And Now A Seasonally Appropriate Blast From the Past
Posted on December 5, 2010 Posted by John Scalzi 23 Comments
The song is titled “December,” from the band All About Eve, back when it was The Band You Most Wanted to Play Your LARP Society’s After-Party, which would have been 1989 or so. And before you LARPers get too defensive, please note I had the album myself (still do, in fact, in a box somewhere in the bowels of my basement), and enjoyed it. That said, the song and the video are definitely of the time, presented with the sort of Jurassic 80s grandeur that would not survive the extinction event that was Nirvana’s Nevermind album. I leave it to you to determine if our world is poorer for it.
For some reason, I’m really reminded of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don’t know why.
blocked by Vevo. :(
Rembrant: that’s how it showed up on my screen originally too. I clicked on the hyperlink to watch it on YouTube, and it played just fine.
I love your next to the last sentence. “Jurassic 80s grandeur” captures my retrospective view of the music and music videos of the time perfectly.
I like Collective Soul’s “December” better…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6exsatE-DUk
If I found out they were playing at a LARP, I’d try a LARP for the first time…
How have I never heard of this band before? I need to spend some time rummaging in your basement boxes, if that’s cool with you.
I have a totally different, almost unplugged version of this burned to a disc somewhere. It’s one of my farvourties along with the cocteau twins ‘How to Bring A Blush to Snow’ for mellow listening.
I’m always alarmed when you post music from groups that I never heard of and at least hint that they were popular and well-known. This would alarm me less if you and I weren’t the same age.
The video is definitely ’80s. I suspect it’s produced by the same people who did videos for T’Pau.
Hmmm…missed this tune from All About Eve.
The one I knew from All About Eve was Every Angel (see the link). I don’t recall if I have an album, CD or possibly the 12″ single…will have to check the boxes in the basement.
I have the All About Eve album before the album December was on. Brings back my goth days, playing in the clubs, listening to All About Eve, The Mission, Sisters of Mercy….a pretty incestuous little music community, all those bands shared members at various points. Good song, good bad. Sounds dated, but dated is fun now and then!
–E, I share your dismay. Clearly I was hanging out with the wrong RPG groups…
I just spent my evening sawing, sanding and painting wood pieces for use around the house. Thank you for making me not feel old any more.
I don’t recall All About Eve – I must have been too busy listening to Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.
Hey John, did you ever rp?
Heard of the band, don’t remember the song. Grunge still bores the #%%$$ out of me, but it’s better than rap metal; probably just evidence that I’m a BOF.
That said, the song and the video are definitely of the time, presented with the sort of Jurassic 80s grandeur that would not survive the extinction event that was Nirvana’s Nevermind album. I leave it to you to determine if our world is poorer for it.
I, for one, am going to go with . . . no. Even as a child of the 1980s, I seem to have developed a peculiar nausea around “80s music” for some reason. Despite the horrors that followed, I am so glad Nirvana happened.
Still one of my favorite bands of all time.
Sigh…I am an unreconstucted fan of 80’s music. Not the fashions, mind you (what the hell were we thinking?!?!), but I still love pre-grunge rock and New Wave. My I-Pod has been known to successfully disguise itself as a Walkman.
Can’t say I ever heard of them. But that song reminds me a little of early Over The Rhine, from Cincinnati: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qP5YHVWXO4
UGH! The 90’s music scene in America was essentially a black hole for music, dominated by Grunge, Nu-Metal (that bastard child of Rap and Heavy Metal), Jam Bands, and what I refer to as “Indistinguishable guitar-based pop-rock”. These genre’s combined with pop-radio abandoning anything that wasn’t analogous to the overproduced auto-tuned crap you hear on the radio today.
The music scene in the U.K. was MUCH more diverse and enjoyable. Two of the huge genre breakthroughs in the 90’s U.K. that never made much of an impact in America were Brit-Pop (think Blur and Oasis), and Electronica (Orbital, Underworld, and Leftfield).
Thank God for resources on the internet, including Pandora, that allow you to find more artists that you can enjoy… can’t do that on the radio anymore.
That’s truly awful. But then, so was Nirvana.
I would argue that grunge didn’t end Goth. Here in the uk Goth carried on in the underground, hugely popular. They were simply different.
I have some fondness for this kind of first-wave goth. I still love the Sisters of Mercy. In this case, I think I prefer Julianne Regan’s other band, Gene Loves Jezebel. But I came of age when we were playing second-wave goth, ie industrial and EBM, after our vampire LARPs.
And there was some good grunge, at the beginning. But it was just as pretentious and self-important as anything in the 80s, without the decency to be up front about it.