Saturday, January 17, 2009

Singles Going Single # 98 - Blue TV 7" (1985, Twilight)

I picked this beaut of 45 up a couple years ago at Wuxtry Records in Decatur, GA when I was visiting the Atlanta area (keeping my fingers crossed that they're still in business). Actually, half of it ("Back in Time") has already been made available on Little Hits blog, amidst tracks by a half dozen other like-minded combos that you can check out here. At any rate, I enjoyed it enough to include it in it's entirety in the nadir of my Singles Going Single series. As specified in the Little Hits post, Atlanta's Blue TV, like dozens of bands of the era, fell under the pervasive influence of R.E.M's groundbreaking albums, like Murmur and Reckoning.

The pair of songs enshrined on this 45 could arguably have come to fruition without the presence of Athens, GA's fab-four, given the rapid and robust trajectory of post-punk music at the time, but I'm really not here to make a point. "Back in Time" is the more approachable of the two, with it's flip, "Train Wrecks" staking out a darker, more frenetic path. But enough of me, let the music do the talking.
 
A. Back in Time
B. Train Wrecks
 

4 comments:

jonder said...

Yep, Wuxtry is still in business (both in Decatur and in Athens).

Monkey Flinging Poo said...

I live a few miles from Wuxtry. Probably looks exactly the same from when you last visited!

Burk Sauls said...

Blue TV was one of my favorite local bands in Atlanta at that time. The members went on to other bands if I'm remembering correctly. Someone really needs to do a good overview of that scene. The early 80s music scene in Atlanta gets overshadowed by REM, of course, but there was a lot of other great stuff going on then. Loads of REM clones, for sure, but bands like Blue TV, This Future, Mary My Hope and others were out there on their own terms.

Doug Hamilton said...

Hey, I was the singer for this band. Excellent write-up. Thanks! We were definitely influenced by R.E.M.-- probably my personal favourite at the time-- but our bass player was really into British bands with a prominent bass sound, like New Order and Gang of Four. And because she wrote many of the core riffs, including the one for Train Wrecks, that influenced us as well.