Drunken Owls and Other Delights

The titling on this video is wrong...it's not a Bono solo but a Robbie Robertson track off of his eponymous solo album released in autumn 1987--it just has U2 playing the music and Bono singing backup (and threatening to take over with those amazing high notes). You can definitely hear bits of Joshua Tree in this one, kind of "One Tree Hill" meets "Silver and Gold". I remember the long-since vanished WMDK out of Peterborough having this track on their heavy rotation even more so than the overplayed "Somewhere Down the Crazy River".

I bring this up because I've been doing some serious chronology work for Walk In Silence and finding quite a few awesome tracks I'd either forgotten about or hadn't listened to in ages. Expect a video-filled RTS/WIS post probably this Sunday!

Actually, I've been wanting to do a cover of it for years. Maybe once I get that new version of the NHS recorder I'll do it. ;)

So much AWESOME. :D

I admit this song gets stuck in my head now and again.

AND! The packed parking lot you see at around 50 seconds in? That's the one we go to on Masonic, and yes, it does get packed there. The neat thing is that they actually have someone out there directing traffic to keep the turnaround smooth.

I believe this was one of the first videos I remember watching on 120 Minutes either late '86 or early '87.

Song that made it to one of my 2002 comps (as well as the Best of '02 comp I'm currently listening to). I find it amusing that I'd first heard these guys on NPR's All Things Considered while doing my comic book/Newbury Comics run one evening. :p

Okay, who else besides me remembers this little ditty from the early 80s?



And yes, as a matter of fact that is Meat Loaf as the couch potato. ;)



Check out the alternate version, chock full of famous people:

Yet another random song that popped into my head today...and it just occurred to me just how much late-90s Blur sounds like this song...

I have no problems listening to Beatles mashups if they're done well, like these. :)








(CCC does some of the most brilliant Beatles mashups around, and definitely worth looking for.)

...and of course something I just found:

Haven't done these in awhile! This is probably one of my favorite comps I'd made during the late early 90's, as it's very moody but it captures my moods and thoughts of the time perfectly. In fact I mentioned this one last year in this post about making compilations. This is actually called Untitled II--the first volume was so named due to not having a decent title, and it didn't quite fit the Listen/Walk in Silence series in terms of mood. This volume did however fit the previous volume's no-theme-but-a-really-good-collection feel.

tape brand: not sure of the original, as it broke sometime in 1993 I think. A TDK, perhaps? I remade it in 2000 or so, when I was remaking a handful of my missing comps, and that was done on a Sony.
compilation made: Summer 1990, during my tenure at the Athol DPW.
listened to: Mostly during the above job (while mowing, mind you!) but quite a bit during August 1990, when I'd decided to take a few weeks off between the job and going back to college. Spending afternoons playing multiple rounds of Stefan's Game* while waiting for my sophomore year to start.
* - I posted about this game before... basically it's a variation on Solitaire and named after the person who taught it to you.
mindset: I'd finally gotten over the emotional disaster that was freshman year in college--being pissed off at my roommate, questioning who I was and what I really wanted to do with my life, being away from Tracey, and not doing as well academically as I really ought to--and was hoping that the next year would be better. I'd given up trying to make friends with people I had nothing in common with (read: stopped trying to hang out with the indie crowd as they obviously were too indie and I couldn't relate). Still feeling a bit lost and angry, but wanting to make an effort to change that.
writing: Interestingly, a lot of new Flying Bohemian stuff. I'd gotten better with the music over the past year or so. Also about the time I created the Eden Tree name as well. Not too much fiction, though I think I was toying around with the IWN, expanding Belief in Fate and whatnot. More poetry written...not as much as the 1988-89 era, but some, and significantly better in quality.


SIDE A
1. "Agonised by Love" - Clan of Xymox
I'd picked up the vinyl copy of their second album Medusa (at Nuggets in Kenmore Square, I think) after getting into them via Lonely is an Eyesore and Twist of Shadows, and I was still big on the reverb-heavy 4AD sound. This track jumped out at me as one of the best ones.
2. "Just One Kiss [extended mix]" - The Cure
The video is the shorter 7" single version. One of those tracks you find via listening to the b-side of a big single (in this case, "Let's Go to Bed") and really liking it. I love the guitar work on this.
3. "The Final Solution" - Peter Murphy
I think this song poked out at me because they used to play the video on 120 Minutes way back in the day, and I finally got around to picking up the album it was on (Should the World Fail to Fall Apart), again at Nuggets.
4. "When I Was Young" - Danielle Dax
I wish there was a link to this song online somewhere, because this is one of her most beautiful and haunting songs. One of the first tracks I'd heard from her as it had been taped on one of my first tapes of things dubbed off of college radio back in 1986. A track about losing one's childhood but remembering how cool it was when you had it.
5. "Holiday in Cambodia" - Dead Kennedys
I either got into this track via head58 or my roommate (who had Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death). This track was also played on WFNX on their more adventurous retro days.
6. "Jealous of Youth" - The The
Definitely a summer song for me...if I recall, WMDK played this a lot when it came out as a US-only single (it would be released in the UK a year later). And definitely one of those songs that fit my mood at the time--kind of let down that my rose-colored Alternative Nation was more irritating and cynical than I'd wanted it to be.
7. "Ball and Chain" - Social Distortion
I knew as soon as I first heard this song that I'd hear it as a singalong in someone's dorm room upon my return to college, and I wasn't let down. Social D does those "I suck and it's all my fault" songs so well! :p
8. "Chance" - Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
I found this single in a discount bin at a Boston used record store after finding RLYL's Crawling Mantra EP--inexplicably--at the Athol Salvation Army store. A band I quite liked but never got around to buying all that often. I now have most of their discography on mp3, thanks to eMusic.
9. "Her Way of Praying" - The Jesus & Mary Chain
Automatic was an album I got from Columbia House and was probably the first one of theirs that I really liked, as it sounded more polished and less screechy and dirty than their previous albums. This was the big single at the time when it came out.

SIDE B
1. "Summertime Rolls" - Jane's Addiction
I was big on Nothing's Shocking when it came out in '88, but never quite paid attention to this track until about this time, when I realized just how great it was. It fit the "end of era" feel I was going through at the time, and was a good counterpoint to the above Danielle Dax track as well. Impressed a few people when I showed them I knew how to play the bass riff of this one.
2. "Rusted Pipe" - Suzanne Vega
Interestingly enough I got into Days of Open Hand because of this documentary about the album (this song is about halfway through). Especially since I was never a big Suzanne Vega fan. This album, though, got a lot of listens about this time.
3. "Another Satellite" - XTC
WMDK threw this song on their playlist during this summer and I was pleased to find out I already had it on the Skylarking album. If I remember, I think they also played it live on 120 Minutes acoustically, as they were pushing their latest album (Oranges and Lemons) at the time. Just felt like a summer song to me.
4. "Temptation" - The Flying Bohemians
One of head58's best songs, and in my opinion the best TFB song we had. We'd just recently recorded it at the time (August 1990) and it was good enough that I had to put it on a compilation. No video, obviously, but you can still download the Running Away Game EP it's on from my MediaFire folder here.
5. "Everybody Knows" - Concrete Blonde
The lead track from the Pump Up the Volume soundtrack, and a great cover of a Leonard Cohen track. I remember coming out of the theater after seeing that movie and running into head58 and we both had that look of "yeah, we should screw the FCC and start our own radio station!" on our faces.
6. "Rain" - Tones on Tail
Two reasons for this track being on here--first, their compilation Night Music was one of the first purchases upon moving to Boston and it was very heavily played in my dorm room. Second being that this one stuck out for me when I played the album that year's Fiasco that h58 had put together. This is one of those songs that takes half the song to actually start, but I love it because of that.
7. "Can't Find My Way Home" - Swans
Their Burning World album was definitely a change from their aural sludge they normally played--this album was downright listenable and even catchy to some extent--and this was a very haunting cover of the Blind Faith song. A few years ago this and the Electronic version of the song became the unofficial theme songs of my novel of the same name.
8. "Transmission" - Joy Division
Another track from their Substance compilation from 1988 that I really liked, and an album I listened to quite heavily during this time.
9. "Kenneth Baker" - Bill Pritchard
Kind of an odd track to slip at the end, but his Three Months, Three Weeks and Two Days album was on heavy rotation about this time for me. One of those politically-tinged songs that wasn't so much lifting the middle finger at Thatcherism as much as it was giving it a good leer and saying "WTF is wrong with you??"