S2E3 – “You are my dancing Virginia in black leather boots”

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

What’s up everybody? Welcome to episode 3, season 2, Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you as always for checking out the episode.

I gotta tell a story. Being in a band is very tricky. No matter the point in the band’s history, there’s always challenges. You’re always managing personalities, there are clashes, and this can range between just a couple of members or perhaps all four or five members depending on how big the band is. You’re gonna have struggles as you’re getting things started, people have different ideas about how to market, how to promote, and then you get larger challenges when you finally start to have some sort of following or success even, and then you’ve gotta keep it going, right? Maybe you’ve had a great album release and now you’ve gotta write another one. It’s not easy. Bands break up all the time for what seems to be kind of the weirdest things ever. And the worst of this is when a band, instead of just having a clean breakup, does something like go on an indefinite hiatus.

I hate this with an absolute passion. Don’t give me hope when there is no hope to be had. Breaking up cleanly just feels better and then if you wanna surprise me later if y’all decide to reconcile, fantastic. One of the bands that I followed for the longest time is a band that I’ve mentioned several times on this podcast, Moxie Fruvas. Back in 2001, they announced a hiatus and it made it sound at the time like they would return, but they didn’t. Here we are in 2024 and we are still without Moxie Fruvas touring, new music, what have you. Their website still exists and I went and checked it out just kind of recently and saw that there was some old demos that got posted. One of the band members gave the webmaster permission and this was back in 2018 and these demos were from 1997, well before the hiatus got announced. So the likelihood of them ever coming back together, it’s pretty much nil. Now I personally was in a band that we went on hiatus with the intention of coming back. I think we did it twice when our keyboard has had a baby and each time we did come back together until finally we did call it quits a few years later.

Now when we went on that hiatus, I personally questioned if we would come back together because kids change stuff, right? Being a parent is hard especially when you are a local band and the band’s success isn’t your main source of income or honestly a source of income period. So yeah, but luckily we did and I love that time. Now lots of bands have gone on hiatus and come back, but I’ve decided that the worst thing that happens is when a band goes on hiatus and then you as a fan forget about them and years later you happen to be doing a podcast and you’re building out your musical vault for future episodes and you discover that the band has actually resumed producing music as is the case with this week’s Vault Artist.

Jump Little Children are a band out of North Carolina and I discovered them back in the late 90s. I saw them live once. They opened for Guster at Peabody’s Down Under here in Cleveland and I actually helped the band load their gear in for this show. I was there ridiculously early because it was a general admission show. I wanted to be close to the front and there was no line. Apparently I overestimated how popular Guster would be as far as that particular idea was and so I helped them carry their gear in. That’s me. I’m that guy. Their second album was the one that really hooked me. Magazine was the album. It was in constant rotation those days and I still listen to a few tracks to this day. They put out an album in 2001 called Vertigo and that one had a few songs that fell into my rotation as well. And then their first album I had to go back and find. At the time, Licorice T-Demos was kind of hard to find. It’s on Spotify now but I mentioned that album because it is this week’s Vault Song. It’s probably one of my favorite songs from Jump Little Children. It’s called Dancing Virginia.

Now in the rediscovery of Jump Little Children, I discovered that their hiatus did in fact get rescinded I guess, right? They went on hiatus after their fourth album came out which was Between the Dim and the Dark and then they released a fifth album in 2018. I think Dim and the Dark came out in like 2004, 2005 and then they released another album in 2022. I had no idea. So I’m very happy that I’ve rediscovered that Jump Little Children have returned from their hiatus but damn it, it is so frustrating that if it wasn’t for this podcast, I’d likely have no idea that they were back.

Now before I get into the new music, I do have one song that I had planned to share from the Vault which I’m going to go ahead and share anyway. This one is from a local Cleveland artist. His name is Cody J. Martin and the song is called Lies for a Precious Kind. I was lucky enough to play a few shows with Cody back when I was actively gigging and actually it was with the band that did the hiatus thing and Cody is a force on stage and he is just the super nicest guy you would ever want to meet and have a conversation with. Very powerful for just a guy on stage with a guitar. He’s super captivating to see live, an amazing player, amazing vocalist. I refer to him jokingly as Cleveland’s man in black because he dresses in all black when he’s on stage and if you are in northeast Ohio or wherever he happens to be playing, you should absolutely go see him because he’s incredible.

Alright, let’s get into the new music for this week. If this is your first time listening, welcome. If you are a long time listener, welcome back. Appreciate you more than you know. If this is your first time, here’s what I do each week. I listen to hundreds of songs, literally hundreds of songs. I give them about 30 seconds to make an impression on me. Most of the songs that I do listen to suck. I try and find the ones that don’t suck. I am an aging Gen X. So my musical tastes perhaps are a little dated, but the whole point of this podcast was for me to find new music. So that’s what I do. This week, I have five songs for you, a couple of kind of typical picks for me and a couple of ones that might make you scratch your head. So let’s get into it.

The first song this week is Ceremonia from Blanket. If you’re looking for the next Foo Fighter styled band, this might be a pick based on this song, Ceremonia. A lot of the same energy, albeit I will say it’s a bit heavier in moments than some of the Foo Fighter songs that this particular song reminds me of, but the influence is so sharp that I really had to go and check out some of their other songs. I was very curious if it was kind of a Greta Van Fleet situation where it’s basically just new Led Zeppelin, but it’s not. These guys definitely have their own sound and style. Ceremonia is a real ripper of a song and when I compared it to some of their earlier releases, I wonder if they’re going in a slightly more mainstream and slightly heavier direction. I’ll be really interested on their next release to see if that’s the case. In their bio, they describe themselves as shoegaze post rock grunge. And I get that based on their last album in 2021, especially the shoegaze part. But not so much with this release. To me, it’s way more straight ahead, grunge influenced, but really, really good. Really like this song.

The second song this week is No Place Like Home from The K’s. Late last year in season one of the podcast, I featured their song Heart on My Sleeve, and this one continues this previous feel. Very high energy that will get a room bouncing in a live show. Like last time, I love the hint of the British accent. Sometimes when you hear British artists, they don’t have the accent when they sing. The K’s give that to me. Great drums. And I really like the melody line in the lead guitar that leads into the chorus. These guys really write catchy songs and they orchestrate them really well to boot. There’s nothing extra. They build great tension and then they kind of resolve it in the chorus and it just makes you feel good. The K’s have released nothing but singles up to this point over the last few years, but their debut album does come out in March of this year. And I think it has the potential to make some noise if the right people start listening to it.

The third song this week is Beautiful Things by Benson Boone. My oldest daughter, Jenna, hipped me to Benson Boone in this song in particular. It had been teased on her social media feeds and she had sent it to me probably a month ago, like just, hey, listen to this. It finally dropped this week and she reminded me of it. Benson has a fantastic voice. And the chorus in this song makes me wish the whole song was sung with the same energy. But on second thought, it would probably make it really boring if he did that. The power in this song is really the juxtaposition between the verses and the chorus. Not much else to really say about this one. It’s really catchy. It’s very clean. It’s damn good. He’s got a pretty big audience. I think he has like 12 million listeners on Spotify. So I’m not, you know, sharing him to a lot of people. But generationally, I probably am. So check out Benson Boone.

The fourth song this week is Megaphone by Death Milkshake. This is one of those unicorn tracks that I find and, you know, it’s different obviously than some of my other kind of regular podcast picks. If you’ve been listening for a while, you know that I kind of lean into rock a little bit more. Death Milkshake reminds me a bit of Robert DeLong, if you know who that is. I am a big fan of Robert DeLong. I’ve luckily seen him live probably three or four times. But I feel like Death Milkshake gives me a little more of an 80s vibe. Some of the kind of keyboard synth sounds, the bass guitar styling, it’s very funky. Death Milkshake is a one man band just like Robert DeLong. He loops the sounds, plays all the instruments live, and kind of builds the soundscape. And if Death Milkshake’s live show is kind of like Robert DeLong’s, I’m going to definitely go try and see him if he happens to tour the United States. This song Megaphone, I thought it was just fantastic.

The fifth song this week is That Golden Time from Villagers. If I asked you to guess who this song reminds you of, who would you say? Hit pause and send me a message through the website, songsthatdon’tsuck. net. Go ahead, I’ll wait. If you answered Pink Floyd, give yourself a gold star for this week. Very good. Now lyrically, if you’re really listening, it’s very deep, it’s very introspective, and the music composition really allows you to kind of sink into the vocal and process the lyrics. This is the first single from this soon to be released album from Villagers, and it sounds like that the whole album will kind of have this feel based on the artist’s description. And honestly, as much as I love Pink Floyd, makes me really excited to hear more of this album from Villagers once it is released.

Alright, that is it for this week. As always, spread the word to your fellow music fans. If you’ve got a friend who has not listened to this podcast, grab them by the ear and say, hey, you need to listen to songs that don’t suck, I think you will enjoy it. Follow the show on social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and threads. You can find us on all the podcast platforms, and you can find the podcast on YouTube now. You won’t see my face, but you will hear my voice. As always, check out the website SongsThatDon’tSuck. net, and thanks for listening. And until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.