Picked up some music today
I’ve probably blabbed about it here before, but working at KRNU as a music director can make you kind of burnt out on music. Dozens of CDs come in every week, and most of them are just horrible. And when you’re doing a weekly show, you have to seek out new music to keep the show fresh. Eventually, when listening to music becomes your job, you start to lose the joy that comes with hearing new stuff.
Putting together the KRNU top 100s over the past few weeks was an amazing recharge. Digging through all the old 80s music – a lot of it which I hadn’t listened to in years – reignited the desire to listen to music for enjoyment. For example, I’ve always like groups like The Church and O.M.D., but I came upon those bands when there wasn’t really time or motivation to explore more. Listening to early Church albums and trying to track down some early O.M.D. (nothing against the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, but I’m enjoying albums like Organisation a lot more) has just reignited whatever metaphorical fire is appropriate for this rambling.
So in the last few weeks, I’ve been listening to a lot more of Peter Murphy’s early solo stuff, the first three Simple Minds albums, Talk Talk’s “Spirit of Eden” and “It’s My Life,” Naked Raygun’s “All Rise,” Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love” and the aforementioned Church and OMD. It’s stuff that’s been sitting on shelves in my apartment for years, and some of it hasn’t been put in a CD player in nearly a decade. In some ways, it’s kind of frustrating knowing this music has been sitting there while I got bored with everything else, but it’s also exciting being able to rediscover music second time around.
That said, I stopped by Homer’s today and went on a little buying spree. I’ve been looking for more OMD, individual Teardrop Explodes albums (I only have a compilation), and Madchester stuff like the Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets. I didn’t find much along those lines, but I did find three albums with super low pricetags.
Echo & the Bunnymen “Ocean Rain (reissue)” – $8.99
Reading Bill Drummond’s essay on Echo & the Bunnymen in his book 45 has gotten me a lot more interested in rediscovering the band. I’d only ever owned “Songs to Learn and Sing” and the self-titled album and I was content with those. I actually went to the E’s looking for a more comprehensive best of for KRNU, as “Songs to Learn and Sing” is pretty incomplete. I’d been eying these reissues for a while now, but they were pretty pricey. Now, for some reason, this one was on sale. It’s got a few classics like “The Killing Moon” and “Seven Seas,” but the reissue also includes 8 bonus tracks with some rarities and live recordings. And it comes with extensive liner notes. I’m a sucker for liner notes. I get really disappointed and feel kind of cheated when CDs skimp on the liner notes. Actually, Drummond’s essay was written for the sleeve notes of some best-of collection I’ve never seen.
Talk Talk “The Essential” – $7.99
The new romantic phase of the early 80s has always been one of my favorite periods in music, even when I was too young to understand that Duran Duran and Tears for Fears were part of a “movement.” Talk Talk was one of those groups that managed to survive a musical shift quite nicely – their biggest hits happened on both sides of their transition away from new wave. I’ve enjoyed “It’s My Life” and “Spirit of Eden,” but I’d never owned “Talk Talk” and “Life’s What You Make It” on CD so I picked this up. I figure any career retrospective with only 12 songs is probably lacking, but at $7.99, I figured it was a good start.
The Style Council “The Collection” – $7.99
I’ve always been fascinated by the way in which Paul Weller disbanded post-punk mods The Jam at the peak of their success and went on to start this jazzy, over-produced, slightly homo-erotic continental pop duo. I’ve never really heard if it was contempt for Jam fans or just an experiment to see what would happen.
You can listen to some of these songs and see them fitting in with later Jam music, especially with some of the politics, but then you hear stuff like “You’re the Best Thing” and “Shout to the Top”, and you see Paul in his new romantic attire, and it jerks you right back into a mindset of “What exactly was going on here?”