The Breeders - Pod

YOURZ

There was a time when Pod was never filed away because it was always the next choice to be played.  It was one of THE must have CDs if you wanted your collection to have any sort of indie credibility.  Mind you, this was 20 years ago when things like 'indie credibility' meant a lot more to me than it probably should have.  But then, acceptance from my peers was also very high on my list of 'must haves'.  The older we get, the less we give a shit about small stuff like this.

I'm really glad Pod has stayed in my collection for all those years, though.  Listening back to it reminds me of some fantastic days, particularly of making music and hanging out with a great bunch of creative, talented and generally awesome people.  The Steve Albini-produced track list includes quite possibly the best Beatles cover ever in 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun'.  And while the production could only be described as minimal, at best, it also served as a no-nonsense template for the great swathe of bands who took this ideal and ran with it.  Of the 12 tracks, 9 come in under the 3 minute mark and a third of these under the 2 minutes.

It was head Breeder Kim Deal's links to her day job as The Pixies bass player that got this side-project noticed.  This could have been a bit of a disaster if Deal's song writing hadn't stood up.  But thankfully it did and still does.  And while history will record their more commercial followup, the mega-selling Last Splash, as the best this band has to offer.  But for me, it will always be Pod.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

MINE

I wonder how Steve Albini feels about having this on his CV now?  When I read those words - "Engineered by Steve Albini" - before listening to Pod I thought, well, it'll have to sound good at least.  How wrong I was.

Let me paint you a picture.  YourZ and I live in a small apartment building (four apartments, two up, two down) on a dual-carriageway road in a beachside suburb of Sydney.  We live on a hill, and therefore the garages are underneath the apartments - a good way underneath, in fact, dug into the hill.  The buildings on either side of us are the same, and that means a proliferation of garage bands.  YourZ has rocked the suburbs on many an occasion, there's a sort of heavy-metalish band next door and I think in the mansion a few doors down there's a bit of a vanity band (I've heard them do Roxanne by the Police and Madonna's Like A Virgin and both really not that well so you get my drift).

The sound produced by the Breeders on Pod reminds me of listening to a garage band through the doors.  The vocals are unintelligible, there's always someone off-key because there's no fold-back, and what you can mostly hear is the drums, which sound strangely flat.  I've read they recorded it in a week, and had money left over to do other stuff.  And it sounds like it, with the exception of their version of Happiness Is A Warm Gun which I don't think would have upset John Lennon too much.

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT

For more information: http://www.myspace.com/thebreeders

The Police - Greatest Hits

MINE

Listening to the Police just brings me back to one summer in my youth, when Outlandos D'Amour and Regatta de Blanc formed the soundtrack of one very large, boozy, freewheeling trip by a bunch of friends I largely still see to this day.  It was the holidays in between high school and - whatever came next - for the group of 18, and we camped on the South Coast of NSW for what seemed like weeks.  Some of us (hi, Richard!) in two-man tents while others dossed down in the communal large tent where we'd gather for drinking games in the evenings.

And while that trip is still memorable for the very rude version of Hotel California we created (Hotel Aphrodisiac, very puerile) the musical soundtrack of that summer remains, for me, the Police's first two albums.  Oddly not Zenyatta Mondatta, even though it was released that year.

And it's the weird tracks, not the singles, that still resonate with me today. So while this collection's great, and features many of their stand out songs, the mere thought of listening to Be My Girl - Sally, It's Alright For You and Peanuts makes me resolve - we need the WHOLE COLLECTION (YourZ sez: yes, we do)  so we can play it for the 50th birthday reunion in a couple... of... years... *shudder* When did I get to be so old, anyway?

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

YOURZ

I was the eldest of 5 children and, as a teenager, my brother and I shared a detached studio in my parents' back yard (okay, for real, it was a large, insulated garden shed, but it was ours).  The necessity of this came about because my father, who was in the Armed Forces, was only a junior rank and could only get a three bedroom house.  How we survived with one bathroom, I still don't know.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that my brother and I would spend a lot of time in The Shed listening to music and trying to decide which rock star we most wanted to be.  One of the bands that was always on our list was The Police and, in particular, their album Reggatta de Blanc.  I recall seeing Walking On The Moon on the Australian music television institution, Countdown, numerous times before finally getting the album.  From then on, every thing they released, I owned.  I still have most of it too, on flat black plastic. (Mine says: I've got Ghost in the Machine on FBP but my cassette(!) of Outlandos & Regatta one album per side died years ago)

As a Greatest Hits compilation, this one is fair.  The big hits certainly are here, including the most inanely-chorused song in the world, De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da (what were they thinking) as well as some great album favourites.  But as Mine points out, it's subjective.  Personally, I would have plumped for Bring On The Night, On Any Other Day and Driven To Tears.  What would you have picked?

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

For more information: http://www.thepolice.com/