Compare and Contrast

Missing the 80s...

Twin Sons of Different Songwriters

Sitting Alone with Time to Reflect On All That's Come To Pass

This goes back around 10 years.

Okay, 11 years. And 9 years.

So it goes back an average of 10 years.

Squeeze broke up. Again.

But this time, it looked permanent. Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford stopped speaking to each other.

And Tilbrook wrote a bunch of songs without Difford and put out a great little album called The Incomplete Glenn Tilbrook... which included this:




Two years after that, Chris Stamey of the dBs released a pretty great album called Travels in the South, that contained this song:




I didn't hear either of these songs when they first came out. I wouldn't hear them until a few years later, when I discovered both of these albums on the same day.

And they both were revelations. Fantastic albums by songwriters that came out decades after they first burst onto the scene.

Fantastic albums that would've been huge in a better universe.

Albums that should have sold millions.

But albums that relatively few people heard.

And more than that... these songs are basically the same.

Yeah, they sound nothing alike. And their lyrics are totally different.

But they both look at the intense longing of memory. And the vivid memories that places can bring up.

Memories of places that once meant love and the promise of the future.

And now signify all that was lost in that love. And in that promise of the future.

Two songwriters tackling the exact same subject.

Two songs that nail that subject perfectly.

Exactly the same. But totally different.

Hitchcock Tilbrook Bonus Tracks

She's So...

A friend just pointed this out to me:

Robyn Hitchcock from Mojo Presents Abbey Road Now!:



And from the same record, Glenn Tilbrook with Nine Below Zero:

East Side Story Squeezed Down

31 Years Ago

The original plan was for a sprawling double album that genre-hopped (in the same way the White Album had down 13 years earlier).

Each side would have a different producer: Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, and Paul McCartney.

But the Edmunds and Lowe sessions each produced one track and Paul McCartney begged off to do his own album.

So Costello mostly produced the sprawling genre-hopping record that squoze down to the amazing single-record classic East Side Story.

Still, I can't help but wonder what might have happened if Squeeze and McCartney had actually gotten together -- especially since the press was tripping over itself to declare Difford & Tilbrook the new Lennon & McCartney.

Guess we'll never know.

So I'll have to be content with this:

Puffy White Clouds with the Face of Mitchell Froom

It would be too cynical for words just to post Glenn Tilbrook's song "Hot Shaved Asian Teens" in an attempt to drive more traffic to my blog, right?

Good thing I like the song then...

Lyrics and link to Glenn Tilbrook's "Hot Shaved Asian Teens".

I guess the cynicism goes with mentioning the title ("Hot Shaved Asian Teens") three times.

Let Me Whisper in Your (Right) Ear

Now we know.

Thomas Dolby was onto something.

It's not just poetry in motion. There are clear and obvious electrical, chemical, and scientific causes and effects of everything. Even love. (Maybe especially love.)

Now, what Dolby was trying to tell the world in 1982 (with a little help from Andy Partridge, Lene Lovich, and Bruce Wooley) is finally proven: If you want something, ask the right ear. Requests to the right ear are twice as likely to be granted as requests to the left ear.

So the next time you ask for a raise (or a dance, or a phone number, or anything else), blind them with science.

I'm sorry to report that I plan to use this information for evil, not for good. I wonder if it matters if the listener is a lefty... (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


And of course, there's no guarantees in science, so you have to take the risk that things might wind up like this: