If any of you followed me over to Atomic Ned from my old site, Swizzle-Stick, you’ll know that I was a big fan of both the Ultimate Fakebook and The Sheila Divine and, in fact, interviewed both bands numerous times.
So how cool is this? The Ultimate Fakebook played a rare reunion show for Halloween and belted out a cover of The Sheila Divine’s monster hit (to me anyway), “Hum”.
Enjoy!
Here’s hoping your trick-or-treat night doesn’t get rained out.
I need to move to Finland … or Sweden … or Norway. They still get it over there – it’s as if grunge never wiped out hair metal. These countries are churning out bands with big blond hair and leather pants as quickly as the Sunset Strip in LA did in the late ’80s and early ’90s. And I couldn’t be happier.
Santa Cruz wouldn’t have been a huge band in the U.S. in 1989 – most likely they would have been a B- or C-list band headlining 500 seat clubs – but they’ve got the sound and the look that would have earned plenty of full-color pin-ups in Metal Edge.
You can hear a bunch of Santa Cruz’s cock rock songs here.
Most people missed out on Damone, the ’80s-hair-metal-meets-’90s-power-pop Boston band, that released a handful of great (but not-so-great-selling) CDs between 2003 and 2008. I’m not sure why the band, fronted by powerhouse Noelle LeBlanc, didn’t make it – maybe because while they should have been opening arena tours for Motley Crue and Def Leppard, they aligned themselves with Hot Topic-type bands and were trying to peddle their music to fashionable high school kids with no appreciation for the great music from the late ’80s.
Damone broke up in 2008 but Noelle didn’t stop. Hooking up (figuratively, not literally) with her brother Danny, Noelle formed The Organ Beats, a similar sounding band though she lost the band members that brought the hair metal influence to Damone.
Recommended if you like: Butch Walker, Paramore, Hey Monday
The Organ Beats just released a new 2-song single on Bandcamp and they’re inviting you to download for free.
If you like what you hear, check out The Organ Beats full length 2009 release, Sleep When We Are Dead, available for the lovely “name your own price”.
Up High in the Night(2001)
Stab the Unstoppable Hero(2002)
Must have gotten these two Arlo releases from a SubPop publicist. I’d have to go back and look at SubPop’s catalog releases during the early 2000s to see just how these fit into the stuff the label was putting out. Seems to me that it was between the mid-90s grunge/punk stuff and the later 2000s bearded folk stuff.
Continue reading “Justify Your Existence: Arlo”