November 7, 2006

YouTube Rodeo: Black Tambourine's "Throw Aggi Off The Bridge"



We love YouTube. We were minding our own business last night looking at clips of Seam totally slay at the Touch + Go 25th Anniversary thing from a couple months ago when we thought, hey, we'll just pop Black Tambourine into the search box for kicks. And lo and behold there is a clip for the band's dreamfuzz classic "Throw Aggi Off The Bridge," which is sitting atop this item. The clip is pretty student filmy, but all the best clips from the early '90s were. Even so, among all the shots of bridges and skylines is actually footage of the band in the studio, which from an indie musicological standpoint is priceless. At least to hardcore nerds like us. For those of you asking who the hell Black Tambourine is, here is how its label summarizes them:

"Conceived as an explicitly pop band at a time when pop bands were pretty rare in America, Black Tambourine wore their influences on their sleeves: The Jesus & Mary Chain, of course, but also folks like Phil Spector, Smokey Robinson, Love, The Ramones, Shop Assistants, The Pastels, 14 Iced Bears, Orange Juice and the list goes on. Though they only played a handful of gigs in their brief career, their two singles on Slumberland and Audrey's Diary wielded a large influence, and were key artifacts in the birth of US indie pop."

Wikipedia also has a very succinct summary here. Note in particular the band members' pre- and post-BT projects, which includes some of our other early '90s favorites: Whorl, Velocity Girl and Glo-worm. You may recall we rhapsodized about Whorl here over the summer. And we talked about Black Tambourine's label Slumberland here in September. Speaking of, if you know what's good for you, you'll head over to Slumberland and snatch up the BT MP3s they're offering. Actually, we'll save you the trip and just hotlink the band's shoegazer-tastic "Black Car" and the tune that got us onto this tangent in the first place.

Black Tambourine -- "Black Car" -- By Tomorrow 7"
Black Tambourine -- "Throw Aggi Off The Bridge" -- Complete Recordings
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[Buy Black Tambourine's Complete Recordings from ITunes; stream it at Rhapsody]

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1 comment:

mgrooves said...

I believe that the bespectacled bassist on the right is Slumberland honcho Mike Schulman. And Archie Moore's rocking out in the background, too. Great. find.