At last Junior and I can find common ground again:
>I wasn't kidding about Elastica, Bill. As derivative as they were, I
>thought they were terrific. Truly....
But you did sort of imply that they were a prefab, manager-created band,
Junior, which they weren't really.
>
>I had a great music week in 96, or whenever it was they toured, when
>I saw them on a Thursday night in the Union ballroom here at the
>University of Kansas, then two nights later in Pittsburgh while I was
>at a conference there. In Kansas they ended up with the whole crowd
>up on stage dancing with them for the last number (that big hit of
>theirs, what was it called...); then in Pittsburgh they absolutely
>tore it up in a weird futuristic looking club that looked like
>something out of a Terminator movie
I saw them in Minneapolis, and they were a little bit disappointing--kind
of shell-shocked, it seemed, and short enough on material that they did one
song twice, something I hadn't seen a band do since about 1981, when I saw
British post-ironists ABC perform fourteen songs, three of which were "The
Look of Love." But Elastica's lone full-length record was perfectly swell.
Derivative, yes, but derivative of stuff that was well worth imitating.
>That Justine whats-her-name, yow!! Now there's a rock n' roll woman
><g>.... Too bad they disappeared.
>
That would be Justine Frischmann, the finest Jewish (not Hungarian, btw,
Bill; her father was a Hungarian refugee who moved to England in the '40s,
I think, and is a noted architect and professor) rock diva since Susanna
Hoffs. <g> The band were plagued with endless lineup problems, and though
they did eventually write enough songs for a second album, it has yet to
see the light of day. In fact, references to the next Elastica record are
sort of a running joke in some of the British music press.
--Amy
