Your Sunday Musical Obscurity
Posted on July 12, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
From 1990 or so, the Scottish band Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie, with their not-precisely-a-hit “Blacker Than Black”:
I always enjoyed this tune, mostly because any song that starts “Death is a pony that’s waiting for me/His name is Luigi, he’s tied to a black tree” has got to be performed by the truly commited.
Incidentally, some of the more visually astute among you might register the presence of Shirley Manson, better known as the singer of Garbage. She was so young in those days, as were we all. Younger, anyway.
Ah, I saw Garbage in Vancouver back in 97′. As far as Scottish bands go, I’d have to go with the Bay City Rollers.
Disregard that last bit about the Rollers. I must have been drunk in the 70s, 6% Moosehead and Labatt’s Blue if memory serves. Cottage life in northern Ontario . . . ah, the glory days, when middle-class families could afford summer homes on the back lakes.
Shirley Manson and an accordion? These guys are awesome!
Side note: I’ve always found it interesting that with a very few exceptions (Smashing Pumpkins, the White Stripes, the Black Eyed Peas) mainstream popular bands for the last 15-20 years are always all male, all male with a female lead singer (or backup singers), or all female. Seems like in the 60s-70s it was more common to have singing groups with both male and female singers but that went away somewhere. Just a thing I always notice now.
Ah! Good to see my girl Shirley in her early days. Garbage is one of my favorite bands to come out of the 90’s.
When, oh when, is Shirley’s solo album coming out?
Shirley’s solo album isn’t coming out any time soon, but Garbage is making a comeback.
My first thought on hearing the singer, was “this sounds like Stan Ridgway”.
Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie were a fantastic band who released several blinding albums. Here in Edinburgh they are still well-remembered: like being on Sean Connery’s milk round, most locals of a certain age have at some time been to a Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie concert.
The band is still around (albeit without their former backing singers) are are now known as Isa & The Filthy Tongues. They still tour regularly and have released one excellent album to date. Especially check them out if you like The Pixies.
http://www.myspace.com/thefilthytongues