Most of my posts over the last few months have been about art, and art is great! (I’m a fan!) However, I am also deeply influenced by music. (By “influenced,” I mean it is important to me, part of what helps me to keep going, and I find great pleasure in listening to it!)
Formula: MUSIC=GOOD. QED.
I thought for this post, I’d mention 7 tunes that I really enjoy (today) and write a little bit analyzing what I’m enjoying about each song. So here are 7 songs (in no particular order) that I think more folks should listen to!!!
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Siouxsie and The Banshees – “Slowdive” From A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (1982)
This track has been haunting me for months. It starts rather spare and staccato, builds with some screechy violins, and then BANGS to life with a thump-thump heartbeat of percussion. Siouxsie Sioux, the lead Banshee and primary vocalist for the group, whispers, hisses, and croons the lyrics (accented, again, by those violins), and the song builds and churns throughout. It’s rather eerie and tense (which is exactly what I want in a great Banshees cut.) I’ve played this tune a ton lately...
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Re-Flex – “Flex-It (12” Extended Mix)” Original version from The Politics of Dancing (1983)
Here’s some classic, new wave dance music. Synths, echoed vocals, snappy drum-machine hits... Great for a dancefloor. It reminds me of something that would have been playing in a “night club” scene in an ‘80’s action or horror film! It’s a good cut.
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Hayley Ross feat. N-Joi – “Come Back (N-Joi Remix)” Taken from the single “Come Back – N-Joi Remix.” Original version of this cut comes from The Weight of Hope (2020)
I don’t know much about Hayley Ross (besides this song), but Discogs says she’s a performer in the “Folk Rock, Indie Rock, Folk” area of the music spectrum. The vocals on this track are quite good (though obviously chopped and manipulated.) N-Joi, however, is one of my favorite, old-school, TECHNO artists. Songs like “Mindflux” and “Adrenalin” were dancefloor KILLERS in the early rave days (and still rock-a-beat!) So, when I spotted that N-Joi was still out there doing mixes in 2020, I grabbed this cut rather quickly. It’s great stuff. If I were still DJing at clubs, I would throw this one in almost every night!
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Crass – “Roxy (Unf*ck the World Steve Aoki Remix)” From “Never Normal Was III” single (2020). Original version was called “Banned from the Roxy” and comes from the LP The Feeding of the 5000 (1978).
This shouldn’t exist. Crass were as anarcho punk as anarcho punk got, and to have a dance version of one of their songs seems like it should destroy the entire universe. However, the low, grumbling bass actually works pretty well with the vocals. It’s somewhere between drum & bass and dub-step, but still very nasty. I genuinely enjoy this cut.
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Transvision Vamp – “Twangy Wigout (7” Version)” Taken from A’s, B’s & Rarities (2022). Original version comes from Little Magnets Versus The Bubble of Babble (1991).
This cut... This is psychedelic. The vocals are breathy, barroom croon by Wendy James, but the rest of the track is warped, echo and dream-pop shimmer. The track may have come from a doomed album (the band broke up shortly after recording the record), but this track is pure golden bliss. (To be fair, my wife doesn’t like it much, because it’s kind of weird...)
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Angelic Upstarts – “Woman in Disguise” from Reason Why? (1983).
People make such a big deal about “pop-punk,” in which punk bands started embracing vocal harmonies and listenable tunes... You’d swear people just never listened to any punk bands from the ‘70s or ‘80s! Rich Kids, The Damned, Soft Boys, Husker Du, Descendents, Generation X...shit, even the Misfits had harmonies out the wazoo... And that bring us to this cut by Angelic Upstarts, who are sometimes categorized as Hardcore of “Oi!” punk, but this cut is straight pop goodness! Just listen, and see what I mean...
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Last one for today: (I was planning on sharing more, but I threw my back out a couple of days ago, and typing for too long gives me wicked headache, so I’m cutting this post early!)
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Fierce Ruling Diva – “Woman Like Man” from The Berlin Project (2019)
Fierce Ruling Diva is another old school rave fixture. This track is a THUNDERING house / tech-house cut, that pounds the listener into the ground...unless you give in and dance to the propulsive, stomping beat. It’s spare, with chopped samples and proud-to-be-gay attitude all over it. This is the kind of track that would DESTROY any club that was brave enough to drop it!
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Oh yeah... There’re a few songs to chew on. If it get the urge, I’ll maybe do this kind of post again in the near future. I love pointing out songs that may have slipped between the tracks, and I don’t think any of these were huge Billboard faves...
Thanks for stopping by! (And if you have tracks to recommend to me, I’d be happy to give them a listen!!!)
---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)