Hi everyone. I thought I’d post this minor key blast from the past:
https://soundcloud.com/thegoldenyearsontario
It’s me and my friend Courtney playing & singing a cover of the classic Chubby Checker song “Let’s Twist Again." I always found the song kind of sad in the way I find Ataris songs sad. There is a sense of youth on the cusp of breaking toward adulthood and tedium. A whiff of missed chances and stunted hopes. Of the high school baseball team falling one run short. Aside from that band Staggered Crossing releasing a sophomore record titled Last Summer When We Were Famous, which was the follow up their big hit “Further Again,” I’ve never heard an artist explicitly reference a desire to match, or even top, an earlier hit. It gives the song a slightly desperate air. I always heard it like “Can we PLEASE twist again? I NEED a hit, people! The label’s gonna drop me. PLEASE just...twist again, okay!?”
We recorded it as a minor key prom waltz. Bedroom pop. Courtney sings lead and I did the rest. I’m not gonna lie, I am SUPER proud of this recording. Courtney’s vocal is really beautiful and hits that note of yearning I seem to require. It was never officially released but we recorded it sometimes in early 2014.
I am making a new record this summer for the first time in AGES. It will be called, you guessed it, Better Days Are A Toenail Away, and it will be a full band affair, unlike the earlier Golden Years stuff.
“Electric guitar, bass and drums? Ew. How 2007 of you.” - An Actual Friend of Mine
I’ll be playing all the instruments. Here’s a video of me struggling my way through one of the songs: