My friend Sina has asked me to DJ at the first night of his "all-girl pop, rock and indie" night, DEBBIE. Friday, April 6th, at Ryan's Bar in Stoke Newington. 181 Stoke Newington Church Street, N16 0UL. I'm very excited about this. I love DJ'ing and, as you may have noticed, I love female vocalists. Expect me to play Throwing Muses, Siouxsie, Dolly Mixture, Curve, Saint Etienne, Dusty Springfield, ABBA, The Kid and tons more.
The first song that came into my head when Sina asked me was Throwing Muses' Not Too Soon. Such an amazing song, perfect. An ecstatic melody that soars through the notes, every voice and instrument has such a great texture and sound.
Live in Düsseldorf, Spring 1991:
Live at The Middle East, Cambridge, MA, May 6, 2000. I'm not sure why I wasn't at this gig as I was living in Boston at the time. But I did go see the first, I believe, reunion gig in Providence the year before. Which was great. I remember getting to the club (Lupo's) early and there was a couple there who had flown over from the U.K. just for the gig. I admire such dedication.
Written by Tanya Donelly. From their The Real Ramona, an excellent pop album. Tanya also contributed the lovely Honeychain (well, there is that dark, scary bit about a minute in).
Kristin's songs are also quite poppy on this record. I've always found Graffiti melancholically beautiful and haunting.
The single Counting Backwards:
Which had a version of Amazing Grace as a b-side that I always liked:
The 1:12 pop perfection of Him Dancing:
And the album closes with the achingly beautiful Two Step. Languorous and dreamy, simply gorgeous, in fact one of the most gorgeous songs I know. That guitar melody is exquisite, and this is a great example of Kristin's unique lyrics.
I had only planned on posting about Not Too Soon but once I got started it made sense to do half the album as it's such a great record! I remember when I first heard of Throwing Muses. It was in 8th Grade and we had 2 student teachers from Fairfield University. My best friend, Brian Ewing, had one as his English teacher and he would chat to her about music as she had very good taste and knew about bands we'd never heard of, which was so Exciting. In fact, she loaned him a 7" of her friend's band, Humidifier, which had Jim Wilber on guitar, who would go on to play in Superchunk (a band I loved in my early 20's, and still listen to occasionally). I remember we didn't quite know what to make of it. It was good but very different from anything we knew about as 14 year-olds obsessed with AC/DC. We loaned the teachers tapes we recorded in the basement of us covering AC/DC songs and they were very nice about them. I remember it was "Wear Your Favourite T-Shirt Day"at school and the student teacher in my Spanish class wore a Throwing Muses one (I want to say it was House Tornado, though hard to recall as it was 1990. I do remember it being colourful) . Intrigued but very shy, I worked up the courage to ask her about it after class and she told me they were her favourite band, though "a little scary". It would be another 2 or 3 years before I actually found any at a record store, and I did start with The Real Ramona.
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