Friday, August 20, 2010

RIP Michael Been of The Call

At one stage of my life, American rock band The Call meant a lot to me. Throughout the 80's and 90's an Anthroplogy lecturer in my city had a Thursday radio show on the local university station entitled "The Twilight Zone" and would play music he considered subversive: ie The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, Mojo Nixon, Stiff Little Fingers. He had a tendency to ignore the radio station's playlist and would slip in a lot more of the stuff he liked than most Dj's could get way with. I remember Stan Ridgeway 's "Camouflage" being played almost ever show. He played The Call 's "Oklahoma" fairly regularly and described Micheal Been's voice as that of a man possessed. In the late 80's I found The Call 's "Reconciled" album in the cassette bargain bin and thrashed it. Then later bought "Into The Woods" and their most commercially successful album "Let The Day Begin" was bought on both vinyl and cassette because they had a couple of different songs. The band lost me with "Red Moon" as it seemed their intensity had disappeared. Sadly Michael Been passed away on August 19, 2010.

Beastwars - IV

After over a year off for various reasons, we have returned solely because we wanted to review the new Beastwars album. I really w...