Remake/Remodel #8: Do Re Mi's "Man Overboard"

It's common for an artist to take one of their own songs and re-arrange it radically, as the muse strikes. Bob Dylan seems to change the arrangement of his songs for each and every tour (I know of at least three different arrangements of "Maggie's Farm" on record by Bob - but more on that later). A lot of people may not know just how radically today's song changed...and why it did.

Do Re Mi were a Melbourne-based band who mined s similar cold, angular, robotic funk groove to Hunters and Collectors in their early days. They shared a stage with the Hunters regularly and were part of the same post-punk underground scene. They released two independent EPs in 1981-1982 before being signed by Virgin records in 1985, making them the first Australian band signed to Richard Branson's iconic record label.

Tucked away on their second EP "The Waiting Room", in the middle of side 2 (it hasn't ever been issued on CD) was a fast-paced punk-ish song called "Man Overboard". The lyrics buzz by at such a rate that it is difficult to comprehend them. Although the first verse is sung by vocalist Deborah Conway a capella, the rest of the song is done and dusted in just over 2 minutes.

The original 1982 EP version:



Most people who grew up in Australia in the 1980s know the more popular version issued in 1985, as the first single from the band's debut album "Domestic Harmony". It goes without saying that it is markedly different, and this time around the lyric is made crystal clear so there is no ambiguity whatsoever.

The famous 1985 version:



The interesting thing about this song is how the slow version came about. I had the good fortune to meet Do Re Mi vocalist Deborah Conway a couple of years ago at a small gig promoting her then current LP "Half Woman Half Man" and I asked her how the change in the two versions came about. She explained that in 1982, radio DJs played vinyl exclusively on air. "The Waiting Room", being a 12-inch vinyl EP and of a far shorter running time than an album, was pressed at 45 RPM. However, most people know 12-inch vinyl to be played at 33 RPM (unless of course it's a 12 single, but that's another story) and DJs often played the record at the wrong speed. The band often heard their song "Man Overboard" and other tracks from the EP played at a considerably slower speed on radio and realised that there may be something interesting in some of the songs if they played them a bit slower...

...and so, with a slower tempo, a sultry reworked groove and plenty of room for some well placed pauses-for-effect in the lyrics, the version we all know and love was born. Deborah Conway summons up a powerfully raw, woman-scourned fury that strikes fear into the hearts of men everywhere. It is truly spine-tingling, and yet you can't help but shake your butt along whenever you hear it. It's rare that relationship dirty laundry-in-song sounds so danceable.

The other interesting thing about this song is how the lyrics escaped the censors. How many Australian top 5 hit singles can you name that manage to feature the words "anal humour", "penis envy" and "self-abuse" in the lyrics and are still getting played on commercial radio to this day? Besides "Man Overboard" I doubt there would be many. (Oh, and Alanis Morrisette expletive-ridden "You Outta Know" doesn't count.)

Do Re Mi lasted for one more album in 1987 "The Happiest Place In Town" before splitting up. Deborah went onto have a prosperous solo career kicking off with a top 20 LP "String Of Pearls" and now tours with her musical (and life) partner Willy Zygier. She still remembers the Do Re Mi era fondly, and I was stoked that she signed my vinyl copies of "Domestic Harmony" and "The Waiting Room" at that gig...

Drop us a line in the comments below.

Until next time. Cheers!

Queen: "A day at the Races"

QUEEN - A DAY AT THE RACES.

Hi guys, this is my second blog, following my Billy Joel's Greatest hits.

I am aiming to give you an overall view of the album from both what I seen and/or read on videos/DVDs/books. I'll then endeavour to pull apart a three songs and maybe ponder some subject matter and see where that ends us up at. I wanted to do another blog, as I am a beginner while helping out a cool blog spot.

Ok? Let's do it, as Freddie would say!!!

This album follows on from the success of the album preceding, named A Night at the Opera. 

Those of you who are Marx Brothers fans, will know what both "Opera" and "Races" are also Marx Brothers comedies. That fact alone gives a nice edge to these albums. It's easy to take the recordings on board in a slightly theatrical manner. If you are willing to broaden your mind, it might even take that slightly more theatrical quality that Queen might well be regarded at producing, especially at their live shows. As hard core fans recall seeing in the videos of Freddie in leotards. 

The most interesting tidbit I have for you is bearing on the fact that this came after "Opera". 

A Night at the Opera was made at or around a time when the guys, Freddie, Brian, Roger and John were in deep financial debt, with little or no money being given to them by their manager at the time.  The appearance of "Races" heralds a time when Queen were shaking free of the debt and managers leaving band members poor. The music, as the band reflects, has them going on to record music that quietly expressing that the bad times were fading fast into the past and Queen were finally finding their audience, or at least in the beginnings of really establishing themselves for the rest of their career.

A direct evidence of this breaking into the big time can be seen in "Somebody To Love".

Just listen to the vocal harmonies to open! Freddie and Roger cutting the air with top end vocals (Roger was as high in range vocally as Freddie, if not higher) With Brian and John rounding out the rest. Yes, John did sing, we just can't hear him quite as well as the others.

Piano, a drum fill and we are fully into perhaps indeed as Gospel- styled rock piece. With a swing and punch that really gives an all-round richness in sound, instrumentation and open mouthed pit-of-the-stomach depth.

The more I write, the more it becomes obvious just how great this is as a complete song, as the subject is somebody to love. You must have been made of stone if you can't connect with this!

The statement that Queen were finding their stride with this album comes with the place this song found itself in the UK and US charts.

It reached number 2 on UK charts and 13 in the US and, as well as Freddie liking (or loving) Liza Minnelli, he also idolised Aretha Franklin, who is also credited to influencing this track.

"Somebody to Love" is track 6 on CD and first track on B side on the LP.

Jumping back to some hard rock and roll we love about Queen, let's look to "Tie Your Mother Down", opening track to the album.

The full version gives a solid Japanese-styled scale intro including Brian May's studio crafted guitar trick of the eternal musical stairway...then, we get our beloved riff- so familiar to this head banging piece and the head banging starts right when we hear Brian get it going.

With crashing cymbals, bass and snare drum strikes, Roger accents the opening guitar riff with help from downward bass lines and Freddie bringing in a "Ooooh, yeah!" and we're off rocking and rolling.

This is a great party piece, perhaps a clear sign of Queen's solid foothold in the rock genre of the time.

All with touted no synthesisers, which the band loved to exclaim boldly, Freddie sings about taking someone's brother swimming with a brick, yep, and it IS alright!

It's everything we need in a rocking Queen anthem: cutting, multi-fingered guitar solos which includes the sound of a slide. This use of guitar slide, so often found in more blues music guitar solos, gives "Tie your mother down" it's own distinct ingredient. This is Queen showing how much they loved both variety in their production whilst by recording different songs, they explored many different musical styles.

We close with thumps, bumps, more cymbals and guitar high notes and an end guitar chord.

And lastly, let's look at "Teo Torriate", last listed track on both CD and LP.

England and Queen have had close relations with Japan over the years following World War two, if not before. 

We have Freddie's piano, love lyrics he does so well, but most importantly, a two-fold verse in the English language followed with what might be the closest translation in Japanese.

The dialect of Japanese used in this piece is unknown to me, with much of the Japanese used has been unfamiliar to most of the Japanese citizens I have met and sung these words to. The most commonly understood word to any Japanese person I have indeed sung this song to, I have found if  Shizukana "shizukana = silent " or quiet.

As mentioned and found in the opening to track 1("Tie Your Mother Down") we have again, a touch of Japanese or oriental styled musical scale introduced into the music.

I really want reiterate just how much we can see the band's entering into different genres and writing songs in more than one style here. 

Over the years, as we might think, a band grows and moves with the times, styles and trends of the years. It might well be an indication of the art form of music itself in fact reflecting these trends, as art either directly or indirectly attempts.

The song closes with Brian May's guitar elevator once again.

"Teo Torriate" is a really beautiful piece. Lovely, gently vocals accompanying the lyrics with piano and vocal scale giving us that Japanese influence in the choice of scales. The inclusion of those Japanese lyrics plus, when the album was released, the Japanese words,via the fold-out printed lyrics which are located inside the LP, we can learn to sing them with Freddie.

This is such a nice touch and for after we become familiar with the melody of the words, we can add our mastered Japanese lyrics. Cool, huh!

A choir of additional voices leads up to the ending Brian May guitar escalator.

So, in closing I give you the chance to go and look at these and other pieces from A Day At The Races. Take a listen to the album via the Spotify playlist below. If you keep in mind the things that happened to the band during these times, it's easy to understand what helped influenced the album in the writing itself and hopefully enjoy and appreciate this breakthrough album by Queen even the more!

Shalom, friends. Enjoy your music!

The D-Generation takes on Australian rockers

Five In A Row:


The D-Generation were a comedy troupe that started out as students at Melbourne University in the mid-1980s. Well known to Australian TV viewers, they had their own TV series as D-Generation, then The Late Show. They then branched out into other programs such as Full Frontal and then into various radio and film projects.

They had two successful singles that beautifully skewered Aussie music legends. Five In A Row, issued in 1989 took the "mickey' out of (in order):

John Farnham
Jimmy Barnes
Little River Band
Kylie Minogue
and James Reyne's idiosyncratic clipped and slurred vocal style

The sequel, released twelve months later, took shots at:

Michael Hutchence of INXS
Dragon
Darryl Braithwaite
Kate Ceberano
and Midnight Oil

They are very funny short films, well worth a look. Enjoy

Five More in a Row:

Dragon - Live One

Apologies for the lack of posts of late. School holidays are a killer for finding time to do cool stuff like posting to a blog!

Thanks to Todd Hunter, bass player in the band, here is a live set by Dragon from 1984 (issued on vinyl and VHS video in 1985 as "Live One"). It was recorded at the Sydney Entertainment Centre during the tour supporting their hugely successful LP "Body and the Beat".

Considering this was recorded in 1984, you can guarantee that the clothes and the mullets are outrageous. What is undeniable is the quality of the music and the performance. Vocalist, the late Marc Hunter, owns the stage. His performance style, honed from years of bashing out gigs, seems suited to this large venue. He manages to get the crowd singing in unison on "April Sun In Cuba".

The days are gone when a local rock band could fill a 10,000 seat venue like the Sydney Ent Cent. Cold Chisel, INXS, Midnight Oil and Dragon all did it during the 1980s. The most recent band to do it was Powderfinger (if there were others, please correct me). Fame is a curious beast, and just over 10 years later, I witnessed the band play the stage in the food court of the newly opened Westfield shopping centre in Tuggerah on the Central Coast of NSW. Again, Marc owned the stage, and I had no idea he was not long for this world at the time...

I considered this gig was somewhat a fall from grace. In reality, it's hard to sustain a career at the heights of which they scaled in the 1980s. This video is a great reminder of just what a solid performing band they were.

Enjoy.

Remake/Remodel #7: C is For Cookie

What do you do, when you cover a song that is so indelibly stamped into the brains of about 3 generations of people, to make your version idiosyncratically yours?

Mess it up completely.

Seriously. If you're going to cover anything from Sesame Street, you know you're going to offend people if you don't do it justice. So when a thrash-punk band gets hold of it, you know it'll only end up one way - completely opposite to the way it is supposed to sound.

We all know and love the original. Everyone loves Cookie Monster. Gen X-ers and their parents heard this song for years and now GenY kids know it. It needs no introduction.

So when Boston hardcore punks released their cover, it was always going to be gloriously stupid. Short, fast and loud is the order of the day. But even though it clocks in at under 2 minutes, their version, in my view, is about 40 seconds too long. The joke gets old quickly. Yeah ok, it's funny the first couple of run throughs, but by the end you get a bit over it.

VERDICT: There's a certain amount of merit in recasting a song in such an outrageous way, and Slapshot do indeed deserve credit for that. It's a fun version. They just labour the point. The original is still unimpeachable. You can't help but smile your way through both versions.

Original:



Slapshot:

Remake/Remodel #6: Charlie Hunter Trio does Nirvana

In what appears to be a perfect fit for a segment titled "Remake/Remodel", today we look at Nirvana's "Come As You Are".

Much has been written of Nirvana's sound, how they intended to sound like the Pixies, emulating the soft quiet of their verses mixed with shrieking loudness in the choruses of their songs. It has even been mooted that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has a guitar riff that is a knockoff of "More Than A Feeling" by Boston. That is a statement that is not without credibility.

But Kurt Cobain had a habit of recycling and regurgitating. The riff to "Smells..." does have the same rhythm pattern as "More Than A Feeling", but the chords are different. It was different enough to avoid trouble, but "Come As You Are" was not so lucky.

The riff for this song was the subject of a lawsuit from British alternative band Killing Joke, who claimed that the riff to "Come as you Are" was a slowed down version of the riff in their song "Eighties". To my ears, Killing Joke appear to have a winning case.



It has also been speculated that this was one of the reasons that Kurt was so depressed before he died. He loved Killing Joke and didn't intend to rip them off. But we'll never know for sure. What we do know is that Killing Joke dropped the lawsuit in the wake of Kurt's death.

Musically it is a slow burner of a track, with the dark, heavily processed run of notes in the verse, with the heavy guitars making an appearance in the bridge section "Oh I swear that I don't have a gun...", giving a bit of light among the shade.

In the wake of Kurt's passing in 1994, there were a huge wave of tributes and covers. One of the more interesting ones, in my view, was a cover of "Come As You Are" by the Charlie Hunter Trio. Charlie Hunter is a jazz guitarist and this track was my first introduction to his work.

Charlie Hunter is amazing from the point of view that he plays a hybrid guitar with 3 bass strings and 5 guitar strings, enabling him to play lead guitar and bass lines all at once. It is truly remarkable what he does. In the intro to his version, he plays "Come As You Are" in the bass line, and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in the guitar line - all at once. I don't know how he does it, but it blows my mind.

VERDICT: I don't really have a favourite of the two. The original is great as it is. Charlie Hunter does a version that takes the bare bones of the original and takes it to a new place entirely. It does amazing things that I never though could be possible and is makes my head spin every time I hear it.

What do you think? Drop us a line in the comments below.

A Reflection on Grunge, 20 Years On

I tweeted on the weekend:

Nirvana never intended to change the world. But I'm bloody glad they did. #20years #RIPKurt
— Sound and the Fury (@sound_fury_pod) April 5, 2014

Kurt Cobain has been dead for 20 years now. And it is with some trepidation that I remember his passing. It is a contentious one that has confused, upset and infuriated people for years.

Kurt, and by extension, Nirvana, were not particularly innovative. Nor were they the most talented band in the world, nor were they the flag-bearers of any particular cause, mission, concept or idea.

What they were, however, were the right band at the right time. Music in 1991 was boring. If you lived outside of any capital city in Australia there was very little alternative media to amuse you. Triple J, the lone bastion of alternative music and culture, was only starting to go national, but most regional centres didn't have it yet. There was no internet as such. You had to make do with what the radio commercial stations fed you.

What was the prevailing musical fashion of the day in rock music in Australia?

Hair metal.

Motley Crue. Guns n' Roses. Skid Row. Aerosmith. Metallica. Poison. Warrant. Bon Jovi. RATT. WASP.

The music, the imagery, the costumes, the gimmickery, the wankery, the cookie-cutter feel to it all. It was stale by then. I was bored. Many, many other young people like myself were feeling the same.

Nirvana's "Nevermind" album, was issued with little fanfare in September 1991 around the same time as Metallica's self titled "Black" album and Guns 'n Roses' colossal ego-trip "Use Your Illusion". The industry wasn't expecting much from it: maybe it might sell gold (500,000 copies in the US). By January 1992, it had taken Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" off the top of the US Billboard album chart and the lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit number 1 on the Australian Singles chart, and stayed there for a number of weeks. Nobody saw it coming.

What was the net result of this? Michael Jackson struggled to have a number 1 album ever again. RATT, Motley Crue, Skid Row, WASP, Poison, Warrant and other hair-sprayed confections were blown out of the water. Independent music was given greater exposure, and a lot of people heard a lot of great music they would never have heard otherwise. Guns 'n Roses and Metallica survived it all. But G'nR failed to deliver a timely follow up and were quickly forgotten. Metallica did change their image and were pilloried for it. Bon Jovi changed their sound to be more commercial radio friendly and survived. Rock became alternative, and the alternative scene is still defining music trends to this day.

They'd changed the world without really trying.

The down side? Kurt Cobain himself really struggled to be the one everybody wanted a piece of. He struggled to reconcile this age-old facade that mega-selling bands have no artistic credibility. He couldn't reconcile the need to starve for your art with working to live. His depression got worse. The tortured artist became even more so. The illicit drugs messed up his mind until...

...that fateful day.

Kurt didn't need to go to the lengths he did. He had the world at his fingertips, the ear of music fans everywhere. The record company would have given him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wanted to. I've always said he could put out an album full of elephant farts and still have a million selling album: such is the amazing cache that the Nirvana/Cobain name carries. Everything he committed to vinyl is pure and honest - it was real, never contrived. He should never have worried about his artistic integrity: only when you become a parody of your former self on record do you need to worry about that. And there was no sense that that was on the horizon.

Kurt was a hero to people because he gave of himself - probably a little too much. Millions of people knew he was the real deal, and his honesty - in his lyrics and his songs - spoke volumes to people who were fed up of the manufactured idols on MTV; the useless politicians, and the self-indulgent wankers in hair metal bands singing about unattainable (for us, at least) women and other shit that has no relevance to us.

The problem was, he never wanted to be an idol. He was not a spokesperson for a generation of disaffected teenagers, and he knew it. He felt like a fraud. The public wanted him to be something he wasn't prepared to be. He was an average bloke in a rock band. The public knew that, but they wanted more.

No-one knows what goes through the minds of someone in such a low depressive state like that. It feels odd to celebrate someone who ended their life in the way they did. But that doesn't take away the value of the contribution they made to music during their lifetime.

I'm glad Nirvana and "Nevermind" changed the world. We're almost due for another one...

March 2014 Mixtape

image source: The Meaning of Larf


On this rainy Sydney Sunday afternoon, here for your wet weather enjoyment is 200+ amazing songs that constitute the March 2014 Sound and the Fury Spotify playlist.

Here's a sample of what you can expect:

• Brilliant Australian music tunes from: The Bamboos, The Beards, The Angels, Bored Nothing, Chase The Sun, a brilliant rarity from Cold Chisel, Easybeats, Flash In The Pan and heaps more.
• Jazz and Funk from Billy Cobham, Osibisa, The Lafayaette Afro Rock Band, Polar Bear and more
• Classics from The Yardbirds, ZZ Top, Status Quo, The HeeBeeGeeBees, The Jam, Jefferson Airplane and heaps more.
• New Music from Eagulls, Evil Blizzard, Real Estate, War On Drugs and heaps more

As per usual, play on shuffle, get your favourite food out, crank the volume and ENJOY!!!

The Musical History of Adelaide Part 3

Here is the final in our series of amazing talent from Adelaide, South Australia.

Kaleidoscope
Kaleidoscope are NOT the same band as the US psychedelic band of the 1960s. These guys play a kind of noisy, catchy post-grunge with a small degree of feminist leanings in the lyrics. Bassist Kylie Cowling and her partner Craig Lewis have been instrumental in nurturing many bands in the Adelaide area with showcase events like "Show Us Your Riffs" and producing music for other artists in their own studio.



The Superjesus
The Superjesus formed in 1994. They took their name in homage to the many bands who have "Super" and "Jesus" in their name (i.e. Supertramp, Superchunk, Supergrass, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Jesus Lizard, Jesus Jones et al). They had a sound that was equal parts Smashing Pumpkins-esque gutteral rumble and sweet songbird pop, thanks to the layers of overdriven guitars throughout their music, with Sarah McLeod's sweet vocals floating over the top. Their lineup was destabilised after founding member Chris Tennant left in 1999, but then Tim Henwood joined and the band went from strength to strength. But then he left and the band laboured on for a final album as a three piece before calling it a day in 2004.



Testeagles
The Testeagles were a band that fused hip-hop, rap, techno and metal into a furious blend. Known for their fiery live performances, they have been plagued with issues with record labels, resulting in most of the music not actually reaching the general public. Their only LP, "Non Comprehendus", issued in 2000, summed up their sound in the most intense, speaker-damaging fashion, riding the wave of Nu-Metal that was current at the time (and they did it better than most of the better known exponents of that style), but were dropped by their label not long after it was issued. They laboured for the next few years, picking up many shows on the Festival circuit and called it a day in 2008.



Groove Terminator
Groove Terminator is a hip-hop DJ and producer who achieved notoriety in the late 1990s-early 2000s with infectious party jams like "Here Comes Another One". He has also mixed a few Ministry of Sound compilations and is still a highly sought after performer on the club circuit.



The Mark Of Cain
The Mark Of Cain formed in 1984 by two brothers, both ex-Army members, John and Kim Scott. It took the band four years to get their first releases out, on Sydney indie label Phantom, and their popularity was at its peak between 1995 and 2002. Their sound is extremely heavy and aggressive, inspired by combat, with songs like "Battlesick" and "Ill At Ease". They are a ferocious live band, and can count among their fans such rock music heavyweights as Black Flag singer Henry Rollins.


The Audreys
The Audreys are a rootsy folk band formed in 2004. Usually consisting of two core members, lead singer Taasha Coates and guitarist Tristan Goodall, the band is often augmented with a number of session musicians and live players for tours. Their albums are highly rated by critics and they have a solid live following.



The Mad Turks from Istanbul
The Mad Turks from Istanbul started as a power-pop band featuring a young Charles Jenkins (now of Charles Jenkins and the Zhivagos) on vocals. They were signed to Greasy Pop records in 1987. After the release of their first record, Cafe Istanbul in 1988, they relocated to Melbourne and renamed themselves The Mad Turks. After the failure of their second album, "Toast" in 1990, the band split up and regrouped in 1992 under the name Icecream Hands, and went on to be far more successful, with the ARIA nominated album "Sweeter Than The Radio" in 1999.



Hilltop Hoods
Hilltop Hoods are a hip-hop collective from the Adelaide suburb of Eden Hills. They formed in 1991 and comprise of MC Suffa, MC Pressure and DJ Debris. They are now one of the most well known, if not THE most well known, Australian rappers, but they haven't had it easy. It took years for Australians to warm to the sound of Australians rapping in their own accent, with most people only accepting rap music performed by Americans (the nation who actually invented the form). Despite this, in 2006 their album "A Hard Road" was one of the best selling locally produced albums that year. Their last three album releases have shot to the top of the local album charts and they have a voracious live following.



This marks the end of our musical trip to Adelaide. We hope you have enjoyed it.

Next stop, we head west to Perth. See you then.

The Musical History of Adelaide Part 2

Welcome to Part Two of our stay in Adelaide during our Rock Around Australia trip.

Paul Kelly
It is beyond difficult to sum up the career and music of Paul Kelly in a short paragraph. However, Adelaide's bard du jour has been making uniquely Australian music for 35 years and he shows no signs of slowing down. He sings in a unique local drawl and his lyrics are fuse Dylan's wit and wordiness with, at times Tom Wait's world-weariness. As Molly Meldrum used to say, "Do yourself a favour" and check out some of his back catalog. Start here:



Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel started life under the name of Orange, and started gigging in Adelaide in 1973 before finally settling (if you could call it that) in Sydney in 1977. Fronted by Scottish-born singer Jimmy Barnes, their sound was shaped by Soul music and the blues, but it developed a tougher, more ragged edge from being in competition nightly on stage with bands like AC/DC and The Angels. The band went on to become one of the biggest selling bands in Australia, selling over 6 million records to a population of 23 million people.



Redgum
Redgum was started by four students of Adelaide's Flinders University in 1975. They have a strong satirical bent to their songs, which generally have a strict folk flavour. The subject matter of their songs often tackles corrupt politicians, unemployment, foreign ownership of Australian assets, consumerism and more. Their biggest hit was the story of two Vietnam Vets (a subject kept very much under the rug at the time) called "I Was Only 19" in 1983. Their second biggest hit is linked below, the playful skewering of youth tourism to Indonesia (as it seemed everybody was doing in 1984), "I've Been To Bali Too". They split in 1986.



Exploding White Mice
Exploding White Mice take their cues from the hard driving punk sound of The Saints and Radio Birdman. They started their career on influential Adelaide indie label Greasy Pop belting out fast three chord originals and covers of 60s instrumental and garage pop hits. They may not be household names in Australia but they made a healthy income from touring in Europe. They called it a day in the mid-1990s.



Swoop
Swoop made a name for themselves by taking the groovy retro funk of Sly and the Family Stone and Parliament/Funkadelic into the grunge era. They worked the groove hard and added some rap for good effect. The band issued the independent debut LP "Thriller" in 1993 before signing with a major label in 1994 to release their heavily funkified sophmore LP "The Woxo Principle". By this time, the rap influence was watered down somewhat, and there were some more sunshine pop and psychedelic influences contained within. The band issued another single in 1997 "Teenage Funkazoid" but since then very little has been heard of them...