Buckle up and get ready for possible whiplash as we run the gamut from quiet, contemplative folk to heavy-duty industrial, plus a fun video from an excellent mystery artist.
And welcome back to 120 months. I’m here with Keith Porterfield and Scott Mobley, and we are taking a little deep dive, a little walk through MTV’s 120 minutes. We’re going month by month.
We’re just choosing a song and a video to talk about, and we’ve got our ever popular mystery song waiting for us at the end of the episode. We are in June of 1988. And yeah, it’s an interesting month.
This is right about the time that I actually discovered in TV, so we’re starting to dip a little bit into my era of MTV, although I was watching mostly the mainstream side of MTV at this point. I am not sure that I was even really aware of 120 minutes quite yet. Speaking of mainstream, so setting the table for June of 1988, the billboard charts of this month, number one was Debbie Gibson, foolish beat.
Number two, Michael Jackson, Dirty Diana. Number three, Rick Astley, I think he was on last month too, together, forever, number four, Brenda K. Star, one hit wonder. I still believe.
Number five, Cheap Trick, the Flame. Now, the flame is what it is. You may like it, you may not, but man, cheap trick is just an underrated band.
I bang that drum every time I get a chance. Late 70s, early 80s, cheap trick. Cheap Trick is a wonderfully underrated, like fantastic rock band, and the flame is not that is bad, but.
Yeah, later era, Cheap Shark has its moments. But yeah, you dive into the those 1st couple albums in the late 70s and man, there is some and you see some influences that will continue, you know, for decades after that. Like, a lot of bands name check cheap trick or, and I think a lot of bands probably don’t name check cheap trick, even though they should, but I digress.
Number six, Belinda Carlisle, Circle in the Sand. I always liked Belinda’s solo stuff, actually, is like for as far as pop music goes. Number seven, George Michael.
He was on last month too, I think one more try. 8 Prince Alphabet Street. and it can’t go wrong with Ellen. Number nine, Pebbles Mercedes Boys.
And number 10 was Def Leppard, pour some sugar on me. I’m talking about MTV. That was probably the number ones rated video on MTV, if I’m guessing it this time, because they played that thing every hour on the hour.
It was nonstop. Speaking of which, number 11 was poison, nothing but a good time in number 12, Lita Ford, Kiss Me Deadly, number 13, NXS, new sensation. Those songs all, to me, feel like they were probably like one, two, three, and 4 on the MTV on MTV is like mainstream rotation because MTV really didn’t do.
I mean, they played Rick Astley. They played, uh, certainly like Prince and stuff, but like Pebbles and that particular George Michael song. I don’t feel like those were getting like a ton of rotation on MTV at the time.
Cheap Rick the Flame definitely was. Anyway, that’s the background for this episode of 120 minutes. So are these?
I think there’s 2 episodes from June that we’re on that were available to us to choose from. So against the background of all this pop music was some very decidedly not pop music. So buckle up.
I will warn you that the whiplash between Scotch Choice and Keith’s choice is going to cause some some issues. So beware, they are. I don’t like to put people in a box.
I don’t really like to compare artists on a spectrum, but if you were to put these 2 in a box and compare them on a spectrum, they would be as far from each other as you can, no matter how you design that spectrum, no matter what criteria you used, these 2 songs would be on the far end of that, of whatever spectrum it is. Somewhere between these 2 songs, the truth lies. Yeah man.
Yeah, man, it is they can’t they couldn’t be more different. Yeah, practically every other song ever recorded actually lies between these two. It’s true.
It’s so funny. I didn’t realize it until today when I was, I’d already done some of my pre-reearch and I was writing out my notes. I was like, these 2 songs are like, you couldn’t possibly, if you tried to, like, challenge us to find 2 more different songs that at least were somewhere in the realm of, like, MTV play.
This is it. So buckle up for that, folks. It’s it’s a ride.
That said, I’m going to kick things off this week. I chose Billy Bragg waiting for the Great League Ford, dude. Would the active be so sleeping with the sleepers, while you’re whitey, with a driveway, for words.
Ah, one week forward to the fact, well, politics, get me to sack. White, white, grateful. If you are like me, you might not have run across Billy Bragg, uh, until his days of working with Wilco on The Mermaid Avenue Project, Mermaid Avenue Project was Wilco and Billy Bragg, that is, taking Woody Guthrie lyrics that had not been recorded, I think a lot of people think that they did like cover songs of uh, of Woody Guthrie stuff, but it actually is his lyrics that he had written that he never had recorded, that um, his daughter actually reached out to Billy Bragg at one and was like, hey, I have all these lyrics.
Do you want to try this? And they recorded some really great albums and they are fantastic. There was a little bit of friction between Wilco and Billy Bragg.
There were reasons for that. So they didn’t work together a lot or like play live together a lot. I think, because that was kind of the original idea was that Wilco was kind of going to be his his backing band because he’s a solo artist and they were going to do this, but anyway, that was my entrée into Billy Brax.
So that was like in the late 90s, really. But Billy started off in the in the early 70s just kind of learning guitar and stuff. He was inspired by Elvis Costello, the jam, the clash.
In 1977, he met his next door neighbor, Paul Wig, a.k.a. Wiggy. And they actually formed a band called Riffraff.
And it didn’t really go anywhere. But they kind of started getting their feet wet in terms of recording music. Billy Bragg actually became disillusioned with music in general and joined the army in 1981, the British army, completed 3 months of training, and then bought himself out of the army for 175 pounds, which is apparently something he can do in Britain.
So he kind of got a mulligan on that. I was like, you know what? I think the whole army thing is not for me, which would be of no surprise to anybody who knows Billy Bragg.
He is a political artist, you know, if ever there was one, which is why, you know, the comparisons to what he got through, the music wise, there’s folk, there’s punk, we’ve talked about that weird, not dichotomy, that weird merging of folk and punk that comes up. We talked about, I think, with violent films. It comes up a lot in more politically active circles.
It seems like that seems to be a marriage that just works like people that make folk music are often political. People that make punk music, also often political. And when they come together, sometimes it really works.
And Billy Bragg has made it work for for decades now, that that is him to a T. So after he got out of the army, he bleached his hair. He busked around London as spy versus spy, which you might remember from the old man magazine days. And this is where he has tons and tons of stories about him.
There’s no way I could possibly tell all of them, but some of the funny ones were that around this time, he snuck his way into charisma records by pretending to be a TV repairman. He actually got them to listen to his tape and they loved it, but they informed him that they were going bankrupt and couldn’t afford to sign any new artists. So kids, if you’re planning on sneaking into a record company to try to get a record deal, make sure that record company is solvent because that is an important piece of the puzzle to get them to sign you.
But he did kind of establish a relationship. And when Chappel Roan reached out to him just to write more demos because, like, as a songwriter, you can just write songs for publishing companies, and then they’ll go out and shop them for you. He was doing that and actually then talk to Christmas Records into letting him record some of those songs that he wrote.
So he had a recording. One day he’s hanging out. He heard John Peel, a famous BBC DJ on the radio, say that he was hungry.
And so Billy Brad grabs his tape, gets an order of, I think, mushroom baron is what he got, rushed down to the BBC, gave it to John Peel, who was very appreciative of the food and played the song on the air. Unfortunately, at the wrong speed because it was a 12 inch, but it was actually recorded at 45. So it got played at 33 speed.
John Peele later apologized, played it at the right speed, and that was kind of Billy Bragg finally starting to get a little bit of notice. He was also kind of well known at this time for going around London with what he called the porta stack, which was like a £35 mobile PA system that he could totally strap on. So he was like a completely self-contained unit of amplified sound, so like he was busking at at amplified volumes around London, and so he got to be pretty well known for that.
If you look up pictures of it. There’s a lot of pictures of him in various situations with that porta stack on. So this guy’s the real deal.
I’ll just put it that way. This guy is, he came about this honestly for sure. His recording career does kind of start to take off.
He’s never been, you know, a huge artist, but he starts to find an audience and the political stuff really starts to hit home with a lot of people. And so we come to this song waiting for the Great Leap Ford, which was written in 1988. He was disillusioned about the 1987 elections in the UK and made this song as kind of a, not really an apology, but, uh, a way of explaining what it what his situation was being what he called a political pop star, uh, because he was getting some notice.
He was getting on like top of the pops occasionally. And that the difficulty of balancing being a pop star and being like overtly political. And so that’s what this song is about at its heart.
One of his quotes that I really liked was, I don’t mind being labeled a political songwriter. The thing that troubles me is being dismissed as a political songwriter. And I think that kind of says a lot about what his attitude was.
So this song actually hit number 52 on the UK singles chart. This wasn’t one of his biggest, biggest hits, but it did get some airplay. I noticed noticeably it hit the charts in the UK on September 10th of 1988.
We’re in June of 88. So the song is getting noticed on 120 minutes in the US, uh, which I think is kind of interesting that it took even a few more months to, because you would think it’d be the other way. You think it would break in the UK and then maybe find its way over here, but it does say a lot about how 120 minutes was kind of on top of the music scene, not just in the US, but always bringing like a lot of artists over from the UK.
So that’s kind of the setup. You have an overtly political artist, recording somewhat poppy accessible music, and this song is probably one of my favorites by him. I think the video is really great at showing that he also has a sense of humor about himself and about his situation.
It’s kind of him like forced gumping himself into different like historical situations, particularly those that are kind of left-wing socialist type imagery. But there’s other stuff as well. There’s him dressed up as like an 80s pop or an 80s, like hair metal dude, you know, at one point.
My favorite moments, I think, are him. He’s got little signs that get kind of like, I’ve meant to go back and really look to see. I don’t think he’s actually carrying the signs.
They’re kind of like chironed in, but there’s one song, there’s one that comes in when he’s talking about playing on top of the pops. One of the signs says, I’m not miming, because top of the pops artists were expected to lip sync and Billy Bragg was one of the ones that was very decidedly not going to do that. And so that little sign in the video is him kind of taking a little shot at top of the pops.
And then there’s one at 3 end of the video where he’s got a little sign that says this has been an expensive video, which I’m pretty sure it was not an expensive video based on the general quality. Although, you know, there’s a lot of clips. There a lot of like him green screened over the top of things.
This is this, to me, is a great introduction to Billy Bragg. I didn’t think, I didn’t know if you guys knew a lot about him outside of Mermaid Avenue or even inside of Mermaid Avenue for that matter. So I was really glad to get to pick this one because I think it is a good, it shows off his range.
It shows off his skills. It shows off his humor again, and it’s overtly political, which I’m not sure there’s many Billy Bragg songs that aren’t, but if you’re going to go into Billy Bragg, you might as well kind of get a taste of what he does right off the bat. So this is that.
And I’m curious to see what you guys thought about it. So I went into this ice cold. Like, this easily could have been the mystery song.
Like I was that I was that high school and I’d certainly heard the name Billy Bragg. I mean, the name rang a bell, but I had no idea what I was about to hear what this was. I have to admit, I was floored by this.
I’d loved every 2nd of it. I’ve always had a place in my heart for protest music like this. I think I’m a little amazed this guy never made it under my radar, but wow, just a fantastic song.
And it’s perfectly done. It’s got a great little energy build through it. Nice folky and anthemic, kind of at the same time mix.
You know, I really loved every single note to this. I can’t wait to hear more what this dude does. I also really like the video.
I’m not sure the the cheekiness of it would work for everybody because the song’s a little heavier than the video is for sure, but it worked for me. I mean, the silliness of what he’s doing sort of superimposed with the political figures and, you know, all this stuff going on in the song, maybe doesn’t drive home the message as much as someone else might have with a different vision for this video. But it sort of brought out the energy and the feeling of the song.
It was a blast to watch. So I, you know, I really did like the video too. So yeah, I can only say I wish I’d known about this sooner.
I can’t wait to do a little bit deeper dive. This was a great pick and just a fantastic song. I think the humor in the video is, is meant to kind of disarm you a little bit, and it’s meant to downplay the seriousness a little bit of what he’s saying politically, because I think that’s kind of the point is that what of, of the situation he finds himself in.
Like, he really does consider himself a pop artist, and he, during this part of his career, before and and after, records other music that is even more targeted to the pop audience because he does want to get to find some success in his music career, and he’s trying to find that balance. And I’m wondering if the humor in the video is kind of meant to, because it’s always him kind of being a little bit silly with these very serious, like, situations in the background. And I, I think it’s meant to kind of be a acknowledgement that, yeah, I’m just this stupid pop star that’s just kind of singing and this is, this is the heavy duty background that’s going on, you know, that’s behind these lyrics that I’m singing.
I don’t know if it works or not exactly, you know, it is a little odd to see it, you know, especially if you’re kind of going in cold. But I think that’s maybe what he’s going for. It’s just the idea that, like, I’m frivolous and and the stuff I’m singing about is not frivolous and that’s that’s kind of weird.
It’s kind of a weird situation. I guess that’s what he’s shooting for. It definitely, it’s it is, you’re right.
I think it is sort of, you know, here’s my silly little pop song, but it’s really about what’s going on behind me here. That, I mean, it kind of, I mean, it worked on me. But I could see somebody looking at this and going, that video is maybe a little too cheeky for what he’s saying about, but no, it is what it is.
I liked it. Yeah, it may not land with everybody that way. There’s actually a line in the song.
And I wish I’d done a better job of taking notes, but it’s to speak to that. It’s just something the effect of mixing pop and politics. They ask me what the use is, something or other, I give my usual excuses.
That was my favorite line through the entire song. And so, yeah, it kind of speaks to that sort of thing. My only experience with Billy Bragg was the song California stars with Wilco, that was actually the only thing I ever knew by him, and he doesn’t sing on that, I don’t think, or if so, he doesn’t take the lead anyway.
So I was going into this kind of cold too. I liked the song, just fine. I don’t think I was as bowled over as you were, Scotty, but I did like it.
I have always thought of Billy Bragg. I knew that he did political lyrics, for whatever reason. I always just thought if it was being a goofy guy, and this video did nothing to dispel that.
So it’s just kind of weird to me that that, for whatever reason, the vibe that he has always given off to me is that he’s just a real goon, but he writes these really heavy, like, political songs. So that definitely gets pointed out in this video. Yeah, I mean, I liked it.
I think it’s an interesting deal. I always enjoy the kind of the melding of pop music and like really heavy lyrics. I’m a big, the fan, as we’ve talked about before, and Matt Johnson is a master of doing that as well.
So I did enjoy that part of it. Yeah, I can’t say that this is something that I’m going to go listen to a whole lot of Billy Bragg. I mean, I did enjoy it.
I like the video too. But yeah, not something that I’m really, really over the moon about or anything. But yeah, it was a good song, for sure.
I feel like you just described everybody in Billy Bragg’s orbit of just like, yeah, I mean, it’s all right. Like, he’s okay. Like, because that’s kind of his career. he always kind of was just, you never really had a number one hit, but, you know, he would kind of show up on the charts.
He made a few appearances on top of the pops. He is, I mean, he is, by all accounts, like kind of a goofy dude. I mean, you can just see, you can see it in the video.
It’s very clear. But he’s also like we talked about with Midnight Oil. Like, he’s not doing this for show.
You know, he is very, very much an activist off the mic and, you know, when he’s not recording. In fact, he makes some statements in one of the interviews that he did where he kind of takes a shot at Phil Collins as being like, you know, Phil Collins, like, we’ll talk about the homeless as a subject, as subject matter, but he won’t actually do anything about it. And he’s more in line with like the Clash, who very much like walked the walk, and that was kind of the kind of person he wanted to be right or wrong.
I don’t have any opinions about Phil Collins or any of that. I don’t know. Phil Collins may have given lots of money, the homeless.
I don’t know that, but that was kind of his impression of it. But yeah, he’s sincere and he’s he’s trying to do good things. And I mean, I, you know, that’s that’s all I can really ask out of anybody.
Um, and he’s not somebody I listen to a lot. So it’s not that I disagree with that either, but he’s definitely got some good stuff. And if you’re into folk punk, and if you are interested in artists that are on the activist side of things, you could definitely do a lot worse than listen to Billy Brack.
So maybe go check it out. All right, it’s time for some whiplash, but you won’t get whiplash from this transition. I don’t think.
I think it’ll be the next transition where. This one will be just fine. Yeah, this one I think will be okay.
We’re gonna throw things over to key. So this week I picked a song and we’ve talked a little bit before on some of these about how 120 minutes was kind of finding its footing and still wasn’t really sure exactly what it was. And so we’ve seen some songs show up on it that surprised us, that we didn’t expect to see there.
And this one, for me, was very much one of those. It was a surprise song. So today, I’m going to be talking about Fast Car by Tracy Chapman.
So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car. Speeds about to feel like I was drunk. City like day, I’ll be boys, and here, I’m feeling nice crap around my shoulder, and I, I, Had a feeling that I belong, I Had a feeling I could see someone, be someone…
This song, you know, I was surprised to see it on the 120 minutes playlist, but pleasantly so, because this song is one of my favorite bits of recording music of all time. I absolutely love this song. And we talked a little bit before.
Also, when we were doing Vienna by Ultravox about how there are some songs out there that can actually hit you in such a way that you actually have a physical, it gives you like a physical effect, you know, like the hair on the back of your neck, stands up a little bit, you get kind of the creeping feeling in your spine a little bit. This song does that to me every single time. It is just a gorgeous song.
The song itself is pretty simple. It’s based around an acoustic guitar link that’s really cool. When it gets to the verse or to the chorus, There’s a, you know, bass drum and pedal steel guitar that come in.
But it’s just a really beautiful acoustic guitar bit and the song itself is really pretty. The lyrics are about a girl that has an alcoholic father. She drops out of school to take care of the dad after her mother leaves.
And then at a certain point, she meets a guy that’s got a fast car and that, you know, they go cruising in it and it’s it’s like the escape for them of kind of the drudgery of their regular life. And then they get together, they’re trying to make a go of it. It doesn’t work out for them.
It turns out that the guy is kind of a deadbeat just like her dad was. I think it’s the second to last verse. It talks about how he, uh, the guy, you know, spends all his time at the bar, sees more of his friends and he has his kids.
The very end of that verse, she said something the effect of, you know, so take your fast car and keep on driving, just telling him to, you know, to get lost. That line breaks me up every time. It’s just that song is so sad and has such an emotional half to it.
And that line in particular always hits me strong. But man, yeah, I, like I said, I, I, it’s hard for me to talk to you about just how much I love this song and it’s really kind of not the normal thing that I listen to, but, but yeah, every single time I hear this song, it hits me part in the fields. The song itself is off her debut album.
Uh, a Pono’s debut album came out in 1988. This album was successful. It went like 6 times platinum, got nominated for, I think, 6 Grammys, one, 2 or 3 of them.
The main one. They’re being best female pop vocal. The album was critically acclaimed, did really well.
And I listened to it this week. It had been a long time since I’d listened to the album, so I decided I want to listen to the entire thing again. The album doesn’t and as a whole doesn’t do as much for me as the song does, there are other good songs on this album for sure.
Talking about a revolution is really good. If not now, is a really great song. But the album itself, I don’t think I’ve got the appreciation for it that maybe the people at the time when it was out had and that the critics have had for it.
I did enjoy it. I do think it’s a good record, but I, for my money, Fast Car is very much the standout song on this album. And the funny thing about it is, you know, wondering why it might have been on 120 minutes because this song got big.
It was a big hit. But I was kind of looking at the timing of things, and it turns out that Tracy Chapman played at the 70th birthday concert for Nelson Mandela, and she was on earlier in the day, and then at a certain point later on, Stevie Wonder was supposed to play. And he apparently, you know, this being the 80s, he misplaced or lost the floppy disk to his keyboard that had his samples and programs on it.
And so was unable to play and basically just bolted, like just decided, I’m not going on. I’m not doing this. So the organizers of the show had to kind of on the fly, start getting the stage ready for whoever was supposed to be next.
And what they did to kind of kill time was send Tracy Chapman back out with just a microphone and her acoustic guitar to play a couple of songs just to kill a little time. One of those songs was Fast Car. And it wasn’t long after that that started climbing the charts.
And so that performance at the Nelson Mandela birthday concert, I think, you know, was kind of the reason that that song and album started gaining some traction and climbing up the chart. Well, the funny thing about that is that concert happened on June 11th of 1988. The date that Fastcar played on NTV’s 120 minutes was June 12th of 1988.
And so it was right after this that that song release started to take off. And so I think at the time that 120 minutes played it, playing it again because it’s a good song and they were looking for good music to put on there, but that was kind of a little bit off the beaten track. And this song just really hadn’t taken off yet because it hadn’t gotten the exposure that it was going to get once it got played on that show.
I looked at some other playlists, 120 minutes playlists going forward into July and August, and this song does not play again. And so I don’t know that it ever played again. I think maybe it was just a one and done thing on 120 minutes and after it started taking off, you know, in popularity that it didn’t really ever make an appearance on there again.
So, I think we’re kind of lucky we got it on there that one time. So, yeah, I was really pleased that it was on there and that got a chance to talk about it. I had never seen the video before.
This was the 1st time I’d ever seen this video and I actually really liked it. Didn’t talk about it on the podcast, but it reminded me a lot of the video for nothing compares to you in that it’s a shot a close-up shot right on her face with kind of a black surrounding all around and a spotlight hitting her right on the face. And this one does have a little stuff going on in the background, a little interstitial stuff, but it is largely just her performing the song with the spotlight right on her and you get a real good sense of her, the emotion of the song and she’s singing it.
So I really like the video, even though it was pretty basic, not a whole lot going on to it. Um, but I thought the video worked really well with the song. Again, the song is just beautiful and one of my all-time favorites.
And so, yeah, a little bit of an odd choice for 120 minutes, but I’m really glad it came up and interested to see, you know, I’m sure you guys have heard this. know all about it. But yeah, in this context, I found that to be really strange. I’m glad you told the story about the Nelson Mandela concert because I thought that was really interesting.
And it really just goes to show like what an artist she is to be able to just kind of go out there with a guitar and captivate what was a pretty large crowd. Probably one that was not super happy about not getting to see Stevie Wonder and probably was, you know, like uh, getting um, a little antsy, you know, with uh, with the changes on stage. So to be able to go out there with a quiet, you know, soft song like this, and and for what I remember of watching the actual video of it, just absolutely owning that audience.
Uh, that says a lot about Tracy Chapman and who she is. And as an artist. So, uh, I also made the a note, uh, that it reminded me of the Sinate O’Connor video, for the same reason you’re saying, it’s that just, you know, intimate portrait of an artist, just like pouring her heart out.
Uh, not, in this case, not not into camera, but kind of, you know, still the, still just a close-up of her face and and that’s most of the video. It does cut away to little pieces of snaps of other stuff. So 1988, I mean, I was 15.
I was, uh, as we talked about the beginning of the episode, the videos that were getting played on MTV were Def Leppard, poison, in excess, that stuff, and that was me. That was what I was into. So this one just completely missed me the 1st time when it came through because it was eventually in MTV’s mainstream rotation for a while. right at this point. like you pointed out.
But it became a huge, huge song that you could not avoid. And I, you know, it wasn’t like one of those that I would just recoil from or anything, but it just wasn’t my vibe at 15, but now going back and having heard it throughout the years, obviously, but recently, um, you know, it was, it was just covered by a country music artist like last year, and that got her back into the spotlight and she actually performed on the Grammys and a lot of the young reactors on YouTube are like discovering it. And so going back a while ago and listening to it again.
And then, and then for this podcast, like it really speaks to me now. It’s absolutely an amazing song. It’s perfectly recorded, perfectly performed.
It suits her to a T. I mean, it’s just it’s just great. Like the the acoustics guitar line is is a classic. I mean, it’s almost as iconic as like some old school, like, you know, guitar hero type stuff.
Like that guitar line is that good. It’s not one that I would, you know, claim to be is like my favorite song or that I’m a huge Tracy Chapman fan or whatever, but man, when you really sit down and just, it’s another one, you know, you compared it to Ultravox, Vienna, and when I was talking about that song, I mentioned that there are certain songs where you put on your headphones and you kind of block everything out and you listen to the song. This is one that also benefits from that.
Like, put on the headphones, crank up the volume and just, like, really listen to what she’s saying and the, uh, passion and the emotion in her voice and and you’ll totally get it. Like it is, it is that good. Very, like, what can you say about it, a song like this that is just, um, again, it’s the perfect art, the perfect song for the perfect artist, and, and she nails it, and it’s, you know, it’s been a classic for almost 40 years now for a reason.
Yeah, I did know this one from when I was a kid and I actually did like it when I was a kid. It’s funny. You mentioned the video.
She does. She never looks at the camera. The entire video.
The spotlight is on her face, she’s singing and all that, but she never once looks up at the camera. She’s always looking away. I thought that was kind of interesting too.
And then you also mentioned the Luke Combs cover that. She actually won a CMA award as the songwriter for that song for his cover of that. So, yeah, in addition to the Grammys that it got for her.
She actually picked up a CMA for this as well. Also, like the long build before you get to the 1st chorus. I think the 1st chorus comes in like 2 minutes into it.
So you, I mean, you’re in it. Like you’re hearing that guitar line. She’s drawing you in, but if you don’t know what’s coming and it just kind of builds and builds and builds and then when that court, it just makes that course hit like that much.
It’s just that much sweeter when you have to wait for it. And I really like that a lot. Yeah, and you get a lot of the story part of it, you know, it’s it is definitely one of those songs that tells a story as it goes and you’re heavily into the story before you get to that 1st course.
Yeah, I agree. I think that works really well too. So I think you guys touched on most of the things that I wrote in my notes on this one, but I’m a huge fan of Tracy Chapman’s.
I remember buying this album almost immediately after I heard it the 1st time. And that wouldn’t have been like seeing it on 120 minutes because I didn’t watch 120 minutes then. So I remember being in a record store and like, you know, they used to put like the new albums that were out, you know, and I remember seeing that great picture of her that’s on the cover and all of that.
And I know I saw this on MTV. I know I saw this video. And so, you know, hearing the story about the Nelson Mandela thing and kind of how maybe that led to this and then this led to heavy rotation on MTV.
Probably, it makes a lot of sense now that you kind of say it that way, because I remember seeing this on MTV, like in regular rotation, pretty early on. And I remember this on being like a monster mainstream hit almost immediately after it after it came out. So, none of that’s really important, though.
This is just a fantastic song. And if you, if you’re someone that only knows Tracy Chapman, buy this song. I would really recommend listening to the album that it’s on.
It’s really good cover to cover. You know, Keith said, this was like the finest moment on it. I don’t think a lot of people would disagree with you on that, but I do think there’s like a lot of really great songs on that album.
I would point people to talking about a revolution or maybe can I hold you? Like, those are all fantastic songs. I also really like the album that came right after it.
It’s called Crossroads. There’s a lot of really good songs on that too. After that, she sort of gets more band members and the sound becomes a little bigger and a little more overproduced.
And, um, you know, so I kind of lost interest in her after that. I prefer this sort of raw minimalistic thing that’s going on in this song and on this album too. You guys also both, you know, mentioned the videos sort of similarities to Sinead O’Connor. the same thing.
This one does, like you said, you have a little more imagery and stuff worked into it than the Sinead O’Connor videos in it, but it’s basically the same thing. Like, point a camera at this woman and let her do what she does and you’ll get a great video out of it, and that’s exactly what happens. You know, it’s just her singing.
That’s all it really needs to be. She has such a unique and interesting look. And, you know, her voice is doing all the work here and it should.
I just wanted to mention real quick before I pass the mic. I wanted to mention the cover of this song that went to number one all over the universe a couple years ago. I don’t know exactly what it was.
And, you know, I was going to look up the name of the guy. My apologies to country music fans, but your artists are all very interchangeable to me now. I found it very interesting that there is nothing different whatsoever about that cover.
It is almost like they took the original song, stripped her vocals out and put his in. And the fact that it worked just proves how timeless this song really is. I mean, they did not change a thing, and 40 years later, it’s a monster hit again.
So that’s just a testament to how wonderfully written this song is and how perfectly executed it was back then that you can just do a karaoke version of it and have a number one hit all over the planet. This is great stuff. I really, you know, after saying I didn’t have much to add, I added a whole lot, but there you go.
All right, so you’ve listened to Chase Tracy Chapman. You’re in the zone, you’ve relaxed, and you’re thinking, maybe I’ll switch it up a little bit. What would you recommend, Scott?
Well, I wanted to keep with sort of the folky theme we’ve got going here. I kid, I kid. So this week I picked Stigmata by ministry for my song on the complete opposite of the spectrum.
When we started this project, we were in an era on MTV, where I knew a lot of the artists we were talking about, I didn’t know some others, obviously, but this was not really anything that I was listening to at the time. You know, I knew these bands, but I knew them because I discovered them in the 90s when I worked in alternative radio or whatever. And I’ve been thinking a lot about, you know, the moments where I went from being a pop music fan or a mainstream music fan to, you know, drifting away from that and branching out a little bit.
And here we are at one of those moments. So, um, you know, at this time, I had started to dabble into alternative music a little bit, I certainly was down with REM at this time. I think I probably had James Addiction’s 1st album at this time and a few others, but that was about as far I had drifted off the reservation.
So back in this time. Rolling Stone magazine would do a best of issue every year. And part of that issue was to ask a bunch of currently relevant artists, what their favorite albums of the year were.
And this year for 198, 1988. Now, this would have been probably January 89 when I read it. They asked 4 members of Metallica for their lists.
And at that time, I worshiped those guys. So when all 4 of them had ministries, the land of rape and honey, as their album of the year. I figured this was something I wanted to hear.
So I naturally assumed, though, that it was some sort of speed metal or thrash metal. I went and bought the album, I took it home, and I had one of those moments. I was not sure what it was.
I wasn’t even sure that I liked it at first. But I knew that I was hearing something that I had never heard before, not even close. And yes, my horizons were not that broad musically at the time, but this is one of those songs that really did change the way I looked at music.
I give it a ton of credit for where my musical taste went after I heard it. Stigmata is the 1st song on the Land of Rape and Honey album. So ministry, for those that may not know, are an industrial band, they formed in 1981 by Al Jorgensen.
He is also their only constant member through their entire career, and they are still going now. They started out as an electro pop band on their 1st album. It’s called with sympathy, and then they started to embrace the more traditional industrial music on their 2nd album, which is called Twitch.
Both of these albums have their fans. Neither one of them ever did much for me. I think with sympathy is just boring.
And Twitch sounds like a 1000000 other industrial bands at the time, they were not the 1st band to do that kind of music. So for this album, Jorgensen’s ads bassist, Paul Barker, to the band, and that duo, Paul Barker, and Al Jarvinson, along with a few other people that kind of come and go, would record the 3 ministry albums that are considered their best works. On their previous albums, Jorgensen had met with, worked with producers, who kept encouraging him to try new things and go in different directions to push the limits of what they were doing.
And he never wanted to do that out of sort of a need to fit in with the industry. He did not have that need on this album. He let himself go, and this was the result.
So Stigmata, and this whole album is really just a testament to how aggressive electronic music can really be. I mean, yes, there are guitars here, but they are so distorted and looped and played with that they barely sound like guitars. The drums here are also just a series of loops. just and distortions that provide this rhythmic aggression that, you know, it takes 2 drummers to do this live.
That’s how much is going on there. So even the vocals are mechanical and distorted to the point that they sound more like a machine than a man. That is at its core electronic music with the aggression, energy and power of metal.
And I think that’s why it has its share of imitators. I don’t think it ever got much better than this. So ministry who would go on to do 2 more great industrial metal albums.
They drifted more towards the speed metal riffs and away from the electronics of this song and this album. There’s nothing wrong with either of those albums. In fact, I’ll say the mind is a terrible thing to taste.
The album that comes right after this is better than this one. But if this music is called industrial metal, and that’s kind of how they’re labeled, then this leads a little more to the industrial side of that. Well, the stuff that comes after, it leans a little bit more to the metal.
And then after those 2 albums, they almost become just a straight up metal band. This video, um, well, it’s kind of a mess. It’s exactly what it needs to be, I think.
This is ministry sort of kicking the door down and doing a new thing. And every image in this video for good or bad, and there’s definitely some bad, leans into that. You know, there’s punk kids shaving their heads and Barker riding a motorcycle around.
There’s also a few Nazi salutes thrown in there, if you caught them. All that is to say that, you know, this ain’t your big sister’s ministry anymore. And that’s fine for what it is.
So I know that was a lot. I’ll let you guys take it from here, but that was stigmata by a personal favorite song from one of my all-time favorite bands ministry. Yeah, I love this song too.
One of my favorite ministry songs. On one of the earlier episodes, I mentioned the fact that at one point I had a guy that I knew in high school that had made a cassette tape of for me, I’d asked him to, you know, expand my horizons musically a little bit. This was a guy that was always kind of ahead of the curve. as far as music goes.
And I’d said that that was the 1st time I’d ever heard ministry. That actually is not exactly true. I had heard stigmata before that, on the bus, on a school trip one time, taking place in a academic competition when I was in high school, and so I have now revealed to all of our listeners that I played golf and competed in academic competitions in high school.
So we’ll go ahead and and let you know you’re probably already thinking this. Yes, of course, I wasn’t a big man on campus because, you know, nothing says popularity, like a golf playing mathlete, but anyway, on the bus for that trip, that dude that made that tape for me was on that same trip and was playing some stuff and I heard this song. This was the 1st time I’d ever heard Stigmata by ministry.
And so when I was asking him to make me a tape of stuff, he asked me specifically, is there anything you want me to throw on there? And I was like, yeah, give me the one with all the yelling on it. That’s all the only way I knew that song was that it was the one with all the yelling.
And the one with all the yelling turned out to be stigmated by ministry. So, yeah, man, I loved the song then. I love it now.
I have the album, Rape and Honey. The thing about ministry albums for me and rape and honey is no different is that all of their albums have got 3 or 4 just fantastic songs on them. And then the rest of the album is just not good at all, in my opinion.
This album, unfortunately, is the same way for me. I love Stigmata. Deity, flashback, the missing.
Those are all great songs. Everything else on that album. I can pretty much completely do without.
This was also the 1st time that I’d ever seen the video. It was fine. It kind of fits the song.
The one thing I really did like about it was the eyes when he gets to the part where he’s saying, the look in your eye, and then it cuts to shots of various eyes. Yeah, just going back and stroving back through or through those eyes. Yeah, that was really cool.
But yeah, man, you can’t can’t beat this song. If you want some some aggressive industrial metal, fantastic, get you pumped up kind of stuff, yeah, stigmatic by ministry will absolutely do it for you. You mentioned that their albums kind of come and go, you’re right.
I don’t think they have an album that is, you know, all great tracks. This one, to me, it has more good tracks than some of the others, and that I like all the songs you mentioned. I would also throw the title track, Land of Rape and Honey, and I prefer in there as good.
So that, you know, that gives you like 6 good songs out of 10, which is a pretty good, pretty good record for them. I don’t know if there’s 6 good songs on. Mine is a terrible thing to taste, but you’re right.
When they’re good, they are as good as it gets, you know, at this. The thing that I really remember about this is that, and it’s hard to really remember or put in perspective this when you’re 40 years away from it. I really think, you know, at the time, and it sounds like you kind of have the same reaction.
When you hear this for the 1st time in 1988, nothing sounds like this. I mean, this is the was the most unique and original and crazy thing. I had ever heard at that time.
And I’m sure other stuff existed that was weirder or whatever, but I hadn’t heard it, you know? This to me was just a revelation in what, you know, what’s going on in music. And I, that’s why I think I’ve always sort of appreciated this song maybe more than some others, but yeah, I mean, that’s a takeaway from the song.
It’s fantastic. But I think just the, just the way it hit me when I heard it the 1st time, 40 years ago, I will never forget. I just remember going, what in the world is this?
You know? And then, and my brain just like wrapping itself around it, you know, and going, this, this, this is now what I listen to, you know, for whatever that’s worth. I like that we have come back multiple times to, you know, my friend made this tape for me or my friend, let me borrow this, because that was, that was the way it worked back then, and it was probably the, uh, most assured way that you were going to actually, like, really lock into something and listen to, because I was like, okay, my friend wants me to hear this.
I’m gonna, I’m gonna, the load it up, listen to it front to back and give it a shot. Keith, you’ve mentioned it several times. I mentioned, you know, my friend who was the one that kind of introduced me into this world and in the 2 of the tapes, the 2 of the 1st tapes he gave me were nice nails, pretty hate machine, and then the 2nd one was ministry.
The mine is a terrible thing to taste. So that was my entree into the world of industrial, um, I really liked it. I, you know, I was listening to a lot of Metallica and stuff at the time, so it wasn’t like a huge, huge leap just in terms of, you know, I was accepting of like loud and screaming and volume and stuff.
That said, I had never heard anything like ministry. I mean, that, you know, that tape blew me away, even, even beyond 9 inch nails, which was already pretty out there. Ministry, obviously, is like the next level of industrial on top of that, particularly those those.
And so then I started kind of working my way backwards and discovered this and, you know, ministry is not in my top 20 bands by any stretch and when I think of some of the, like, industrial stuff that I like, I actually probably lean more towards, like, dance industrial, like maybe front 242 or, you know, thrill cult or that kind of stuff, but ministry have some standout songs, and this is probably the the standdy Audiist of them all in my in my world. So I really, I really dig it. I think you guys have covered, you know, most of it.
I do like that the video is industrial in a very literal sense of the word, I’d say, about 50% of the footage is just like stock footage of big machines doing their things. So like there’s no, there is a literal, visual, it is visually industrial, which I dig. The thing that I discovered in doing, I don’t do a ton of research on your picks usually, but I was really curious about this.
So, you know, ministry being who they are, having an album titled The Land of Rape and Honey is not, it was not something that surprised me a lot. It’s like, you know, it’s obviously play on the idea of the land of milk and honey and they, you know, they were being subversive and they kind of did this thing and it’s supposed to kind of shock you a little bit, but so I don’t know if you guys ran across this or not, but it turns out the land of rape and honey was the slogan for a region in Canada. They grew rape seed oil and they grew and they produced honey.
They were agricultural products and they sold them with the slogan, the land of rape and honey, and that is 100% the truth. Rape the oil being renamed canola oil for reasons that I would hope are obvious. So when you’re if you’re using can oil oil at home, that used to be called rape seed.
It still is called rape seed oil depending on where you are in the world. But that just blew my mind that, because it’s, you know, it’s a little offensive, it’s a little insensitive. It’s what, and I’m sure they still kind of intended it to be that.
But what were the people in Canada thinking, like, what are you, what the… That’s that, you know, ministry naming their album that? Fine.
Yeah, yeah, not Chuck. This is a guy who named a band Revolting Cox and another one in 1000 homo DJs. And also the pawniness of the title is also kind of a ministry thing.
A lot of their albums are Bund titled. It’s the Canada part of that that you gotta go, what? Why were they like, oh, this will this will really bring people in?
This will I’ve got it, guys. Come to the point of rape. Yeah, I was up all night.
I had a couple options. This is this is the one I’m pitching to you. The land of rape and honey.
Can you see it on a big side? We’ll hang it over the highway. Yeah, my favorite part of my research for this entire episode, I think, was learning that little fact.
I just wanted to add, real quick, you mentioned 9 inch nails, and, you know, we talked about how ministry albums maybe aren’t cover to cover great. Nine Inch Nail’s pretty hate machine is. So if you like this kind of, if you like this kind of music, pretty hate machine maybe isn’t quite this, it’s maybe not quite as aggressive as this, that would be another album or 2 for Trent Rezner before that happens.
But Pretty A machine is a cover to cover masterpiece. So if you like this kind of thing, that’s a good place to go. It’s a little more drum machine forward than the thin ministry, I guess.
It’s a little dancier than I think ministry is at this at this time. If aggression is your thing. And for teenage boys, it usually is, but the ministries, the mind is a terrible thing to taste is that.
It is nothing but just wall punching aggression for 45 minutes. All right, we are to our favorite. I keep saying this is our favorite part.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it is my favorite part of the episode where we talk about a mystery song. It’s my pick this time. I broke my, my process for the 1st time in, uh, however many we’ve done 16 or 17 episodes.
This is the 1st time that I kind of cheated a little bit. So I had been choosing the mystery song solely based on just something grabs me. I’d never heard it before.
I checked to make sure you guys haven’t heard before, and if that’s the case, then that’s the pick and we go with it. And I told you guys this offline. I got spooked by Martini Ranch.
We picked that a couple, a couple episodes ago, and now I’m terrified that we’re going to miss the next martini ranch. Like, what happens if another one like that goes by and we don’t and we don’t pick it because we didn’t listen to it. And so now I now I’m in my head about this this whole process a little bit.
So I chose the song. I changed my mind. I chose a different one.
I think I think we’re the better for it. But this week’s mystery song is Hugh Cornwell, and the name of the song is another kind of device. You start to turn me wild That’s another kind of love.
Q is more famous, probably, for being the lead singer and lead guitarist for a band called The Stranglers. So the Stranglers, and Hugh Cornwell, as far as his solo stuff, follow a pattern that we’ve talked about a couple times. In some of our earlier episodes.
We talked about uh, Devo, uh, we talked about the wire, where they moved from being like a very pure punk band into a new wave band. I actually wasn’t aware of kind of how often that happened. I was definitely aware of Devo’s kind of transition.
It’s really just their 1st album that’s, you know, very, very guitar heavy punk, and then they move very quickly into like more synthesized and drum machines. And although Alan Meyers really plays drum. He plays like a drum machine.
You know, they move into what is is like post-punk in new wave. And these guys were were no stranger to new wave, but Hugh Cornwell in his solo stuff. Kind of wanted to go a little more poppy.
He was looking to get a little bit more dancey with some of his stuff. kind of I want to say experimental, but not necessarily in experimental for him. I think not it’s not necessarily experimental in the grand scheme of things because there were a lot of people that were making music that sounded kind of like another kind of love, which is a song we’re talking about today and some of his other stuff. But that’s kind of where we find ourselves.
So he was the league guitarist and league of singer for them from 74 to 90. So we’re in 1988 and he releases his 1st solo album. So he’s still in the Stranglers at this point.
He just kind of wanted to see what he could do outside of that. And what’s funny is some of the critics were like, you know, you could have just made this album with the Stranglers, it’s not a 1000000 miles different from what they were doing at the time. And he tried it and it honestly didn’t work, at least not in the UK.
The song did hit number 11 on the U.S. alternative chart. That got the notice. So he was on Virgin Records.
Virgin US said, hey, you’ve heard this man flock of seagulls, you might recognize that name because they stole that name from one of your lyrics in a Strangler song. So they obviously are fans of you. They’re about to tour the US.
Do you want to come and open up for them? He was like, sure. And Virgin UK said, oh, that would be great except we’re kicking you off the label.
So, so he lost his, he lost his record contract and he did not get to tour with flock of seagulls, but I did learn that flock of seagulls got their name from Strangler Song, which is another piece of information I did not know. This was so this was really the only song off this album that got any play. And his soul, he still, you know, is out there doing solo stuff he’s still recording, but he’s never really hit it as big and I think the Stranglers are probably always going to be more of his legacy.
He also made a really cool video for this song that should be more popular. It’s not very well known to the point where it’s not even on YouTube. We had to dig this one up on daily motion or thanks to the folks at 120 minutes.org.
I was able to find it on daily motion. And it was made by a guy whose name I’m going to butcher, but his name is Jan Svunk Mahar. something like that. And we’ll just go with that.
He was an artist, filmmaker. He liked to play around with really tactile objects, like ceramics and clay, which is kind of a main focus of this video. He likes to play around with stop motion.
And if you’re thinking to yourself, stop motion and clay, that sounds very familiar, he did, in fact, influence the brothers Quay, who were famous for making Peter Gabriel’s sledgehammer video in 1986. So you might be thinking, oh, these guys saw, you know, Peter Gabriel’s sledgehammer, they decided to make that video. It’s kind of, even though this video came out 2 years after Sledgehammer.
It actually is the other way around in that the filmmaker for this video, who never made another music video as far as anyone knows. He was the influence on the people who made the sledgehammer video. So he was doing stuff like this years back and somehow connected with Hugh Cornwell and they and they made a really, really interesting and very cool video.
It’s totally worth watching just for the video alone. It’s got a lot of weird mannequin head evolving into kind of creatures. It’s got some talking shoes that come up at one point that’s really interesting.
He has his own head made out of clay that is really impressive and the number of things they’re able to do with it because it almost, to me, it felt like there were a couple things they did. like, that’s got to be just like a one-way street. Like, they make the they make the model, and then once they distort it, the way they distort it, it’s never going back, but, like, it happens a couple times. So it’s like, do they make a bunch of models?
I don’t know. They obviously put a lot of time and effort into the video. It’s well worth watching.
The song is pretty good. It’s nothing super special. It’s kind of, it is exactly what he wanted to do, which is, you know, a lighter, popier thing than what Stranglers were doing.
It is, it is that. It is very new wavy. It’s a little better than just the average new wave song.
I actually, I was intrigued enough to dig into a little bit more of his stuff, and again, I think the Strangler stuff is more interesting than his solo stuff, but there’s some, there’s a deep well of stuff to get into if you do like this song, but, but yeah, it’s not the best mystery choice I’ve ever made. It’s not the most interesting mystery song we’ve ever talked about, but it is one of the best videos, I think, that we’ve seen on the so far on the podcast, and I’m curious to see. I’m guessing neither.
Well, I know neither of you guys knew who he was going into this because he wouldn’t have been the mystery choice otherwise. I’m curious to see what you thought about it. I did not know who this was.
I do know the name, the Stranglers, but I didn’t, I’m not that familiar with them. You know, we’ve talked a lot about how we’re not seeing a ton of great videos during this time on 120 minutes. I think this certainly was the exception to that.
I mean, this video is a lot fun. It’s interesting to hear that it’s not, maybe this guy was the inspiration for all these other things because at this time, this seems pretty derivative. I mean, it’s obviously like the sledgehammer video.
And there’s a couple other things going on there too. I’d be interested to know if that guy, the same guy that did this video or ever worked with Tim Burton, because those shoes are right out of a Tim Burton movie. The shoes with the fangs on them.
I mean, that is that could have been a Beetlejuice very easily. All that said, I had a blast watching this. It’s a cool video, even it’s, you know, it doesn’t feel that original.
I really kind of liked the song too. It’s nothing terribly earth shattering. You know, but it’s catchy and fun, pretty harmless.
So I’d say, you know, B minus for the video, B minus for the song. It’s pretty good Overall, I liked it. Well, I apparently liked the song a whole lot more than you guys did.
This, for just the song part of it, this might be my favorite mystery song that we’ve had, I loved this song. Absolutely loved it to the point where I went to the iTunes store to see about downloading it and was disappointed to find that they’ve only got a live version of it there. So I’m going to have to do some hard target search and see if I can actually find a physical copy of this album because I must have this song.
I absolutely love the song. It was fantastic. That’s really strange to hear because, you know, the video was hard to find too.
So I wonder why this is sort of, you know, disappeared. The video, like you said, I enjoyed it. The one note I made was I put in quotes, what if we made it terribly disturbing version of the sledgehammer video?
But I didn’t realize that they were, you know, it was connected with someone that had actually worked on that or whatever. So, um, but yeah, like the the faces, like the clay claymation faces, like melding together and then coming back apart and all that stuff, like, uh, in the text conversation we had about uh, this earlier, I described it as being exactly the right kind of creepy, and that’s exactly what I still think of this. The video it is exactly the right kind of creepy.
But yeah, man, this song, I absolutely love this song. And I will find a copy of it. Mark my words.
I’ll keep you guys updated on my progress and my search. I wanted to hear the version from Apple Music or whatever, just to find a slightly better copy than what, you know, the sometimes the videos that get uploaded, the actual audio is not as good as, as it should be. And it’s not available.
Neither of his 1st 2 or 3 solo albums are like, I think Apple Music starts at like 1997 with his solo stuff and he, I’m pretty sure recorded one in 88 and 90 and 93, if I remember right. So he has stuff that is not out there. I’m guessing, you know, Virgin dropped him, and so that one just probably fell out of print, and there’s nobody that, you know, is around to like get it up on Apple iTunes or to do, you know, the stuff that you have to do, and he apparently doesn’t have any interest in doing that, which is interesting, given that it did that song, you know, or this song that we’re talking about.
It made an impact on the US. I mean, number 11 on the alternative chart, it ain’t it’s not nothing. You know what I mean?
Like, that’s, I don’t have a song that hit number 11 on the US alternative charm. That’s pretty decent from where I’m sitting. So, uh, it is surprising that it just seems to have fallen off to the point, again, where you you could hardly even find it on YouTube.
You can’t actually even see the video. I think the song is on YouTube, but not the video. So it’s a shame because I, you know, and I may be underplaying the song, but it really is a good song.
It’s the reason that when I decided to listen to all 3 of the mystery songs, potential mystery songs, I chose this one because not just because the video was the most interesting, which it absolutely is, but I really, I did like the song quite a bit. Yeah, I think I may have underplayed that a little bit. It’s not, again, like, I’m not sure that.
I liked it as much as Keith did, but it was interesting. What it did make me do is go back and listen to a few Strangler songs and I do like a lot of the Strangler stuff that I heard so far. They have one song that is very harpsichord forward.
It’s almost all harpsichord, but yet it’s still very punkish. And so it’s like, it’s just they were kind of experimenting inside the bounds of punk and new wave with different instrumentation and stuff. But like a lot of British bands where I think they were, there’s more British bands that did that than American punk and new wave bands where they kind of weren’t afraid to dip into other instrumentals and do different things with the way they lined out their songs.
And that harpsichord song is really, really cool. So, yeah, go back and dig up some Stranglers too if you’re interested. There’s not a ton of difference as he transitions into his solo work from what I, to my ear.
There wasn’t a ton of difference. So a lot of the stuff that you like about his solo stuff, you probably would all like about the Stranglers, if I’m guessing. Absolutely find the video though, folks.
It’s, again, you can find it on daily motion. if you search for it, and it is, it’s, it’s worth, it’s worth the effort, because they, they put a ton of time and effort into that video. It’s a shame it didn’t get more, it didn’t get more play than it did. You know, the amount of effort and dedication it takes to do anything in stop motion or claymation or anything like that, is that is a level of dedication and time consumption that I will never, ever, ever have.
And so I really, really admire those people, you know? And every time one of these like stop motion movies comes out and they’re like, oh, we worked on this for 14 years. Really?
And then, you know, and then, and then it bombs and they don’t make any money? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, the dedication it takes to get yourself involved in the world of stop motion and claymation and all that stuff is admirable, I think.
And something I would never, ever put the time into. Yeah, I appreciate that somebody has done it because it’s such a cool thing. It’s so cool, but man, but well worth it in this case because, man, yeah, this is a fun one to watch.
I just you just don’t know where it’s going to go. It’s, you know, is it sledgehammer? No, I mean, sledgehammer is very few videos or sledgehammer, but if you like sledgehammer, then you’ll also dig this.
I mean, it’s there are some really cool things that he’s doing with effects and and stop motion and just just playing with. I like people that just play in the sandbox, which is what it felt like. You know, he’s like, okay, here’s however much 50,000, whatever they paid this guy and just like, you know, no rules, no theme, just make something happen.
And he did, and it’s cool. It’s fun to watch. So, you gotta love it.
All right, that’s it, folks. It is June of 1988. We have given you a couple songs that you might be familiar with, a couple that maybe you weren’t.
Um, you know, if you’re into protest music, if you’re into activist music. If youre into folk punk, go discover some Billy Bragg. If you haven’t listened to the Mermaid Avenue stuff, Billy Bragg and Wilco and, you know, doing the Woody Guthrie songs, man, there’s some really, really good songs.
There’s at least a dozen of those across the 3 albums that are really, really good. Keith Mitchin, California stars as being probably one of the standouts, but there’s there’s a couple other ones. way over yonder in the minor key, which is a Billy Bragg one with Natalie Merchant. Holy cow.
So good, so good. So check that out. Tracy Chapman, you’re probably familiar with.
If you haven’t heard Fast Car, congratulations, I guess. I don’t know how you managed that. That’s got to be some, that’s got to be some kind of record.
Way to, uh, you’re going to be shocked by a bunch of news at some point when you come out when you come out of hiding. There’s a lot of stuff you’re gonna be surprised to hear. Um, but yeah, uh, you know, some of the other stuff from that album and uh, give me a, give me one good reason.
Give me a reason. I don’t know the actual title of it, but she has another track that’s really good that you’ve probably heard as well, but I think go for the double shot. If you’re gonna do it, do it right.
Put on fast car, get in the groove, and then switch immediately to Stigmata, uh, and just do the do that double shot. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how well they fit together. Make sure you crank the volume up 1st because it just so it really, it really hits.
Lots of videos back to back too, because, you know, there’s a, you know, yeah, thematically, you know, pretty similar. Yeah, yeah. I think probably the same person directed him, if I’m not mistaken.
Speaking of videos, you don’t want to miss. Yeah, go check out Hugh Cornwell, again, the song is called Another Kind of Love. You can find it on daily motion, that is a clay motion stop motion classic.
But it’s not a classic. I say it’s classic, it should be a classic. It’s not because I don’t think anybody’s ever seen it.
But they should. It’s fantastic. Thanks for tuning in.
The next month we have coming up is July of 1988. I expect it’ll be a good one, so tune in for that. Thanks to 120 minutes.org for amassing all these playlists.
They are still to this day. They just added like 50 more playlists. So that gives us even more stuff to choose from, which is nice.
So that is an ongoing project. You’ll continue to get to see more stuff where they put up 120 minutes playlist. You can go and kind of relive a particular episode or you can go and pick and choose like we do from different episodes.
It’s really, it’s really like a nice little walk in the park, is what I was going to say. Not what I’m trying to say. It’s a it’s a nice walk down memory lane.
Most of the episodes have just like all these songs that you remember from back in the day. And it’s fun to go to their website and just kind of, you could lose a hold day, just prove it on their website. So check out 120 minutes.org.
Don’t forget 35,000 watts story college radio, a documentary film about college radio is available right now on Tubi. Also on YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Google Play. And thanks again to Scott and Keith.
We will see you next time right here on 120 months.