Greg Stekelman reminded me of this amazing song a few weeks ago on Twitter.
Ah, Si Señor . The story begins, for me at least, sometime in the first half of 2001, when Sean Drinkwater and I were sitting around our The Archenemy Record Company office and we got a call, completely out of the blue, from a Danish journalist, Erik, who was in town to cover Aerosmith and wanted to check out what else Boston had to offer musically. We went to meet him, a very nice guy, and when the other Archenemies (Rick, Jussi, Tony) got home, we all went to 'Mod Night' at the Common Ground. A few weeks later we got a package with a cd and a letter from a Danish band called Si Señor. We gave the cd a spin and quite liked it but didn't have the money to take on any new bands at that point. But I emailed them and they expressed an interest in coming to the States for some gigs. So I thought, "Why not?" and set some up.
It was an incredibly fun week. Lifestyle (2 free records there, go on, grab 'em!) got to play with Bis at The Tune Inn in New Haven, CT on our way down for the first gig of the tour in NYC. I fondly remember Bis dedicating a song to us because "we both ripped it off the same Duran Duran song". Then to The Acme Underground in NYC (Sunday October 7th so my old emails tell me) where we finally met all of Si Señor, everyone having a great gig and then drinking the night away. The excellent synthpop band Soviet also played that evening. Then up to Boston for a gig at T.T. The Bear's with The Texas Governor (one of the first gigs, when it was just Goolkasian with Rick on a laptop) and the ace William Academy (2 free songs there, such nice guys and they even covered Electronic's "Gangster", which had us all very excited). And the final gig of the tour was at this strange youth centre in New Hampshire - Lifestyle, Si Señor, Freezepop and The Texas Governor, where for the final song of the night, all the bands got on stage to perform "Feed The World" as Si Señor had covered it once and everyone "kinda knew it", or at least how it went.
Throughout the tour, everyone kept comparing Si Señor to Pulp, especially Jakob who, being thin and tall with glasses, inspired many whispers of "the Danish Jarvis Cocker". Though personally I thought they sounded more like Blur, when Blur were at their punkiest. Or, as koobaradio put it, "happy Smiths" : ) Sometime during that week, they went over to Tony "Boothnavy" Norton's studio and recorded a new version of "Do You Like Boys?" (the one heard above) as they had always pictured it with the sort of sound that Tony is so good at. And then the following April, Boothnavy spent the month in Copenhagen recording their record. You can hear some of the songs on their myspace.
And here's a TV performance of the ace "Something Illegal":
Freezepop later covered "Do You Like Boys?" on their 'Future Future Future Perfect' album (this is the version Greg mentioned):
Speaking of Freezepop, "Doppelganger" really is an amazing single, and has been stuck in my head a lot lately. You can get it for free at their site.
And then yesterday, Liz Ohanesian introduced me to The Aprils , who reminded me a lot of Freezepop. Check out Liz's article on them.
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