Thursday, December 16, 2021

sneaky feelings 'better than before'


I woke up around 6:20 with two cats on my bed and this song in my head. It is one of those songs (unquantifiable, there are surely hundreds if not thousands) which 'live in my head rent-free' as idiots on tiktok will sometimes say. In my head, it played right from the beginning which by the way is cut off in the video I linked to above, but who knows if that youtube version will last a long time, I don't, the song was 'Better than Before' by Sneaky Feelings.

Of course although the version in my head was pretty fine, I wanted to hear it IRL through my actual ears, so I looked for it on spotify - no. I thought well maybe it's not by Sneaky Feelings and I got that wrong, so I went searching on just 'Better than Before' and - no. Raising my blood pressure was the fact that spotifuck has no faith in my / our ability to remember song titles, so I was presented with numerous incarnations/interpretations of Fleetwood Mac's 'Don't Stop', in amongst songs actually called 'Better Than Before'. So then I gave up on that platform and looked for it on discogs to just establish whose song it was. Yes, Sneaky Feelings, and they do have a couple of LPs on spotifuck but not that one. So I got to it finally on youtube, a video I had never seen/have no recollection of ever seeing, which was/is cut off at the beginning so the bit in my head, the unaccompanied intro, is still only in my head but that's OK. It's a fabulous song, and a fun video of its time (1986), which would surely have been a huge production and I suppose largely improvised on the spot ('and then there were these school kids who just showed up' etc). (+ subtext 'you couldn't do it these days, they'd all need notes from their parents'). I've never been to Dunedin but I assume this is a sentimental journey from anyone who lived there in the mid-80s. I bet in real life it wasn't so washed out. 

The other SF song I always really loved was this one. But reading about them on wikipedia it sounds like their two most recent albums (the only things of theirs on spoti) are critically acclaimed by people with taste, I think I should check them out and if you like, or I do actually do this, I'll get back to you about it.  

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