Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
#136 The Edge Of The World – Sonia Dada (1992)
I bought
Sonia Dada’s self-titled debut CD (used, for $2.99) based on their catchy (if
ungrammatical) ditty “You Don’t Treat Me No Good”, which got quite a bit of
airplay on WHFS and was revived in 2010 by Jerrod Niemann. Retitled “Lover,
Lover”, the surprisingly faithful cover went to #1 on Billboard’s country
charts. The original actually hit #1 in Australia, where the band had
considerably more success than in the U.S.
“The Edge Of
The World” is even better, a fantastic soul ballad that really should be
revived, although I doubt that anyone else could come up with a version that’s
better than the original.
My copy of
the CD lists “Daniel Laszlo” as the songwriter for both tracks – he’s actually
the writer or co-writer of all 12 tracks – and as a member of the band. The
band’s Wikipedia page and official web site, however, list “Daniel Pritzker” as
the band’s co-founder and primary songwriter, with no reference to “Laszlo”. I
did track down a couple of websites that indicated that Pritzker used Laszlo as
an alias, at least at the beginning of the band’s career. None provided any
explanation, but my theory is that Pritzker felt that his status as an heir to
the Hyatt hotel chain might have damaged his rock cred. (As of the date of this
posting, Forbes listed his net worth at $2.1 billion.)
#135 Ain’t That Enough – Teenage Fanclub (1997)
For some
reason, I completely missed out on this band originally; I’m not sure whether
WHFS didn’t play their stuff, or whether it just went right
past me. Regardless, I didn’t become aware of them until I bought Nick Hornby’s
excellent essay collection Songbook,
which devotes one chapter to this song and another to the also-worthwhile “Your
Love Is The Place Where I Come From,” both of which are from their classic
album Songs From Northern Britain.
(Full disclosure: I couldn’t pass up the book after seeing that Chapter 2
featured “Thunder Road”.)
I couldn’t
possibly improve on Hornby’s description: “a three-minute blast of Byrdsian
pop, packed with sunshine and hooks and harmonies and goodwill.” In other
words, although the book came out over 13 years ago and the album is from 1997,
it’s a perfect ray of hope for the times we currently live in. (For more, pick
up the band’s fantastic album Here from
last year.)
Serendipity #66
Glad -- Traffic
This Is The Day – The The
Heard 1/30/2017 around 6:00pm, at Potbelly (downtown Rockville)
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