Music Open Thread

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I’m a big fan of the Depeche Mode sound-alike band Cause & Effect.  For a number of years I’ve had a song, Illumination which I thought was Cause & Effect.  It is one of my favorite songs, but I’ve recently discovered it was really performed by a group called "Red Flag".  Anyone know anything about that group?  Are their albums good or is Illumination just a good one-of? 

41 thoughts on “Music Open Thread”

  1. There were the Velvets. And there were the Stooges. And there were the Ramones. And everything else sucked.

  2. Second comment here ever, both music threads. Why does no one like rock & roll anymore. Just saw Widespread Panic at Summer Pops in San Diego, unreal band. Listen to any of their live albums and be blown away.

  3. The only album I have from them is Naive Art, their first. I had no idea they had so many other albums until I looked here:
    allmusic.com Red Flag entry
    If you like them, you would certainly like Camouflage, a German Depeche Mode soundalike. And you can find a bunch more older and modern stuff at flashbackalternatives.com, a web radio that plays this kind of stuff exclusively.

  5. I heard an old Marty Robbins tune from his ‘Gunfighter Ballads’ albums, the song ‘Big Iron’. That was a great collection, ‘Cool Water’, ‘Streets of Laredo’, ‘El Paso’. They will come in handy as civilization continues it’s slide back to more primitive times and the human race begins to end it’s short existence here.

  6. BBM:
    I don’t know, but the original version of Cool Water by the Sons of the Pioneers works better for me. You know the guitar player was a Texan named Karl Marx Farr? Of course, the only member of the troop to really acheive solo fame was Leonard Franklin Slye, but under a pseudonym.
    Going more modern, I always liked the urgency of the Grateful Dead’s version of El Paso — more like a dying man’s attepmt to tell his story that Robbins’ laid back style. GD guitarist Weir’s version of Big Iron is less compelling.
    Growing up in Texas, I know lots of parody versions of Streets of Laredo. It’s hard not to laugh when I hear the opening lines, a sad result . . .

  10. Why does no one like rock & roll anymore.
    I’m a 44-year old head-banging rocker. I thought I’d be listening to folk music at this age. No such deal.

  11. If you like Depeche Mode, I can almost guarantee that you will like Cause & Effect. I would reccommend their “Another Minute” album (which has the excellent songs “You Think You Know Her” and “Echoing Green” and “Nothing Comes to Mind”) The last has the ultimate dismissal: “When I think about her, nothing comes to mind”. Their “Trip” album is just as good. I especially like “Crash”, “Shakespeare’s Garden”, and what I think was a mini-hit “It’s Over Now”.
    Both albums are a touch tough to find in stores, but easily available at Amazon. After trip, one of the band members moved on or died, and the subsequent albums are ok, but more of a specialty taste.

  12. i saw Depeche Mode my freshman year of college (89). Erasure opened for them – when the singer came out he was wearing a leather tank top with a huge brass circular plate on his belly. he waved to the crowd and said “Everybody Shimmmmy!” he was like Jack from Will and Grace, in leather.
    this was Saratoga NY, a place not known for a lot of flamboyant men, shimmying or not.
    Depeche Mode was good. no prancing, though.

  13. Go to the All Music Guide at http://www.allmusic.com
    It’s a great cross reference for almost every band ever to record and it has reviews and recommendations too. Not to mention sound files to listen to from nearly every album.

  14. I thought my one friend and I were the only ones that remembered Cause and Effect. I love the siren-y it bits at the beginning of “It’s Over Now”. And that is the extent of my C/E knowledge.

  16. Why does no one like rock & roll anymore.
    I love rock & roll. Pity fewer bands are making it. I’ll be glad when we’re done with the current wave of Gang of Four/Television/Roxy Music manques and get back to something decent.
    My recent iTunes purchases:
    Foo Fighters
    White Stripes
    Spoon
    I recently digitized my entire music collection and keep it on a 160MB external HD, which I can then just plug in and set to “shuffle” whenever I want. Creates some weird juxtapositions, but it’s fun.

  17. i have been lurking here now since last winter and thought i might pop my head in for a moment. i am one of those fiercely independent new hampshire voters you folks read about every primary season…(ad nausea), however, with nearly all stereotypes, there is some truth. in 2000, i voted for nader, so i was one of those 4000 or so who lost it for gore. the turning point for me was when, during the debates, gore and bush actually declared their devotion to the golden rule and american politics found a new way to define mediocrity. i miss the old (libertarian) republican party and i am not enchanted by the current crop of democratic leaders. strangely, i began to appreciate howard dean because of the “dean scream”. i found it endearing, a quick look into the heart of a man who cared about giving his supporters a good show, it felt unpolished and honest. so what is the point of all this? i just want to introduce myself on my first post here… so, hello to you.
    i am passionate about politics but utterly under informed, so i read here and elsewhere.
    my first passion however is music, twenty five years ago i was a punk rocker (really, this was my class superlative in the yearbook, i guess it was the hair), in college a became a college radio dj, somewhere along the way i put down my guitar, got a haircut, got a real job and had a family, now as my nest is beginning to empty, i have gone back to my college radio station, become a dj again, and picked my guitar back up, and all along the way, i never stopped hunting for and purchasing great american, british and canadian “popular” music. i quote “popular” because i have found the best popular music rarely sells more than 100,000 copies.
    sebastian, try the latest release from Of Montreal , on polyvinyl records “the sunlandic twins” https://www.polyvinylrecords.com/index.asp
    felix, and townes van zandt said “there’s the blues, and there’s zip-a-dee-doo-dah.” i didn’t agree with him either. open up there is life after the ramones.
    charles, how about a great transitional cd, Sun Kill Moon “Ghost of the Great Highway” it is has both great crazy horse tube screaming guitars and skillfully fingerpicked folk under one of the most beautiful american original voices ever, Mark Kozelek. unless by “head banging you meant speed metal in which case i am of no use to you.
    phil, love spoon
    some of the great little heard music of the past few years:
    Sufjan Stevens – Illinois (challenging and amazing orchestral pop)
    Richard Buckner – Devotion and Doubt and/or The Hill (the greatest living singer/songwriter alt country music to edgar lee master’s spoonriver anthologies)
    Arcade Fire – Funeral (think french canadian, early talking heads with some sugarcubes thown in)
    Iron and Wine – Our Endless Numbered days (folk pop, truely wonderful)
    the Decemberists – Picaresque (engaging lyrical narratives, sea shanties and talented musicians)
    Calexico – Feast of wire (tex mex pop)
    Matt Pond PA – Emblems (the cd you wish peter gabriel had made)
    Court and Spark – Bless You (west coast twang, with a deep sense of music history)
    and so many more…
    back to lurking

  18. The Shins, Rogue Wave, Iron And Wine
    thesis: they are the same basic sound, with varying a varying ratio of Rock to Introspection.

  19. cleek,
    i agree with your thesis only if you are broadly defining it, e.g.
    replace: the shins, rogue wave and iron and wine
    with: the beatles, the beach boys and the moody blues
    if you don’t think the 2nd is true than i deny the first

  20. pick a Shins song from their last album, tone down the guitars, slow it down some, and muffle the vocals a bit, and you get a song from their first album. do that a little more and you get a Rogue Wave song – not as jumpy as the Shins, a little less aggressive, but still ironic and clever melodic garage rock. crank the dial a little more and you get something like an uptempo Iron and Wine song; a little more and you get a typical Iron and Wine song.
    there is probably a band between Iron and Wine and Rogue Wave.

  21. cleek, i do see your point and it is not coincidental that they are all on the same label, subpop, clearly their A&R person has an ear for melody driven, intelligently written lyrics and vocalists who do not over stylize their voices. and yes i hear similarities between them more so with the shins and rogue wave, it is a bit more of a stretch to get to iron and wine, perhaps you would like to put holopaw in between…
    …but, when i listen to the shins, i hear is brian wilson’s ear for subtle harmonies song over guitars, turning the majors to minor 7ths or 9ths ever so briefly and then releasing the tension and jumping back on to the energy of the chord progression.
    i hear the moody blues penchant for drama in zach rogues voice
    and to me sam beam is an original.

  23. “America rules! Our Beatles are way better than your precious Rolling Stones!”
    The above Homer Simpson quote was inspired by felixrayman’s 3:05 AM post. Yes, it is important to remind those wacky English that we Yanks actually did invent punk, but jeez, no love at all for the Pistols or the Clash?

  24. and to me sam beam is an original
    i agree.
    maybe if i put it this way: an ficticious band that combined what I think are the distinguishing bits of The Shins and of IaW would sound a lot like Rogue Wave.
    though, i don’t mean to imply that i find RW a mere rip-off of the other two.

  25. There’s a band from Florida called “The Aeffect” that I think has produced the most Depeche Mode-ish album in 10 years with their 2004 release “Secrets & Lies”.

  26. cleek
    agreed,
    what do you think of the new Teenage Fanclub cd – Man Made?
    got a favorite cd released this year?
    mine is Sufjan Stevens – come feel the Illinois, it is like a seven course meal
    now playing.
    South San Gabriel – Carlton Chronicles

  27. Well now, Cleek. ’89 was my freshman year in college. I wasn’t at that show, but I saw tons of them at SPAC around that time. Always met my friends at the 2nd. ramp on the lawn.
    My first roommate got busted at that DM show selling bootleg T-shirts. If you have one it may be a rarity now!

  28. The last has the ultimate dismissal: “When I think about her, nothing comes to mind”
    Nah, IMO that honor goes to Chelsea Hotel No 2:

    I don’t mean to suggest that I loved you the best,
    I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.
    I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
    that’s all, I don’t even think of you that often.

    What’s even worse is that, from what I know of the composition of the song, it’s not actually intended as a dismissal…

  29. what do you think of the new Teenage Fanclub cd – Man Made?
    haven’t heard it. didn’t even know about it. will see if iTunes has it.
    got a favorite cd released this year?
    not yet… most of the ones i was really waiting for (Spoon, White Stripes, Beck) turned out to be either ho-hum or outright disappoinments. still waiting for Malkmus’ latest to show up on iTunes… hate buying real CDs – nowhere to put them anymore.
    i really like Robyn Hitchcock’s latest, but i think that’s an 04.
    i like Fiona Apple’s unreleased latest.
    Andrew Bird’s latest sounds promising, after a couple listens.
    —
    Always met my friends at the 2nd. ramp on the lawn.
    i went to some show there in the summer of 95 (Sting? my wife liked him at the time). it was raining so hard, people were surfing and sledding down the rushing water on the ramps on pieces of cardboard, or raincoats, or whatever they could find.

  30. Yes, it is important to remind those wacky English that we Yanks actually did invent punk, but jeez, no love at all for the Pistols or the Clash?
    The “everything else sucked” comment was, of course, hyperbole, and I do like both the Pistols and the Clash – the US version of the Clash’s S/T release was the first record (by which I mean a round black chunk of grooved petroluem) I ever purchased.
    But I would not put either of those bands in the same league as the Velvets/Stooges/Ramones axis as far as either quality, originality, or influence go. Although I would have when I was 15. It took quite a while to learn to love the Stooges, and was worth the effort.
    The shins/Rogue Wave discussion is interesting too, I often recommend the latter to fans of the former. Haven’t heard Iron and Wine, though.

  31. “i really like Robyn Hitchcock’s latest, but i think that’s an 04.”
    haven’t really enjoyed anything from Robyn since Globe of Frogs, but i did play several cuts from Spooked on the my radio show last year when it came out, enjoyed the songs Television, English Girl and Sometimes a Blonde.
    “i like Fiona Apple’s unreleased latest.”
    haven’t heard this yet … but i will, looking forward to it….
    i saw Sting as well, only 15 years earlier than you, 1980 and he was still with the police, i thought he was a poser, but my girlfriend at the time really wanted to go…so …

  33. phil, love spoon
    The great thing is, I came to them in a completely roundabout way. I was a big fan of the 80’s Austin-based band The Reivers, and a few years ago I found a fansite that mentioned what the band members were doing now, and showed that lead singer/guitarist John Croslin had produced some material for a band called Spoon. I looked them up, and thus a love affair was born. (I can think of few singles in the past five years better than “The Agony Of Lafitte”/”Lafitte Don’t Fail Me Now,” their two songs detailing their short and terrible relationship with Elektra records.)

  34. The great thing is, I came to them in a completely roundabout way
    me too. caught them opening for Superchunk at the Cat’s Cradle one night. Superchunk was uperchunk, but Spoon really grabbed my wife and me.

  35. I like Spoon but their most recent release is kind of weak. So they lost their spot on my “favorites” playlist to the Futureheads, whose most recent release is definitely not weak.

  36. “Any Sarah Vaughan fans out there, or is civilization too far gone?”
    No. Never liked Clifford Brown, either. Etta James is cool, though.
    Chess good. Blue Note great.
    Verve sucked. Any attempt to reach a large fifties audience resulted in dreck, for the fifties mass audience had not ears to hear.

  37. Jo Jo Gunne “Bite Down Hard” (now on Collectors Classics), preferably with a hit of blotter, and a glass of Blue Nun or Mateus. (Only half full or you will spill it while dancing.)

  38. Sebastian, just checking out my itunes playlist and found some stuff you might want to check out, if you haven’t already:
    Old:
    Book of Love
    Fiction Factory
    Images in Vogue
    Machine Age
    Rational Youth
    Seven Red Seven
    Story Structure
    Techniques Berlin
    New:
    Subimage
    Alan Replica
    Pleasures Remain
    Halovox
    Dimbodius
    Blue October
    All these guys are synthy, ranging from sweet like Erasure (Subimage) to borderline industrial dance like Front 242 (Halovox, Machine Age). All of these can be hard to find. Your best bet is to google them and order direct from them or their label (Ninthwave is a good source of current synth stuff). The older stuff…you may be out of luck as I have a lot of it on vinyl (that I have converted to passable mp3’s) and is out of print or never issued on CD (I assume it is still technically illegal to copy these and give them away but the idea of copying impossible-to-purchase music doesn’t seem ethically wrong to me.)
    Enjoy.

  39. and to me sam beam is an original
    I like Sam Beam–to the extent that I do–because occasionally he sounds a little like Glen Campbell. Or because he sounds like he’s plowing the same ground that Uncle Tupelo or Will Oldham or Woven Hand or Nina Nastasia plowed before him. Not that Beam isn’t pleasant, but I don’t hear anything that distinctive to me. What are you hearing?
    Any attempt to reach a large fifties audience resulted in dreck, for the fifties mass audience had not ears to hear.
    Theodor Adorno, is that you?
    Mm. I can’t think of a single sentence that runs more counter to the way I approach popular music. Care to elaborate?

  40. Platosearwax,
    Thank you for recommending halovox. For those who are interested in hearing more please check out http://www.halovox.com.
    The CD can be purchased through iTunes as well as A Different Drum, CD Baby and more.
    Best wishes,
    Frank J. Freda

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