What's in your CDP tonight? the minority report

The Grays! Okay ghosthouse, you win. You must also know about Great Buildings, the group Danny Wilde and Phil Solem were in before The Rembrandt’s. The singer/songwriter I was playing with in 1980-1 loved GB, so we went to their show at The Starwood celebrating the signing of their Columbia Records contract. I didn't see the attraction. GB didn’t hit paydirt, but The Rembrandt’s sure did. Danny made some okay solo albums. Much better at the turf they toiled in was Jellyfish, a really outstanding Group.

@bdp24 
@pokey77 
bdp - You are like a like a walking music encyclopedia!...guess they call them "musicologists"!  

I have to give credit to pokey77 for turning me onto The Grays and Jason Faulkner.  From those I found out about JellyFish.  For some reason tho' I found JellyFish's stuff inconsistent and occasionally annoying.  By contrast (IMO) Ro Sham Bo is a strong album all the way through.  JF's Author Unknown (not quite as consistent but still very good) could have been on the playlist last night but I ran out of time.  Apart from Pokey's recommendations, I'm pretty ignorant about that whole (SoCal?) late 80s/90s pop music scene.  Don't think those bands were getting much airplay on the east coast back then...leastways not the station I was mostly listening to then (WXPN out of Phila).  

Anyway - NO.  I don't know Great Buildings.  Did find Apart From the Crowd on the Spot and will listen more later today.  Brief sampling I did sounds promising.  Funny, heard of The Rembrandts but I couldn't name you a tune by them, so something else to explore.  

FWIW, much of my taste in pop music can be explained by this hit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypv1lZlW1WY
"Formative" as they say.




  

as much as i respected the cratsmanship, i never really embraced that grays/jellyfish genre, mainly because it's more pop than power. i did like jon brion's solo record, meaningless (you can find it on youtube), which is looser; you might also dig redd kross, who are tons of fun.

Thomas Newman - American Beauty Soundtrack

The Rembrandts did the theme song for the TV show Friends, and had another hit single, I believe (but can’t for the life of me recall the song). They kinda seem to me like an American version of Squeeze. For anyone trying to follow the musical thread, Jon Brion and Jason Faulkner were in The Grays together, Jon then going on to become an in-demand producer and Jason a member of Jellyfish (at the time they made their debut album). Jellyfish were a quite unusual group, the lead singer of which was also the drummer. He did live shows playing a very small drumset (bass drum, snare drum, one cymbal) standing up, like the guy in The Stray Cats. Jellyfish did an instore at the Tower Records in Hollywood to promote the release of their second album (post-Jason Faulkner), and the little sound system they were going to use as their P.A. went down. So they did their set acoustically, almost a cappella. Great harmony singing, often compared to Queen but sounding more Brian Wilson-esque to me.