cheesies and gum

 

Remember all the times I told you not to be a one-hit wonder. I hope you have listened, I have not yet heard your one hit but when I do hear it I'm going to be sure to be keeping an ear out for a follow up because there is nothing worse than only having one. 

I have probably mentioned to you how much I have been enjoying Martha and the Muffins lately but when I play their first album I make sure to skip the first track, and you know why. It is not inherently crap or anything but I have just heard it so-damn-often over the years. And it is by no means their best song. And its existence is the reason I have shied away from Martha and the Muffins for like, ever. Imagine if I'd died before I turned 56! I might have gone to my grave always thinking that Martha and the Muffins is not really a band I liked that much. And yet now I have their first three albums and I play them a lot. I particularly like the 2nd one Trance and Dance and suggest that is where you start when you want to discover or even rediscover the joy of Martha and the Muffins. 

What do they have? The songs are packed with ideas, some of the lyrics are now charmingly arcane from a forty-years-later perspective (I mean 'Suburban Dream' - shooting fish in a barrel - I bet the postpunkers could, and did, write lyrics like this in their sleep). (Just makes me think of Tracy Mann's character in Sweet and Sour, going to the back of the warehouse in a bad/pensive mood, muttering something about 'I'm going to write a song about plastic conformity now'.) It's not slick music though, or unimaginative or passionless at all, and it sounds really dynamic but they're great players together too. 

Three songwriters in the band for the first two albums (then two of them chucked the third one out. It would have been really problematic for them if 'Was Ezo' became a hit when it was released as a single because Martha Ladly wrote and sang it and apparently they had thrown her out of the group by the time it came out. But fortunately for Martha and the Muffins they never really troubled the singles charts again after their first humungous hit, except in Canada, with a few other random exceptions. Luckily for them also yes they had two Marthas so removing one of them made the band name actually more truthful. (The third album This is the Ice Age is pretty good too, I haven't heard anything else). 

So if you were listening to them on spotify, cleanse your palate with 'Primal Weekend', then go to 'Was Ezo', 'Luna Park', 'About Insomnia' and from the first album, 'Sinking Land', 'Cheesies and Gum', 'Paint by Number Heart', 'Hide and Seek'. They also do a much better cover of Chris Spedding's 'Motorbikin'' than Spedding's own (I actually bought CS's relevant album for that song and this version is a huge improvement - trust me). (It's not like trusting me for the time it takes to compare is going to be a risk for you really is it).

BTW weep not for Martha Ladly I think her subsequent career was a fuckload (as they say) more interesting and rewarding not only than the other Martha's or the Muffins' - made a couple of great singles, briefly in the Associates at their peak, then she goes on tour with Roxy Music etc. And she is now a professor at the university where Martha and the Muffins originally formed. 

OK so I just recommend you listen to a lot of Martha and the Muffins particularly the first two albums and try to keep away from the big hit if you can, the other stuff is really rewarding.