The 80s and Today

Dovetailing nicely with my post on the Killers the other night, this evening on the way home from work I heard the Bravery. I didn't hear the band announced until after the song was over, but as it sounded like New Order and yet wasn't New Order (or the Killers), I surmised that it must be the Bravery and was correct. Maybe Brandon Flowers is annoyed with the Bravery because the song I heard, "An Honest Mistake," sounds more like New Order than Flowers's band does.

I was listening to one of those "shuffle" radio stations that pretend to be your iPod except with songs that you'd never put on your own iPod, and I also heard "Come on, Eileen." That got me wondering when we were going to see a Dexy's Midnight Runners revival band. We've got New Order, Joy Division, XTC, Gang of Four, the Jam, Duran Duran, and various other 80s bands covered, so what about Dexy's? Maybe they could mix all the band's incarnations together to combine banjos and fiddles with a full horn section while wearing preppie button-downs and topsiders. I say this as a big fan of the band, who unfortunately are remembered as little more than a one-hit wonder on this side of the Atlantic but had a number of hits and continue to be revered on the other. The band reunited a couple of years ago, but I haven't heard if they've stayed together or not.

Speaking of revival bands, when is one of these 80s echo groups going to display any Drastic Measures influences? That was a fun band. I've got their album (Canadian-only?) from '79 or '80 or whatever, and I understand that there was a CD at one point, but I don't know any more than that. Was the CD just the album, or was it a compilation of various tracks? Do any of our Canadian friends know whatever happened to Tony Malone? He had something to do several years ago with the soundtrack to a small Canadian film called Highway 61, but I couldn't find any other music from him at all. (Although googling him did turn up an anti-religion book he published a couple of years ago, The Bible for People Who Hate the Bible.)