Monday, May 07, 2012

My Music Monday

I'd say it is hard to describe the band Electronic, but it probably is not that difficult.

You can't call them a "super group", as the sum of their parts were from other groups, none of them resonated so much in the U.S. that made them "super".

Interesting, yes.  Super, not so much.

Comprised mostly of Bernard Sumner (New Order / Joy Division) and Johnny Marr (the Smiths) their first record actually had guest vocalists, on their debut disk, from the Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk, which really didn't help matters for things other than getting press.

The problem with having vocalists from either PSB, Kraftwerk or New Order seemed to be that they ended up sounding like those groups no matter what. I think anyone other than a hardcore fan would have a hard time saying that "Getting Away With It" wasn't a Pet Shop Boys' song.

With their second and third disks, for the most part, Sumner supplied the vocals.....which, even for me, made it hard to remember if I was listening to a New Order disk or Electronic. That's not to say the music was bad, just a little indistinguishable.

...and "Vivid" is the best song, in my opinion, that Electronic recorded.

The single and album never ever ever charted in the U.S. and that's a shame, because it's catchy.

Marr uses harmonica quite liberally on the song, which works. Harmonica is an instrument that rarely works and yet it carries the song here.

Unfortunately, what you have here in the video is the "single" version of the song, which ends up cutting off about one and one-half minutes of the full length album version....and the music starts 45 seconds into the video.  So below the video, I also posted the entire song, if you'd rather experience it that way.




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