Heard anything new lately?
I don't intend this to be strictly an 80's blog. Having said that, I think the early 1980's was an incredibly fertile period in underground music, and worthy of the attention it now receives from the new dance punk bands paying tribute to the Gang of Four and 99 Records' New York groove, as well as the reissues of great records by ESG, the Fire Engines, Orange Juice, Josef K, Essential Logic, Kleenex/Liliput, the Delta 5, Swell Maps, Ludus, the Beakers, the Blackouts, Factrix, and so on...Plenty of music blogs are looking for the next big thing. I try to keep up, but it's hard to get excited about singing grandmothers, songs about states, freak folk pedophiles, or the return of PROG (of all things). Leave that to the bloggers who want to clap their hands and say "Fire!" in a crowded arcade. I'm still trying to catch up on great bands I missed in the 90's, like Bailter Space, the Grifters, Thin White Rope, and Prolapse.
I did hear some great new records in 2005 by 50 Foot Wave, the Detroit Cobras, dEUS, the Fall, the Hold Steady, Human Eye, the Knitters, Maximo Park, the Pernice Brothers, and Super Furry Animals. I also really liked the new records by these Atlanta bands: Luigi and the Tom Collins. Luigi is led by Michelle Dubois, who was one of the singer/guitarists in Ultrababyfat. She has a great voice and is a terrific writer of Pixies-ish pop songs. The Tom Collins' last album sounded like Houses of the Holy era Led Zeppelin with less histrionic vocals. They are tremendous musicians, and their new record suggests that they've been spending some time at the Hollywood Town Hall. (Good bands are always more than the sum of their influences; those are just reference points.) Both Luigi and the Tom Collins have mp3's available on their websites and their Myspace pages, as well as on eMusic, and I highly recommend their CD's.
Visit Luigi
Visit The Tom Collins
5 Comments:
curmudgeonboy
Get off my lawn, you damn kids!
I visited the Luigi myspace page, made "friends" with them, and even got a nice myspace message from them. My kinda band!
The Tom Collins broke a year or more ago though. At least last I heard there were no plans for any more shows, etc. Good band either way.
Right you are, Rich. I wrote this post a year ago (before they broke up). I wonder if Fran still works at Criminal Records. Last I heard he was playing bass with Tenement Halls.
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