Hawks64:
1-
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)- Metallica
JMLs secret identity:
2-
Sunshine Day- Osibisa (Ghana)
John Maddens Lunchbox:
3-
A Wanderer In The Sleepy City- Wu Qing-feng (feat. Rufus Wainwright) (Taiwan)
ditkaburgers:
4-
I Touch Myself- Divinyls
higgins:
5-
Don't Dream It's Over- Crowded House (New Zealand)
Oliver Humanzee:
6-
Fur Immer- Neu!
AAABatteries:
7-
Wake Me Up- Avicii
Todays (hopefully) spoiler free talking points
1- Denmark is an interesting country for this format. With the vast body of work for Metallica vs less credentialled artists. I will be curious if anyone is keeping a tally of artists from countries (havent checked the spreadsheet yet) and times chosen.
2- In doing research for this I looked at books on singles teleased and where the artists came from and Osibisa came up from Ghana with the song I chose. Stupidly i neglected to do much research with this band. They were fairly big on albums charts in the early 70s, UK, US and Australia, but curiously no singles. This song is nice enough and all, but theres gotta be better stuff on their early albums. Albums dont go to #55 in the US, #11 in the UK and #13 in Australia and then repeat the process with their next albums without singles, whats on there?
3- I had Taiwan locked and loaded with a great rock song a taiwanese friend played to me 3 years ago. Only problem was I couldnt remember the name of the band or song. So i reached out to my friend and she couldnt remember either. Dammit. Research back to square one. I had stumbled across this Rufus number shortly before Krista mentioned Rufus in this thread so rather than spend countless time researching further, took the easy single. Its good enough I guess.
4- We see the Divinyls again. I kmow opinion is pretty divided on this song, but if you ever heard Chrissie Amphlett speak you wouldnt begrudge her any success. Shes from a really bad upbringing and dedication, hard work and the right collaborator got her where she got. You cannot understand how bad the Australian music scene was for female rock vocalists at the time. Gone too soon.
5- I think I wrote in the 1977 part 2 thread about how Neil Finn progressed from useless member of Split Enz to its singer and chief songwriter with the support and encouragement of his older brother Tim. Mentors like that in the music business are hard to find, but Neils transition from Split Enz running out of steam into Crowded House is astonishing. Neil improved in leaps and bounds with his underrated collaborators and its no stretch to say he is a songwriting genius. He makes the incredibly difficult so smooth and easy on the ear.
6-its funny how Neu went from being former members of early Kraftwerk, to outpacing them early in their careers, but once Kraftwerk too off with Autobahn, they sort of packed it in. The work of legendary producer Conny Plank is evident here and a quick look at his discography shows that Plank was a much sought after producer who artists would see over and over again. Kraftwerk, Neu, Can, Ultravox, Eurythmics etc. even Devo got their first album done in his studio. Neu continuing woukd have been fun to see but their body of work is still the envy of many
7-Avicii was lost to us way too soon. For Euro DJs to break through the mainstream is no easy task and his best work may have been ahead of him. Sweden was too crowded to use on him, but he was in the conversation. A very talented man.
