A Year of Music

Stuck in my head this morning: “The Sideways Man” by the Digital Dinosaurs, a throwback to 60s-era Kinks disguised as a late-70s DiY tune. The bit that gets stuck in my head is the “ba ba ba ba bababa baa” backing vocals, which is also the bit that reminds me of The Kinks. You can find this song on the Angst in my Pants compilation or on Messthetics’ Greatest Hits (which I highly recommend). It’s less catchy than the usual stuff that invades my head while I sleep, but is insidiously accessible all the same.

Hyped 2 Death has more on the Digital Dinosaurs.

Doesn’t it seem like every song from the 80s had a sax solo in it? Where did that come from? Why did it stop?

Maybe it's just a product of Chuck Warner's preoccupations, but I've noticed that where the songs on Hyped 2 Death's Messthetics series tend to have lyrics concerned with things like collective action, urban anomie, industrial decay, DiY culture, and getting wasted, the songs on the Homework series tend to be more preoccupied with, uh, girls, being bored and getting wasted. The difference is that Messthetics is British (and Irish, I think) and Homework is American. Are we really that shallow?

Also, the only real difference between Homework and Teenline is that the songs on the Teenline comps are way more likely to sound like Cheap Trick or the Stray Cats. I like Teenline a little better, except there's no songs by Christmas or Lester Bangs on Teenline.