Friday Random Ten: Daylight Savings Time Edition

1. Auto-Suggestion - Joy Division
2. Slide Away - Oasis
3. How Many More Times - Led Zepplin
4. The CROSS of Changes - Enigma
5. Helpless - Oingo Boingo
6. Prettiest Start - Aladdin Sane
7. Perfectly Still - Gin Blossoms
8. Silence - Korn
9. The Passion of Lovers - Bauhaus
10. Rocketpop - Tripping Daisy

Ok, that's more like it... good stuff this week.

I picked up Joy Division's Substance when it showed up in the bargain bin at Altitunes; I'd heard people mention them in passing a number of times, but really didn't know what to expect. Imagine my surprise when I put it on and hear Dead Souls... I'd heard a version of the song before, on the soundtrack to The Crow, but I'd assumed it was a Trent Reznor original. Listening to the CD I realized that Joy Division represents the UR source for a lot of the music I like; I really had no idea that anyone was even creating music like this in the 70's.

I'm always surprised that more people haven't heard of Oingo Boingo... they were huge (huuugggeee, even) when I was in high school. I remember how put off a lot of people were when they broke up. Anyway, after leaving SoCal I found out that Oingo Boingo was really a regional phenomena; they didn't have so much of a following outside of the SoCal beach cities. Y'all may be more familiar with Oingo Boingo's frontman, Danny Elfman; Oingo Boingo is what he did before he started devoting so much time to composing. My own personal pet theory, and you can take this for what its worth, is that Mr. Elfman is probably responsible for the ska genre. You look at all the ska and ska-ish bands that came out of that part of the world and then you look at what they were listening to when they were growing up; I went to high school with a couple of the guys from Reel Big Fish and I know they were big Boingo fans. Boingo is about the only band I can think of from that time period that made heavy use of a brass section; you gotta think that ska's characteristic use of brass was, in the very least, heavily influenced by Boingo.

And lastly, what ever happened to Tripping Daisy? They had one radio hit and then sort of disappeared. Which is a shame, because they had such a unique sound.