The Giant Panther

Today's walk down memory lane takes us back to 1990. This won't take long either. An Irish band called Something Happens flashed across our collective rock radar screen as the century began its last decade. I didn't mention them in my earlier post about Irish rock because they came and went so fast I had forgotten about them. They toured fairly heavily, so I've heard, and got their big break warming up for a 1988 Simple Minds tour when that band still had it going on. They had signed with Virgin Records, but the marriage didn't last and they were dropped when they were unable to replicate the success of Stuck Together With God's Glue.

The song I'm posting today is called Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello (Petrol). The title is very irritating, but the song has always been a favorite of mine. There's a line near the end when the lead singer relays a comment a woman made to him about the beer goggle life. She says "I know I've had some when you start to look handsome." You have to laugh at that all around, but rhyming had some with handsome strikes me as pretty funny. Another fun fact I didn't know is that the parenthetic Petrol in the song title is an apparent homage to the band That Petrol Emotion. If the legend is true they stole the guitar riff from that act. I've always kind of liked TPE so that sort of makes sense. You don't often see bands fessing up in print like that. Another great early 90's one hit wonder type song was The Beloved's Hello. They could've added a few hellos to that song title as well since they speak sing the word hello more than Something Happens does. Ironically The Beloved Song came out roughly two months earlier than this one. Maybe I'll post the other song sometime soon, but if you have a chance to grab that one you should. Kind of a comical coincidence, but I would have gone with one Hello and then (Petrol) as my song title if I were a member of Something Happens.

To finish the thought on this Flash and The Pan (I kill myself...why do you suppose they didn't call themselves Flash IN The Pan?...no need to answer that one...I'll have to do some research on those guys, but they were like a four very good hit wonder band), Something Happens had some other claims to fame. I didn't see the film, but apparently they had a song called Burn Clear appear on the soundtrack of an Irish movie called The Courier. Hello was included in the top 50 singles of 1990 by the UK rock magazine New Musical Express (NME). They had a much later song called Forget Georgia that was covered by a Canadian Singer named Emm Gryner in 2005. And lastly a song from Stuck Together With God's Glue called Parachute was a minor hit along with Hello. I would venture to say this song is a rocker, but it definitely stood out as a single. It caught a lot of radio airplay back in the day so of course I had to buy the CD. I've had it on my mixed cut iPod like device for about a year (it can only come up about once every six weeks at best in case you are wondering...at an hour a day seven days a week that is). It's a real project changing the music so I don't do it that often. I'll probably wind up blogging about every song on there until I take the time to rotate them out. Even though it's a labor of love, I can never seem to get psyched up to do it. Every day at the gym I hear another song that I'm happy to hear, but is scheduled to be replaced. It seems to push off the project another month each time. It's crazy. Anyway...Hope you like Hello x 5 (Petrol)!