Another good band: The Smithereens

So, since I' m home alone all day -- except for Ralphie! -- while everyone else is off at work, I've been slowly going through Gye Greene's CD collection. Some I've heard before, some I haven't.

Came across The Smithereens, and their album "11" (as in "This one goes to eleven"). VERY good album! "Girl Like You" is particularly good -- though all the songs are tasty. The sort of song I wish **I** had written. Good opening riff. Also "Yesterday Girl." Heck, the whole **album** is good. Strong, catchy songs. Vaguely Foo Fighters-like, except The Smithereens did it first (by about ten years).

You can catch a few seconds' worth of it at cdnow.com (which apparently got bought out by Amazon) -- but if you want a used copy, you can pick it up at djangos.com (Amazon.com also does used CDs, for similar prices -- but if you want to support the small guy you can go to djangos).

Their "Green Thoughts" album is also pretty good. (Heh! No surprise GG has it!)

Next-Door Uncle's birthday!

Hey! It's Next-Door Uncle's birthday today! Must stop by.

Next-Door Uncle's a fun guy. Was a bit a of a larrikin [Aussie for "mischievious twerp"] in his youth -- which makes it fitting that April 1st (April Fool's Day) is his birthday! He apprenticed as a carpenter, then dabbled in architecture (IIRC), before becoming some sort of construction supervisor guy. He just recently retired.

Lives next door to us. Has a nice big workshop with lots of metal-working tools. Restores "classic" cars, sometimes fabricating the parts himself, out of raw chunks of metal. (Hence, the hope that he could help us melt down the aluminium.) Has a bunch of old rusting Rovers in the side yard, which GG and I will someday ask to use as a backdrop for a music video. (Yet another thing GG wants to do "When I Finish My Dissertation (tm).")

Next-Door Uncle speaks good 'Strine, as well.

Technically, he's The Lady's uncle. But GG and I still call him "Next-Door Uncle."

Dog's name

The dog is a tri-color Welsh Pembroke Corgi. Sometime I'll post a picture or two of us together. His name is Timmy, but sometimes GG and I both call him "Ralphie" or "Buddy." He doesn't seem to mind.

Easter candy and alumin[i]um

Stayed home today with the dog -- again -- while everyone else at work -- again. Funny how much leftover Easter candy you can eat when you're just hanging around the house.

Summer is just winding down. It's a very Aussie thing to light [anti-]mozzie candles and place them in doorways and windows that don't have flyscreens. The sad thing is that each candle comes in a little aluminum (or as the Aussies spell it, aluminium -- the extra "i" -- and pronounced "al-loo-MIN-ee-um") cup. When the candle burns down, the little teeny cup remains.

Seems a shame to just throw them away, so I've been saving them. Figure eventually I'll go over to Next-Door Uncle's place and melt 'em down into something useful -- don't know what, yet.

Have also been saving the colored aluminium that the little Easter candies come wrapped in. Will melt that down, too.

10,000 Maniacs: Their best album

So, today when everyone was at work, I listened to all of our 10,000 Maniacs albums. Gye Greene doesn't have **every** one they produced, but fairly close: The Wishing Chair (1985); In My Tribe (1987); Blind Man's Zoo (1989); Hope Chest (1990); and Our Time in Eden (1992).

Despite their wild-sounding name, 10,000 Maniacs are a fairly gentle band. They're not like some bands, where I like **all** of their songs on an album -- but all the albums have one or two good songs. If you're not aware of their stuff, I'd recommend Blind Man's Zoo and In My Tribe, both in terms of lyrics and melody.

IMO, if you can look at the track listing for an album and go "Oh, that one," that's a good sign. If you can't remember the song, that's bad. Based on that, here's my results:

Hope Chest (1990): Pit Viper, My Mother the War
The Wishing Chair (1985): Can't Ignore the Train, My Mother the War.
Blind Man's Zoo (1989): Eat for Two, Please Forgive Us, You Happy Puppet
In My Tribe (1987): What's the Matter Here, Hey Jack Kerouac, Like the Weather, Don't Talk, Peace Train, My Sister Rose
Our Time in Eden (1992): These are Days, Candy Everybody Wants

Gye Greene was introduced to them by a former girlfriend, who broke up with him, then decided she was gay. But while they were dating, she convinced him to go see them in concert -- and then the band broke up a year or so later. Thus, he saw them in the nick of time. So, he figures it all balances out.


GG and I have a bit of a grudge against Natalie Merchant, their singer and songwriter. Although on the whole she seems like a decent person, with good intentions, **just** as the band was breaking through into the mainstream with "Candy Everybody Wants," she dumped the band and went solo. In interviews, she said it was due to feeling stifled by the band dynamic, where all decisions are compromises.

Which, I can understand. But the solution, then, is to go cut a few solo albums -- e.g. Phil Collins, from Genesis -- in **between** your "band" albums.

A band's vocals are the public identifier of their "sound." When the singer leaves -- especially if she/he was also the songwriter -- she's **really** scuttling the band.

I think 10k Ms released another album or two after Natalie Merchant left, using their on-tour violinist/backing vocals lady as their new singer. But, it didn't work out.


The band School of Fish was another one: had a hit with "Three Strange Days", then cut another album. Then the lead singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist got cocky, decided to go solo.

Crash and burn, baby -- crash and burn. There's some cruel justice in this world: payback for wrecking a perfectly good band, leaving yer buddies behind.

BTW -- check out the two School of Fish albums. IMO, the first one is slightly stronger.

H.I.R.//H.I.R.I.

You that are "in the know" know what that's all about. ;)

Fair dinkum, mate!

(Hopefully, I conjugated that correctly.)