We’re halfway through the year 1987 and in this episode, we dive in to the early years of bands that would go on to bigger and better things as the decade comes to a close.
DOWNLOAD
Episode 6 – June 1987 (37 downloads )TRANSCRIPT
And welcome back to 120 months. A month, five month retrospective of MTVs, 120 minutes. I’m here with Scott Mobley and Keith Porterfield.
We’re each picking a song from June of 1987 is the month that we are currently on. And we’re going to each pick a song, kind of go down the rabbit hole a little bit, talk about the band, talk about the song. Maybe talk about something else related to it.
Who knows? And then we’ve got our mystery song at the end. A new song, not a new song, a new song to us that somehow in our all of our music listening and all of our college radio days we all failed to run across.
And so far, we’ve managed to find one each month that was new to us. If you’re following along with us, we’ve mentioned this before, 120 minutes.org is a website where they have spent years and years cataloging all of the playlists from 120 minutes. And it’s a great website.
We definitely thank them for their help getting all this put together. If you go there, you’ll notice that they actually don’t have any playlist from June of 1987. I think that it’s probably the last time we were going to run across this issue.
Maybe there’s one more like this. But so what we’ve done is we’ve noticed that 120 minutes tended to play songs week to week, they would carry them over a lot of the time. So we had to make some educated guesses as to what may have played in June of 1987.
So the songs we picked were from May or July. for sure. So they are 120 minutes tracks. There’s a good chance they did play in June, but we weren’t able to 100% verify that for all you sticklers out there.
So, uh, we’ve got 3 songs lined up. We starting off with Mr. Keep. Try again.
So we’ve got 3 great songs lined up for you this week and we are kicking things off with Mr. Keith Borfield. All right. Well, one of the things that I’ve really enjoyed about the, this format with the, going through in the 120 minutes is being able to kind of get myself a little introduction on bands that I had heard of or, or, you know, maybe heard a song or something like that and and kind of revisit them and give them a little bit better, uh, you know, look than I’d ever done in the past.
And this week was no different. I specifically picked one like that. And so today I’m going to talk about a song called Severina by the band, Mission UK.
And I, like I said, I’d heard of the Mission UK, but not a band that I ever really knew anything about or checked into it also. This was my 1st experience with them. They are a UK band, a British band, known as only the mission in the UK.
The mission UK is strictly what they were called in the United States. And that was because there was, when they 1st came over here, there was a R&B act from Philadelphia that was also had the name the mission, and so they had to adjust and become the mission UK. And it seemed like that was a thing in the late 80s and early 90s.
I don’t know if you guys remember, but like the charlatans for a while were having to call themselves the charlatans UK and then Wade, you know, Suade was the London Suede for a little bit. So there was a little while there that just like that just kind of seemed to be a thing and that ended up happening to the mission as well. The main guy behind the Michigan UK is a guy named Wayne Hussey, he and one of the other members were formerly in the band called Sisters of Mercy, who we haven’t talked about yet on this podcast, but I have a feeling at some point they might show up.
Yeah. They were a good kind of goth rock band. So yeah, I feel like we’ll probably end up hitting them at some point or another.
But these 2 broke away, started this new band. The original name of this band was called the Sisterhood, basically playing off the old Sisters of Mercy name. But they played a few gigs known as the Sisterhood, and then the front man from Sisters of Mercy, a guy named Andrew Eltrich, released a single under the name, the Sisterhood.
And I can’t prove it, but I would imagine, just so these guys couldn’t use that name. So if you ever won this one, the lead singer of the Sisters of Mercy might be a petty bastard. It turns out he might be.
So they had to change their name again. They became the mission and then the mission UK. So that’s how they are known these days.
Wayne Hussey, like I said, he’s the only guy that’s been in the band for the entire time, he’s had some guys that come in, come back and that kind of thing, but he’s the only constant member. He also played in Dead or Alive for a little while. And as I was doing research on this, it said that he had played with the cure at some point or another, as a gigantic cure fan, I don’t have any idea when that would have happened.
I mean, maybe he sat in with him on the live band at one point or another. I don’t know. I’ve never heard of Wayne Hussey playing with the cure, but that’s what it said on his Wikipedia page.
So we’ll treat that with a grain of salt. Who knows? There’s a chance that I might have been in the cure at one point.
Not 100% sure, but they’ve rotated through a lot of people. I think maybe that was impossible, yeah. It seemed like I remember having a lot of Aquamet in my hair at one time or another.
Maybe I was a mature. But this song, Severina, I watched the video for it, and like I said, this was my 1st ever introduction to these guys. I had a couple of quick impressions.
My first one, when I first heard the opening of the song was, These guys sound like the church. That was the first kind of comp that I had, is I thought, you know, it was the church, is what they sounded like. The 2nd thing I thought, the minute I saw Wayne Hussey was, this guy looks like the love child of boy George and Ian Asbury.
And although that actually was kind of a normal look back in the 80s. There were a lot of guys running around looking like the love child of boy George and Ian Asbury. This guy is like the poster child for it.
I mean, that was essentially exactly what I thought when I saw him. The video is pretty generic. It’s just a performance video there on a stage somewhere.
It’s all kind of set up to look like there’s a space motif. There’s stars and constellations in a big moon in the background. It does cut away a few times to some scenes of a woman underwater swimming, supposedly, or I guess that could very well be Severina, who knows?
And I don’t know what the what the significance of the water imagery is or if there is any imagery, but that’s basically it. It’s just them performing the song and then you cut back to the image of her underwater swimming around. The song itself, kind of a mid-tempo, kind of jangle rocker.
It a good one. I really liked it. Um, I think if I delve more into these guys, I think I would like them.
You know, I listened to a couple of other songs of theirs and I liked all of them, this song seemed pretty representative, but I also checked out one called Tower of Strength, one called Deliverance, a couple of others. Yeah, I liked all of it. So I kind of feel like this might be a band that I need to kind of check in on a little more.
Um, but that’s really about it. I mean, I didn’t have a whole lot more about them. The song itself is off an album called God’s Own Medicine. was the 1st album that they put out.
It got mixed reviews. One of them, though, I really liked. This was a quote I liked.
It was a bad review. These people didn’t like it, but they called it a horrible amalgam of Led Zeppelin. Yes, and Echo and the Bunnyman.
So if you happen to like any of those bands, which is a pretty wide net to cast, maybe you should check these guys out. If it is an amalgam of those guys, I didn’t find it to be a horrible amalgam of them, so I enjoyed it. Whether it’s, you know, horrible to those guys, some of these folks or not, but, yeah, that’s really about it.
I don’t have a whole lot on it. Like I said, I just kind of checked in on this just to, because I’d heard of the mission UK and never really listened to any other stuff. But I enjoyed it.
I liked the song. The video was pretty generic, but wasn’t bad. So I’m interested to see what you guys thought about it.
So I’m in the same boat as you, Keith, I heard of this band, but I don’t think I really heard anything from them. If I had, I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I played several songs and I couldn’t find one that I went, oh yeah, that one.
So yeah, I think it was kind of in the same boat and that this is one of those bands I had heard of. I certainly noticed sisters of Mercy and, and, um, was kind of surprised to find out this guy was with them because I’d never heard of a spinoff or anything like that. Um, So, the song itself, I definitely liked.
I also immediately thought of the church when it came on. So, I’m glad to hear I wasn’t going way too out on a limb with that. But watching the video and hearing the song for the 1st time.
I had a real, um, a real Beavis and Butthead reaction to that chorus, meaning that, uh, the song started and I went, all right, all right, all right, racking along. Okay, this is good. And then that chorus hit, I went, oh.
I don’t know what is going on with that chorus. like, I don’t know if it was just super 80s or something weird with the production, but man, it really, like, struck me. Not enough to make me say I didn’t like the song, but it was just really like a moment where the song almost like changes into something else when that chorus ends. But yeah, overall, I like this and I felt kind of the same way you did that I would love to like be a little deeper into these guys because I don’t know anything about them.
I’d always heard the name, but I don’t think anything of theirs ever struck me enough to follow up much with them. So yeah. about the same reaction. But yeah, this was a good one.
I liked it. And the video’s fine. It’s pretty generic.
A lot of the ones we’ve talked about, but yeah, overall, I’ve done this. Yeah, that course is very 80s. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, I had kind of the same reaction.
I would say the 1st thing I thought was, oh, I can see why Keith digs this, not realizing that you didn’t actually, weren’t actually familiar with these guys, I was like, oh, yeah, this is right up Keith Sally. Like, of course, he picked the mission. So that was kind of a surprise, but certainly, like, yeah, it’s that vibe that I was like, oh, yeah, I can see why.
Um, the 2nd thing I thought was, man, if I was in the mood for this, um, kind of music. I would, uh, I would choose Sisters of Mercy over this 10 times out of 10. And then I did the research and realized, oh, they’re actually related to, you know, some of the same guys, and that’s why, because it sounds, it sounded to me like Sisters of Mercy light. like where Systems of Mercy has like a little more punch and a little more muscle behind a lot of their songs.
This is kind of a, it felt like a lighter take on a lot of the same kind of stuff like melodically and… It definitely has a popier energy than Sisters of Mercy. you know, more on the outside of things. This is more, yeah, kind of like you said, like the church.
It’s just poppier. It’s yeah, it’s poppier. It a little softer.
It’s a little, um, more in tune with, I think, what was going on in other genres of the 80s, whereas, and I guess you could say that about Sister Mercy, Sisters of Mercy, too, but where Sisters of Mercy melded in with other genres, I think it would be more on, like, the metal side of things, you know, where it’s got the punchy guitars and the driving drums and the more, um, you know, songs like more that have the really dramatic kind of almost orchestral sense type stuff going on. Uh, That said, I don’t know a lot of the missions catalog. I was curious enough to dig in a little bit because I didn’t want to sound like a total idiot and say all this stuff and then be like, well, you only heard one song.
They do have that. It seems like that’s kind of their vibe is that they tend to be like a little bit on the softer side in general. I did like the song deliverance.
Um, when I was digging through the catalog really quickly. I listen to probably, you know, parts of 3 or 4 or 5 different songs and deliverance. I listened to all the way through because I was like, ah, okay, this, this I like.
Uh, this one I did not particularly care for. I think a lot like Scott. I was kind of like, okay, okay.
Oh, that chorus is weird. It’s weird. And I can’t put my finger on why.
Man, it’s weird to me, like I said, that it turns you guys off that much. Just, it’s different. It is very 80s, but yeah, I didn’t seem, it didn’t strike me as jarring at all.
Yeah, I mean, it’s, again, like, Scott, say, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Tell you why. It just didn’t go the direction I thought it was going to be.
I guess I wanted it to go left and it went right or whatever, you know, however you want to say it. It was petting me down my back and then it went up real fast. rub my photo wrong way. But yeah, I can, you know, if you’re a fan of 80s goth, you probably already know the mission, but if not, I’m reasonably sure you would like these guys, they certainly fit in with other bands of that era.
Um, If you’re a fan of Sisters of Mercy, I would think it would be worth checking them out because, I mean, they, they’re similar enough that that was the very 1st thing that popped in my head before I even knew there was a connection. I was like, ah, this has a very sisters of mercy vibe initially. Um, but, but again, it doesn’t.
It doesn’t have the punch that Sisters of Mercy have, which I really did. I think another reason I’m a big fan. is that is the vocals. You know, Wayne Hussey’s voice versus Eldritch, the guy from Sisters of Mercy.
I mean, the Sister Mercy, his vocals are much deeper, the kind of really rich baritone kind of thing. And I think that probably adds a little kind of the driving punch to their stuff as well. because Wayne Hussey’s vocals are very, they seem very 80s-ish to me. I can’t remember which one it was we talked about earlier.
It might have been when we were talking about OND, and I think Scott, you mentioned that his voice had like a very, there was a very 80s voice. I kind of felt the same way about Wayne Hussey. Like there were a lot of guys that kind of sounded like Wayne Hussey back.
And, uh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think the difference with Sisters of Mercy is definitely the deep baritone vocals. I would definitely, I would 2nd what Michael said in that, if you likes Sisters of Mercy and you’ve never heard these guys, then check them out.
There might be something there for you, there, it’s similar enough, and it’s definitely of that world. If you’re not a fan or have never heard of either of these bands, please start with Sisters of Mercy. Let’s start here.
But yeah, but if you’re already a fan of Sisters of Mercy or a fan of, you know, like this. Maybe the poppier side of goth, I, I, it’s the best way I can describe it. Yeah, there’s definitely something here for you.
Like I said, I liked this song. I just, there was just a weird reaction I had, like a guttural reaction I had to that chorus, and I’m not sure. I cannot put my finger on why, but it just went, ugh, every time it came on.
Why’d you do that? Why? The other song…
Why? The mission? Yeah, definitely check them out.
Like I said, you mentioned deliverance, which was one that I particularly noted that I liked, but the other one that I really liked was called Tower of Strength. So I would check that one out too. if you’re interested in these guys. Yeah, I would start there.
That’s 2 better ones to start with, I think, and work your way to this one. That’s going to be a theme. Not with Scott’s choice, but with my choice, I think, as well, in terms of not necessarily getting the best starting place, but we’ll get there.
Let’s go, let’s talk about Scotch choice next person. Okay, so I picked Faith No Moors. We care a lot for this week. the world Yeah, one good day, time, but someone’s out of love.
Oh, oh, oh, oh. This song was a kind of a staple of college radio when I was there, it was heavily requested. It was always kind of around, and if you hear this song, and I really doubt, like, if you didn’t know, that your initial reaction would be, oh, it’s faith no more, because it doesn’t really sound like faith no more, at least in my mind it didn’t.
In my memory, it didn’t. It was always this sort of outlier. And so just a little bit of background on that.
These guys form in San Francisco in 1979. They have lots of lineup and name changes and other stuff. This incarnation of the band happens around 1985.
Um, What we know is faith no more. Uh, the band is this band. They’re all pretty much the same guys that would go on to become capital F, faith no more, with the exception of the singer. guy named Chuck Mosley.
Um, he is the vocalist you hear on this song, which is the noticeable difference between, you know, what Faith and War becomes after this. He is fired for the band shortly after this because apparently he’s kind of a clown and would fall asleep on stage and, you know, got in fights with people everywhere they went. He really wanted this band to go in a more acoustic direction, which seems like a just a horrible idea.
When you listen to faith before. The interesting thing to me about this song is that in my memory, and, you know, I’m the 1st to admit, my mind is a terrible place, but, um, the, in my memory, this song was radically different from what Faith No More would end up becoming what we know as Faith No More. Listening to it now, and then listening to a couple of the Mike Patton era, Faith No More songs afterwards.
There is almost no difference except the vocals. If you listen to this song, and then you listen to Epic, and then you listen to something like, um, the big song off Angel Dust, uh, midlife crisis. They are all the same pretty much musically.
It a thumping baseline. It’s that big splash of synthesizer chorus over the top of it. Really, the only difference is the vocals.
And in my mind, that never was the case. This was always this radically different song from what I do as faith no more. It really isn’t other than the vocals.
So, um, like I said, this guy, Chuck Mosley, that sings on this song, he’s also the guy singing in the video, um, is one of the mini singers these guys pulled in. He happened to be the singer when they got their recording contract to do this album. was on slash records. They ended up going to a major label before they got really big.
Um, you know, right after this album is when he’s fired and then Mike Patton comes in, um, and Faith on War becomes faith no more. But like I said, everybody else in this band has pretty much been there since the beginning. The drummer, my Gordon, has always been there.
Billy Gould, the bassist always been there. The, uh, the keyboardist, his name, Roddy Bottom. He’s always been there.
The one thing that struck me about this video, I don’t know what you guys thought this video was going to look like or what you had in your head that it might look like. I had never seen it before. I don’t know what I thought it was going to be, but it wasn’t this.
I mean, this was the 80th 80s video. It looked like, you know, like the living color. I don’t know, like crazy, um, look.
Although, you know, Faith and War kind of does that and the epic video is similar to that too, I guess, but I don’t know, this really my eyes just went, what the heck is this? kind of in a funny way. But I liked it.
I like the video. I thought, but the one thing that struck me as funny was they’re guitarist. Jim Martin.
When they get popular and like when Epic comes out and all that, he kind of kind of has this, um, this sort of dark, you know, metal guitarist look. He kind of looks like Kim Fayle from Soundgarden, you know? Not in this video, man.
He was like the dork of this band in this video. I’m not sure what they were going for with that look. It’s like, here we are rocking out, and we’re rocking this song, and then here’s this dork standing behind us, making funny faces, and making good.
I don’t know, that’s that’s kind of scrummy. funny. Um, So I will say that if you’re a fan of Faith and War stuff after this, This album probably does not have much for you. It’s not terribly good.
Um, but this song’s fun, I think. And it’s it’s catchy and it’s kind of kind of airwarmy. And it definitely, if you take out those vocals, it sounds like what Faith and War is going to keep on doing.
If you’re not a fan of this band, I would not start here. I would start with the Mike Patton era stuff. The album after this is called The Real Thing.
That’s one that has epic on it. If you have never heard it, the album after that, Angel Dust is one of the forgotten masterpieces of the 90s, if you have never heard it fix that problem, it is fantastic. This song, we care a lot, a lot of fun.
Uh, very catchy, very popular at this time in the college radio world, at least the one I was in, and uh, I got a kick out of listening to it again. So it’s great no more. We care a lot.
Yeah, I loved revisiting this one. I had seen this video before. It’s probably, I would say, of the songs that we’ve talked about thus far, so we’ve talked about 20 something songs.
I think the only song I was probably more familiar with, the only song in video is probably the cure, you know, why can’t I be you? Um, but besides that, this one. So I kind of went into it knowing what I was going to expect, it is like super primary colors.
It’s still got, you know, an 80s vibe that doesn’t necessarily fit the song as maybe you kind of conceive of the song now in your head if you’ve been a fan or if you discovered it, you know, a little bit later, which I did. you know, kind of more in the 90s. Like I discovered Epic 1st and then worked backwards to the song. I think that’s true for me too.
Absolutely a college radio classic. I mean, you know, we were, I was in college radio in 93, 94, 95. So we’re talking almost 10 years later, and it’s still requested all the time.
And, like, just, I don’t know, if you were to make a list of, like, 50 songs that kind of define college radio, this might make it for some reason, you know what I mean? It was just always there. It always was.
It always was. It also famously had a 2nd life as the theme song to Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel for a long time. Oh yeah, that’s right.
If you, um, if you listen to it and don’t recognize it at first, uh, and it gets to the dirty jobs part, you’ll… Well, wait a minute. I do recognize that song.
That’s why it was a show, which, by the way, was a really good show. It sucks that the host has turned out to be kind of an asshole, but I really used to love Dirty Jobs, and I like watched it all the time. So this song was like super burned in my brain from that, even though I was already familiar with it going into it.
But, um, so yeah, it’s, and I feel like it’s popped up in other pop culture places. I meant to do the research to see if it was in other films or TV shows or whatever. Because it just feels like it’s always been in the, I don’t want to say the zeitgeist, but it just is one of those songs that has had a longer life and a much more kind of full life.
I didn’t look that up either 40-year-old song, you know? I didn’t look that up either, but I think you’re right. I think it was probably in, you know, I’m just spitballing, but some Polly Shore movie or something, like some 90s, some 90s comedy that, you know, but it had to be, had to be in somebody.
I would be shocked if it wasn’t. You know, the interesting thing about the video, I think, is that the video totally does work for this era and this band and everything. I think, though, in my, it’s just in my head that this song always had kind of this punk energy to it.
And the video does not capture that at all. And so maybe that was just me doing that with my brain, you know, going, this is a punk song, but it just kind of had, to me, it always had this punk energy that I expected the video to be a little more raw. Like, I expected to be like a black and white live, you know, sort of the guy jumping around on stage, kind of punk thing.
And then what I got was, you know, the opening to in living color with different people. I don’t know, I just, it just struck me because it was so different. But if you really think about it, it does kind of fit, I guess.
Yeah, I was not thrown off by the video on this. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t thrown off when I when I saw it. I did the one note I made was that if you ever want to see a video that features an adorable baby, a drag queen, and a dog flying through the air.
Have I got good news for you? Because all of the weird interstitial images that fly through that video, you know, between… Yeah, exactly. between shots of them performing the song.
This is another one. I 1st heard it on KTXT as well. I was familiar with Faith No More at the time, and I, the only Faith No More album I have is Angel Dust, and you’re right, Scotty, I don’t know a whole lot about the rest of their career, but that album is magnificent.
If you haven’t ever heard Angel Dust. you know, that’s where I would recommend starting. That’s like I said, the only of their albums I have. You know, I’ve got a couple other songs, epic, this one.
But yeah, man, if you really want to check out some faith, no more. Angel Dust is highly recommended by me anyway. But yeah, man, I love this song, loved it back in the day.
Like I said, one of the few other faith, no more songs that I’ve got. So I’ve listened to it a lot over the years. Yeah, great song.
The video, like I said, I liked it. I thought it was fun. So, you know, maybe it wasn’t what you guys were expecting.
I don’t know what happened. It just wasn’t what I wanted, what I thought I was going to see, I guess. It just kind of threw me for like, it is a fun one.
Also, I would say, what was the singer’s name again? just lost it. This guy’s name is Chuck Mosley.
Chuck Mosley, yeah. It looked like Chuck got his outfit by like going up to the local community theater and rolling around in the costume department for a while and then just got up with whatever stuck to his body and decided that was what he was going to wear. But yeah, I liked it.
Love the song, liked the video. So yeah, this was a good one. So I just looked up, like, you know, the popular culture for this song, and it doesn’t show up in much, but it does mention that it was sampled in MC Hammer song Prey.
Wow. Really? Now, the main sample in prey is Prince, when doves cry.
Yeah, but they must have used. I bet they use the drumbeat. It’s a really thumpy drum beat, you know?
This doesn’t even mention dirty jobs. Which is ridiculous, because yeah, it was the thing. Yeah, I was pretty ubiquitous.
And then they just use the, you know, it’s a dirty job and someone’s got to do it part, but still, um, I will, in the edit, try to find the, we’ll try to find a clip from prey and put it right here, so you can compare, I’ll try to figure out what. Good luck with that. to see what’s going on with that. That’s wild.
All I can tell you for sure is I got to pray in order to make it today. Well, that is true. Yeah.
Actually, yes. No, it’s pretty taught me nothing. He taught me that and something about what I can and cannot tell you.
Okay, so moving on to, I would say another band that was a stalwart of college radio, shall we say? alongside Faith No More. Uh, we’re going to talk about throwing muses, the song, uh, specifically as fish.
I feel at his hand Stalking in the grain. I And, uh, Third Muses was formed back in 1981, there’s, uh, a couple of women who kind of became, um, college radio royalty, indie rock royalty, I would say, Kristen Hirsch, who, 1st obviously famous for for being a throwing muses, and then later 50 foot wave, and then a massive solo career as well. I think she’s got like 11 solo albums, uh, formed it along with her stepsister, uh, Tanya Donnelly, who, uh, besides being in throwing muses, went on to co-found the breeders, was the lead singer Belly, both of which had massive college radio success, and also had like a massive solo career as well.
So, you know, 2 women who just kind of defined in a lot of ways, like late 80s, indie rock, and, um, you know, they they were formed in Newport, Rhode Island, but they really were part of the Boston scene and, uh, were were friendly with and friends with and toured with the pixies. So they kind of came up with the pixies and there’s definitely some similar, some similarities there between the 2 bands. And I think they, from what I understand, Kristen and Joy Santiago, I know are, for instance, to this day, they did kind of feed off each other and so I think influenced each other as they were coming up in the Boston scene.
So it was also, interestingly, the 1st American band that signed to 4 AD. Uh, 4AD would go on to be, uh, I mean, I, we played so many bands on 4AD in college radio, like they definitely were one of the indie labels that, um, just consistently, if you got something from 4AD, you knew it was probably going to be pretty good, but this was kind of where they started to dip their toe in the American market and signed them. And as a matter of fact, this song is not on an album. nor is it on an EP. It’s actually on a 4 AD compilation that’s called Lonely as an Isore.
Um, There might be a reason for that. Uh, I don’t know for sure, but it might be that this song isn’t very good. I’m saying this, I’m gonna, I’ll just say this right now.
So, as you know, this podcast is related to 35,000 watts, the story of college radio, which is a documentary film about college radio. In the course of that, I reached out to a lot of college radio icons and artists to see, you know, who we could interview for the film, and we actually interviewed like Joyce Santiago, and he mentioned Kristen Hirsch, and I reached out to Kristen. She has been absolutely nothing but the just the sweetest, nicest person we’ve traded emails for years trying to get, uh, 1st of all, an interview for the film lined up, then she was going to be on the podcast and like was so nice and we just never have been able.
So, like, it pains me to say this, but I just, I feel like my credibility would be shot if I was like, oh, my God, I love this song because I don’t. I don’t, like, throwing music has a lot of fantastic music. They will get so much better.
Um, there are, there are absolutely classic, iconic throwing music songs to explore, do not in any way take this as a reason to not go listen to the rest of their catalog. Um, you, you really, and it’s not even like, I mean, a lot of what you, I don’t, I’m not even going to point you to like a specific song, like just anything in their catalog from a little after this. It’s probably gonna be pretty good.
Like they have a really solid run of albums, but, um, ooh, man. I was not expecting this. I hadn’t heard the song before, but I chose throwing music because I do like a lot of their stuff.
And again, I really like Kristen and Tanya stuff. So I was like, well, yeah, this will be this will be really cool. I get to kind of dive into one of their older songs that I wasn’t familiar with.
Ooh, man. So, Kristen was 19 or 20 when the song was recorded. She’s…
Using a vocal style that I don’t think she really employs later in her career, like a weird, almost like trilling kind of thing happening. And I think maybe she, you know, will like throw a little things like that in in future songs, but not to the degree she does in this song. Um, Yeah, wow.
Uh, video wise also, you know, kind of just like a black and white performance video with some of the weird kind of chroma keed stuff over the top. A fish appears, as you might expect, at some point in the video. It’s certainly an unremarkable video unless you’re kind of really wanting to dive into like an early days of throwing muses.
I, you know, what can I say? I don’t start here if you’re like a complete, a completionist who just wants to hear everything that throwing muses has done, then you priority heard this and got it. If you’re going back through the catalog.
I put this pretty low on your list of priorities to listen to. But it was interesting to see kind of primordial throwing music, shall we say, and having heard this, I would never have guessed that they’re going to go where they end up going with their career, which is on to bigger and much better things. But I’m curious to see how you guys felt about it.
Well, as is the usual case, Mike, you and I’s musical taste, align pretty perfectly here because I did not care for this song at all. In fact, I found it to be awkwardly annoying. I listened to it a couple of times.
I wish I’d only listened to it once. And yeah, I don’t want to throw any shade at Kristen Hirsch or anybody else in the band, but man, alive, I did not care for this. You mentioned the vocals.
That was another thing that I thought of. And I feel like I’m fairly okay with kind of out their vocals. I mean, Susie Sue doesn’t bother me.
Elizabeth Fraser doesn’t bother me. But man, the vocals on this song are just, like I said, I actively annoying. They were just, it just bugged me.
There was nothing about the song that I liked at all. You know, it sounded like there might have been a little print killer guitar solo in there in the middle of it, but it’s buried so low down in the mix that I couldn’t tell whether that was what was going on or not. Yeah, there was, yeah, I hate to say it, but there was absolutely nothing about this song that I liked.
So yeah, anybody out there that wants to check out the throwing uses, literally start anywhere else. Do not, like, make this the last throwing music song you ever listen to, please, and you’ll probably have a better experience than I did, because, yeah, this was this was not for me, even a little bit. Yeah.
There’s a reason I think it showed up on a compilation for their record label. Oh boy. Scott’s going to come in hot.
I feel it. So before I get to that part where I do what I usually do and disagree. Um, I didn’t know much about throwing news.
I know I’m a fan of Tanya Donnelly. I dont know much about Kristen Hirsch. I admit that.
And this is more her band than Tanya Donnelly’s. Um, but I’m a big fan of belly. I a big fan of Pod, the album she did with Kim Diel as the Breeders.
Um, I, I, I love I’ve always loved Kanye Donnelly. And to me, throwing muses was always that band she was in before she became the person that I followed. Thrilling muses to me was always like, um, just one of those kind of generic sounding, you know, poppy bands of this era, whatever.
I say that without knowing anything about them. I’m just making that up. Um, but I always just kind of dismiss them.
The other reason I probably dismissed them is because I did not have a very good relationship with 4 AD at that time. Their stuff was always like, if you need to fall asleep real bad, here you go. Um, and there was stuff on 4AD that I do like, but I just, for me, that, that, that stuff always just kind of rubbed me the wrong way, just wasn’t for me, I guess.
So I didn’t know much about this. Um, I’m sorry guys. I loved this song.
I loved it. I, it reminded me of like, uh, the velvet underground, maybe, or just this sort of raw, lo-fi, um, very stream of consciousness, very sort of, um, droning is a feral word, but I don’t know, this just worked for me, and I, I, I like the video too. Um, I get, well, maybe why, if you’re already a fan of this band and you know a lot about like where they’re going from here, that this would maybe rub you the wrong way because it is kind of radically different from what they do.
But just as a standalone song. I don’t know. I liked it.
I’m not going to stand on the mountaintop and defend it. But if you know, I can certainly understand why someone would hear this and go, well, not for me, but it was for me. I liked it a lot.
I did not see that guy. I actually did not see that coming. I just this one was a pleasant surprise for me.
Yeah, I thought when I heard this, I was like, well, I think we, this will be the 1st time that all 3 of us are just like 3 thumbs down on it. So there’s always got to be a, always got to be a consenting opinion. Yeah, and I’m I hate that that has to happen, but I really liked this one.
I really did. I don’t know what it is about it. It’s just kind of, to me, it was just kind of fun.
Yeah, fun is not a… But I’m willing to admit. I am willing to admit that this is probably not where you should start if you’re interested in throwing muses.
I mean, it doesn’t sound like anything else I heard from them, and it doesn’t it certainly doesn’t represent, I think, who they are at all, but I don’t know. I kind of liked it. If you if you like your music raw and nasty and kind of, you know, um, low rent.
I think this is, there’s, there’s something here for you. I dug this one. Man, I, wow.
I don’t know what to say. literally speechless. I could say I was doing that just to do it, but I really did like this song. I listened to it like 4 times this morning.
Wow. I mean, we like what we like, right? I, yeah, I, um, it’s funny because I feel like I’m taking it easy on the song because, again, I, I doubt, you know, Kristen’s listening to the podcast or anything, but, like, she, she really is a lovely person and I have no…
I was going to say. I was gonna say, I might, you know, after you guys said what you said, I was like, well, maybe I’ll get you back in our good graces. I don’t know.
Yeah, for all we know, though, maybe she doesn’t like this song. This is obviously not what they go on to do. You know?
That was my hope is like, if you’re listening, Kristen, hopefully you understand why maybe this, this, this particular song is not my, in my top 10 throwing music tracks, um, I mean, you know, and a lot of the time with bands, like their early stuff isn’t necessarily going to be your favorite. I mean, you know, there’s receptions to that. Sometimes bands just come out of the box and they’re awesome, but, um, yeah, I, I, to me, this, it felt just kind of like a tossed off kind of thing that, that they, again, that they threw to their record label to throw in a compilation like they didn’t even put it on the, and they were relatively prolific at this point.
They had put out like an album in 2 EPs within a year or so of this song. So, you know, they had places to put it. So it makes me think that that maybe that they weren’t.
You might be onto something there. Like, the fact they didn’t put this on an album, I mean, maybe they’re not big fans of it either. I don’t know.
I think. I don’t know. I don’t know. you know, hey, we have comments for a reason.
Like, if you if you also love the, if you like Scott, also enjoy listening to this, I would be fascinated to hear from you. I knew saying that, and I knew when I had the thought of that after listening to this song many, many times, that I would be in a probably pretty vast minority. And I knew I probably also knew that you guys weren’t going to love this song.
Um, and I totally understand that. I totally understand anyone who says, not for me. Like, I’m not going to argue with you at all.
I’m not gonna try to defend it. But just for me, I got a kick out of it. It had a real sort of experimental quality, like I said, velvet underground, the butthole surfers, like that kind of just raw, playing with noises, playing with sounds.
The vocals are weird, but they kind of work for me. I don’t know. if you’re into, like, if you like music super duper weird. There might be something for you here.
Maybe some tagline for yeah, yeah, man. Sure. Yeah, I’m just gonna leave it at that.
That’s the last word on that song. If you like your music weird. There may be something fun.
Maybe something for you here. And if, you know, tell me I’m wrong. I don’t care. you know, I’ve been wrong before.
I mean, we’re gonna run into songs that, yeah, that I love that other people hate. I am sure. We may already have been there.
I, sure we’ll get there if we don’t, but there you go. Hey, man, that it gives me hope that, you know what? There’s a place in this world for so many different types of music.
And I’m sure there are other people who do like this song. I mean, I’m sure there are, but I’m not one of them. Someone in MTV decided to put it on the air.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they did make it on 120 minutes with this, which is weird. I’m assuming we’ll probably see throwing uses again on those playlists, but…
All right. Time to move on to one of our favorite parts of the show. And that is when we talk about a mystery song that none of us had heard up until, whenever we do the research for these, I do my research, usually the day that we record, but probably up until like the day or 2 before recording, you’ve never heard these mystery songs that we’re trying to, we’re trying to pick stuff that we just were unfamiliar with and didn’t run across.
Today is no exception. We found a good one. Keith’s gonna lead us into it.
And I think this is going to be fun. Yeah, this one, the song I picked is called Faith Healer by the band Big Dipper. I’m trusting in the bond leader.
Now is the time we must get down I don’t know how you guys go about it, you know, we take turns, you know, peek behind the curtains here of the podcast process. We take turns picking who’s going to be our mystery song for the episodes. And so I don’t know how you guys do it, but I generally just start kind of at the 1st one that I haven’t seen and just kind of look through them and see which what grabs me.
And so this one I picked very much because of my 1st impression of the video. And the very 1st thing you see on this video, and for about the 1st 30 seconds are some old footage, or it’s black and white footage. I don’t know if it’s found footage or something they did.
I’m not sure, but it’s these guys dancing around in my very 1st thought that looped into my head was, this looks like an Ian Curtis Dantalike contest. Like, I don’t know if you guys remember or if our listeners know about Ian Curtis, but he had a particularly, like, kind of spastic, uh, herky-jerky dancing style when he was uh, performing on stage. And yeah, that’s what’s going on at the beginning of this video. this black and white footage of 3 or 4 different guys, like, you know, taking turns, like doing some of the most Ian Curtis-like dancing you will ever see in your life.
So I don’t know where that came from or why that was part of the video, but that is 100% why I picked this song. Now, as it turns out, it’s a pretty damn good one. Kind of just a post-punk rocker, um, it’s, uh, the band Big Dipper, uh, formed in the mid 80s right around 86 or so.
They were members of a couple of different bands that were involved in this. They all, you know, ended up breaking up with their bands and coming together. For our purposes.
The key thing we need to know about the prior bands for these guys is that the bass player, Steve Mishner, was, in fact, in Dump Truck, another all-star 120 months participant. So, yeah, all roads somehow lead back to dump truck with this particular podcast. But yeah, this is it’s a good one.
Like I said, I like the song. It’s a kind of a rocker. I really liked the chorus, which was dealing with the faith healer and trusting in the poem reader.
So I thought that was a good line in there. The rest of the video, you get to see the 4 members of the band and it’s another one where it looks like they maybe got the props for this video from like the local high school drama department or whatever. Very cheaply done.
But it just works. And like I said, the song is really good. It came out on their 1987 EP called Boo Boo, which is a great name for an EP or an album.
And then you guys had a couple of other albums after that. They broke up in 92, but have since reunited. They put out an album as recently.
It’s 2012. But I don’t know if they’re still together at this point if they’re playing live or anything like that. But yeah, just a great guitar pop song, and a really cool video where, like I said, throughout, like, you know, you get that 1st 30 seconds or so, but then other places during the video, these guys doing their Ian Curtis dance come back from out of nowhere and dance for you a little bit before it goes back to the band.
So, um, good video, uh, great song and and just a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this one. Super catchy.
I, I think those were the members of the band that were dancing. I think so, too. I didn’t notice that.
Yeah. I think so. Yeah.
I didn’t 100% verify and go back and, like, check their faces, but I think that, yeah, it’s like each member of the band doing just the most amazing dancing, if you dancing maybe, not exactly the word, but the most amazing body movement, to the, to a really interesting, like, jangle pop kind of intro. Like, so the 1st 30 seconds while they’re doing the dancing, I was like, 0 my God, this is like right up the jingle pop, like, shoot, like, just, like, you know, right in the groove. And then it kind of breaks into something a little different.
I mean, it’s still very jangle pot. It still fits really well alongside some of the other bands that we’ve talked about, like the squalls and Don Dixon and, um, love tractor. like it seems like they’re, you know, of a piece with that. There was definitely that that vibe going on at this time in the mid 80s that they tapped into.
But it, the song becomes kind of a little more angular, a little more like syncopated rhythm. So it’s not just like the full on straightforward jangle pop once it gets into it. But still, like all the elements are there, like the kind of open ring guitar and just the just the super catchiness of it.
Like, and also that that spirit, which is in the video as well, of just like not taking themselves too seriously, that seems to be like a trend that we see with like, you know, the videos and some of the music that we’ve been running across with like dump truck and Don Dixon and some of the other ones. It’s interesting that there was that connection, not just with the music kind of being in the same in the same pocket, but the videos kind of having that vibe where they weren’t trying to be rock stars. They were just being the themselves and being fun and having fun with it.
I think that’s part of the image that they were kind of trying to project. The other connection besides the dump truck connection is that I think 2 members of the band, or at least one member of the band, was in the embarrassment, which is a band. I was not familiar with, but they were making a documentary at the same time that I was making 35,000 watts about their band.
I think they actually won. The embarrassment? Yeah, that’s a great… really good.
And they they seem to be a lot of fun and really nice guys. I think they did it. They actually ran a Kickstarter at the same time.
We were running our Kickstarter, so that’s why, like if you looked at music docs on Kickstarter during that month or 2 that we were both trying to make money like our docs would appear right next to each other. So I felt kind of connected to them. So the documentary is called, um, man, I was like, I’m going to write this down.
I was like, no, I’ll totally remember. We were famous. We were famous, you don’t remember the embarrassment, I think is what it was called.
Also very clever on like that too. Yeah, so that’s that would be fun to go check out. I have a feeling that there’s gonna be people in the comments that are like, oh, yeah, I remember the embarrassment.
We played the hell out of them because I think they were, um, another one of those bands that did get a lot of college radio airplay as well, even though they didn’t come across my my personal radar. But yeah, yeah, another just, it’s, we’re just killing it with these, these, mystery songs. other. Yeah, fun, catchy, and a nice palate cleanser after throwing me.
I guess this is the part why I’m supposed to come on and say I hated it? I don’t know, no. I really I really like this song.
I promise, I’m not a contrarian. But the, yeah, this is a fun one. And I just, I’ll just reiterate everything you guys said.
It was, it’s catchy. It fun. The video’s great.
But I do want to point out that something that I found that I found interesting and I tried to dig and I couldn’t find much about it. So if you go to YouTube and watch this video, it says it was directed by Kelly Rikert, if you don’t know who that is, she’s an independent film director, she did Wendy and Lucy and makes cut off and 1st cow. She’s a really good, like, hot indie film director.
And her name is credited on the YouTube of this video as having directed it. I cannot find that anywhere else. It is not in her biography.
It is not on her wiki page. I googled, did Kelly Rikert ever direct music videos, can’t find it. Um, however, um, she would have been in film school around this time.
She went to film school in Boston. She would have been about 22 years old at this time. These guys were in Boston as well, and she would have been around there.
She’s also friends with Todd Haynes, who is another indie film director. He famously did the Karen Carpenter movie with the Barbie dolls. Back in the day.
He would have been doing that about this time and, um, he was making, like, experimental videos for local Boston bands. I just I think that connection is there, even though I couldn’t make it. I couldn’t finalize it.
But I think she did direct this video and she would go on to become a pretty hot indie director. So I just found that kind of be an interesting connection. But yeah, I really dug this song.
Like you said, we’re, we’re nailing it with these, uh, never heard of it, bands, because we’ve really found some some gold in there. Yeah, it’s really cool. I was going to say, I haven’t actually didn’t really look at who directed it or anything.
That’s kind of interesting to find out. Mikey mentioned the big change. I hadn’t mentioned that when I talked about it.
I really, really liked that. You know, you have like that 1st 30 seconds of the song, that’s kind of its own thing, and then it makes that change into it. And like you said, definitely more angular kind of feeling when that happens, but that guitar lick, that the bulk of the song is built around, is just really, really killer.
Like, that’s just a great little guitar like. I think it kind of makes it, once it makes that change and becomes the song that it’s going to be the rest of the way through, that guitar look is what really drives it. that’s what really, really did it for me on this song. Yeah, this song is just undeniably catchy.
Like the opening is catchy. The guitar like is catchy. The lyrics are kind of clever and funny and whatever.
I just, yeah, everything about it is just great. This is just a really great little jangle pop, whatever you want to call it kind of song that, you know, was just completely off my radar, as was this band, but this was a good find. Yeah, I think I’m going to dig a little deeper.
I ran out of time and I want to hear some more from these guys because I’m interested. I, um, I like bands that don’t take themselves super serious. Even though, like, the music is straight.
I mean, I guess the song is kind of funny because it’s, you know, like he said, the lyrics are kind of like faith healer and whatever. I think there’s a little bit of a, you know, obviously a metaphor going on there that you could dig into if you were interested, but like, uh, there’s, there’s just something about bands that, that seem to be having fun with what they’re doing, or at the very least, don’t feel the need for their image to be, um, you know, perfectly cultivated for their audience. And, and they’re, they’re fine with going on camera and looking silly, which they absolutely do when they’re doing the dancing and when they’re dressed up as bones at the end and like, you know, or doing the whole thing.
Like, that’s it, that’s fun. I enjoy that. And I, it makes me like, like those bands.
Not that I don’t appreciate occasionally a band that does, you know, do the whole rock star thing and they do have the image. I mean, there’s certainly bands that I like that are on that end of the spectrum. Um, I think in terms of this episode, the mission definitely falls in that category of like they, they want to present themselves a certain way and he certainly has an image that, like, there’s no doubt, that, that, that’s part of what they’re doing.
And that’s fine. There’s a place for that. you know, and sometimes you want a rock star to be a rock star. But I do like that these guys, much like the embarrassment, much like dump truck, much like Don Dixon, the squalls.
I mean, you know, again, a lot of the bands that we’ve talked about during this era, all had that vibe. And I don’t know if it’s something that was just in the air. I don’t know if they were feeding off of each other or, you know, a scene that was happening.
Certainly in Athens, there was that cross pollination of bands, but it’s just something that I don’t remember necessarily being the case as much like in the 90s, like when we were in college radio. You had bands that, um, were maybe more, um, What’s the word I’m looking for? Not agnostic.
They were, I mean, like Nirvana is not a band that necessarily like were presenting themselves as like, we are rock stars. And, you know, they were they were kind of anti-that in some ways. But they also were, I think, aware of their image and weren’t necessarily the kind of bands that would make fun of themselves to this degree, although you would see that Dave Grohl was fine with that later on in the Foo Fighters, so maybe so, but you know what I’m saying?
Like, it’s nice to see this era when bands were having fun with it and maybe I’m maybe I’m kind of misremembering. I think it has more to do with maybe the era itself, because if you look at the 80s, the 80s was, you know, bright and fun and happy and everybody was, you know, for whatever reason, you know, the energy was different. And then the 90s kind of have this brooding, angry young man vibe to it that I think fed into grunge and things like that.
And yeah, like you said, you know, Nirvana, uh, and Pearl Jam and those bands, they presented themselves as, we don’t care if we’re rock stars or not. But at the core, you kind of think they wanted to be, right? I mean, it’s it was almost like a like a front, you know, I don’t know.
Um, but it’s, uh, yeah, I think it has more to do with just kind of the vibe of the era they were in maybe. But yeah, you’re right. There’s definitely all these bands that seem to be from around that time and doing that kind of music. all kind of have this, Hey, we’re rocking out, kind of vibe, you know?
Um, and I don’t know if it’s intentional or they were just genuinely happy fun guys or who knows, you know? Well, we can certainly say that we never would have seen Kurt Cobain wearing a Daniel Boone style coon skin cap the way we did the singer of Big Dipper in this video. Yeah, definitely.
We definitely see the Foo Fighters doing something like that, though. You know, you could definitely… Kurt Cobain, Eddie… sort of self-depreciating humor. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Like, it obviously, like, Dave Grohl does have that. And he definitely, you know, played into that with Foo Fighters later in the 90s. But like, excuse me.
But like Pearl Jam is a good example of a anti-rock star band that still were, they certainly didn’t, like, make fun of themselves. they didn’t even make videos, you know, for a while there. They didn’t, they still presented an image. I think that they wanted, you know, to be presented to the public of who we are and what we stand for.
Yeah, it’s almost like their lack of pretension became pretentious somehow. Yeah, if that makes sense. A little bit.
I think I think that is, um, part and parcel of a lot of what pans in the 90s where, because like, how do you, you know, because selling out was like the worst possible thing you could do. It was like selling… We don’t care to you, even though they probably did care.
Although I don’t know that that was much with like the original guys like Nirvana and Pearl Jam as much as it was all the followers that came along, you know, afterwards. Sure, for sure, yeah. You know, your 7 Mary 3s and bands like that, that, you know, if it had been 10 years earlier, those guys wouldn’t have been wearing flannels.
They would have been wearing leather pants trying to glom onto the, you know, glam pop, glam rock, uh, movement of the late 80s. And so I think, you know, you had some of those bands that probably really were serious about, you know, these are their convictions where we just want to make our music. We don’t want to do all this.
But then you had a lot of people glom onto that afterwards. And so it kind of makes the whole decade seem like maybe it was a little more, you know, kind of taken itself seriously than it might have been otherwise, just because these were people that were trying to sell records and get videos on there and that kind of stuff. And so we’re just aping, you know, kind of what the popular thing was at the time.
Yeah, I totally agree. I definitely think Pearl Jam was sincere about what they were doing. Um, and I think it’s more in retrospect that we kind of see it as, uh, maybe they were being a little whatever.
Yeah. And I think, you know, Eddie Vedder has loosened up a lot. I think since he was a, he was kind of an angry young man himself and in terms of his relationship with the press and and the audience and kind of how they wanted to present themselves changed a lot from from early on.
And I think Nirvana probably would have followed a similar path had Kurt Cobain, um, still, you know, been able to make music and stay in and stay in the scene for a lot longer. I think he might have also, you know, um, changed kind of his relationship with with all of that because it was, you know, he had a brief time that he just didn’t seem very happy with with like the success they were having. But yet, you knew that they were chasing that success other, because, I mean, it’s not hard to be an unsuccessful band.
Like, you know what I mean? Like if you don’t want that success, it’s it’s not hard to not get it. I spend a ridiculous and almost embarrassing amount of time thinking about what Nirvana would have become if Kurt Cobain hadn’t.
I mean, I think it’s so fascinating to me to think about where that band was going. you know? And what do we know now about where music went and what changed and whatever, you know, I just, I think about that a lot. Like, where would that have gone?
You know? What was the album after in utero gonna sound like? you know, who knows?
It’s definitely one of the best, like, what if? Yeah, it’s just such a great what if question. Like, it just because it could have gone one of 10,000 ways.
And I just don’t know which one it would have been, you know? I’m going to say that they become a boy band dance pop kind of thing and take over the charts and K-pop never happens because Nirvana becomes the big pop sensation of the world. I almost think maybe they would become not the Foo Fighters, but something close to the Foo Fighters.
Like, like maybe at some point, Dave Grohl would step up and go, you know, I have all these songs I wrote, let’s do this, you know, maybe, but… See, that’s that to me is weird so far off. Who knows if this is going to see the light of day, but like, while we’re here.
Um, I think that’s the big, that’s probably the biggest what if. Or that’s the biggest thing you have to, you have to know the answer to that question before you can even try to chart like a theoretical path. Does Kurt Cobain feel comfortable turning some of the reins over to Dave Grohl, particularly in terms of songwriting?
Because he was writing those songs that are on the original Foo Fighters album when they’re still alive. Yeah, Nirvana was still a thing. And my impression from what I’ve heard is that Kurt was kind of not so receptive to that.
Would that change? And if so, then that is probably a path that they go down. If it didn’t change, then that’s a whole other, you know, do they even stay together?
Maybe, you know. Or just Dave Grohl just don’t realize, like, together. and then Nirvana continue on with a different drummer. That’s, yeah, entirely possible.
Yeah. Yeah, like, or does Dave Grohl just not realize, like, holy shit, what I’m doing is actually pretty, pretty good, you know. pretty good and also quite commercially viable, shall we say? God, I didn’t react. his former drummer is outpacing his album sales and popularity and all that.
Who knows? you know? Yeah, lots of lots of politicals.
Well, that could be a, that’s a whole other episode for another day. And now that we derailed completely. Yeah, no, that I forgot completely what we were talking about.
Okay, June of 1987 is, in the can, we have talked about, um, a couple of college radio icons in Faith No More and in throwing muses and, uh, I, you know, the mission, I don’t know where mission slots in. I I think we obviously played them on KTXT. That’s the only way I think I would have been even remotely familiar with them, which I was.
But, uh, not huge in America, so they were kind of, um, maybe a maybe a lesser known goth band for some goth fans that haven’t dug quite that deep, that they’re certainly, you know, again, start with Sisters of Mercy if you’re not familiar with them, but if you are, um, there you go. And then once again, a band that somehow has flown under our radar for upwards of 40 years in Big Dipper. If you like of several of the bands that we’ve already talked about, I’ve gone through the list a couple times, but dump truck, uh, the squalls, Don Dixon, Love Tractor, uh, and then I’ll throw in, you know, RM and some of the other, like, jangle pop classic bands, these guys sit right next to them in terms of what they’re doing.
Like they’re, they’re catchy. It’s upbeat. It’s, um, uh, good quad, not just like generic though.
Like they have a, they definitely have a… This is a genuinely good song. Like it’s genuinely good.
Yeah, not just because it sounds like that and it, you know, it’s pleasing to the ears, but this is a good song. Yeah, absolutely. So, go check out Big Dipper, if you haven’t already, I’m actually gonna do that.
After this podcast, I’m gonna go dig a little deeper in their catalogs. I am really curious, what else they’ve got. So we will move on next week two, July of 1987.
Who knows what’s on top? We’ll figure it out, but we’re looking forward to it. Thanks for tuning in.
Don’t forget 35,000 watts, story of college radio is available to watch right now on Amazon Prime, 2B, and Google Play. If you’re an educator and want to get an educational license, those are available as well. Just go to our website, 35000watch.com, and click on the league for educational use.
And you can figure out how to do an educational license so you can play it in your classrooms and whatnot. And thanks for tuning in. We will see you next week for Scott Mobley and Keith Porterfield.
My name is Michael Millard, and we’ll see you next time on 120 months.