The Unheard Music (Volume IV)

I was musically disadvantaged in my youth as I lacked older siblings.  As anyone with older brothers and sisters will attest, your sibs have a distinct influence on your musical sensibilities for better or for worse.  There were older kids in the neighborhood but they provided me with a steady diet of classic rock and the Top 40 of the day. As a result, I was well versed in The J. Geils Band, Queen, The Who and others. I also got way into my parents' Beatles and Stones records.  A kid down the block was into KISS but he was rumoured to be 'on drugs' so I was told to keep away from him.  I can thank a cool babysitter for exposing me to Cheap Trick early on, so I had that going for me but I needed help learning about the cool new stuff.

Early on in high school, I formed/joined a band which not only expanded my personal circle of musical friends but also exposed me to their tastes and that of their older siblings, some of whom were in college.  Our guitarist/singer Jason had two brothers at Brown University in Providence, RI--not a hotbed of musical talent per se--but it's proximity to Boston was important. One winter break, Jason's brother Bruce brought home a cassette of a Boston band called O Positive. The tape was a compilation of their two EPs: Only Breathing and Cloud Factory. It wasn't that O+ sounded that different than a lot of the music we were listening to at the time (a dash of The Cure, some New Order, Echo & the Bunnymen, a pinch of R.E.M.) but it was the rarity factor, no one in our little world (outside of a few people) had ever heard of O+, which was key; having knowledge of a band nobody knows has cache when you're a teenager trying to be cool and exclusive with your music.

The problem with liking an obscure band is that it can be difficult to find their records and all I had of O+ was this crappy third-generation cassette.  Repeat trips to Wax Trax! and Pravda in the late 80's yielded no results, I couldn't find any O+ wax anywhere.  In my first trip to Iowa City's Record Collector, I hit paydirt, I found both EPs on vinyl for about $3 a piece.  A few years later, Link Records reissued both EPs on one CD and the owner of Record Collector remembered I was a fan and ordered me a copy, which I proudly still own today. Problem is, when I went to add O+ to my iTunes library, the CD wouldn't track. It was one the handful of CDs that had degraded so badly that no computer would read it. I wrote about this very phenomenon back in November 2005. Undeterred, I broke out the old vinyl EPs (which still played fine, thank you very much) and burned the songs onto CD so I could rip them into iTunes. If you listen carefully to these mp3's, you can hear the warm analog sound complete with pops and cracks. Viva la vinyl!

O Positive "With You" 

This track was the first O+ song I ever heard, a cool opening bass line that Peter Hook wouldn't be ashamed of and some guitar work that Robert Smith may have partially inspired. Fractured lyrics that mention smoking cigarettes, suicide and love, what's not to like for a moody teenager?

O Positive "Up, Up, Up"

A ballad's one thing, everyone does ballads but for a young Indie band to come up with not only an interesting melody and compelling lyrics but to top it off with an outstanding string part written for an octet is pretty remarkable. While not technically Orch Pop (yet), it was definitely head and shoulders above what even the most accomplished of their peers were doing at the time.

Outside of people who went to college in Boston or high school in Glen Ellyn, does anyone know this band?  What do you think of them?

Comments

[Jeff]

I appreciate your punctuality - I look forward to seeing your pick of the week when I get back from lunch. Can't wait for the track...

[Jeff]

Cool - but any chance you could put up 'with you'? I'm sure you're probably one of select few who has that on MP3... ;-)

[Jean B.]

Ken, you put "With You" on a mix tape you made for me in college--my first exposure to O Positive. I still have all your tapes in a box someplace... Lloyd Cole, the Buck Pets, Big Black, etc. Every once in awhile I'll hear a song that's a "Ken song." Loving your Friday Unheard Music posts!

[Scotty]

I haven't heard those songs since our days at Hillcrest but its like I heard them yesterday. Both songs still sound great.

[Jay]

Wow, I was searching for "With You" just last month but came up empty handed. Glad to finally have it in my WGHS Classics playlist. I believe "Edward the Bear" by The Damned was another tune in heavy rotation on your radio show at the time. I'm hoping we'll see something by The Chills or Let's Active here in the future. Keep 'em coming!

[Justin]

Those sure are familiar... I also must have heard them on WGHS. Thanks for the memories!

Also, my copy of SSS also went bad, and the new copy I got from Lala is also bad. Must have been a bad pressing or something.

Somehow I ended up with a Let's Active record from WGHS... not sure how, and I'm also not sure where it is anymore, but there you go.