Music Monday - The Judybats

This is one of those bands that I've loved since the first moment I heard them. I am still annoyed at myself for not seeing them live as they played in Milwaukee more than once. Oh well.

The Judybats appeared from Tennessee in the early 1990s and got lumped into the 'alternative' umbrella. 'Alternative' music at that time is the same as most 'college radio' music from the 1980s: pop songs that weren't popular at the time. This is not meant to be a cut. It is not to say that they weren't inventive or anything like that, it's just that the music wasn't avant-garde or impossible for people to get into unless they were 'arty', they were just good songs that most people never heard and, therefore, didn't get played 7 Billion times a day on some Top 40 station to make you sick of them.

But I digress.

Their songs tend to be about relationships, mostly sad or failing ones. The lyrics are intelligent and show signs of being carefully crafted. They are like little plays, telling stories that come alive in your mind. 'Our Story' is a song filled with longing, regret, and love. A long-time relationship nears its end, or at least another in a series of ends, and the singer reflects on the problems and promises that occurred during it, of the love that held them together and the problems that tear them apart. It's not an official video but it works.



I can't embed 'Being Simple' due to the settings on YouTube but it's another favorite so I'll put up the link for it as well. The video features the single version of the song and has echo effects that don't feature in the album version. Considering it looks like the video takes place near a pool, I suppose the echo 'makes sense'. I do like the song this way as well. I love the way the song builds verbally, walking down a clever path and then suddenly they twist and you see what the point of the previous cleverness was all about. The beginning of the first verse also sounds like something I'd write or should write.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdu1ea4j7-A

At the same time, the band had quite a sense of humor. Later albums would feature covers of Bee Gees songs and things like that. They broke up, got back together again, broke up, and got back together for a brief tour a few years ago. It's hard to keep track of them.

It's been a while since I last checked but their two 'big' albums, 'Down in the Shacks Where the Satellite Dishes Grow' and 'Pain Makes You Beautiful', tend to haunt discount bins and can probably be picked up rather cheaply.

This is good stuff. I still need to find the single version of 'Being Simple'...