Feverdream >> I'll take you where you really wanna go

› › › ›  Feverdream - "Never Letting Go"  ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹

› › › ›  (Viridian Records [Australia], 1995; Satellite Records [U.S.], 1997)  ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹

This song is massively important to me, and I've been waiting 12 years to share it with this ever-rotating world, and it was almost the very first song I posted on this blog.  I'm into "pretty" vocals as much as the next person, but this song is a case where you have to take the singer's rough voice for what it is, and appreciate the surprising amount of acrobatics he can do with it, despite how limited it sounds at first.  I've noticed that bands from Australia in the '80s & '90s were heavily inspired by the Stooges, Sonic Youth, & the Byrds, with a great sense of melody and a certain tough, but not macho, sense of cool.  (Well, AC/DC were macho douchefucks, but I have a theory that most Aussie bands were embarrassed by them and hence consciously tried to be the anti-AC/DC.)  Feverdream were based in Melbourne and put out three albums and an EP.  Feverdreams are those weird dreams you sometimes have when you're sick, due to elevated brain temperature, I would assume.

Note: Do not confuse the Aussie Feverdream with the more prolific and simplistic Dutch punk band of the same name; the Aussie one came first and put forth superior recordings.

For a complete adrenaline overload, watch this clip of my favorite car chase scene ever (on full-screen and w/ the sound on mute, of course) while blasting this song.  It's freaky how the lyrics, especially the "gone off the rails" part and the bridge jump, sync up with the music...

(Start each of them at the same time, of course.)  It takes a little bit of user interaction, but trust me, it's worth the effort!  And if you don't trust me to provide mind-blowing entertainment, then why are you even here?

I got into this song thanks to a compilation of Feverdream's work intriguingly titled You Don't Know Us, But We Know Who You Are, their first-ever release on a U.S. label (Satellite Records in Pasadena, CA), which I bought for a few bucks in Jan. '99.  This song doesn't have the shoegaze quality that most of their songs had, but I will post some of their shoegazey songs in the future.  Satellite Recs. put this sticker on the front cover:

SUGGESTED RADIO TRACKS:

1. Never Letting Go

2. In Way Over

3. No Stone Unturned

To buy other tracks from this album, and to read a great bio about the band, go here and click the "Read more..." button.  I'm pleasantly stunned that this CD is still available.  I had read a gushing article about them in Jack Rabid's The Big Takeover magazine from the fall '98 issue, which was the first issue of it I ever bought, so it was serendipitous that I found the CD shortly thereafter, and I made sure to pounce on it.  It took me many years to track down the CD that originally housed this song (Moniker, on Viridian Records, distributed by Shock), via eBay.  The guitar solo in this song is possibly my favorite ever, and I have to recommend it to anyone who is burned out on guitar.  It's completely transcendental, and I always get a rush out of the way it kicks in right as the singer says the last word of the chorus, which happens to be "Go," and he even takes down the pitch of that word to allow the guitars to come in at a higher pitch, and of course the drummer starts playing like he was shot out of a cannon.  Just... wow.  But if you listen to it while driving, don't blame me for the ensuing speeding ticket.  (This band featured a triple guitar attack: Tim James, Ben Keenan, and David Wroe.  The only other good three-guitarist bands I can think of are Band Of Susans and Juno, and maybe Temple Of The Dog, and of course the guitar ensembles of Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham.)

This band's singer/bassist, Ewan McArthur, also played some bass for the gothy band Eden on Hyperium / Projekt Records.  Strangely, he soon completely ditched rock music and went on to a career in electronic(a) music!  I interviewed him for my old online zine in '03-ish, so I'll have to put that up here at some point, though I'm probably going to post those interviews on a WordPress site instead of this one.

At Jazz Fest yesterday, I stuck around in 90º heat to see one of my least favorite bands ever, The Strokes, just to see if they would suck as bad as I always thought.  They did.  During a pause due to equipment troubles, the "singer," who resembled nothing if not a human coatrack crossed with a Basset hound, actually said the following thing to kill some time and to be witty: "I stopped following jazz in the '40s."  Then his head probably realized that he may have just offended tens of thousands of jazz fans in the birthplace of jazz (though he had little to worry about, as about half of the crowd was teenage girls*), so he made a clumsy follow-up / explanatory comment and the band mercifully went back to another lame song that sounded just like their previous ten.  He later pointed out that the band was in the shade on the stage while we were all stuck out in the full sun.  Really classy.  The good stuff yesterday included the Nicholas Payton SeXXXtet, Khris Royal & Dark Matter, Shamarr Allen & The Underdawgs, and, to an extent, Lauryn Hill, who performed as though she had just chugged ten or so Jolt colas.  KR & DM covered two of my favorite songs, Tears For Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" and Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express," in elegant jazz-funk style.  Badass.
*I once knew (online) a girl who had sex with him when she was about 16, ca. 2004.

Planets with similar climates: Kitchens Of Distinction - "Within The Daze Of Passion" (1991) & "What Happens Now?" (1992), The Chameleons - "Return Of The Roughnecks" (1985), The Sound - "The Fire" (1981), Compulsion - "Delivery" (a.k.a. "Basketcase") (1994), The Veldt - "Soul In A Jar" (1994), Unwound - "Kantina" (1993), Swervedriver - "For Seeking Heat" (1993), Catherine Wheel - "Chrome" (1993).


Currently thinking about the following things I ate or drank yesterday: Mango freeze/smoothie thing (at Jazz Fest), couscous in yogurt sauce w/ raisins (at Jazz Fest), a Blue Moon beer (at Jazz Fest), Maas Lander jong belgen cheese that my sister brought me from Amsterdam, a Guinness Draught beer.


Currently happy for: Former Hornets Peja Stoyakovic and Tyson Chandler, who helped the Dallas Mavericks eviscerate the Lakers today and sweep them out of the playoffs.  It was honestly like watching the Harlem Globetrotters toying with a high school team.  Jason Terry was 9-of-10 from downtown, and Peja was 6-of-6.  Phil Jackson was exposed as the mediocre chessmaster he's always been, completely unable to adjust to matchup problems or to motivate his pouty team.  I'll never like Mark Cuban, but he has put together a near-perfect team that will win its first title, probably against the Heat, which would be a rematch of the '06 Finals.