Lost in the ’90s: One Dove
Thursday, October 9th, 2008 by John C. Hughes
Scottish trio One Dove found themselves branded with the trip-hop label after releasing their debut Morning Dove White in 1993. It wasn’t a label undeserved, really, since the group’s expansive, five-minute plus opuses tended to obscure the catchy hooks underneath layers and layers of shuffled beats, foggy synths, and in the case of the original “Guitar Paradise Mix” of the album’s lead single, “White Love,” squealing electric guitar.
Where the “Guitar Paradise Mix” meanders for more than ten minutes, the Stephen Hague radio mix of “White Love” (download) gets right to the point, pushing the melody to the front, beefing up the dancier aspects of the song and putting vocalist Dot Allison in center stage. The tinkering resulted in a decent-sized modern rock radio hit for the band, a dance floor smash, and a video in regular rotation on MTV, no small feat for a dance act in the age of grunge:
Same deal with Morning Dove White’s second single, “Breakdown” - the original “Cellophane Boat Mix” (download) was a much more dubby affair with a drowsy Allison vocal, while whiz kid Hague’s superior radio mix (download) strips the song down to its hooky essentials, energizing the vocals in the process. “Breakdown” also has some neat wordplay, as Allison laments a lost love to the moon:
I remember the night you left me
The moon was full, I felt empty
Tides and werewolves may be turned
But you don’t know how to cry (more…)




It may be the height of over-sharing to admit this, but Revenge of the Nerds was a movie that really spoke to me in high school. As a computer-loving, comic book-collecting, Dungeons & Dragons-playing sophomore, I certainly related to Lewis and Gilbert and their struggle and desire to fit in. Maybe I wasn’t as persecuted as they were, but I certainly felt a kinship for being teased for being smart and not athletic (not that I was any sort of genius, mind you). While the movie was meant to be another Animal House-style comedic romp, the background and weight given to the lead characters led to a few actually somewhat poignant moments.
Remember when the Hustle swept through discos everywhere? People were taking Hustle classes, the nightly news reported on the fad, there were instructional records and books. Hey, remember when everyone did the bump to, say, “Lady Bump?” How about in 1977, when everyone was doing the latest dance, the “Crazy Thing,” to Jeff Lynne’s “Doin’ That Crazy Thing?”
Y’know, if you name your kid Herbert or Poindexter, you’re just setting that child up for a lifetime of teasing and ridicule. And if you name your band Kajagoogoo, well, you can expect a certain amount of critical derision.
Board games, candy, AWFUL boys, Nancy Drew books and girls who sing – these are a TON of my favorite things!
What’s up, every bizzle? It’s Jizzle-ohn in the hizzouse with another Lost in the Izzle.
Hardcore David Bowie fans are probably familiar with the name Ava Cherry, but for the benefit of everyone else, Ava was Bowie’s lover in the early to mid ’70s, as well as one of his backup singers in the Astronettes during the Diamond Dogs/Young Americans Tour. Bowie had plans for Cherry and the other Astronettes, producing an album for the trio that was New Wave before the term existed. It also ended up being shelved for twenty years when things with their mutual management MainMan went sour.
Combining shoegaze and dreampop with straight-ahead power pop, Washington D.C. indie-rock darlings Unrest were the brainchild of Mark Robinson, founder of the TeenBeat label. After a few post-punk experimental years, Unrest tamed their sound a bit (with plenty of more unorthodox tracks here and there) and snagged a distribution deal with famed 4AD Records, which was itself distributed in the U.S. by Warner Brothers. This is a roundabout way of basically saying their 1993 album, Perfect Teeth, was the first to get a major label push which resulted in the band getting some MTV play on “120 Minutes.”
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