The Goodbye NYC, Goodbye USA Theme Festival: Day Two

As Day One illustrated, there's a bit of irony in the Goodbye Festival songs, in that the vast majority are by non-American artists, much less ones that are New York-based. Well, my countrymen will get their day, but for the moment, we're going to keep that non-American theme with today's featured artists: Swing Out Sister and Pizzicato Five.

It was only recently that I came to the conclusion that Pizzicato Five & Swing Out Sister are relatively similar, and have an almost symbiotic relationship in my mind. Pizzicato Five is basically Swing Out Sister if they had continued down that pop pathway and not switched to jazz/soul back in 1992/1994.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Swing Out Sister's It's Better to travel was one of the first albums I remember buying. Everybody knows Breakout from that record, but I found the subsquent songs much more exciting.




Their second album, Kaleidoscope World was even better. Since the videos didn't make major inroads onto US television, my memories of the album are almost completely linked to listening to the album in my Walkman on the way to the airport. (Nearly all the time I was on my way to New York.)







Given my profession, it's odd that Swing Out Sister has no real lyrical hold on me. Quite honestly, lyrics are not their strong suit. They are a bit like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, not meant to be deconstructed, but merely enjoyed.

SOS undertook a stylistic change in 1992 with the album notgonnachange, which I'll admit is not my favourite, although jazz/house/pop would probably leave me panting for more today, at the time it was released I was 13, overweight, awkward, and feeling relatively down on myself. (It's amazing I didn't go completely into grunge during the 90s.) The last thing I probably wanted to see was a happy boho Corrine Drewery dancing in some pastel town. Yet, I remember cracking a pleasant smile the first time I saw the video for Am I The Same Girl? So perhaps it was just what I needed.

Roughly around the same time that Swing Out Sister decided to confirm their new sound with The Living Return (the lead off single, their cover of La La (Means I Love You) had one trippy video, but I didn't see it until years later.) Pizzicato Five started appearing in the US music shops. It was like kismet, the same cosmopolitan image of Swing Out Sister combined with 1960s pop influences and in Japanese! (Which meant that I could make the song mean anything to me, since my Japanese was--and still is--not entirely fluent.)







They were definitely a niche band in the US--this was the mid 90s, remember, and got next to no play on MTV which was grunge to the core. I actually was partly on the grunge bandwagon (mostly due to Soundgarden and Soul Asylum), but Pizzicato Five became my "rebel music." While all my classmates were driving around listening to whatever flannel-clad band held the top 40 spot, I was listening to P5 and their poppy music.







(Did one of the chefs in the last video look like Takao Tajima to anyone else?)

Pizzicato Five is also associated with a recent darker period in my life, albeit indirectly. Akiko Wada covered their song Triste (悲しい歌 or "sad song") sometime ago. During a particularly low period, I attempted suicide and had put on my mp3 player to try to enjoy what I thought were the my last moments alive. Well, Triste came on and I found I couldn't go through with it. I don't recall a lot of detail as to why, but what I do remember is hearing her sing the song as if issuing a challenge to any and all who tried to keep her down.




I don't necessarily think I would've gotten the same umph from the original version, though it's pleasant in its own AM radio easy listening way.




For today's closing video, we go back to Swing Out Sister. Their 1997 album Shapes and Patterns coincided with my graduation from high school and from Wisconsin. The lead single Somewhere in the World became my own personal theme for moving on into the great unknown. It still is today.



Next time: H.O.U.S.E. N.Y.C. (and London)