A wonderful guitar based pop song which strongly evokes the early 90s to me. The guitar work is superb - a clean electric sound with the kind of fast strumming I love (and used to try and imitate). It's an optimistic and uplifting track - check it out! The Peel session version sounds the best to me, but that's probably because I heard it first. At one stage Mark Edwards had made this available online.
from Chopping Down the Family Tree, available on CD (Scat)
28 Jun 03 ·konsu: Mark Edwards is one of the unsung heros of midwestern post-punk. His influence is often kept secret, as if to protect the pearls contained within from pop-poachers and indie-plagerists. His Homestead stuff is worth hunting down, particularly "Let's Skip The Details" & "The Taller You Are,The Shorter You Get". His self-effacing wisdom, and ironic poetics are the stuff of legend, as well as his no-nonsense approach to guitar, which much like mr. D, I had practiced in my solitude many times before. A rare recommendation indeed!
Ha! Good luck finding this one. Hot little hopes is a storm in a teacup about going out on a night with high expectations by a band who never got the sucess they deserved. The music is sublime; a string and brass waltz that builds to a delirious gallop, but it's the lyrics and their delivery that make it special, and confirm BHJ as a lost treasure.
Johnny Brown is a songwriter whose lyrics are great writing in their own right; much of his work reads like documentary, the man has a spectacular talent for transcribing the ordinary while maintaining strict disciplines of structure and story to catch your heart in your throat. Here as elsewhere the story almost doesn't deserve to be told- it's ordinary people with ordinary hopes and fears, but the music and the telling turn it into a modern fairytale.
17 May 02 ·LateBirdsInMay: Keeping it in the family by responding to my own posting here. Aside from wanting to comment on just what a fantastic piece of journalism the above is - it's worth mentioning that BHJ have reformed, and a new album comes out next week - 'love never fails'. Aces. 18 May 02 ·delicado: Good news. Do you reckon they've gone electro?
A great version of this Troggs song, which formed one side of Spiritualized's first single. It's a pretty straight cover version, but with a richer production and that probably soon to become hip again early 90s dance/indie crossover sound (wah wah guitars, funky drums). Actually, it has aged pretty well, and I still can't listen to it without singing out loud when I hear it 'I've been watchin' you; and a lovin' you in vain...'
from the single Anyway that you want me (Dedicated)
10 May 01 ·tinks: does that mean that it's almost time for a soup dragons revival?? hahahaha... 30 Jan 04 ·shaka_klaus: i heard another version of this one recently in a commercial on tv. don't remember which at the moment. spiritualized gives me goosespots. i saw them in 98 at a festival and they opened up with 'cop shoot cop', what can i say? amazing. this version is also a fav of mine. 30 Jan 04 ·delicado: I've been listening to the original Troggs version a lot recently. The Spiritualized version is a great cover - the same in many ways but also very different and intense. I think they're a good band; not everything they do is spot-on, but when a song by them is good, it's normally pretty mind-blowing. 31 Jan 04 ·shaka_klaus: i forgot to write that the version of the song in the commercial is sung by a female singer. 18 Apr 07 ·artlongjr: The female singer may have been Evie Sands, she sang the original, which was written by Chip Taylor. Chip is famous actor John Voight's brother. My favorite version of this tune is by the band American Breed from about 1967. Haven't heard the Troggs version yet.
A super-simple, super-charming innocent indie pop song from the hazy summer of 1990. The popguns were a nice jangly guitar band with a female singer and the old drummer from the Wedding Present. Their best songs really are excellent; I'm slightly surprised to find myself still enjoying them after all these years.
A perfectly distilled instrumental which seems to capture everything poignant and affecting about Badalamenti's soundtrack work. 'Perdita' opens with a faint piano, being played seemingly with one finger, which gets louder and is joined gradually by a rich string section. Rather like some of Ennio Morricone's best themes, this is very simple, but so beautiful that it doesn't end up sounding obvious or clich�d. On the other hand, perhaps I'm just being nostalgic about being 16 again.
