There aren't as many comments as I usually like to see on this copy of In the Hothouse, the live album by the underappreciated British band (yes, yet another one) The Sound. But reading these, and then digging a bit into The Sound online (pro tip for bands with generic names like "The Sound": search for the band name and an album title to find info), had me really wishing I was more familiar with their work, and that they had found the success that so many wished for them.
The Sound had a rabidly loyal fan base among music critics and, one assumes, college radio DJs. The consensus among the band's fans seems to be that they should have been as huge as bands like The Psychedelic Furs and Echo and the Bunnymen. At the very least they should have ended up on a John Hughes soundtrack or two, right? Sadly, they broke up in 1987, and the same mental health problems that contributed to that breakup led to the suicide of frontman Adrian Borland in 1999. But forget all that for now, as we return to the slightly more hopeful year of 1985:
"This is a killer live set." "Interesting assortment of songs too." "Anything I say about this band will be biased. Except that I was there and it was mondo squared. Love the stuff." "Thank god!" "'Missiles' is a great tune." "'Prove Me Wrong'!!" "TKO" "Ditto - 'Prove Me Wrong' is unreleased in a studio version and if it's any indication of the next album, step back!" [A studio version of this song was indeed featured on their next album, Thunder Up.] |
Listening to The Long Ryders for the first time, it's not clear to me that they should have been lumped in with the Paisley Underground bands of the '80s (covered previously in this Rain Parade post). They definitely had '60s influences, but as far as I can tell they were much more a country-rock b…
I covered a Robyn Hitchcock in this space a while back, but this is the first time we've looked at an album from The Soft Boys, the band that first brought him to the attention of college radio nerds across the globe. The band was rather short-lived, breaking up shortly after the relatively unsucce…
