FROM THE ARCHIVES : A SERIES FOR SATURDAYS

From July 16th 2008

TELEVISION, THE DRUG OF THE NATION

Another song dragged up from a great TV performance.

It was 1996, and the show was called The White Room, hosted by Mark Radcliffe. As far as I'm concerened, this was one of the best and nost underrated music programmes ever made in the UK. It usually had one or two 'big' acts headlining, along with a few emerging acts. many of who were assocaited with the mid 90s rise of Britpop.

Until I saw them on the show, I had never heard of My Life Story, but I soon tracked down the current single they played that night:-

mp3 : My Life Story - Sparkle

They were a huge act in terms of numbers - combining the classic pop line-up with a lively string section. My first thought when seeing them on TV was that they were a wonderful throwback to some of the great OTT 80s pop acts such as ABC, or perhaps it was like watching Marc & The Mambas all over again. I also thought, purely because of the strings, that it could be Tindersticks on speed (with a different vocalist of course....)

If you click here, you can learn more about the band, and find out that by the time I cottoned on to them, they had been around for a fair few years, and indeed in terms of popularity were reaching a peak.

I havent been able to track down the live performance from all those years back, but I have shoved the promo for Sparkle as well as the previous single, 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, up at The Video Villain.

Is it just me, but does anyone else reckon Arcade Fire learned a lot from My Life Story?

Update all these months later........still havent found a clip of the live performance, but here's the videos as mentioned above:-





Enjoy.