Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Bands That History Forgot...










In 1982 EMI AMERICA released " DON'T RUN MY LIFE" b/w "ICE AGE" from the band Spys. That's all I know....honest....who were these guys? I mean...it's not that great a song when you get right down to it. It's SOOOO dated. But this is just another mystery and I love mysteries.


At least Spys didn't have that far to fall......ROMAN HOLIDAY actually had a fantastic hit on MTV with the Ska-tinged "STAND BY" And all things looked good for a follow-up. Instead they released this piece of over-produced crap called "ONE FOOT BACK IN YOUR DOOR" and promptly fell off the face of the earth.

Earth MIGHT have been where SPECIMEN were from.....or perhaps they were bread out of some dark bat-cave in England. But either way they seem to be the Goth band that all the Goths forgot about. Shame...because 1984's "RETURNING FROM A JOURNEY" has always been one of my favourites. Another great SPECIMEN song is "KISS KISS BANG BANG". I was SURE the recent Val Kilmer film took it's title from this song.....as impossible as that sounds.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" was a staple track for many DJs on Muhlenberg College's WMUH (Allentown, PA). Lots of influence for my musical taste came from WMUH...although Specimen doesn't make my top 20 list. Even though I was goth ;)

WMUH used to play a few humor audio tracks, too...not knowing any artists or titles, they are hard for me to track down. Do you know that one where two girls are talking on an old-fashioned "party line" phone line in the jungle, and they hear a tiger roaring and shout, "Heyyyy! Get off the line!"

Anonymous said...

I've been trying to find a copy of the Spys song at a decent bitrate for a while. Thanks so much.

Anonymous said...

Specimen! Wow that's a group I just to like!Zshare seems not to work can your post it again in another server please... I don't find the Berlin Express elsewhere.

Thank you. John.