The holidays are over, but I am once again reviewing
a band that is not current, because it kind of fits with the Star Wars theme of
the week. I read a reference about Oscar Isaac's former band, Blinking
Underdogs, and then I liked what I heard, so I'm going for it.
Blinking Underdogs is a ska-punk band formed by
students at the University of Miami School of Music. They released their first
full-length album independently in 2001. There is also a note from 2001 on
their archive page that Oscar has gone off to Julliard so they are taking a
break, and Alan (Mills, trombone) has gone also, and it isn't really the same
band without horns (it wouldn't be) so they are going to be a different band.
Before I get into the music, I want to say some
things about that note. It sounds so familiar, remembering my college days and
how every time you ran into some people their band name had changed because of
member shifts. These things happen, but also the existence of an archive seems
brilliant to me. There are so many bands that I wish I could go back and listen
to again, where I am lucky if I happened to pick up the cassette tape back
then, that finding that this music has been captured saved is a good thing.
I enjoyed the music overall. My favorite tracks were
"Away", "Blue Alishia", and "Trailer Park".
"Blue Alishia" may actually be the better song, but I am drawn to the
class consciousness and loyalty of "Trailer Park".
Some of the tracks seem to lose strength by being
too experimental. I love the intro on "Salvation", and it has some
other elements that are really good but feel mismatched in their almost
cacophonous blend. Still, these are music students, so some experimentation
would be almost mandatory, and with the track that seems to be called
"artist", while it sounds very different from the other songs it goes
to interesting places. (Some tracks show a strong jazz influence.)
There are more links available that you would expect
for a band that has not been together since 2001, though some of them seem
hastily thrown up by Star Wars fans. The most useful sites were the archive and
AllMusic.
Those are listed below, but I have also done some
searches to try and find out the whereabouts of other band members. I got the
idea after seeing an interview where Isaac said that the bass player, Nick
(Speck, also the one who write the note on the archive) plays for Orgy now.
Checking them out, that is a pretty good band, and I may want to do a full
review of them later. (With some names you need to be careful on your search
parameters.) Anyway, this is what I could find. I hope I got the right people.
Oscar Isaac (vocals, guitar)
Okay, we kind of know what he is doing now, but
there is a fan page with a section on music and you could start there, or maybe
watch Inside Llewyn Davis:
Nick Speck (bass)
Apparently Orgy isn't his only other band. I will
probably get back to him.
Bill Sommer (drums)
Apparently also an author now.
Alan Mills (trombone)
All I could find was that he was also in a band
called The Know How, but that came before Blinking Underdogs.
Keith Cooper (sax)
There is a nice bio here with his endorsement of a
reed.
Matt LaPlant (guitar)
It looks like he might be doing sound mixing now.
Some similar names made finding information on him more difficult.
And here are the Blinking Underdog links:
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