In 1996 a good friend of mine named Gillis moved to Paris. This being the early days of the internet with web-based email not yet widely used (at least by me), we kept in touch via handwritten letters. To further set the scene, I was a year out of college, living at my parents’ house on Hillside Ave. To paraphrase a couple of lads from Liverpool, “out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent …”
Anyway, back to Gillis, my Parisian pen-pal. Most of our correspondence coalesced around music: what we were listing to, what CDs we were looking to buy, and any music or bands we were seeing live. I recall a few of the letters including a list of “songs/albums/bands I listened to the most this past week”. I made several tapes of the CDs I was listening to at the time. Via the power of text, I just asked Gillis about this and he told me about some of the tapes I sent him in Paris:
- Ben Folds Five – Ben Folds Five (debut Album)
- Beck – One Foot in the Grave
- Various Artists – The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
That last one I remember because in October of 1996 a friend (this one: https://www.thewrap.com/netflix-hbo-nora-skinner-vp-drama-series/) got me tickets to the New York Film Festival showing of the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus film. Gillis was (is?) a huge Who fan and their performance of “A Quick One (While He’s Away)” was the highlight of the film. Seeing it at a movie theatre on a huge screen with a great sound system was amazing and I remember writing to Gillis about this. Check it out here:
So much to love in there, from Roger Daltrey’s fringe / tassel top to Keith Moon’s frenetic drumming style to Pete Townshend’s windmill guitar strumming to the addition of water to the drum kit to add the visual effect of spraying water as Moon flails away at his kit, it is all perfect.
Sorry – I am straying off point here – back to Gillis and his list of what he was listing to in the 1996 and 1997. At one point during our letters, he mentioned he has digging a band called the Cardigans. At that point, I had not heard about them, so I wrote back to ask him what the Cardigans were all about. He told me about them and said something to the effect of the Cardigans combine an upbeat pop feel with a great rhythm section and well produced and crafted songs – all with a female lead singer.
This naturally intrigued me, and I started looking for Cardigans CDs. Before I got a chance to stop at Crazy Rhythms in Montclair or Compact Disc World in Totowa, I remember seeing a copy the band’s current (at the time) release “First Band on the Moon” at my friend Pete’s and Dave’s place in Hoboken. The single “Lovefool” was featured in the soundtrack and in the the 1996 Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Daines film “Romeo + Juliet” and that album was getting a boost from that association.
I liked what I heard on “First Band on the Moon” and then start looking for other stuff the band released. Again, it is hard to imagine this now, but there was so little information out at the time. There was no Wikipedia, Pitchfork or AllMusic to look up the discography. There was no music streaming service to check out other releases or YouTube to sample some songs or see the latest video for free. All I had was the CD and the liner notes to figure out who was in the band and maybe the lyrics to some songs.
Ok, enough of my Gen X complaining, back to the music. I do remember loving the “First Band on the Moon” album and agreeing with the original review by Gillis: “ . . . upbeat pop feel with a great rhythm section and well produced and crafted songs – all with a female lead singer.”
I remember listening to “Never Recover” from “First Band On the Moon” over and over again. The rhythm section carries this song – I love the bass line in this song and how it propels the song forward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHGioqDh5mg
I also loved the bounce of “Your New Cuckoo”, the alt-rock kiss off of “Been It” and the pop confection perfection of “Lovefool” Though the movie did not come out to later, I had a very Rob Gordon hearing Marie DeSalle cover “Baby, I Love Your Way” in High Fidelity (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPciCqzM8_A) when I heard “Iron Man”. The Cardigans make it their own in a very space age bachelor pad type of way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb7IpfOzon4
One of my favorite songs on the album is Choke:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMM_ZTOe8nA
Sorry, another digression but I swear I will bring it back to Choke . . . . Back in High School, my good friend Spags got me hooked on the band Chicago. His theory was (and one that I bought hook line and sinker) that the first 5-6 Chicago albums were a great combo of guitar driven rock with a the right combo of horns and piano. I still listen to and dig the first three Chicago albums and they all still hold up. When I first heard “Choke” by the Cardigans, I immediately liked it but could not put my finger on why. After a few listens, I realized that it was the Chicago-like horn parts. Great horn harmony with a flute line thrown in. Listen the horn chorus/refrain at the 1:25 mark of this song and again at the 2:26 mark of the song on to the fade out. It sounds like an outtake from the 1970 Chicago album (called Chicago but referred to as Chicago II). This is a good example of a song from Chicago II that has similar horn/flute feel:
After a few weeks of listening to First Band on the Moon in heavy rotation I moved on to other things (probably things like Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five or OK Computer by Radiohead which were new and were in my heavy rotation). In January or February 1998, I went to visit a friend at Notre Dame. While there, we drove up to Chicago for the day and while tooling around Chicago I wandered into a record store. I found CD copy of the Cardigans album “Life”. What I did not realize at the time is that the reason I found this CD in Chicago was because the Cardigans had signed to a Chicago based record label called Minty Fresh. “Life” was really the Cardigans second album but it was the first released in the US.
To be continued . . . .
A Theory For You to Disregard . . . Completely 