Sometimes it's amusing merely to list similarities between songs. Here are two tracks, one by Sometime Sweet Susan (not "Sometimes Sweet Susan"), the other by Brief Candles:
* both are by Milwaukee-based bands -
* both titles incorporate the idea of "west" -
* both bands' names are pop-cultural references, Sometime Sweet Susan to a '70s porn film which, according to IMDB, was the first hardcore film to feature an all-SAG cast (O! the '70s...), Brief Candles to the Zombies song of the same name -
* both bands generally are indebted to shoegazers, although you really don't hear it on this particular SSS track -
* both make prominent use of the same chord voicing - doubly, in that both songs feature lots of major sevenths and both songs move those chords around the guitar in sometimes harmonically unexpected ways.
There. I have now increased your utterly trivial knowledge, at least for a few moments, by a teensy few percentage points.
Sometime Sweet Susan "Somewhere West of Here" (The Coming Lights, 1995)
Brief Candles "Westward" (They Live We Sleep, 2006)
PS: Turns out another blogger just recently wrote about Sometime Sweet Susan...curious coincidence, since the gist of his entry is that there's very little online info about the band...
3 comments:
Wow--mid-90s flashback! I had a SSS album, I guess FUSE, but I am not sure why or where I got it. It's possible you alerted me to them, 2fs, or equally likely I heard them on WFMU.
I remember the current issue of Milk the month I moved to Milwaukee had Alligator Gun, Loomis and Sometime Sweet Susan on the cover. A month later they all played @ the Globe (with the Promise Ring opening) and I had 4 new favorite bands to kick off college.
Nice post on my old band. One more coincidence? The SSS drummer at that time, Dan Hanke, runs Latest Flame records, the label that put out The Brief Candles album. In fact, Dan gave me a copy of that CD which I really enjoyed.
PCarino posted the comment regarding WFMU - they were one of the stations that played us quite a bit. Yes, we watched CMJ reporting very closely back then.
Ah, the memories, right?!
Post a Comment