The Shock Of The New (Wave)

Back in mid-June, music blog kingpin Fluxblog surprised me by posting a track from the 80's New Wave act Squeeze. The jolt wasn't because the posting was unusual for the website's tastes (in fact, Fluxblog tends to post a wider variety of music genres than any other blog). No, the shock was that anybody even cared about Squeeze anymore at all--their music is hopelessly out of vogue, at least at the present moment. They're a guilty pleasure band for me, and it was lovely to see a much-visited blogger give them a mention. It was fate, then, that helped me find a new import copy of their masterpiece East Side Story, remastered with 2 bonus tracks (The Axe Has Now Fallen and Looking For A Love) at a Virgin Megastore in Glasgow. Because I didn't even know it existed, I never saw it listed in such mainstream music spots as Amazon (which has the song order inexplicably mixed up), and HMV (not to mention, of course, Virgin Megastore). I simply must spend more time web surfing. To these ears, it was smart for the band (and Nick Lowe, who produced the second track listed here) to leave these tunes off the finished album--they're much weaker than the rest of the album. Still, it's nice to hear these songs for the first time and remember why I used to listen to Squeeze in the first place.