as i mentioned before, as a new{ish} user of Spotify, i'm finding it a treasure trove. songs i hadn't heard for donkey's years, bands i remembered from also donkey's years ago with their whole back catalogue on it, and i was finding myself scooting from Ramones and Smithereens to Scritti Politti and Warren Zevon, and my heart skipped a beat so many times, that it was getting dangerous...
it reminded me a bit of my teens, when i knew a few people, mostly the dads of families i was babysitting for, who had an eclectic taste in music {from the 70's usually} and were delighted to share this with this weird person who occasionally looked after their kids. that, and the then mad radio-broadcasting system that had the days of the week divided into the 9 different religious/ideological broadcasting companies that Holland has {nowadays combined somewhat, but then each company had a day per week}, which had me mostly listening on Tuesdays only, when the music was chosen by people who had the same taste as i did {until Studio Brussel happened, and i hardly listened to dutch radio at all anymore...}. back then it was mostly hoping that songs that i liked would pop up on the radio, while spotify gives the freedom to skip and chose.
a band that i rediscovered recently:
* the Wonder Stuff *
an odd band, based around singer Miles Hunt, from the West-Midlands in UK {which is a collection of cities like Birmingham and Wolverhampton, with mostly coal mining and related industries at it's - former - centre} who made catchy folky pop, which i liked a lot around the time i was au-pair in East Sussex. it strongly reminds me of the time i went out a bit in Hastings {to a pub in the Old Town called Ye Olde Pump House, that we just knew as The Old Pump House, mainly...} with some fellow language students {some of whom i'm still in contact with} and i consider to be my version of Student Life... this lot was daft, weren't tied to one genre, and had mad lyrics which made little sense, and were incredibly British. their album Hup i owned on cassette, and i listened to it endlessly, so hearing it again on Spotify it was weird to be able to sing along to songs i hadn't heard since before my eldest was born, now 27+ years ago...
their albums had interesting titles, such as The Eight Legged Groove Machine, Hup, Never Loved Elvis and {brilliant this} Construction For The Modern Idiot, reflecting their daft take on things. they struck lucky when they decided to record the song Dizzy with British comedian Vic Reeves {who with his then companion Bob Mortimer stood for a surreal, absurd kind of comedy that regularly got quite out of hand...}, which hit the big time {just now found the original clip and was reminded of the madcap stuff Reeves & Mortimer got up to in the early nineties - oh, those were the days...}
they lasted until about 1994, when i guess the fun was gone from being in a band, which had rehashed into different set-ups, and they reformed kind of in 2000, again resulting in may different members over time, but still with Hunt as the front man.
the novelty wore off soon, i must say, listening to them now, as the music and singing can get a bit incessant, and there's more stuff to get through these days... as opposed to 1990, when i was so delighted to have found a band that seemed to be daft, irreverent and absurd, and who's music cheered me up so much. the reminder was nice, though!
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