AN EMOTIONAL FISH
An Emotional Fish is an alternative rock band from Dublin, Ireland. An Emotional Fish were formed in 1988, and consisted of Gerard Whelan (lead vocals, percussion), Martin Murphy (drums, percussion), David Frew (guitars, vocals), and Enda Wyatt (bass, vocals, keyboards). Their musical influences include David Bowie, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, and Dolly Parton. (More from Wikipedia)
An Emotional Fish, An Emotional Fish – Here is the story on this Irish band according to Allmusic; I knew nothing about them myself at the time: “Since they come from Dublin, are righteously political and their first two singles were on U2’s Mother record label, An Emotional Fish is frequently written off as a blatant U2 imitator; and there is no denying that they owe a large debt to those Irish superstars. While their music has the same droning guitar of U2, there are more Celtic touches than U2 at a similar stage, along with straighter pop hooks. Unfortunately, they were involved in a nasty scandal in the U.K. involving Radio 1. After that, their debut album was massacred by the critics; and the band essentially vanished, releasing records like 1993’s Junk Puppets and 1996’s Sloper to little notice.” What I have is their debut album, An Emotional Fish; the article on that album, with a rating of 4½ stars, has a different story: “The disappearance of An Emotional Fish was one of the great disappointments of the 1990s. Released in September of 1990, An Emotional Fish likely was a victim of the Rattle and Hum era U2 backlash.” Since Allmusic is written by a host of writers, there are sometimes different points of view shown. In any case, despite the odd name (hardly any band names start with “a” or “an”, other than A Flock of Seagulls – perhaps they got the idea from the 1988 hit film A Fish Called Wanda?), this is probably the best album that I got that day.
(December 2015)
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
December 2015 – 1990’s pop/punk band AMANDA JONES; Story of the Month on the early American singles by the Beatles; also, Rochelle Harper, Lisa Loeb, 3 Doors Down, Level with the Ground, Chris Stamey with Yo La Tengo, Meri Wilson, Bobby Brown, the Cruzados / the Plugz, Terence Trent d’Arby, An Emotional Fish, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Hunters & Collectors, Looters, Shakespear’s Sister, Robert Tepper, Y Kant Tori Read / Tori Amos, Ugly Kid Joe, Paul Young, the Rolling Stones, Mandy Brix, the Joneses.
(Year 7 Review)
