Friday, October 31, 2008

The Final Countdown, Part 4: Some Product

I have been talking about the emotional last ever meetup of the Bowlie Forum. Previous episode

They were giving away a record to all Final Countdown attendees, a 10' featuring two tracks each by Wintergreen and the Gresham Flyers, with each band contributing one original song and one cover. I liked the covers here more, partly for their bold audacity. The Gresham Flyers' cover starts off sounding like a Kinks album track, but then turns into 'Are "Friends" Electric?', with Sharon on robotic Gary Numan vocals. This storms. Wintergreen, meanwhile, play some 'Somewhere In The Night' (some tune by Smog), only with the track retuned so that it becomes an electropop anthem. Apparently this is the only recorded track from a proposed concept album of electropop covers of songs from some doomy Smog album. That said, 'Somewhere In The Night' still sounds like the doomy miserable end of electropop.

I also picked up a copy of the Gresham Flyers album, Sex With Strangers. It is quite a strong collection, with tracks that have really wormed their way into my consciousness, 'Shiftwork' in particular. I like the use of several different vocalists on the tunes, being a sucker for that kind of thing.

Remind me again, are the Gresham Flyers named after a breed of chickens? Or is that just the Buff Medways?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I thought they named themselves after an old bicycle brand?