As a child of the ‘80s, the British alternative genre was my first exposure to music and to this day, I’m a sucker for tunes with a synthesizer and dark brooding lyrics. One of my (forgotten) favorites is Second Skin by Manchester’s post-punk quartet The Chameleons. This epic, nearly 7-minute tune was released in 1983 on their first (and best) album Script of the Bridge. The song has floated in and out of my life over the years but it always has the ability to transport me — back in time and sometimes to another place completely. The lyrics were influenced by a book lead-singer/songwriter Mark Burgess read about near-death experiences (talk about dark and brooding). The haunting atmosphere is apparent in the first few moments of the song and once the drum beats down and the guitars kick in (yes, the song has guitars in it too), you’re hooked. Halfway through, there is an abrupt change in pitch that builds to an unforgettable ending. The song is the gift that keeps on giving, people.

The Chameleons released two more albums, What Does Anything Mean? Basically in 1985 and Strange Times (with the excellent single Swamp Thing) in 1986, before disbanding. Recently, Mark Burgess and drummer John Lever have reunited as Chameleons Vox to play Chameleons back catalogue material. Catch them if you can.

A week ago, I got a text from one of my oldest friends, Cheryl, pointing out that we’d known each other for 21 years, which, as she also points out, is a really long time.

We met in college, at James Madison in Virginia and one of our earliest bonding experience involved other longtime friend and fellow ex-bandmate, Meredith (both of whom will likely contribute to these pages down the road). The three of us, being carless freshman at the time, took the crosstown bus to go shopping for records and dorm room furniture…likely made of milk crates. Canadian band, Sloan, had just released their seminal sophomore full-length, Twice Removed, that very month and the three of us couldn’t stop listening to it.

The band’s still active to this day, just having released their eleventh album last fall and, as was just announced last week, playing Coachella this year.

I know this is an over-used phrase, but the Twice Removed truly is almost perfect, start-to-finish. It’s loaded with songs that boast sparkling pop hooks, Beatles-esque harmonic vocals, original lyrics (the opening track’s are derived from a series of letters from pen pals and/or fans whose first language definitely isn’t english), and just really, really good writing. I’m not alone in holding the album in such high regard either—Twice is widely regarded as one of the best Canadian albums of all time, which is saying a lot given the many wonderful bands our northern neighbors have bestowed upon us.

One stand-out song on such a polished, well-done album is track number nine, “Deeper Than Beauty”, which clocks in at just under three minutes, is totally bass-less, features an unchanging, simple drumbeat and nearly unchanging jangley guitar line, and a stream-of-consciouness-like, dominant vocal track that is charmingly rough compared to the rest of the album and sounds like it was likely done in one take. The three of us—Meredith, Cheryl, and I—at one point on the bus ride back to campus sang this song from beginning to end in what, in retrospect, I realize must have been a cringe-worthy display of naive youth; one that I hold as a dear memory to this day, nearly 21 years later.

Best moment, in this writer’s opinion, comes at 1:06 when singer Chris Murphy seems to loose it a little as his voice cracks. I can only hope they play it exactly like this in the California desert later this year.

Back in the ’90s one of the ways you discovered new music was by rummaging through used CD bins looking for something that peaked your interest, but clocked in at around $5-$6 and didn’t break the bank. Compared to today’s world where some of us think twice about dropping even a few dollars for our favorite music, it’s odd that we used to spend money on music we hadn’t even heard yet, but that’s how we rolled back then. We were pioneers!

It was in one of those bins that I came to this album… I mean, just look at that CD cover. Were these guys 100% earnest art-school goofballs, or had they slyly predicted the painful irony-fueled zeitgeist of the upcoming decade? I’d like to think it was more the former, and anyway, there was an Indian dude on the cover and that was pretty cool for me. This predated even No Doubt and Tony Kanal, this was before Aziz, before Mindy, before Kumar, before Aasif, before Sunjay Gupta! You just didn’t see Indian people on TV, not that these guys were on TV back then either, but hey, it was something.

Of course, it turned out not to be a monumental album by any means, but man was it catchy, and fun, and just awesome to listen to in your Honda Civic as your cruised around Southern California. Imagine a pop-punk album where they forgot to bring the punk. Each of the songs sort of blends into the next, and they’re all about two minutes long… just short enough not to feel repetitive.

These guys would go on to change their sound completely and find some success with their single Divine Thing and their cover of The Rolling Stone’s I’m Free, both of which are… uhm, pretty bad.

We’re featuring the lead-off track here, Hang-Ten!, but the whole album is worth your time, the rest of their discography, not so much.

Oh, and this is surely the most low budget video ever filmed… the random antiquated overlay at the 1:20min mark notwithstanding.

Let me first quickly echo Paul’s introduction—this is his longtime project and, after partnering up on a number of other, oft-times more arduous endeavors, I’m happy to be helping him re-introduce this one to the world.

I seriously love music. Always have. And I think one of my favorite things about listening to new music are those moments when you realize you’re listening to something otherworldly; something that makes a massive shift in the way you think about music and, if you’re lucky, much more. I think one of the first bands that did that for me was Huggy Bear. The british group had a short life as an actual band—active roughly ’91 to ’94—but the influence they made with both their sound and their politics continues to leave an indelible impression on both this writer and, I’d wager, popular culture as a whole, musical or not.

Their musical/political scene was closely linked to the riot grrrl movement in the states and the seminal Bikini Kill. The two actually co-headlined a tour together in 1993, releasing a split LP together to coincide—Our Troubled Youth/Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah. The song I’m posting today though is from their lesser-heard final 7″, Long Distance Lovers, released in 1994 by San Francisco’s Gravity Records. “Limit 2 Surf” captures the band’s urgency and fuck all attitude pretty splendidly and quickly became a favorite of mine. As far as I know, this is the only digital version of this out there. We recorded it through a phono amplifier that was connected directly to our turntable, so record pops are audible. Hope you’re cool with it, ex-members of Huggy Bear.

Take a look at their live performance of “Her Jazz” on Channel 4’s The Word too, one of their few taped live performances, after which Huggy Bear was kicked off the show and may or may not have “bit the face of a member of our (The Word’s) production team.”

Huggy Bear’s excellent final album, Weaponry Listen to Love, is available on iTunes. Beyond that, you’ll likely need to find most everything else in physical form.

Hi, and welcome to the re-launch of this little website. We’re doing it properly this time around with the support of everyone at Pel and raven + crow studio. We’ll also be bringing along some friends as guest contributors to mix things up. As before, we will feature songs we love that maybe we haven’t thought of in awhile, and so maybe you haven’t either. The only rule is that each recording be at least ten years old. We hope you like what you find.

Please, please, please support the artists. Whenever possible, we will include links to Amazon and iTunes where you can download the songs directly, usually for about a dollar.

Since it serves as the rather obvious inspiration for our name, it wouldn’t make sense to start with any track other than “My Forgotten Favorite” by Velocity Girl. It’s not my absolute favorite VG track (that honor belongs to Crazy Town) but it’s definitely one of the best and nicely defines their shoegazy-pop sound.

Velocity Girl released two classic albums, and while their third and final release was panned by some for veering too closely to a polished radio-friendly approach, it holds up much better than anyone ever gave it credit for when it was released (this writer included). Certainly, Rilo Kiley owe a bit of a debt to the band… we recommend the entire discography.