Episode 48 – From The Vault…

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, with your host, Mark Bradbourne.

Welcome to episode 48 of Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you for checking out the episode, as always, I really do appreciate your time.

Each week when I review music, I never know what I’m going to find. Sometimes I end up on 15 or 20 different playlists because I’m not finding music that is worthy of sharing. Some weeks it’s fantastic and I’ve got more songs than I need and I have to kind of whittle it down and I share extra ones on social media. That’s a rare week, but usually I can find five songs. Usually I’ve been finding three and four, but this week it was pretty bad. I think I’m going to blame it on Thanksgiving because maybe they thought I’m not going to release good music during the holidays because it might get missed because people aren’t listening to music. That’s what I’m going to basically tell myself with this whole situation. So I had to get creative this week and I’m going to talk about that here in a little bit.

Before I get into the music that I am going to share with you this week, I need to talk about the Don’t Suckies. At the end of last episode, I talked about how during episode 50, we will be awarding the don’t suckies, which are basically the awards for the best songs that I found this year for the podcast. I’ve broken them down into genres that have been decided on by me. As I listened to it, I said, yeah, that’s a folk song or that’s a country song. It might not be the genre you think it belongs in, but for my purposes here, I kind of needed to do something.

So here are the categories and nominees for the 2023 Don’t Sucky Awards. In the category of best country Americana, I’ve got Devils in Nola by Drayton Farley. Congratulations and Condolences by Green Sky Bluegrass. Like My Dog by Jimmy Buffett. In Your Love by Tyler Childers. Halfway to Hell by Jelly Roll.

In the category of best alternative indie, we’ve got Dancing in the Rain by Young the Giant. Watching the Credits by the Beths. Cleanup Crew by Spanish Love Songs. June’s Stolen Car by the Paper Kites. And Center by The Last Dinner Party.

In the category of best folk music. Find Your People by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. Shoots and Ladders by Odie Lee. Cannibal Within by Amigo the Devil. Taking Things for Granted by Joy Oladokun. And Jim Carrey by Billy Raffoul.

In the category of best rock, Do Me a Favor by the Bites. Caroline by Fritz Hager. Find A Better Way by The Commoners. I Am the Lightning by Des Rocks. And Life Support from Friday Pilots Club.

In the category of best pop, I’ve got Eye for an Eye by Rina Sawayama. Dream House by Kouinka. 23 by Lawrence. Waves by DaytimeTV. And It’s All Right by Cecilia Kasselman.

In the category of best metal hard rock. Another Celebration at the End of the World by Mammoth WVH. Deny the Sun by Black Orchid Empire. Pain Killer by Sick Joy. Heresy from Bosscat, People Are Vomit by The Used.

And in the category of best musical unicorns, this category is music that didn’t have enough songs in that particular genre, or in some cases, defied genre. Florida Man by Selwyn Birchwood. Burnt Toast and Coffee by High Fade. Nine Beat by Half Moon Run. Burn Your Bible from Twin Temple. And Paradise 2 by Logic, featuring Nora Jones.

If you’ve got an opinion, I’ve got a way for you to do that. If you go to songsthatdontsuck.net, you can cast your vote for the 2023 Don’t Suckys. I will take your votes into consideration when considering who will ultimately win in their particular category. Again, go to songsthatdontsuck. net. On the first page, on the home page, there will be a very obvious link for you to vote for the 2023 Don’t Suckies. We will announce the winners two weeks from the release of this podcast, which will be episode 50 in the end of season one of Songs That Don’t Suck.

All right, let’s get into our quote unquote new music for this week. If this is your first time listening, this is not normally how this goes. Each week, I listen to a bunch of new music, and I find new music that has been released in the recent week or weeks to share on the podcast. This week, couldn’t find anything good. I’m blaming Thanksgiving. I just think that maybe people weren’t releasing music during the holidays, but I’m not gonna let a lack of good new music stop me from doing an episode. So this episode, I am calling from the vault. Basically, what happened was I was thinking about the cover that I would share this week and really wanted to share this one particular song that a band called Popular Genius had put out on their first album, which was a cover of the Jackson Five’s I Want You Back. I absolutely love their version of it, it’s fantastic. So I went to find it on Spotify and discovered that their first album, which this song was on, was not part of their catalog online. Unfortunate, but it inspired me to do this from the vault at some point, I didn’t realize it would be this week. All of these things kind of happened during the course of the week. So what we are going to do is I’ve got six very little known bands, honestly, unless you are from the region that they were from, that I wanna share with you, their music is on Spotify and you can check it out. And hopefully I’m gonna turn you on something cool. Most of these songs are close to 20 years old, there’s a couple of newer ones, but I think probably half of them are fairly old. So let’s get into it.

The first song this week is actually from Popular Genius, the band that inspired this episode and the song is called Consolation Prize. I found Popular Genius through a music platform called Slacker, it’s called Live X Now, I don’t use it now, but back in the day, I subscribed to Slacker and they had such a great platform for finding new music. Basically you would create your playlist and there was a setting where you could say how much new music you wanted to discover. And you could turn that from none to lots. And on a lot of my playlists, I would have that cranked up to lots. So I would be exposed to a lot of new music, found a lot of bands that way. Popular Genius was one of those. That first album, I listened to a ton. This song comes off of their second album which, or no, I’m sorry, it comes off their third album. And that came out in 2003. The vocal is really distinct as you’re listening to it. It’s very recognizable, like the minute you hear him sing, you know it’s Popular Genius. There’s some nice things that happen with the horn arrangements and it was just a really well-rounded band. They had four albums out to their credit, three of them are on Spotify.

The second song this week is from a band called CBDB and the song’s called Unintentional Liar. If memory serves, I believe I heard them the first time on Spotify, this album came out in 2018. And I remember at the time, like I loved this song, they are a progressive rock band, they’re from Alabama. And this song for being as progressive as it is, it was very accessible. Like when I think about Prog music, a lot of times it’s, their audience is people who play music, who are musicians who know how to play instruments. Not always true, but I feel like a lot of times that is the case. But there’s something about the vocal delivery in this song that makes the song very accessible. And while there are some real progressive elements in it, nothing feels like over the top, like in like a Dream Theater, you know, you don’t get that kind of like just amazing technical feel, although it’s there. It’s really interesting. And this song I think is the best example of it. I remember at the time when I discovered this song, I went to go listen to the whole album and I remember being disappointed because the rest of the album didn’t feel like this. But, you know, with time and perspective, I recognize that, you know, not everything has to sound the same. But I loved this song so much. It’s still in a regular rotation for me. And their whole catalog, and they’ve got quite a few albums worth checking out and listening to. So CBDB, unintentional liar.

The third song this week comes from Llama and it’s called Too Much Too Soon. Llama opened for Carbon Leaf. And I discovered Carbon Leaf after they opened for Great Big Sea. This was a show at the Grog Shop here in Cleveland. I wanna say it was probably 2010. It might’ve been before that even. But at the time, I’d never heard of Llama when they opened up but I was absolutely blown away by how good they were. Ended up buying, I think, both of their CDs at that show. And as I’m listening to it, like I’m listening to the banjo playing on this album, come to find out it’s Bella Fleck. Bella Fleck from Bella Fleck on the Fleck Tones. I was actually listening to a bunch of his music in the time cause I was kind of infatuated by FutureMan and all the things he was doing from a percussive standpoint. And Bella was actually pushing this band, like trying to help them catch breaks. And they did, they caught a lot of breaks. Never got to kind of the huge mainstream where I thought they could have gotten to. But neither here nor there. They recently kind of called it a day as a band. They’re all in different projects now. A real shame because I really enjoyed Llama and all of their music. So definitely check out their catalog that is sitting on Spotify.

The fourth song this week is Slow Motion by Phox. I discovered Phox thanks to a professional conference that I had to go to. The conference was Tableau Conference. This was in 2015 in Las Vegas. And Tableau is famous for their conferences and for data night out. Their conferences are like no other technical conference if you’re in the visual analytics field and you use Tableau, you are well aware probably about Tableau Conference. But in 2015, they did something that I would never imagine possible. They rented all of Fremont Street. If you’re familiar with Las Vegas and Old Vegas, Fremont Street is where they kind of have the covered street that has like the LED kind of screens on top of it is fantastic. I’m sure the locals and the tourists who wanted to experience Fremont Street that night were bummed, but for those in attendance, it was like 15,000 of us, we packed Fremont Street. And there was way too much alcohol, way too much food and way too many good bands. At that particular conference, they had hired four bands. They had hired Robert DeLong. They had hired Fitz and the Tantrums, Band of Horses and Phox. Now, prior to the conference, I saw who was going to be at Data Night Out and I was unfamiliar with Phox, so I got on Spotify and started checking their music out and was absolutely blown away. Monica Martin is the lead singer of Fox and it’s spelled P-H-O-X for those who are trying to search for it. Her voice is hauntingly beautiful and seeing her live, it does not disappoint, holy cow. Fox doesn’t exist anymore as a band, but they are fantastic. Their musical arrangements were smart and just that whole album that Slow Motion is on is fantastic and I highly recommend it. Monica had a bit of a solo album, solo career after Fox’s demise. Not sure what she’s doing nowadays, but if she’s not singing, it’s a loss to the world because her voice is fantastic.

The fifth song this week is The Lost Boy by Greg Holden. I found this song because I was very passionate about the television series, Sons of Anarchy. As a guy who rides motorcycles, I was immediately hooked, not that I wanna become a one-percenter or anything like that, but it was great storytelling and had motorcycles and action, all the things that I wanted at that point in time in my life. And this song occurred during one of the most traumatic scenes that I had ever seen on television, especially as invested as I was in the show at that time. I thought the song had been written for that scene in particular, come to find out that that is not the case. On Greg’s latest album, it’s called My Songs and Their Stories, he actually tells the story about the song, which came about way before Sons of Anarchy did, but it just worked really well in that scene. That song caused me to go check out a lot of his music. He’s a fantastic songwriter. And if you’ve never heard of Greg Holden before and you like kind of the singer-songwriter, folky genre, absolutely somebody that you need to put in your rotation.

The sixth song this week from The Vault is Summer in the Sandbox by Domestic Problems. Domestic Problems, they defy description a bit, pop rock band, horn section from Michigan, really, really smart lyrically, just great music, a great time overall. Domestic Problems was introduced to me by my friend Joe, who I met through Moxie Fruvous. If you remember the last No New Music episode, I talked about Moxie Fruvous quite a bit. Joe introduced me to a lot of bands during that era in Domestic Problems, was one of them. This song is probably one of my favorites from them. It’s just really smart lyrically and it’s really cute when you kind of listen to it and you’re like, oh, you know, you can picture the story. And then there’s this one section of the song where he overdubs this kind of talking part and it’s all stitched together. And it’s just chaotic harmony is the best way to describe it. There’s another great song from them. I was kind of debating which one to share. The other one that you should definitely check out is Ernie’s Tragic Love Affair. And it’s about Sesame Street. They didn’t sing all kids’ songs, but these two in particular, every time I hear them, they make me smile. So definitely check out Domestic Problems.

All right, that is it for episode 48.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip through The Vault. It might be something that I do regularly. I’ve got thousands of CDs that are sitting in my storage room. And I’m sure that I’ve forgotten about a lot of artists because I don’t have a CD player anymore and hopefully they’re on Spotify and I can share a few. If you enjoyed this episode of In The Vault, let me know. You can do that by going to songs at don’tsuck. net. You can send me a feedback message through the website. You can also vote for The Don’t Suckies. As always, spread the word to your fellow music fans about the podcast. It’s the best way to share the podcast. Social media be damned. But I say that being on social media, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and in particular threads. I really, really am enjoying my time on threads. And I think you will too. It’s not the cesspool that X is. Anyway, I appreciate your time. Vote for The Don’t Suckies. Those will get announced episode 50 and… Thanks for listening and until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck. Music