The No Shirts - "Don't Come Any Closer"
The first time I saw The No Shirts, they were called the The No Shirt Motherfuckers and they played stilted mathy bizzareness about owls for something like an hour and a half. It was one of the first indie-rock shows I had ever seen and I wanted it to stop. Being perverse and prone to asceticism, I saw them often after that. To my great disappointment, then, they kept getting better. Their sound became more focused and began to display a heavy Wooden Stars influence; tight guitar dialogues and increasingly confident, expressive vocals.
And then they released the highly unexpected Damn American Cars!, a collection of love songs about those most Beach Boysy of subject matters, girls and cars. Besides singing about cars, they must also have been listening to the Cars, because added to the Wooden Stars math, was an eighties artpop sensibility and some unnatural sounding synths.
"Don't Come Any Closer" is, despite being wrought with affectation and obscurity, a tender examination of unrequited love:
Lyrical muted guitar and singing organ accompany a jilted voice:
This hope is so real
Your heart I will steal
Wanna whisper in your ear
Make my vulnerability clear.
Eminently listenable and catchy, The No Shirts, unfortunately, broke up after the release of Damn American Cars!, freeing up the name No Shirt Motherfuckers for your own band's use. Think about it.
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Moebius and Plank - "Missi Cacadou"
If George Lucas was a German scientist and reggae aficionado (and I'm not saying that he's not), then he would have indubitably recorded this song (and I'm not saying he didn't). Whether or not George Lucas wrote and performed this song, Conny Plank and Dieter Moebius certainly did. They were just two bad German dudes who decided that this was the kind of music they wanted to make. And I guess that's OK?
In grade eleven, some friends and I decided to write a play. We met at my house and Joel (one of the friends) asked whether the rest of us would mind if he put on a cd. This is the cd that he put on. No play was written.