The Giant Panther

OK, turn on the way back machine and tune in to a long forgotten mini classic by The Silencers. The Silencers hail from Glasgow, Scotland. I suppose I have a thing for Scottish bands truth be told. Simple Minds of course spring to mind, but you will find lesser bands like Big Country, Del Amitri (I really love these guys) and a band The Giant Panther didn't care for much if memory serves; The Proclaimers in my collection. Upon further review great bands like Nazareth (now you're messin' with a SOB! Hair of The Dog was one great rockin' tune in the 70's, I don't care what anybody says, but I'm not afraid of Miss Misery at all), The Eurythmics, Teenage Fanclub, Belle & Sebastian, Snow Patrol, Franz Ferdinand, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Aztec Camera, Primal Scream, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and The Average White Band can all trace some of their roots to Scotland. We can also thank those folks for The Bay City Rollers too. And don't forget Craig Ferguson. I love his show. Not a bad legacy overall. Simple Minds and The Eurythmics would have to be the top of the food chain here, but I'm a big fan of Primal Scream and The Jesus & Mary Chain too. Then along comes The Silencers with something a little off the beaten path...

In 1987 WFNX here in Boston was playing a song called "A Letter From St Paul" by The Silencers. I was instantly smitten. It's mostly about a woman writing from college in Minneapolis to a friend in London. It's very spooky and mesmerizing at the same time. Do you remember the first time you heard Eminem's "Stan?" Take out the rap and some of the gorier detail and then add some jangly guitar sounds (man I will love those forever and ever amen) and get ready to hear a story. It's wicked cool as they say here in the northeast. Long out of print and very hard to find, A Letter From St Paul is on my all time list of CDs I Alone (With a tip of the hat to the band Live here) seem to own, let alone love. I just listened to the whole CD again after not having heard it for several months and I've decided I still love it. My love of the single A Letter From St Paul is probably clouding my judgment of the whole record, but it is what it is. I just checked Amazon.com to see what they are getting for it these days and they have two copies for $150 each! Blymie. Even the used ones are going for $28 a pop. Unreal. Well, apparently I have 20 or 30 friends worldwide who love this CD too because it didn't sell worth a damn at the time. Smart folks. Bang, Bang, I got mine as Iggy Pop used to say.

You will find songs like I Can't Cry (which I also love), Painted Moon, I See Red, and God's Gift on this CD as well. Not a bad song in the bunch I promise. 1987 was my own personal inflection point for turning to "alternative" rock bands (at the time) like R.E.M., Big Audio Dynamite, New Order, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Godfathers and on and on. I was a child of the 70's and grew up with Zeppelin, The Who, The Stones, and Bob Dylan. Love them all, but the tweener bands I was listening to like Steve Miller, Electric Light Orchestra, Supertramp, and the like were starting to bore me a bit. No disrespect to those acts intended because I still own the lion's share of all of their catalogues, but musically I was searching. Along came The Smiths, The The and scores of other interesting new bands and I sort of changed musical teams on the spot. With that I stopped listening to WBCN here in Boston, a station I had worked for as an unpaid (for the most part) intern for a number of years so I could get into the scene. A station called WLYN in Lynn, MA eventually morphed into WFNX thanks to The Boston Phoenix around 1983 and by 1987 I was a full time listener. Morning Guy Tai was my new Charles Laquidara. Joanne Doody was my new Ken Shelton. Neal Robert was my new Mark Parenteau. I was hooked. I felt so hip and musically informed. I had a whole new genre of bands and Songs To Learn and Sing as Echo once told me. It was exciting. I think alternative music was a phrase I personally pin on the years up until the age of Grunge, which commenced roughly in late 1990 as far as my memory will allow. Oh whatever, Nevermind. I think you get the picture.

When A Letter From St Paul came across my listening canvas I knew it was there to stay. I kept buying Silencers records the next few years, but though they still record to this day I never felt like they were able to recreate the magic of this CD. I haven't listened to anything new by them since 1992 so I'm probably missing out, but I thought this record was great and I just loved this single. I hope you get a kick out of it. You will never hear this song on the radio and if you download it you might be the only one to even own it, but make no mistake; this is a forgotten classic. You'll thank me some day. It was very representative of the time, though I struggle to remember it sometimes.

I'm going to start mixing in some shorter passages next to my notoriously long entries. It will hopefully be a bit more digestible for whatever audience The Giant Panther has created. I'm calling the feature One Track Mind because I'm going to stick to individual cuts in some of my posts. Unfortunately for artists, but great for Apple, we live in an iPod world now that seems to exist solely for singles. I don't mean singles in the traditional sense as the song they play on the radio. I'm referring to the way we slice and dice only our favorite cuts from each CD or artist. It's regrettable from my point of view, but as I was making mixed tapes (remember those?) for my mobile entertainment needs for years (think the beach or just about any party where I got to be Mix Master Jay in the 80's or early 90's) so what's the difference right? The difference is most of today's music buyers are not listening to the whole CD. Nine out of ten times that is where the gems are. OK, I promised to keep things on the shorter side...here is a case in point...

I wouldn't dream of calling myself a Marillion aficionado. I would say I'm very well versed in the Peter Gabriel era Genesis though. I was just reading about Selling England By The Pound today in Classic Rock Magazine at the gym this morning. They run a cool feature called Every Home Should Have One where they feature a CD from days of yore and this Genesis record was this month's gem. If you don't own Selling England By The Pound I kind of feel sorry for you, but that is another story. I have been doing a bit of progging lately and came across my copy of Marillion's Marbles. You will notice I am not even attempting to go down the road of the long standing debate on the lead singing merits of Fish vs Steve Hogarth because I am definitely not qualified to weigh in on that matter. Fish, apparently the Sting of his genre since he had no need of a second name to identify him, left the band after the first four (sometimes) legendary albums beginning in 1983. In fairness, if your given name was Derek Dick you might be in search of alternatives too. That aside the band has more than thrived with Steve Hogarth manning the mike over the years. I want to draw your attention to a cut from 2004's Marbles called Neverland that I got stuck on the first time I heard it. It's an opus so strap yourselves in, but in my view it's worth the ride. It's got an other worldly cadence and a kind of driving operatic sound to it. Top that off with some voice echo and I'm in a trance. 21st century British Prog Rock at its finest. I was playing this song non stop for about two weeks last month and I'm just getting around to writing about it. I hope you like it. Check out the video on YouTube as well to really get the feel for it. Call them a poor man's Genesis if you must, but they need make no apologies in my book. I love to mix stuff like this in next to my normal (but widely varied) fare.