No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: The Soft Boys

Episode Date: May 5, 2019

Travis is in and out of town again for the next couple weeks, so I am all by my lonesome and we are postponing our episode on The Strokes AGAIN! Sad times. But in the meantime I'm diving into all the genres and eras leading up to the garage rock revival of the 2000s. A Wiki rabbit hole led me to these saucy boys from the late 70s: the Neo-psychedelic, post-punk group The Soft Boys. Their debut album A Can Of Bees is so goddamn good, full of killer hooks, bluesy riffs, and danceable drum beats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin, and I am all by my lonesome again today. Travis is busy doing work stuff. He's going to be out of town next week as well. So it's going to be a while until we cover the strokes, which is a fucking bummer. But in the meantime, I thought maybe I could throw up some side tracks the next couple weeks and just kind of dive into garage rock, which is the category that the strokes fall into. They were part of this revival that happened in the early 2000s.

So this one's going to be short and sweet. But I'm hoping that I can share a band with you all that maybe you've never heard of. This was a band I stumbled across while I was digging into the Wikipedias. Kind of fell into a rabbit hole when I was looking into Garage Rock. So this is a band called The Soft Boys. They were really only active from 1976 to 1980. and they are under the post-punk neo-psychadelia genres. So when you go back and dive into garage rock,

its origins kind of appears to have come about in the 1960s with surf rock. So think the beach boys or like the instrumental surf rock of like Dick Dale, you know, with with its fondness for like that standard 12 bar blue. blues. And then with Dick Dale, kind of inspired by like Middle Eastern guitar picking. You know, that's that classic surf rock sound.

That and then the emergence of psychedalia, which also came up around the 60s, with, you know, its roots in again, blues, folk pop, stuff like that. So I think like the Velvet Underground or

shit, 13th floor elevators maybe. So what strokes were able to do, and a lot of bands, you know, they're a part of this revival, was kind of take us back to the basic, like, just the rock and roll roots, you know, basic chord structures, distorted electric guitars, unsophisticated lyrics and song structure. I think that's something that for whatever reason we all just kind of grabbed back onto in the early 2000s. A few other bands that come to mind, you know, think Interpol, yeah, yeah, yeah, the white stripes,

just that, you know, simple guitar, bass, and drums kind of rock. And so, you know, as you do with Wikipedia, I started clicking around and I stumbled into Neo Psychedelia, which is this kind of more like, quote, acid rock or like art kind of rock indie psychedelia that came about in the 80s. And I found this band called the Soft Boys. And holy shit, these guys are awesome. Again, they were only really active for about four years, from 76 to 80.

And I listened to their first full-length album called A Can of Bees that came out in 1979. and man, it is fucking awesome. It is just raw, like, I'm all about the nitty-gritty blues, you know, and they just fucking killed it. That, and it's mixed with like this really cool post-punk sound. They're awesome. So I had a really hard time picking what song to play for today. I'm going to play a couple of them.

The first one is track four on the record. It's called Leppo and Jeeves. Holy shit I love that song. Man, it's just so much. kind of there seems like they're pulling from just so many genres. I'm not even going to attempt to, you know, list off influences that I feel like they must have pulled from. But man, I love their their harmonies.

I love that baseline. The drum beats freaking awesome. It's a little dancey. Oh, good stuff. Another thing that's great, and this was like a super, like, awesome little surprise. Track 9. on the record is one of my favorite John Lennon songs called Cold Turkey that came out as a single

in 69 in his band, the Plastic Ono band. And they fucking nail it. I think I'm going to fade us out with that song. But I want to play one more song. It was a bonus track on this album by the soft boys. This one is just fucking, I mean, it's. just strikes all the right chords. Just some solid blues. They got a wicked harmonica solo in this one. So this one is called the Asking Tree. And again, it is a bonus track on the Soft Voice 1979 debut album, A Can of Bees.

Fuck yeah. Man, that diabolical laugh of things. his that brings us into that guitar solo. Hooh. Good stuff. Man, I mean, this guy, so his name is Robin Hitchcock. He's the lead singer of the band. I mean, he is just oozing with confidence in this recording.

And everyone's just fucking banging on all the cylinders. That's what I love about the song. It reminds me of, you know, some of my, some of my favorite Beatles songs, or I guess specifically McCartney songs are those, you know, just downright, you know, raw bluesy tunes, like Helter Skelter, I Got a Feeling or, oh, darling, man, I just love that style. And yeah, this is an awesome record. I'm so glad that I stumbled upon it. They have another album called Underwater Moonlight that came out in 1980.

which is a little bit more, I'd say, like, new wave, not as bluesy, but still really, really great. So, yeah, I think that's going to do it for today. Thank you for listening. Again, I'm going to fade us out with their cover of John Lennon's cold turkey. And again, we're not going to have another full length for a couple more weeks. We are going to cover the strokes and their debut. album is this it when we finally get back together. But again, in the meantime, I will hop back on here

and record another little sidetrack for you. And yeah, again, thank you as always for listening. Hop on our website, no filler podcast.com. There you can read the show notes and check out, you know, all the other goodies that we have on there for you. I'm not going to go into it. If you want to know what's on there, go on the website. And you know what? I'm tired of hearing myself talk. So you all take care. My name is Quentin. we will shout at you next week. Temperatures rising can't see no future

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