Popcraft
Posted on April 13, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 22 Comments
Me fiddling with technology again — this time checking out the embedding of music off of Imeem. To test it, here’s “Something That You Said” by the Bangles, which is easily my favorite song out of the band (followed by “Hero Takes a Fall”). The song went nowhere for the band when it came out in 2003, on account that 2003 was fifteen years past the expiration date on the Bangles’ fame. I think that’s really a shame, because the track is basically a masterclass on how to write and perform a truly excellent pop song. If the Bangles had released this in 1989, it’d still be in heavy rotation on your local Lite Hits station instead of being a somewhat obscure postscript to their golden age. Thus we learn yet again that life is not in the least bit fair. Enjoy.
Not only that, but if the Bangles had been five guys in London or LA in 1965, they’d be remembered as one of the great groups of the 1960s, and pop critics would wonder why 1980s and 1990s groups could never achieve the ineluctible heights which great acts like them scaled back when the world was young.
Life: not just unfair, but often really, really stupid.
Why limit it to the 60s? If the Bangles had been five guys, period.
I LOVED the Bangles back in the day and not just because they were gorgeous. There were some wonderful tunes too.
Also, is the use of “off of” grammatically alright? ;-)
(bugger the hamsters I say!)
Off topic Bangles side-note:
If you never have, check out the Saw Doctors doing their tune “I’d Love to Kiss the Bangles”
The Bangles were not a girlie group. They were an good band that happened to be composed of women. It’s a shame that pop and women get so little musical respect. It ended up being all about Susanna Hoffs in a short skirt. Pah.
Okay, I loved the Bangles recorded music but does anyone but me remember how truly awful they were live? Every time I saw them sing on some awards show or something they were simply awful. At least one of those women was incapable of staying on-key while singing on stage. Either that or someone in the group had stage fright issues that turned her into a tuneless wanderer.
Yes I know, it could have been crowd noise and bad monitors. But their horrible live performances became a joke at my house, and that took at least four bad outings to come about.
To their credit they clearly did not lip sync . . .
Admittedly, singling it out like this is making me much more critical than I normally would be . . . but ehhh. Not terribly moved by the lyrics, but what I really want to do is take a baseball bat to that drum machine.
I’m a big fan of good pop (which is why I have the Pet Shop Boys on my iPod – no, really, it’s good for the gym), but there’s just something about Hoff’s voice that irks me; which is odd because, in general, I prefer female vocalists.
Someone in my college dorm accidentally played their 33 rpm “Walk Like an Egyptian” single at 45 rpm, and we all liked it better. To this day the real version of the song sounds WAY too slow to me.
Hmm, I’ve got to experiment with imeen now. This could get interesting.
I had no idea that the Bangles even reunited in 2003. Lovely melody but RH is right, that drum machine is really annoying, especially to an old school rocker like me.
Oh God, another gadget or widget I can fiddle around with. I’ll definitely have to check this out.
I used to like the Bangles for about fifteen minutes back in the early ’80s. The only song I can still tolerate by them is “Going Down to Liverpool.” This one’s a little too…something? Lush?
I saw the Bangles live in San Diego last year and thought they were AWESOME. I immediately declared them the most underrated band of all time.
Chick bands are so cute.
This one was. My Bangles crush was not on Susannah Hoffs but on the bassist, Michael Steele. She was very cute. Also, a pretty good bassist. Since I also have crushes on Gaby Glaser, Jane Wiedlin, and Melissa Auf der Maur, I have to entertain the notion that I have an inherent weakness for female bassists.
Ditto on that Michael Steele crush. And for years, friends have mocked me for it.
You’re not alone, man.
Wow, Wiedlin and Auf der Maur in the same pulchritudinal list? It must be the bass guitar that does it for you, man.
Back in the day, for me it was Rose Marshack of Poster Children.
Uhh… when did everyone go all “easy listening” around here?
Melissa Auf der Maur is easy listening?
I saw the Bangles live in Canberra in 2005(?6) and they were great. A really tight disciplined sound and I hadn’t realised how much they shared the lead vocals around.
Until that concert I didn’t even know about the 2004 album and bought it after the show.
To me “Doll Revolution” feels like the band never broke up, they just played on in private and THEN brought out an album with the best songs they’d written in the last however many years it was.
I think my favourite is “Lost at Sea” though but all of them are good.
I thought the Bangles were great live. Saw them with the Hoodoo Gurus in Chapel Hill, NC. Very nearly couldn’t find them, because every time we asked about the concert, we kept getting sent over to where Kenny Rogers was playing.