In this episode, we explore a soon-to-be breakout hit from a Dallas band, a UK #1 that is more performance art than song and an all-time classic from an iconic goth(?) band.
And welcome back to 120 months. My name is Michael Millard. I am here with Scott Mobley, Keith Porterfield, and we are taking a little walkthrough 120 minutes in TV’s indie rock alternative show from back in the day, specifically the day that we are talking about, or the month we were talking about, is November of 1988.
You know, the landscape at that moment. We’ve talked about this on the last few episodes, and this landscape doesn’t change very quickly. So even though we’re going month by month, and you would think, you know, making some like strides through music history, music just kind of moved a little slower back then, I think, and like looking at the top 40 charts and what was on MTV airplay, it’s really kind of been similar over the last couple months.
Uh, you guys’ favorite song, The Beach Boys, Kokomo, is actually at number one at this point, and I know how much you love it. As it should. Yeah, you expressed your deep, undying devotion for that in the last episode.
So if you haven’t seen that, go check it out. But yeah, like the Escape Club now is number 2 with Wild Wild West. I forgot how big that was.
And in terms of what was on MTV, like Bon Jovi, Bad Medicine was, I know, massive, massive, massive hit on MTV. Like I saw it probably 5 or 6 times a day at that point, it felt like. Bobby Brown, you know, was really popular at that point, Def Leppard.
So we don’t have to get into it this time just because it’s kind of similar to last episode, but again, what MTV was playing even in like dial on TV and stuff that was, you know, theoretically reflecting what the audience wants the most of. It was, it was similar and of a piece with what was going on in top 40. So there was this space for MTV to play alternative stuff in Indies Rock stuff, a lot of stuff that was probably getting play on college radio a lot.
And so that’s where we’re at right now. We’re going to see what MTV pulled out of the underground in November 88 and tried to shine a little bit of a light on and we’re going to start with Mr. Scott Mo. So this week I chose the song What I Am by Edie Brkell and the Bohemians.
What you are, oh, what? What I am, is what I am, you, what you are, oh. Oh, I’m not aware I’m assuming anything.
I know what I know if you know what I mean. Here we are with another example of a song that, at least in my mind, brought up some questions about why it would have been played on 120 minutes. You know, spoiler alert, here in a few episodes, you’re going to be mentioning this song in your, what was on the hot 100 in a certain time.
But, you know, I had some thoughts on the whys of that. But for what it’s worth, you know, this song was a big hit. So Little History, New Bohemians, and I leave Edie Burkell’s name off of that on purpose, where a Dallas-based band formed in the mid-80s.
Nothing I found gave you a date. It just said formed in the mid 80s. So they kind of just sort of formed, but it was a group of musicians who had been high school friends.
Then they were joined by other Dallas-based musicians and they were signed by Geffen Records in 1988. The reason I’m not naming names yet, and I will, but is because by my estimation and through my research, Around 2000000 people were members of this band from their inception, they recorded their debut album. Revolving door is an understatement.
So I’m just going to give the lineup for their debut album and the people that recorded this song. If there are major fans of this band out there, they’ll accuse me of leaving someone out, and that’s perfectly fair. I’m going to leave a lot of people out.
So, on the album, shooting rubber bands from the stars, which is New Bohemian’s debut album. Kenny Whitrow is on guitar, Brad Hauser-based, John Bush, percussion, Matt Chamberlain on drums, and Edie Burkell on vocals. This man had become a huge sensation in the deep LM area of Dallas, and they were signed to Geffen in 88.
Having grown up in South Texas, and being in high school about this time, I remember people talking about this band. I know they made their way to Austin at some point. They probably even made it to San Antonio.
And so I had heard their name long before I turned on MTV one day in 1988 and saw this new video from Edie Burkell and New Bohemians. I didn’t know if that was the same band or if someone else had landed on that name, I had not heard the name Edie Burkell before. So as it turns out, the powers that be at Geffen, talked the group into changing the name of the group to feature ED rather than be put out there as one unit, which, from what I understand, from the research, did not leave the rest of the band members very happy.
I’m assuming that they’ve gotten over it because they’re still putting out music now and they’re still using the name Edie Burkell and New Bohemians. I’ll admit, I hadn’t listened to this song in a while, but listening to it again this week. I really, really liked it.
It’s just different enough. It’s especially, especially at this time. It really didn’t sound like anything else.
I’ve also will admit that 17-year-old me had no problems with Edie Brkell. I’m sure my feelings would have been the same if she had just been the lead singer of New Bohemians instead of in the band name. But I get the decision to sort of put her in the foreground of this, even though I don’t necessarily agree with it.
She’s got this cool, hippie, artsy girl kind of energy that I think I saw as very marketable and it worked. So I do think, though, that drawing attention to her sort of overshadowed just how good this band is. The song has this sort of funky, jazzy groove and it really showcases the talents of these guys.
Most of their stuff, to be honest, is a little more folky than this. Shooting Remember Man’s with the Stars, the album that this song was on went double platinum. It peaked at number 4 on the US album sales chart, and what I am, this song went to number 7 on the Hot 100.
There was a 2nd single. It’s called Circle, which I’ll actually argue is a better song than this one, but and it was also a mild hit, but not as quite as big of one as this. And 2 years later, they would release their 2nd album, goes to the dog, which did not find a hit, although I think it does have a couple strong moments.
And the band was immediately dropped by Geffen. So the group disbanded. The guys went back to Dallas.
Edie Burkell married Paul Simon. Yes, that Paul Simon. And she kind of disappeared for a while.
Although you do see her pop up from time to time. For example, she wrote a Broadway musical based entirely on bluegrass music with Steve Martin. That’s a collection of words I never thought I’d say in that order, but there you go.
The band reunited in 2006. They put out about 3 more albums from then until now. I’m sorry to say I haven’t really heard any of them.
The video for this song is the band performing the song. Obviously, it’s highlighting Edie Burkell. It’s fairly standard performance video.
But the band has a cool look, and I give off a good vibe. You know, they kind of look like a group of hippies, and that’s what this is supposed to be. As simple as it is, I think it was probably the right video for this song.
Before I pass the baton, I just wanted to mention that if you’ve never heard this, the band did a cover of Bob Dylan’s, The Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. It’s in the Oliver Stone movie born on the 4th of July. It is, like most Bob Dylan covers a really great version of a song done with somebody they can sing really well.
If you’re looking for more from this band, that’s a, that’s probably the 1st place at point you, it’s really good. So that’s what I am. Eddie Burkell, New Bohemians.
A 120 minutes video that went to number 7 on the hot 100. Um, I assume like many of the others we’ve talked about. This was a debut, and then they saw it in heavy rotation on an MTV fairly soon. was originally released as a single on November 1st.
It doesn’t hit the not 100 until March of next year. So I think it’s fair to say that Geffen probably started this out as a campaign on some alternative channels, but it blew up way beyond that pretty quickly. So that’s that’s probably it.
All right, take it away. Yeah, I remember this song from being on the radio, you know, when from that time from 88 when it was big. And I remember always liking it.
But I didn’t have like a strong opinion about it. I never really checked in on these guys. I didn’t buy this or anything like that.
So I was familiar with the song, but not overly familiar with it. I didn’t really have an opinion much one way or the other, whether I really liked it or disliked it. I just always kind of thought, you know, hey, it’s a good one. good enough whatever.
So this was the 1st time I’d ever really, you know, kind of delved into it a little bit. Um, man, I love this song. I like it more after having listened to it more this time around.
You mentioned kind of the musicianship on it. Um, I enjoyed that. There is a super groovy 6 string bass part on this song.
And the guy you can hear him like reach down and get the high register a little bit on some fills in there before going back to the main part. Yeah, really great. The guitar solos got a really cool effect going on it.
I’m not sure exactly what that is. I’ve heard it in other songs, but I’ve always liked that effect and it works really well. It sounds like a slide guitar, but he’s not using a slide.
So I don’t know what that is, but you’re right. Yeah, I don’t either for sure, but I do like it. It sounds really good.
So, yeah, man, I liked all this. The lyrics. I never really paid a whole lot of attention to the lyrics, and so I went and did a little reading to find out that she wrote the lyrics of this after attending a world religions class in college, and was just kind of put off by everybody’s, you know, sticking to their own dogma, and, well, this has to mean that, and this can’t mean this and all that.
And so she came out and wrote these lyrics kind of in response to that. So, you know, going back and listening to the lyrics, I thought they were really clever. Um, yeah, everything about this, uh, I liked, except for the fact that watching the video, Eddie Bacrell looks fine.
She looks great. The rest of the band is dressed like there, uh, got issued uniforms from Dork Central. This is one of the goofiest looking bands I’ve ever seen in my life.
I don’t know what possessed them. I mean, they had to know they were doing a music video, right? You couldn’t come up with something cooler to wear than that.
Like all the dudes, every single one of them looks like, yeah, like they should have made a different fashion choice on that day, but they’re bohemians, man. I think that’s it. They’re bohemians.
That’s, and this was, this was the costume of the Bohemian, you know, this is going out to the world, um, at the same time as a lot of glam rock. And I think this was whoever designed this look for the video was going for anti-that. I’m not sure they nailed it, but yeah, you know, but they they look like a bunch of hippies.
That’s what they were going for I think. I guess so. We’ll give them that.
Let’s say that that’s what was going on. And so we have an excuse for them to look the way they did, but that was my only complaint about it. really. I thought the video fit the song pretty well.
You know, it’s just kind of the performance video, but yeah, man, I liked everything about this. I liked the song. I liked the lyrics.
Yeah, I got nothing bad to say. This was enjoyable to revisit, and I’m glad we did, because like I said, I knew the song, but I just hadn’t thought about it in a lot of years and didn’t really have a strong opinion about it until going back and checking it out. And yeah, man, this thing shot up the shot up the rankings as far as I was concerned. really enjoyed this.
The interesting thing is that this band did not go any further than this, really. They had a couple more singles, a 2nd album that bombed. And, you know, you mentioned how, like, kind of cool this, the musicianship is on this song.
They didn’t do a lot of that. And I think maybe that’s where they went wrong is that this song is as good as it is, is not very indicative of their sound. The rest of their stuff is a little folkier than this.
I mean, it’s all it’s all her. If you like her voice and her kind of thing, then it’s that. But it doesn’t, not a lot of their songs have this little funky groove that this song has, you know?
And I think maybe that’s where they went wrong. Because like you said, you like this song. You remember this song.
You never listen to anything else, right? Edie Burkell and New Williams. And I think that was a common thread in people at the time, you know, I think I’m probably one of the 10 people that bought their 2nd album.
So, you know, it’s it’s almost like they needed to lean more into what this song is, and they went kind of a different way. Yeah, this song, I’ve talked about this a little bit. This was right at the time when I had just moved to like a bigger city, the big city of Lubbock from where I was and like was hearing several different top 40 radio stations and also getting access to MTV at the same time.
And I was into Def Leppard and Poison and all these bands that I’m kind of making fun of as we talk about like what was popular, but at that time I was 15 and I was into it. So this song did not really hit me at the right time for to appreciate it, to be perfectly honest. And I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten past that.
I think, you know, I really wanted to kind of come at this from like, okay, I’m we’re obviously like almost 40 years on now. I’m obviously 40 years older. I should be able to kind of have a totally different fresh appreciation for this track.
I mean, I, it’s not it’s not bad. It’s, but I think, I think that initial 1st impression has never gone away for me when I do kind of hear this in passing every year, you know, every couple years, you hear it, just for whatever reason. So I really did try to look at it with fresh eyes and it didn’t really get me much further down the road, but I do appreciate the musicianship.
You got to appreciate Edie Prakell’s voice. But even just her, the way she presents herself and like she’s the kind of person who probably, if this has come out like 4 or 5 years later, I would have had a huge crush on, but just as a 15 year old, I didn’t. I kind of put it.
So Jewel came out, you know, what, 5 years after this, and so that was more in the wheelhouse of, I was at an age where I was at least kind of maybe a little bit more able to appreciate it, and I still am not a Jewel fan, and I still didn’t really love the Jewel stuff, but maybe it would have hit me a little bit more like that than it did when I was 15 in high school and just really had no kind of use for this particular type of music at that time. Um, it is pretty amazing. I mean, it broke huge, and I think you’re right.
I think the record company took an approach that we’ve seen before, and we’ve actually talked about it a few times with different bands that, you know, when we were talking about being in college radio and knowing that a label was kind of testing the waters in college radio 1st to see what was worth putting more effort into. And Karen Gallaber, actually in the film, 35,000 watts. The story of college radio, if you haven’t watched it yet, go watch it on Tubi.
She talks about how she was working at record labels, and that was exactly what they were doing, is putting stuff on college radio, and if it had legs, then they could go chase in her, in her words, like another market or another format, in this case, top 40 or probably adult contemporary also is what they probably put this into. And I mean, they must… I’m guessing.
And we hadn’t got to college radio yet, so none of us had the firsthand experience of this, but I’m guessing that song blew up on college radio, and that’s why Geffen was like, okay, yeah, we should put this on top 40 or an adult contemporary, and they definitely should have, because it went huge. So that’s my guess is how that happened. Yeah, I don’t, you know, it’s it’s just kind of a song that’s there for me.
It’s it’s not good or bad. Um, it’s one that I appreciate on a on a professional level. shall we say, but not necessarily on a listener level. Um, but I don’t have anything bad to say about it, you know?
It is what it is. You make a good point about the possible marketing of this because this is Geffen. and Geffen at this time is is nailing it in the marketing department. They were very good at, you know, taking something that might be a little off the beaten path like this is.
I’m not going to say this is wildly alternative, but compared to what was, I mean, you just read what was on the radio at this time. It’s not this, right? It’s not this.
So, yeah, this is not super poppy nor is it super glam medally. It’s none of that. You know, it’s it’s folk music being put out in the mid 80s.
Um, and so they test the waters in college radio. They get a little ground. Then they send it to adult contemporary, possibly.
Then they send it on to the top 40 and it blows up. Geffen did that with a lot of artists, you know? And then some of them, some of them died at college radio.
Some of them died somewhere else. Some of them went big, you know. This is, you know, this is where this is where Nirvana came from.
This is where Sonic Youth came from. This is all, you know, Geffen Records was really doing some crazy stuff in the 80s and, you know, can chalk this up as one of them, although this certainly doesn’t seem to be in the same league as those things. It, it obviously was, when they put it on 120 minutes, they were like, this is going to be a big college radio hit, and it probably was.
And then somebody picked up on it and got it on the mainstream. Speaking as the former music director, you know, at the radio station, we got so much stuff in, you know, that I could not possibly listen to at all. And if someone like Geffen or a, you know, a major label was pushing something, I was going to hear from them and and that was something I probably was going to check out before I would check out something from, you know, rat fart records from, you know, the somewhere out in boondocks of Indiana or whatever.
So, um, so it makes sense, you know, that, that, you know, you shoot that out there and then try to put a little bit of a heavy hitter, you know, label behind it and maybe it does get a little, you know, a little leg up in college uh, airplay. That certainly was the way I did it. Yeah, if they were signed to Geffen, they obviously had some juice already, you know, to get them to that point.
And then, you know, those record, the record labels, a lot of them by the by the time we’re talking about 1988, they had figured out, you know, college radio is a great test bed to put this stuff out there. If we just find the market there, you know, like they might be giants. That’s great.
But if it can go to another level. you know, we will do that, and they definitely did with numerous bands. But I think this is maybe a really, really good example of that. All right, shifting gears to something completely so very not quite as big as a totally shift from ministry to whatever it was the other day from JC Japman, but close.
It’s close. We’re definitely going down a rabbit hole. My choice for this for November of 1988 is the Time Lords and the song is called Doctrine the TARDIS.
I’m gonna say we could do a podcast on this, and I don’t even mean an episode about this. We could do a podcast about these guys, believe it or not, because the rabbit holes are our mini and they are deep. So we’ll try to keep it brief and focus on this particular song and just kind of hit the highlights, but here we go.
The Time Lords. are also better known to a lot of people as the Jams, the JAMSs, that stands for the Justified Ancients of Mumu, and if that starts to get you closer to where you may have heard of these guys before, they were also known as the KLF, for U.S. for our U.S. listeners, that is almost certainly the only way you know them, unless you happen to remember this particular song, which is the definition of a novelty song, to the point where it was a literally created to be a novelty song by these guys. B was the subject of a book that these guys wrote later about how to make a number one single, a very cynical, kind of look at the music industry, but they had something to hang their hat on because this song was, in fact, a UK number one single. But let’s back up.
This is Scottish musician Bill Drummond, who was really, at this point, in the early 80s, a record label executive, and Jimmy Cotti, who was a musician for various bands that worked with one of the labels that Bill worked with. Jimmy would go on to be in the orb, if you remember them, an ambient dance electro band. But these guys teamed up.
And their original thought was they wanted to make hip hop music under the the moniker, justified ancients of Mu-Mu. Bill went by Kingboy D. Jimmy went by Rockman Rock, and they did, in fact, make some music. It was very, very, very sample heavy.
Uh, they already had this kind of performance art idea in mind and and they are, they’re going to end up kind of becoming one of the preeminent performance rock bands that still managed to have hits of the late 80s and early 90s, if not of all time. I mean, honestly, the KLF, the some of the stuff they did is insane, but so they they start out as as the justified ancients Mumu or the jams and don’t really necessarily have like a ton of success with that. But they’re known in the UK.
They, you know, they make a little dent here or there on a dance chart, but nothing huge. And so then they decide, hey, let’s make a number one album, or make a number one single. We’re going to make this goofy song.
We’ll make a novelty track and they did. They recorded this doctor and the TARDIS. So this is based largely on Gary Glitter’s single rock and roll part two.
Your feelings about Gary Glitter now are probably a little tainted, but at that time that all of the stuff about him wasn’t known, and so try to kind of, you know, appreciate their shout out to that song and that light. It also obviously samples the Doctor Who theme, and the song is, of course, based on Doctor Who. The TARDIS was, you know, the police booth that traveled through time.
And the video features, obviously, the evil Daleks from Doctor Who. I am not a Doctor Who fan, so that’s about as deep as I can get into that. But we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute.
So they released this song. It is, you know, for whatever reason, it is a hit, and even though at the time, Melody Maker described Doctoring the Tartis as pure, unadulterated agony, dot, dot, dot, excruciating. Another publication reason that it was a record so noxious that a top 10 place can be its only destiny. calling it a rancid reworking of ancient disks.
Well, it was, in fact, its destiny, because as we’ve talked about, it hit number one. I also love that the credits on the album actually credit Ford Timelord as the talent in the band. Forbes Timelord is, in fact, the Ford Galaxy 1968 model that you see in the video and is was interviewed at the time. as being like the talent behind this particular song.
The guys claim that the car came up with the concept and they were just kind of the messengers for this particular. this particular track, let’s say. Again, there’s so many rabbit holes, I was like, I’m not even sure which ones to go around, but after this, they decide to record as the KLF, and that is where they kind of get into a, uh, they call it like house music smashed together with stadium rock. So that’s where songs like What Time is Love, 3 AM Eternal, uh, and the Tammy Wynette justified in ancient.
Those are the 3 big hits they had in the US. That’s where those songs came from was this idea of let’s fuse some of this weird kind of ambient, sample heavy rock or dance music that we’re doing with stadium rock. They have like the big, loud, um, anthemic courses, you know, a lot of times you actually literally hear a crowd, like in in 3 AM Eternal.
It’s actually kind of a big part of the song. And then after that, oh, after that, well, they have their appearance on the Brit Awards, where they appear with a collaboration called Extreme Noise Terror, they had some really, really grotesque stuff they wanted to do on stage that they absolutely could not do. So they ended up coming out, performing a song, and then shooting a machine gun with blanks like over the head of the audience.
Uh, and then they announced that that is in fact the end of KLF, and they were not joking. That was, in fact, the end of KLF, at least as far as everybody knew. They deleted their back catalog, which in record label parlance means that they removed all their music from sale at that point.
If it wasn’t already printed in a store, it was no longer available, and they kind of semi-disappeared for a while. They started something called the K Foundation. Um, they act, they did some good work with that.
And then they had about a £1000000 left from their KLF hall, uh, that they hadn’t spent on on these ideas that they had for the K Foundation and decided that the best thing they could do with it is burn it. And that is, in fact, exactly what they did in 1995. They, on a distant remote island in the UK, and one dude who had a video camera burned £1000000 in cash and did it for no good reason.
Really? They actually told the guy to get rid of the footage. He said that he complied and didn’t, so that footage does still exist and has been used for various reasons.
Since then. And that’s where I’m just going to be like, you know what? If you want to know more, you’re going to have to just go do the research.
I don’t have to. used up most of my time here. Uh, the rabbit hole about these guys as deep. They are an interesting duo of dudes.
They’ve gone on to do some interesting stuff since then, even though they kind of were on a 23 year hiatus after burning the 1000000 pounds, but you can find out a lot about what they had to say about that, why they did it, what the ramifications of that were, the their music has now kind of come back around. They still do record a little bit at this point, but there’s a lot you can find out and learn and enjoy, because it’s all pretty entertaining, to be perfectly honest. So real quick, we’ll talk about the video itself.
It is really just 4 time lord driving around the English countryside. There’s a few landmarks that you can see. The Share Hill white horses is probably the big one, which is the big white chalk horse that you see on the side of a hill. kind of an ancient artifact, if you will.
It was also filmed on the Royal Air Force Base, which is where the car is just kind of like going crazy on the big concrete pads. There are Daleks strown throughout the video, who seem to be kind of like stalking, if not downright attacking, the car, they’re kind of at a disadvantage because they move extremely slowly, and some of them, in fact, have human legs poking out at the bottom, moving them along. So I don’t think they were really in a fair fight at that and one of the Daleks, hopefully one of the ones that did not have a human inside of it is, in fact, absolutely just obliterated by Ford Timelord near the end.
So, uh, I think the underlying story there was that 4 Time Lord was superior to the Daleks in every way. certainly seemed that way from the video. But there’s not really much. I mean, that is it.
That literally is it. The song is only 2 minutes in 22 seconds. So the, you know, a few shots of the car driving around the countryside and smashing Daleks and you’re already done.
So you’re there. How do I feel about it? I, you know what?
I mean, it’s a fun little song. Like, you can’t really enjoy the Gary Glitter song anymore. So if you want something, you know, tangential to that.
This is that this is that. It is what it is. I, you know, is it in my playlist?
No, did I remember this song existed until this playlist came up? Not really. I’d kind of forgotten about it to be perfectly honest.
But it’s, you know, it’s kind of a jam. It’s it’s got a great story. Uh, it’s, it has a, the band has a history that is well worth digging into how it ended up on 120 minutes.
You know, I think being a big kit in the UK, and this song was, in fact, in rotation at KTXT. So I guess it got some college radio airplay as well. And it didn’t really move the needle a lot in the US.
It did, I think, number 66 on the hot 100 chart, I think. little bit of noise on the modern rock and dance charts, but it just kind of was what it was, but it was a big song in the UK. And, um, yeah, I guess you guys probably remember this from KTXT, but that’s probably about it, but I’m curious what your revisit to this felt like. I had no idea what I was getting into with this one.
I knew the name of this. Like when it popped up, like you said, I was like, 0 yeah, I remember that. We played at KTXD.
I didn’t remember the song, though. I, like, I didn’t remember that this is what it was. I think in my mind, it was just one of those throwaway 80s electro dance tracks that got cranked out every week and it’s exactly that.
When I had forgotten was that if it’s the Gary Glitter song and the yelling Doctor Who, you know, you said, you know, it’s a novelty song, and it is that. What it really is almost is like a weird owl song. It’s like a parody song of the Gary Glitter thing with something that’s just not that clever or funny, but I was so far removed from this over the years.
I think I had kind of erased it and just assumed that the people shouting Doctor Who when that song plays at sporting events or whatever were just getting the words wrong. As far as, you know, like these guys go, I love… I mentioned this about velvet underground an episode or 2 ago, you know.
You have to appreciate what they did. You don’t have to necessarily like the sounds they made doing it. And that’s exactly kind of how I feel about this.
You telling all those stories about these guys. I love that stuff. I love artists being weird and being artistic.
It doesn’t make me need to listen to this though. you know, it’s fine, but it’s goofy and whatever. All that said, I love this video. And the reason I loved it is because it looks like something that my friends and I would have filmed, you know, with like a camcorder standing out in the desert somewhere, you know, when I was in high school.
Just get out in the desert, drive around and run over stuff and then edit it over some funny song. I got a real kick out of this. Um, and you know, you mentioned that you can see the, the legs on one of the Daleks before they run into, but they run into the other one.
It’s like, they’re like trying to create that idea that, oh my god, there’s a guy in there, but there’s no guy in there and it’s, and it’s so badly edited and done that it’s almost seems like it would be intentional that that’s what they did. But anyway, I love the video. The song is what it is, but it’s pretty fun video if you’ve never seen it.
So I’m pretty confident that I never had. But yeah, so video 10 plus song, 5.5. Well, when I saw this, you know, when I 1st got the, you know, that you picked the Time Lords to do this, that it could have been the mystery song for me.
I had no idea what this was, even seeing the doctor in the TARDIS, name of the song didn’t ring a bell to me. And I don’t remember ever playing this at KTXT. So I did not know this from there.
So I clicked through to watch the video in about 2 seconds in. I’m like, oh, it’s this song. Okay, I got you.
It’s, you know, I mean, if you went to a sporting event in the 90s, especially a basketball game. You heard this song. period. They just played. still do it now.
You mentioned the Gary Glitter thing or whatever. They’re still playing that song. Yeah, so for me, you know, immediately I recognize the song.
It’s terrible. It is a terrible, terrible song. It is so bad that it comes all the way around out the other end and it’s kind of good because it’s so terrible.
And it’s just one of those. I mean, it is just an awful, awful song. But it’s fun.
You know, I mean, you can’t deny the fun of it. The video I liked as well. Oddly enough, because I know I make a lot of like, you know, science fiction references when we’re doing these things.
I am not a Doctor Who fan. It’s one that I’ve never really checked in on. I probably would enjoy it.
It’s just, there’s, you know, so many years of episodes out there that it’s always been kind of a daunting task to jump into Doctor Who. So I didn’t realize until I went and did a little reading about this, that the little robots were Daleks, that they were the bad guys from Doctor Who. And the note I took on this before I saw that was that these robots looked like Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street entered the robot fighting competition, and this was what they came up with.
This was their entrance into the robot fighting competition. So. The sad thing there is that if you watch the old episodes of Doctor Who, the special effects aren’t much better than what you see in this video. it’s pretty bad That’s what I was going to say is I don’t know if the Daleks are supposed to be more menacing in the actual Doctor Who episodes, but they were not even a little bit menacing in this video.
I was, you know, I never had any doubt that Ford time Lord could take care of them, man. It was not a problem. They might be supposed to be more menacing, but they aren’t.
Yeah, I feel like I’ve read that someone later in the Doctor Who reincarnations, you know, kind of finally had to come up with a way to make the Daleks actually scary because they really needed a villain that people could believe because but back in the early, you know, in the early days of Doctor Who. It was just kind of like one of those things where you just kind of had to take it on faith that these guys were the villains, even though they, you know, that they’re anything like in the video, they are woefully inadequate to take on anything or anybody. Yeah, they were certainly no match for Ford time, Lord.
That was for sure. No, they were not. Same thing with Scott.
Good video, terrible, terrible song. I mean, I think it’s okay to hate this song just because it wasn’t constructed for any other reason except to hit number one in the UK. you know that was their goal. It was a piece of performance art where they said to our themselves, you know, we have been in this business.
We know what it takes to hit number one and we’re just gonna do that and we don’t care, you know, and guess what? They actually knew exactly what they were talking about. And then they literally wrote a book about it.
And I have, do not have a copy of the book, unfortunately, but I’ve read a little bit about it, and it is obviously pretty cynical, but, I mean, they, you know, they’ve got the receipts. So, like, they do, in fact, know how to make it. And that stuff I love.
I love fascinating. I love that. I don’t need the 2.5 minutes of this song to be part of it.
I just I could just read that. I’d be perfectly happy. Yeah, yeah.
I actually don’t mind the song that much. I mean, it’s, you know, it is what it is, but it was fun seeing the video. I actually don’t think I’d seen the video either.
And it is whimsical. And I have a new appreciation for Time, Lord. hes my new favorite, like, lead singer now. So that’s that’s something.
I don’t know if they say lead singer, but he’s like, he’s the talent of the band, apparently. So I do appreciate that quite a bit. All right.
Yet again, taking another curveball. We’re going in a completely different direction again, if you can believe there is another direction to go in after E Brkell in the Time Lords. Believe it, because we’re about to do it.
Keith’s about to do it. Here we go. All right, so this week I didn’t actually realize I was doing this, but I, between my pick from the last show, which was the Cowboy Junkies, Sweet Jane, and my pick for for this show, I got a really kind of neat juxtaposition about how a song can be produced.
Because that cowboy junkie song that we talked about last episode, Sweet Jane, was recorded in one take by the band around surrounding one microphone, live, no edits, no overdubs, no nothing. Just put it out there. Record it once, put it out there.
The song I’m going to talk about today is not that. It is as much a studio concoction as you’re ever going to find. So today we’re going to jump into Pookaboo by Susie and the banshees.
So, what did you get those? Now, this song, by the time I got to KTXT, I knew a little bit about Susie and the banshees, I didn’t know him well, knew the name. I want to say the only song I was really familiar with was Kiss Them for me, um, because I actually bought a single, a cassette single, like a single when that came out, um, just because I had heard of Susie and the banshees and decided, oh, hey, they’ve got a new song, I’ll listen to that one.
And I loved that song, but I didn’t actually go back and listen to any more Susie and the Banshees at that point. So it was at King TXT that I 1st heard this song, Peekaboo. And yeah, it’s another one where one of those where I put it on and listened to the 1st time and I was like, holy crap.
This is something else. is really fantastic. Man, yeah, I absolutely love this song. Before we get heavily into the song itself, though.
Susie and the banshees was a band that was formed in London in 1976 by Susie Sue, who’s the singer and Steve Severn, who’s the bass player. They had a drummer that started off with him, but in 79, the drummer Budgie joined the band and he has been the drummer pretty much throughout since then. They’ve also, they’ve had a ton of guitarists over the years, including Robert Smith from the cure who played with him for a little while.
But a guy named John Klein was kind of the longest serving guitar member, kind of the, you know, the guy that was the guitarist on a lot of their biggest stuff. Susie Sue’s real name is Susie Ballion. I’m not going to go heavily into it.
She had an interesting life, not a particularly happy childhood. Um, but she and Steve Severin, at one point, uh, were following the Sex Pistols around, just kind of, uh, you know, just following them from show to show. And, and, you know, we’ve talked a little bit before about the the legendary Sex Pistols show that, you know, launched a 1000000 bands in the UK or whatever.
It wasn’t one show for Susie and the banshees. and Susie and Severin followed the band around for a while and as fans and decided then that they wanted to create a band. Get their 1st band together. They started off doing kind of different stuff.
They hit some postpunk alternative little goth in there. But they were really, you know, once they started recording and putting stuff out. They were influential.
They, you know, acts like Joy Division, De Cure, the Smiths, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, LCD sound system. These are all acts that have listed Susie the Banshees as being influences. This song, Peekaboo, came off the album called Peep Show, Peep Show was their biggest record, at least at this time.
It was really critically acclaimed, went to number 68 on the billboard 200, Peekaboo, the song itself. Also did really well, got to number 3 on the hot 100, uh, and number 16 on the UK singles chart. And it also had the distinction of being the 1st ever number one song on the brand new billboard modern rock tracks chart.
When that chart 1st got introduced in 1988. The very 1st number one on it was peekaboo. So let’s get into the song itself a little bit because it’s really interesting.
This song took them a year to record all together. So again, we’re, you know, got the cowboy junkies who recorded their song in 4 minutes or however long the actual song is. Yeah, these guys took a full year to record this song.
And it is built on a reversed loop of a brass part. And then it’s got drums in it that had been recorded for a different song. They took those that drum part, cut it up, reverse those parts, so it’s playing backwards, and then re-edited them together to get the main drum track out of that.
On top of that, they added accordion. There is a base part to it, but it’s only a one note base part. It just occasionally hits with just a deep kind of boom.
And that’s all you get for bass in this song. Um, then they added, uh, you know, guitar and sense over it. And then Budgie also plays another drum part over the top of that.
So all of that stuff, kind of, you know, thrown into the pot and stirred together to come up with this really kind of weird, like the word I keeps coming to my mind is angular, which is kind of, I don’t know if it’s the right word to use for music for a song, but just weird angular track. And then even to make it a little stranger than that, uh, Susie recorded each her vocals using a different mic for each line. So within the song, each vocal line is slightly different from the line before it because it was recorded using a different microphone.
And so they had to record the vocals line by line with a different mic every time. So there was just a lot of throwing things into the pot, stirring it up, you know, studio trickery behind this song. The end result is fantastic.
I don’t know what you guys think about the song. I guess we’ll get to that here in a second. This is easily my favorite Susie, the banshee song, and I’m not a huge Susie, and the banshees fan.
I have a few of the songs. I don’t have any of the albums. They’ve got a lot of good stuff, but to my mind, nothing really compares to this song, it’s been described as quirky dance rock, melody maker when it came out, described it like this.
I wrote this one down because this was one of my favorites. It called it a brightly unexpected mixture of black steel and pop disturbance. I mean, I don’t know what that means, but I’ll take it.
That sounds like about right for the song. They also described it as being 30s hip hop, which I like really well. Actually, I think that is a perfect description of this song.
So there was a little bit of a little small controversy surrounding the song. If you’ve heard the song, you know that in the chorus. She sings a bit where she says Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those weepers, Jeepers, creepers?
Where did you get those eyes? That was deemed to be too close to the actual song, Jeepers Creepers from back in the 1930s. So a couple of songwriters named Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer ended up getting songwriting credits for this on this song, because they actually went to just to head that off at the pass.
They didn’t even they didn’t get sued or anything. They just realized, well, this is bubbling up. People are talking about it.
We need to head this off at the pass. And so they went ahead and beforehand, added those guys to the songwriting credits. So I’m sure the estates of those 2 guys are loving getting a little extra check every now and then from the royalties from this song.
Anyway, like I said, fantastic song, very different, very bizarre. It would be hard for me to describe it without, you know, if you haven’t heard it, you’re going to have to go listen to it to get a real feel for what it is. But, man, who I highly recommend it if you haven’t heard it, you know, pause right now, go listen to it and then come back and join us again because, man, is that song great?
The video is also great. It’s actually really fantastic. I kind of blathered on about the song a lot.
So I’ll kind of leave that to you guys if y’all want to talk more about the video, but I do think it really fits the song. It’s got a ton going on on it. There’s a lot of light and shadow play, color filters going on, some superimposed effects.
The band’s wearing masks at one point. Susie is looks really killer in this video. She kind of looks like a 1920s flapper with her outfit and her hair.
There’s a little bit of synchronized dancing thrown in there at one point. Yeah, there’s crazy amount of stuff going on in this video, but I really liked it and I thought it fit the song really well. So, um, that was kind of a lot on the technical end about the song.
Um, but man, do I love this one? technical or just from a visceral experience, like I said, this is my favorite Susie the banshee song. So happy that it came up and I got to talk about it a little bit, and I’ll kick it over to you guys.
See what you guys think. I dig it. Yeah, I really like this song.
This and Kissed them for me were probably the 1st 2 that I heard. I don’t think I heard him before KTXT if I did. It was just, I’m not sure where that would have been, but I certainly associate, you know, hearing it with being on college radio.
I actually like kissed them for me a little bit better, but this one is more unique, I think. And it’s very ambitious. I already, I already thought that before I heard you explain like, yeah, they took an entire year, put this together in studios, so that makes it feel even more ambitious.
You mentioned angular. I think I have herky jerky in my notes just because it and it’s that reverse. Those reversed bits just give it a different kind of vibe and feel and that you just, I mean, it’s just unique, you know, in that way.
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head. I’m not that that’s not used in other places, but, you know, famously used on like Paul Revere by Beastie Boys, the backwards beat. It just, if you do it right, it just gives you something unique that really stands out, you know, that Beastie Boys track still, you see kids reacting to that today and they’re just like, oh, my God, I can’t believe how good this is very simple.
They just reversed, you know, the beat and then figured out how to make that work. This is much more complicated than that because it’s multiple lines and there’s so much more going on that getting that to work rhythmically and everything was probably a challenge in 1988 or even 1987. I guess is probably when they started recording this, maybe even earlier.
Um, but very cool. Yeah, I like that it kind of keeps you off your toes a little bit. And I like that it has that 1920s, 1930s feel to it.
I can’t even put my finger on what it is that does that besides the accordion, I guess. But I dig that it does have this kind of throwback feel, which is interesting for like a late 80s. I guess, I guess, goth track.
The goth thing kind of kind of came up as I was watching this because on the one hand, it feels like Susie and the banshees is like an undisputed, iconic goth band, just like, you know, the cure and just like whatever. But like, are they? I don’t, yeah, I, you know, I’m not, I’m not sure. time.
Yeah, not really. Like, I was listening to this and I listen to Kiss them for me just because I was like, oh, I haven’t heard that for a while. And I’m like, this is not, you know, this isn’t, and I think you look back, and in retrospect, you try to kind of fit them in those boxes like we like we do, but we have bands like Joy Division or Bauhaus, which are kind of indisputably goth, and then you have your sisters of Mercy, who like took those elements and then popped it up a little bit, but they’re still pretty much universally thought of as goth.
Then you have bands like this or bands like The Cure, where like so much of their catalog is just not even related to Goth where you’re like, are they really a goth band or are they a band that occasionally did goth music? Maybe? I don’t know.
I feel like just based on what I’m. A lot of it has to do too. You just mentioned the 2 perfect examples.
Susie and the banshees, I’ll go in, I’ll go in more of this in a minute, but, you know, they’re not at this time. This is not golf music, but she is. Oh, yeah.
The cure is not goth music, but Robert Smith is. And I think that’s why they get lumped in with that stuff is because of the look of these people, not necessarily the sounds they’re making. Yeah, that’s a really good…
Yeah, that’s one thing I also was going to mention is that, you know, I do think there are elements of goth in some of their stuff. some more so than others, but her look in particular. And she was actually really influential early in the, in the goth era because of her look, not as much particular of her, the music, but her look became kind of what the, yeah, what the, the female goths wanted to look like at that time. So she was really influential there without, you know, getting too heavily into the goth side of the music, I think.
But there are goth elements, I think, in a lot of what they do. It’s an interesting split that goth is, is, is a music. I mean, if you listen to Bauhaus, I think that’s probably the most like template of what goth music is.
But Gotha’s also just an aesthetic, and that’s where you’re Robert Smith and your Susie Suze are like the iconic aesthetic of a Goth. It’s not to say that those artists didn’t record Gotham. I mean, pornography by the cure is a goth album, you know?
And Susie and the banshees have that stuff in their catalog, but they kind of continue to be called goth long after they leave the plantation, you know, it’s… So I thought that was kind of, yeah, just an interesting, when you really listen to, you’re like, this is not what, especially if you were coming into it fresh, and just kind of knew of the band, like, oh, this is not what I was expecting, I would imagine, would be your 1st response. The video.
Definitely dig the video, so many really cool elements. Uh, very, maybe not ahead of its time for 88, but certainly of its time and maybe a little forward thinking for its time. Uh, in particular, I love, uh, we’ve seen this a couple times already, and we’ll probably see it more in this era in particular.
I love projection and projection mapping. I love projecting things on other things. Um, so like projecting the animations on their faces and stuff.
I wish they’d even done more of that. I really dig that look. and it’s, you know, at that point when you don’t have CGI and you’re trying to do everything in camera, that’s a really cool way to do some really neat effects. and we’ve, again, we’ve seen that a couple times. But yeah, I love the just projection mapping in general.
One thing that happens over here in Europe a lot. I don’t know that I ever saw this in the US, but I’m sure somebody does this somewhere. There’s a lot of times like around Christmas or at like a big event, there’s often like a big cathedral and plaza, you know, where the thing is happening.
And sometimes they’ll map, they’ll project something onto the cathedral, but it’s like perfectly mapped to every like door and window and nook and cranny. So, like, it’s almost like the cathedral comes to life because the projection and the real life object are kind of interacting with each other, and it’s just a really cool thing. I’ve seen it in a few different places and it’s always really cool.
But that kind of reminded me of this of like, you have, uh, Susie Sue, who’s already got like this really amazing face, and then you’re projecting these things on top of it, and it’s like the sum is greater than the or the hole is greater than the sum of its parts. It just makes it into a whole new thing that feels very new and artistic to me for you know, for this time period. So I really enjoyed that.
There’s a lot of other things that go on in the video too that you guys can talk about. But that was my favorite thing about it. But yeah, love the band, love the song.
I’m not, you know, the biggest Susie Sue, Susie and the banshees expert out there, but they’re iconic for a reason. This is one of those bands that runs parallel to stuff that I really like. And for some reason, I just never dug into them very much.
All the kids in my high school that were into the cure and the Smiths and Sisters of Mercy and all this stuff, we’re into this too. And for some reason, I just never checked them out. I don’t know why.
You know, I’d seen in Fast Times, Ridgemont High, where Stacy points out that there’s 3 girls that look like Pat Benatar. And it says, yeah, there’s 3 girls here that have the Pat Benatar look, well, that was my high school with Susie Sue. We have 3 Susies in our in our school.
But, you know, but I just never, I don’t know, I never dug into this band. This song would have been when I found it KTXT. So a few years later and it’s a great, great song.
I like how it kind of sounds like it’s going forward and backward at the same time. I don’t know how you describe that, but that’s what it is. It’s like, it’s like one song being played forward and one song being played backward and laid over the top of each other.
That’s, you’re trying to find your way through it. You know, it’s just really, really good. I remember 2 other songs by them that I really liked.
You guys mentioned Kiss them for me. Um, which, you know, was a couple years after this, but that’s a great song too. And then their cover of Iggy Pops the Passenger is fantastic, if you haven’t heard it.
I actually think it’s one of those rare covers that might be better than the original, at least in my humble opinion. I think the reason I never went any deeper into them is because, like we talked about, this was sold to me as goth, and I like goth. And then I’d listen to these songs and go, that ain’t goth.
It’s just, it’s pop music done by a band with a lead singer who’s a goth chick, you know, and that that didn’t, didn’t click for me. You know, this era of the banshees is very polished. It’s pretty much straight up pop music, and it would be years later, but I actually went back and listened to their older stuff, and they were a goth band for a little while, and they were a punk band for a little while when they 1st started.
And that stuff, you know, definitely is the kind of thing I’m more drawn to, even though I admit I’ve never really gone that far down the hole. But so anybody, you know, that has that same opinion that maybe, you know, you avoided them because you didn’t think they sounded goth enough for you. It’s out there.
It’s just not their hits. Their big hits are poppier songs. But yeah, this is a fantastic song.
It’s just weird enough to fit this band. It’s catchy and poppy enough to win anyone over. Like I said, the video is it’s kind of like the song.
It’s kind of coming at you from every direction, but it works. And honestly, when it comes to this band, you’re selling one thing, and that’s Susie Sue, and this video does that. So, you know, well done.
It works for what it is. But yeah, I really enjoyed listening to this again. I forgot how much I like this song.
You mentioned their cover of the passenger. They also do a really killer cover cover of the Beatles track, Dear Prudence, on one of their albums. I don’t know that ever got released or whatever, but man, I think that was a single, actually.
I think that was a hit for them. It’s good. It’s really good too.
That was in rotation at KTXT for sure. Because I think I may have heard that before. I actually even heard the Beatles version, to be perfectly honest.
Don’t quote me on this. I think that was the 2nd single, actually, on the album that has kissed them for me on it. that was about the same time. I’m not sure, but man, it is a great cover.
All right, as we come to the end of our episode, we have our… I always say our favorite. Maybe this isn’t our, I don’t know, it’s one of my favorite moments of the episodes.
I mean, you guys may hate this. I don’t know. I’ve never really asked you before.
I’m always like, yeah, we love this part. You guys are like, oh, God, now we got to do the mystery song. I don’t know. the thing.
Here comes this thing that Michael makes us do, are we freaking week? We doing the mystery song, folks, whether you like it or not. So, uh, we all try to decide on a song that none of us have heard before that we don’t know the band.
We don’t know the song. We usually go in pretty blind into this. I certainly did on this one.
I’ve got nothing. I came in cold and I’ve only just watched the video and heard the song, so we are going to learn a little bit more about these, probably not a lot because most of these mystery bands seem to be mystery bands for a reason, but we’ll see what Scott has dug up. So from a very limited list of potential mystery songs this week, I chose the song, Be with You by the Jack Rubies.
I When you leave the team, oh, even I think of the crumbs. And I hope I never see the day When you leave a table, and I’m good, you’re late. When…
A very clever name, which is why I picked it, but unfortunately, that’s probably about the last nice thing I’m gonna say about them. Information on this band is pretty tough to find. Um, I did find one little blurb from a blog that I think just about sums it up.
Formed in London, England, in 1987, the Jack Rubies consisted of vocalist Ian Wright, guitarist Stephen D, Innocent, bassist Steve Brockaway, and percussionist Lawrence Guilt Nane. Right, and Innocent were the group’s songwriters. A deluge of critical hype, and a cool name, couldn’t convince music fans that the Jack Rubies were doing anything original.
Not in sync with the dance flavors of the late 80s British rock, the Jack Rubies produced derivative jangle pop with biting lyrics that did hook US college radio. They would break up and form other projects shortly after the release of their 2nd album. So that’s what I found.
I’m honestly not going to say this is bad. I didn’t think it was, you know, like aggressively bad or anything. It’s just not very good either.
I think the word derivative is the perfect moniker here. This sounds like a 1000000 other bands. All of whom are doing this much earlier than this and much better than this.
The video I thought was kind of a dud too, basic performance stuff. I think I actually might have zoned out during the video. But so this was a big 0 for me.
And it’s not aggressively bad or anything. It’s just not, it just wasn’t very good. And I uh, I think you guys disagree.
I’m going to leave it right there, but that was that was my take on the Jack Rubies. Well, I liked the Jack Rubies. I was on the other side of that.
Although I wouldn’t say, you know, it’s not an earth shattering band. I’m going to run out and buy their entire bat catalog or anything, but, you know, I put this on. I had never heard of it either.
First thing I thought when the guy started singing, I was, well, this guy has heard Ian McCulloch before. Because while he doesn’t sound exactly like Ian McCulloch, he sounds like he’s trying to sound exactly like Ian McCulloch. They’re trying to sound like a lot of things.
I think that was my opinion too, you know. I guess, I guess so. yeah. and that is a little derivative. But I have to say I liked the song.
You know, I thought it was catchy. I really like the transition from the chorus into the or the verse into the chorus, I should say. I thought the chorus was really catchy.
It’s got a pretty ripping guitar solo in there. So yeah, decent song, but not great, but I enjoyed it. I thought it was, you know, it was a good listen.
The video, I thought was fine. I thought it was interesting that here again, we have another dinner table and the band sitting around the dinner table. At least this time, a table is mentioned in the lyrics.
I can’t remember exactly how it is, but something about, you know, he’s, you’re not going to come back to the table and he’s left with her crumbs or whatever like that. So at least there was a reason for there to be a table in this video. But then in a little bit after that.
The dude’s in the shower. And so I’m taking, well, you know, we have a dinner table and a shower. Did the same guy that directed the damned video direct this video?
Is that what’s going on here? But anyway, it was fine. Like I said, largely a performance video.
The one thing about it that I thought was weird is I don’t know if you guys noticed the fly that kept like landing on the band members’ faces and then they would have to shoo it away and that could not have been an accident, they had have been doing that on purpose because then there were like drawings of a fly. They like edited into the video here and there. And so I have no idea why that was included in there.
It did not need to be, but hey, there’s a fly prominently featured in this video. So if you are a fan of insects, have at it. But yeah, you know, not a huge win for me, but certainly I liked it, I think, better than Scott did for sure.
You’d almost have to. I think the video is from the perspective of the fly for the most part is actually a POV with all the with all the stuff. and then there’s shots that are 3rd person with the fly on stuff, but it was my 2nd watch through. I realized, oh, wait, this is actually the fly is actually the star of the video.
It’s actually like driving this entire thing. You basically, you basically read my notes. My 1st note is Echoing the Bunnyman?
Yes, definitely, for sure. Like, that is maybe a little psychedelic furs in there, but mostly Echo and the Bunnyman was what was I heard, which is not a bad thing. I love those guys.
So being you know, being derivative of a really good band is not an automatic disqualifier, I mean, how many bands are derivative of REM or whatever. So I’m not going to completely knock. It is very derivative.
Um, and it’s, my thing was, I really like the verse. I liked everything kind of going into it. The course just kind of falls flat for me and that’s where, I feel like we’ve had this exact discussion of like 3 other mystery songs where it’s like, they’re taking you somewhere and then they just don’t quite get there, which is weird because you would think a lot of bands have these really great courses, but then they just can’t quite make the songs work.
But I think I’m learning that it’s the other way around. Like a lot of bands can kind of write the song and the verses there and they’ve, you know, it’s got a beat or whatever, but the course is what is going to take that song from decent to great and they just don’t have, not everybody can write that type of course, maybe? You find out how important that is to be able to do that.
Incredibly. between this and, you know, Echo and the Bunny. And bring on the dancing horses is a freaking amazing chorus. Yeah.
Like, and he doesn’t bring it home. I particularly hate his delivery on the last line of the course where he says away and it’s like kind of in a way. Hey, hey, thing, like I did not like that.
I did not like the meta. The song actually is, it uses the dinner as a metaphor for like, he doesn’t want this girl to leave, and the metaphor he uses is like leaving a dinner table. You know, I don’t want you to leave your food and the crumbs.
I don’t want you to leave your plate. It’s a weird metaphor for a relationship, and that’s that to me was just kind of odd. But, um, as a song, like on a scale of one to 10, I don’t know.
I’m right, like around a five. Like, it’s not terrible. There’s a reason the reason you can draw a path to Echoing the Bunnyman because it does have some of the good elements of Echoing the Bunnyman as well, but it just, he doesn’t land the plane on the course and that’s where I think you could, you’re just never going to have a song that’s better than than average with a course like that.
I also, my other note was, is this video correlated with the dam somehow, because there’s a weird chaotic dinner going on, then the guy’s in the shower, why those 2 things happened in the same video. It was unclear when we saw the damned and it was unclear when we saw this one. who directed the video. It’d be hilarious who was the same person because that was like the 2 ideas he had.
He was just gonna keep, he’s gonna keep, keep pushing that square picking around hole until he finally made it work. Great video using these guys gonna work. Yeah.
The damned had by far the better dinner scene, I think, because they had like the spinny thing happening and this just was like a fly flying around. But, um, maybe this guy nailed the shower a little better. I didn’t really compare those two.
But yeah, I mean, look. Am I going to say, hey, go check out the Jack Rubies, I mean, no, but it’s a lot like the guys last week, too. Uh, in my opinion, where it was like strong start, and then the course just falls flat.
They obviously have some talent. They obviously had some juice behind them. And how many times have we told this story?
Like, maybe they had some love in the region they were in, you know, but they never quite could break through, and I think we’ve kind of discussed some of the reasons why that might be, that says they were gaining some ground on U.S. college radio, which is strange, but Which is odd. Yeah, apparently they had a little traction here. Well, yeah, I liked this song.
So, I mean, I could see I could see us playing this on on KTXT. It might not have been like our number one, you know, number one song or whatever. It is funny, though.
I liked the course. I really did. And so I think the verses were fine.
I just liked the transition into the course, and if I remember right, I think there’s some percussion, extra percussion that kicks in on the course, and I don’t know, I just liked it. Yeah, it’s funny that we kind of, we didn’t dislike it either, but I think we had different things we liked about it to get us out of the dislike category. So I just, for fun, I just Googled who directed the video and it says, um, the director is not listed in standard music video databases or official historic archives, the original clip, which became favorite on MTV’s 120 minutes, remains an uncredited vintage release.
So whoever directed it was like, not it. I didn’t do it. I did just check our KTXT playlist that we have, which is like a 1992 snapshot, but it obviously has stuff from before that.
And we had 2 Jack Rubies songs in rotation at KTXT. Um, one was called Baby Fire and one is called Mona Lisa, so we didn’t have this particular track. And they were both in Rec 2, which for KTXT was like stuff that would maybe come up once a year, if you were lucky, especially after Keith and I took over.
That’s interesting, because this was when I found this was their only hit. You know, well, KTXT at that time, we were not necessarily going to play the hit. You know, somebody listened to their album and liked those 2 songs, you know, they probably needed one of those probably did anything.
Yeah, this particular snapshot is right before a couple different music directors, including Mr. Keith Porterfield, who’s on this podcast, started not necessarily discounting anything that had been heard by more than 10 people. which was some of the previous music directors. I think criteria for what should get played on college radio. Well, yeah, there was, you know, we’ve talked about this before, but there were some that if someone said, hey, I like that song.
That guaranteed it would never get played. Yeah, yeah, that we can’t have that. And I mean, you know.
We’ve talked about college radio a ton. That’s kind of the point of this podcast, even though we’re talking, you know, MTV, but like the film and everything. And, like, it is great that the kids who do college radio up to this day want to find stuff that needs to see the light of day and that does, um, deserve, you know, airplay when it’s not getting it.
But I think, I don’t know, I’m speaking for Keith here a little bit, but I think our thing was nobody wants an hour, hour after hour of that, if you can give them some of the really good stuff that everybody loves and there’s a reason they love it because it’s real, they’re really good songs, you know, and we’re talking about a lot of different bands here, REM, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, whatever it was that we were playing that hit. You know, then you could tuck those other songs into those, into those, those hours and into the clock, and, you know, those, to use a film term, those, those big songs are like the tent poles that keep the whole thing up, and you can sneak these other songs in, and then people will hear them, and, you know, very, I don’t know about you guys, but it’s hard to love a song on 1st listen. It has to be really, really good.
There’s a lot of songs that take a while to grow on you. You need to hear them a couple times. So I think there’s an argument to be made for the path that KTXT took, you know, later in the, not later in the 90s, but like, from 93 on maybe is when it started taking a little bit more of not a mainstream turn, but, but being willing to play stuff even that had broken a little bit bigger at that point because it did bring in people who then could be exposed to all this other stuff that that wasn’t going to get played on 120 minutes or certainly wasn’t going to get played on, you know, the radio stations.
I don’t know, that’s kind of an aside. Uh, I, I, I don’t remember playing the Jack Rubies on KTXTs. I don’t know that they got the benefit of that. from us, but they did at some point get put into rotation, but not this particular song, and I don’t know.
I may go check out those other songs just because I’m curious now, but not a ringing endorsement from all of us, but, you know, the mystery songs or mystery songs for a reason. They can go one of many ways. They could be great.
They can suck or they could be something altogether in between. This one’s just kind of, I don’t know, this one in last week. I feel like last episode 2 were just kind of like, yeah, they weren’t interesting enough to be, yeah, they weren’t like the like the bubbleheads.
It’s not exactly the greatest song I’ve ever heard by a stretch, but they’re so interesting that that kind of makes it worth it. Well, hell, the Bill Paxton thing wasn’t the greatest song any of us had ever heard, but man, you know, interesting beyond all rational, you know, expectations for that, but this is not that. This is just kind of a little bit of a boring track that didn’t quite make it.
And that’s how it goes sometimes. That said, the other songs we talked about are all worth checking out. I’m wondering if there’s people that don’t remember Edie Burkel now because I don’t feel like there’s been a consistent love for that band, the way there has been, you know, even even Susie and the Susie in the banshees, which not that they’re like a current band that everybody talks about all the time.
But I think there’s a fan base that has followed them for years and years and years. I guess ED Brkel probably does have that fan base, but it doesn’t feel as strong or maybe as vocal of a fan base. Maybe it has to do also with the fact that the band rotates people every month, it sounds like.
So I don’t know. But if you, I mean, it’s a good song and and I, my personal, you know, ambivalence about it shouldn’t deter you in any way. That’s true of every song that we talk about.
Susie and Banshees, if you haven’t checked them out for sure, check them out. Peekaboo’s is good a place to start as any. Probably.
Like, like Scott was saying, if you’re more of a goth punk fan, maybe, you know, go earlier into their catalog, if you like a lot of, like, say, the cure is more poppy, more accessible music, then you probably will like a little bit more of the later stage, Susie and the Banshees, I think it’s fair to say. The Time Lords, man, if you’ve got 2 minutes, check it out. You’re not going to be, this is all they’ve got.
If you’re strictly talking about the time loads, it’s just the one song. Watch the video. Yeah, just go watch the video.
You can enjoy their entire catalog in one shot. I actually like the KLF outfit. None of us really got into how we feel about the KLF, but I liked the KLF 3 AM Eternal.
I really like Justified in Ancient, which is the Timmy Wynette song and that’s another one that’s just so bizarre. And so out of pocket that why not go check it out? The video is equally out of pocket.
I liked that whole album. That album is actually great. Yeah, it’s very solid.
So, and, you know, this is one of the rare times when I’m going to say, even if you don’t go check out the music. Go read the story of KLF, the Time Lords, even just the Wikipedia page is enough. Like, it’ll take you down the rabbit hole, and there’s a lot of links to the more specific incidents like the music burning incident or the money burning incident has its own page.
The KLF has their own page. you know, so there’s all these deeper rabbit holes you can take, but if you just read the Wikipedia page, which I think is listed under KLF, even though it covers their entire career, it’s it’s really interesting. I mean, it’s, you could do a documentary. Maybe somebody has and I missed it, but you could do a documentary about these guys because they are, it is performance art.
It is people that are making a statement. It’s people that did all kinds of different ways to promote their music and do like, they would do gorilla things like go and and graffiti billboards and stuff. they were really beyond just being a rock band or a dance band. So, if you don’t check out the music, just go read the Wikipedia page and you’ll be thoroughly entertained, I think.
Speaking of being thoroughly entertained, go watch 35,000 watch, the story of college radio, we talk about college radio. We talk to different bands and artists. We talked to alumni of college radio about their experience.
It’s available on Tubi, go check it out. All you gotta do is search for 35,000 watts. It’ll pop right up, and we would appreciate that.
And if you enjoyed this conversation. We will do it again 2 weeks from today. So next time we will be talking about the end of December.
We might have a little Christmas music mixed in there. I think I chose one if I don’t remember what you guys chose, but I think I may have picked a little bit of a Christmas alternative classic, so we’ll talk about that next time right here on 120 months. Thanks for tuning in.