked about that like a lot of the time on the one-hit wonders stuff, like bands like Hagfish, who we all three loved and just, they just didn’t make that leap up into the big leagues and you just don’t.
It’s like they’ they’re just as good as this other band that did. And, you know, I maybe the Hucks and Creepers don’t necessarily fall in that category, but you know what I mean? That’s probably going to be a running theme for us.
Yeah, I think, you know, there there’s any number of things that can go wrong in that situation.. It’s one of those deals like, you know, the butterfly flaps his wings in, you know, one part of the world and you get a monsoon in another. You know, any number of little things could have happened that knocked them off course or any band that, you know, that is kind of, you feel like should have done more than they did.
There’s just not any way of telling with an individual band like that, especially someone like this who’s really obscure and from Australia. And so who knows what happened to them. But yeah, man, they, at least on the strength of this song, seemed like they were a pretty good band.
And they made it on 120 Minutes, which I mean, again, at this time, this show comes on once a week. They can only play what, I think they play about 20 to 22 tracks a week on the show. So, I mean, they kind of, you know, I mean, that, like, like Scott said, that was kind of the big time at that point for them to, like, where else were they going to go that would be much bigger than getting a kind of a plum spot on an MTV show like 120 minutes?
So, maybe that was it. That was, that was kind of their shot and it just didn’t catch a fire. Yeah, they just.
I mean, if you look at, like I said, if you look at the charts, you’ll see like Australia is the only place they ever charted, and it’s not high. Like this song was like 132 on the Australian charts or something, you know? Oh, interesting.
Yeah. So and it never, they never really took off even there, although people there seem to know who they are. Like, if you get on their comments and stuff, you’ll see, like, oh, I remember these guys, you know, blah, blah, blah, from Australia.
But they never, like, you know, a lot of times with these obscure bands from other countries and stuff, you’ll see like, well,, they went to number 200 in Ireland or something, you know, or whatever. You’ll see some chart activity somewhere else on the planet and you just don’t with these guys. It’s nothing outside of Australia.
And even there, it’s not very impressive. So I just, I think a record label gave them a shot and it just didn’t happen. You know, it just didn’t take off.
But there’s some people in Australia that seem to dig them and a whole lot of kids taking Indonesian from that one guy. All right, Huxton Creepers, I will persuade you. So all of these songs are our videos are on YouTube.
We are using 120minutes.org and we we should give them a shout out. They are a website that has painstakingly collected playlist from 120 minutes and have linked all the YouTube videos. And it’s a fairly, I would say, fairly comprehensive doesn’t even do it justice.
It’s almost completely comprehensive. I think there’s a few holes here and there that they haven’t been able to fill yet, but they are doing a great job of collecting the playlists and as we get later on, the actual, the actual broadcast of 120 minutes, which will be kind of interesting when we get to that point. But that is March of 1987.
Next episode will be moving on to April in our journey through 120 minutes on MTV. So that’s a lot of fun. I think we already have our songs picked out and it’s going to be another good episode.
So look for that soon. Don’t forget about 35,000 watts’s the story of college radio available now to watch on Google Play on Tubi and on Amazon Prime. And once again, thanks to Scott Mobley and Keith Porterfield for joining me on this episode of 120 Mon and we’ll see you next time