the Hummingbirds: c/d

bargain!

I got loveBUZZ for a couple dollars used on Amazon a while back. The instrumental sections on "Everything You Said" are awesome.

i've only heard evan dando's cover, it was nice.

btw what was this?

i thot he meant 'into yr arms'

ah, makes sense

(not a Hummingbirds song, readers)

sly persuader was OTM up there: I remember getting Lovebuzz in a supermarket in Brisbane in 1991 and Va Va Voom in Geelong JB Hifi in 1993, ie. both a couple of years after release, and both for peanuts. I still retain these childhood memories but remember little else about these vacations.

I really liked them, or at least the IDEA of them - faintly off-key boy-girl vocals and a sound that one of them claimed grew out of attempt to sound like JAMC's "Never Understand". I remember "Blush" being something of a crossover hit and it felt, genuinely, like the proverbial breath of fresh air on the TV and radio, in a way that presaged Ratcat's and then Nirvana's surprise success a little bit later. Their A-sides were great. Both of those albums, at something like 14 tracks each, probably could have lost a couple of the weaker tracks and arguably some of Mitch Easter's bells and whistles though.

I must listen again to that late Gone EP too - some pretty "wall of sound" moments, as someone already said...

i listened to 'gone' and 'tail' recently after not having heard them for years, sounded great. to this day i still don't know if that (awesome) 4th song on tail is called 'sick on' or 'sick on self pity'

woah this brings back memories. Blush was bloody grebt.

... what ever happened to that andi character?

i had lovebuzz on cassette in high school and then lost it -- would love to hear it again. used to love "word gets around" so so so much.

Snagged the best-of for a buck the other month so it's fun hearing the early songs like "Alimony" and "Everything You Said" here.

Blush was a pretty much perfect powerpop single. Must dig out the 12".

everything they put out was great

i still miss that album

this video is pretty ott goofy though, let's be honest
i guess that's kinda cute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGCMgm5R7T8&feature=related

^^record company fiddling

One can only hope. Would have loved to see the pitch meeting for that one.

for foreign readers: Simon and Alannah are currently both in The Aerial Maps, and the Hummingbirds played two reunion shows last year (one festival with five original-era members not including Robyn, and one headline about nine months later with a ring-in bassist [and bonus ring-in gtrst on one song])

lovebuzz is one of my favorite dollar-bin albums ever.

to this day i still don't know if that (awesome) 4th song on tail is called 'sick on' or 'sick on self pity'

I'm rather shocked to learn that Simon Holmes died, and that I didn't realise sooner. :(

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2017/jul/21/the-hummingbirds-were-a-vital-part-of-australian-music-history-simon-holmes-will-not-be-forgotten

Big tribute show coming up next month: http://www.factorytheatre.com.au/events/2017/12/03/ratcat-custard-ups-downs-more-hindsight-a-night-for-simon

the remembrance by Tim Byron that the Graun review quotes might as well be linked directly: https://inmemoryofsimon.wordpress.com/2017/07/17/my-time-with-simon-holmes/

Simon was a warm & sweet guy offstage, and always focused when on. I hadn't seen him since a secret Simon & Allanah / encoring as Hummingbirds gig early last year. Just ten minutes walk from my house, I found out about it half an hour before, when the regular music trivia at another local pub was called off for the week because too many regulars were going to the show. But we didn't talk that night - I was too busy catching up with ppl I might not have seen for years, including the fill-in bassist (at whose encouragement they'd relearnt the songs), folks that had played with him in Fragile and others, and Tim above.

It's better, I think, to have that as a last memory. Instead of saying 'hey' if he was coming out of work as I was passing, or congratulating him on the show, to have been brought together with people from across the city by the chance to see him & Allanah sing.