Showing posts with label U.S. Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. Times. Show all posts

Monday, November 08, 2010

Your Daily '80s: Wanna go to London


Skinny ties are back in, I hear.

Good. I have some.

That's reason enough, on this edition of
Your Daily '80s, to revisit local music in 1982. That local music would be the U.S. Times, a New Wave band that was in the forefront of hip in Baton Rouge, by God, Louisiana.

Well, at least as far as we LSU students were concerned at the time.

But if you want to know the truth, I think the Times -- as the band was known before it adopted the "U.S." as part of its name -- remains pretty hip today, even though now they're just a footnote in the history of a middling town's "college bands."


THE TITLE TRACK from the band's "Wanna Go to London" album pretty much sums up a time and a place . . . and the music we loved. We just as soon would have loaded up a trunk and flown to London town -- skinny ties, rock 'n' roll stars.

Heck, in 1982, I actually sent my resumé and clips to an English newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the economy was crappy all over, and the editor politely informed me he didn't have jobs for British reporters, much less ones from --
What was the name of that place in the colonies again?

STILL, dreaming was as cheap as air-mail postage.

I wan, I wan, I wan, I wanna go to London,

Go to London, England. . . .


(NOTE: Contains a single F-bomb, not overly noticeable.)

Friday, July 25, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: We goin' old school

This edition of 3 Chords & the Truth came into conceptual being with a blog post by someone who was a few years behind me at Baton Rouge Magnet High.

TRANSLATION: Back in the day.

Anyway, this young lady --
and any woman younger than me is a "young lady," because I ain't old . . . I don't think -- had been searching for a copy of the U.S. Times' "Wanna Go to London" LP for, oh . . . 26 years.

And I just happen to have a mint copy, bought at my second home when I was a student at Louisiana State University. That would be Leisure Landing, the fabulous independent record store that lay just off campus.

Naturally, Leisure Landing is no more . . . like most of the great record stores.

Anyway, I was able to hook Diane up with a pristine digital copy of my pristine vinyl record.
Free of charge. The record Nazis might be able to get me on a lot of stuff, but they ain't gonna get me for out-and-out piracy.

You know what I'm sayin'?

Thing is, Cap, that got me to thinkin' about old days, and music, and how fortunate many of us were to be drunk
hard-studying, model college students when the punk and New Wave scene was happenin' in a town not usually associated with artistic ferment.

There was some good music going on in Red Stick back in the day,
let me tell 'ya.

DOES THIS POST have a point? How about, "Let's take a trip to Back in the Day and listen to some old school garage, punk and New Wave"?

Or, how about
"If you're from where I'm from, when I was from it, listen to the Big Show and be transported to a time when we bitched about how the suits ruined 'FMF and we clung to the low-wattage signals of WBRH and WPRG for dear life . . . for that is from whence The Music came"?

Alternatively, perhaps the point of this post -- aside from a middle-age man's nostalgic leanings -- is meant to be instructive to a younger generation. A reminder that all new things rarely are as new as we'd like to think.

"Indie" came from somewhere . . . and this is as good a place as any to start looking.

WHATEVER THE POINT -- assuming there is one here -- just check out the latest 3 Chords & the Truth and listen to some righteous music.

Do they say "righteous" anymore?

It's
3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.