The Stranglers are another band that I've kind of always had mixed feelings about. They lasted a long time, and obviously survived in much better shape than some of their contemporaries, and of course I appreciate their willingness to go outside the box in terms of musical styles (even labelling them as "punk" doesn't seem quite right, but I don't really know what else to do with them). It's just that I've never tended to get too excited by their songs. Even the classics like "No More Heroes" to me have mostly nostalgia value, and of course at my age the nostalgia factor is only of discovering them half a decade or so after the fact. For the most part, I wouldn't consider it great music in its own right.
As is so often the case, however, there is the odd exception and this is definitely one of them. Originally released as a B-side to "Something Better Change", it's the far better song of the two, the A-side being one of those slices of '70s punk mediocrity that would have disappeared into compilationland if it had been released by anyone else. I hadn't actually listened to this one for a long time until very recently and I was amazed at how powerful it still was. I wish they'd had more like it.
1 comment:
couldn't agree more ;-)
Post a Comment