I am never going to say I have a rich knowledge of music, I just know what I like. When I was a kid in middle school I used to listen to whatever was popular. Back then it was like Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch and MC Hammer. It is weird to say but my life changed one day when I heard the song Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by the Crash Test Dummies. I would always listen to the rap stations on the radio but I heard that song playing on my brothers radio and kept it on that station, which I believe was KOME 105.3, an alternative rock station. After that I always into alternative rock. Ok, so enough about the history but yes I like punk, alternative, and music like that.
I probably heard Failure on KOME back 1997, they had a somewhat hit single in Stuck On You. The band never really had another hit after that, but somehow I went out and bought that album. I have traded in tons of CD's since then but I always held onto Fantastic Planet, currently I have been listening to the album more and more and realizing that it is becoming one of my favorites. The sound is nothing revolutionary but I just dig the hell out of the album. Check out the single from the album here:
I have been looking up Failure recently, they bad disbanded in 1997, a year after Fantastic Planet was released. I remember buying an older albums of theirs a while ago, but it just didn't stick to me like Fantastic Planet did. After Faliure's break up they went on to form other bands. The man singer Ken Andrews went on to form the band's Year of the Rabbit and On. Other band members went into bands like A Perfect Circle, Vercua Salt, Lusk, and Queens of the Stone Age to name a few.
I also found out that a lot of other people enjoyed Failure's album as much as me. Fantastic Planet has a small yet loyal following. The album is being released on vinyl today. The aforementioned song Stuck on You was covered by Paramore.
The album has a perfect 5 out of 5 star review on amazon's page (out of 106 reviews). Its nice to know that other people appreciate this band and this great album. I will leave you with one more cut from the amazing album, the song is called The Nurse Who Loved Me. This song is also covered by A Perfect Circle on their album Thirteenth Step.
4 comments:
Okay one bit of correction and one band recommendation....
KOME was 98.5, it used to be a Hard Rock station that was purchased by Clear Channel (evil corporation that has ruined radio, but I digress) in the early 90's and turned into an alternative rock station which was the trend of the time. 105.3 was Live 105 which was an incredible and independently ran radio station that was hugely influential. KOME was in San Jose, Live 105 in San Francisco, in 1998, Clear Channel wanting to up their presence with a bigger market than SJ bought Live 105, fired almost all the DJs, syndicated Howard Stern and completely decimated what was unique about the station, ie not conforming to a strict regimented playlist of the same 40-50 songs. Then 98.5 in San Jose became a Spanish station (I think, fuzzy there). Sorry if this sounds pissed off, but they ruined something great that really shaped my musical taste.
Anyway, Failure, yeah, I remember a few of their songs, they were good...I will have to re-listen to those tracks you posted. Anyway, two members of Failure are in a new band based in Silver Lake (my old neighborhood in LA) called Autolux, they have one album called Past Perfect, it's a little more dreamy and shoegazery than Failure was, but some really great big guitars, you should download a track and sample them, or if I remember I'll burn the album for you.
Sorry for the length of the first rant. Good luck with your move
good song by the way, nice guitar line, the video is really cool, a homage to the James Bond credit sequences.
Thanks for the KOME help, I never remembered the whole situation. I do recall that they used to play a lot of random songs and then when they taken over they played the top 40 stuff, which I will admit as a teenager I did like, at the time. But today I long for the old KOME. This is why I am not a music expert, hey I had Baby Got Back cassette single!
Glad you like the band, I will have to totally check out Autolux.
I too miss the days of 98.5 KOME... I actually used to call in to that station when I was younger. No-Name was even a DJ there in the evenings...
I don't listen to Live 105 that much today not only because I'm not into hearing the same song every hour but also because of what happened in the past.
I haven't really listened to failure though except for that one State of the Union speech back in 2004.
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