Ah, here's a fine example of everyone's favorite musical genre: 90's eurodance. If you were alive during the 90's, you probably remember hearing Another night on the radio. Real McCoy don't stray too far from the 90's eurodance formula. There's two black girls who sing and dance and one super deep voiced European dude who sort of talks over the verses. This stuff is just so cheesy and cliche that it's hard not to enjoy it a little bit. The best tracks are Another Night and Run Away. Then there are two covers (Come and Get Your Love and Ooh Boy) that are pretty fun.
Party Foul was another local band from Indiana. The singer is a friend of mine, but he moved to Chicago for college and the band seemed to be looking for a singer for a while. Today I realized that they officially announced that they were done a couple of days ago. This wasn't really a surprise because they weren't making new music or playing shows, but it gave me the idea that I should post their stuff here.
A few weeks ago I was watching Chasing Amy. I'd seen it before, but never paid attention to the music I guess. In the Holden and Alyssa hanging out montage scene, there's a song called "Jump Start" playing. It's so perfectly 90's, and it's a great mood setter. I had to get the album. This one was pretty expensive for an old used cd. Like $7 I think. That's not a lot of money or anything, but usually when I buy used cds they're in the $0-$3 range. I'd describe these guys as early 90's power-pop rock. The album opener, "Waiting", is really good, and got me excited for the rest of the cd. However, there's only about 4 songs that I find myself listening to if I'm not popping the cd in to listen to the whole thing. If you like 90's music, you'll love some of these songs though.
I first heard these guys (and girl) on the cartoon Clone High (which is possibly the greatest not-for-kids cartoon ever created...watch it NOW). Their song "By Starlight" was on the unofficial soundtrack I downloaded, and it's an awesome song. After a lot of searching, I ended up buying it. Unfortunately, like most things I buy and post on this blog, the one song I had previously heard was the best. The other songs aren't bad, but nothing else stood out after one or two listens. I'll have to listen to it more. It's sort of like early 2000's alternative rock/power-pop with 90's emo influences. Something about them, particularly the title track, reminds me of newer Saves The Day.
According to Wikipedia..."Custom (also known as Duane Lavold) is a Canadian-born, New York-based rock musician best known for his song "Hey Mister"." I remember listening to Hey Mister when it was new. And awesome. It's no longer new, but it's still awesome. The video for it was banned from MTV because they thought it was pedophilic and offensive to women even though the chick in the video was 22. Custom is sort of like a grittier Beck, I guess. Alternative rock with some hip-hoppish elements thrown in every once in a while. Lots of sexual lyrics, drug lyrics, and bad lyrics. The only copy of this I can find on a blog is something like 96 kbps, so here's a better version.
I've got a thing for 90's music, so I had to check out this cd. I had heard the song Hooch by these guys (and you probably have too, even if you don't realize it...it was on the radio, and Water Boy, and Scrubs), and figured their other stuff probably had to be good too. And it is. But nothing else on this cd is as good as Hooch, or very similar to it. These guys sound like a younger, hipper, late-nineties Dave Matthews Band. They're sort of jammy and have a sax in a lot of the songs. I don't even really like Dave Matthews Band, but I enjoyed this album. I haven't listened to it enough to write much else about the songs on it, but it turned out really good for being pretty much a blind purchase.
