(all the Bonus Video Days in May will be devoted to what the imaginary band in
I Love Distortion (a rock & roll novel in 12 chapters) sounded/would have sounded like.
We now turn the floor over to the narrator of that story, Mr. Sean Richter;)
inspirational verse; "When I was 17, sex no longer held a mystery
I saw it as a commodity to be bought and sold like rock & roll" - The Mekons, 1989
We have a concept pair of videos for you in today's Bonus Video Saturday: The first time I heard The Mekons tune in question in 1989 I was stunned how much it sounded like one of the songs I wrote - "I Can't Sleep When The Sirens Are On" - that Nicole sang in The Twilight Kids. (The first two shows we played in 1978 - opening for Lovely & Sonic, story upcoming in blog entry May 29th, 2013 - we dubbed ourselves Niki & the West Side Rockers until Nicole prevailed in the idea that she didn't want to be set apart from the rest of the band. So beginning with our third outing we became The Twilight Kids. This was back in the days before Stephenie Meyer's novels, when you could still use the word "twilight" without being immediately associated with teenage vampire/human/werewolf love triangles.) (We had enough real life love triangles to contend with, nobody needed to venture into the realm of the supernatural.)
So while the song sounded spot-on like The Mekons, Nicole's vocals - given her upbringing in a close harmony family country band - hewed closer to the Carlene Carter stylings exemplified in the second video. Close your eyes and picture the former tune's punk edge with the latter songs' country tinge, and you get a rough idea of The Twilight Kids when Nicole sang lead. - Sean Richter
inspirational verse; "When I was 17, sex no longer held a mystery
I saw it as a commodity to be bought and sold like rock & roll" - The Mekons, 1989
inspirational verse; "Excuse my stare, it's only admiration / How can I hide this infatuation?" - Carlene Carter, 1980
© 2013 Ricki C.
Hey Ricki C, do you remember parispal, from the Reflections of the Fog days? :)
ReplyDeleteHerve, my Paris friend, how could I forget? Readers, communicating with Herve Oudet and the Continental cadre of Elliott Murphy fans in Europe might very well have been the reason I asked my lovely wife Debbie to show me how to use the internet all those years ago, leading, eventually, to this blog. Good to have you aboard, Herve, how am I doing?
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