Let There Be Rock

As my 3.5 regular readers are well aware, I enjoy the rock and/or roll. I also enjoy writing about said rock and/or roll, and since I already have a forum, I have upgraded my techomology to now feature some of that music on a weekly basis. Mucho thanks to AJ "'Ello guvna" Aranyosi for donating the server space for me to host one of them there MP3 files from my music collection every week. Don't look for anything remotely popular or overly familiar here. I'll try to dig up some of cool stuff that you just don't hear much, or at all, anymore. To download tracks, please right-click on link and select "Save as." Any MP3s offered here are for reviewing purposes only; if you like what you hear, buy the album, dammit.

For my initial offering, I'd like to bring you a track from the debut album of a fine band from my former home and native land, O Canada. Ten Fingers is the second song off the 1988 release Love Junk from The Pursuit of Happiness, an excellent Toronto-based power pop act that scored an MTV hit off the same disc with "I'm an Adult Now." Led by the uber-nerdy Moe Berg, TPOH packed quite a wallop with the combination of Berg's sardonic tales of romantic d'oh, crunching guitars, and sweet female backing vocals.

Back in my senior year of college (waaaaay back in '89), I saw TPOH opening up for Duran Duran of all groups at the Worcester Centrum. I had accompanied the incomparable Art Lizie, the arts editor at our college paper The New Hampshire (I was a staff reporter and general layabout). TPOH kicked butt live, blowing the aging Durannies off the stage (this was during a serious down period for DD, before one of their several comebacks). We were supposed to go backstage after the show to interview Moe and the band, but there was a mixup and they left early.

Alas, I never got to see them live again, and after two more major-label releases, they got lost in the grunge goldrush of the early '90s and faded from view. TPOH released two fine albums on a Canadian indie before calling it a day in the late '90s; in 2000, Razor and Tie released Sex & Food: The Best of The Pursuit of Happiness, a worthy greatest-hits comp with several unreleased tracks and liner notes from Berg. As the ever-dorky Kurt Loder used to intone before MTV put him in a retirement home, do check them out.