Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Cream / Creamtastic A Few Songs by The Semantics
Posted by Steve Haruch on Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 11:47 AM
Fans of listening to hard-to-find Southern power-pop on the Internet: Rejoice, for someone has uploaded three songs off Powerbill, the 1993 album by The Semantics, to YouTube! "Don't Say Goodbye" (above) is about as perfect a piece of pop melancholy you're going to hear -- the chorus is so, so good. (Side note: Read Michael Chabon's essay on Big Star in the latest McSweeney's. If I had my copy with me I would quote it at length.)
As many of you know, before Owsley was a producer and Amy Grant sideman, he started The Semantics in Nashville with Millard Powers. Ben Folds, before forming BF5, played on their early demos. Zak Starkey (Ringo Starr's son) and Jody Spence joined the band and played on the album they recorded for Geffen, which was shelved, then later released in Japan after the band broke up. (It actually sold pretty well there, despite almost no promotion. Go figure.) There are two other album cuts up on the Tubes: the sweet-n-sad "Average American" and the more rockin' "Sticks and Stones," which features some wacky vocoder along the way. Enjoy! Don't thank me, thank Dudgeon82.
Comments (3)
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Was able to track down a cheap import of Powerbill a few years ago. Killer album. If you can find 'em, there's a collection called "One More Step" circulating the internets that has tunes presumably meant for the follow up. Also, Millard Powers solo album (which was released on MP3.com back in like 99, way before it was okay to sell your music online) is rather amazing.
So wish that band had made it. I hear WIll is out in LA gettin' himself some of that Jonas Brothers money. Millard is playing bass w/Counting Crows.
Just terrible timing for the guys. They got signed to Geffen and started working on their first record and by the time it was finished, the industry was all grunge all the time. As good as this stuff is, I can't imagine the 90's answer to XTC/Paul McCartney would have had a chance at that time.
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