Bourgeois Tagg - Bourgeois Tagg

I heard "Mutual Surrender (What a Wonderful World)" on the radio - once. It was a nifty track that appealed to me enough to look for the album. I bought the CD and the other song I liked that made it onto a few mixes was "Dying to be Free" an oddly haunting track that really appealed to me. A year later the band was seemingly everywhere with their infectious "I Don't Mind at All" a song barely three minutes long that sounded like nothing else the band had recorded. To many it was the biggest bait and switch since Coke had tried to re-brand back in 1985. Okay maybe not that big, but I had a friend who bought the album thinking he was getting the new Beatles and declared it was a huge steamy pile of poop, aside from one great song. I don't have Yoyo on vinyl (I have it on CD), but I did recently find a sealed copy of their debut, and I know I already have it on CD and I'm not supposed to be doubling up, but come on, a sealed copy? It was cheap too, which made it impossible to pass up.

This isn't something I'd listen to for a long time. I was scanning the back cover and trying to remember for than the two songs I'd mentioned and it was a blank. Now to be upfront there was a time when I was buying a lot of albums and I didn't really spend a lot of time with much of what I was accumulating. Everything got a chance, but if I didn't hear anything that I thought was awesome, I'd generally shelve it and generally leave it to gather dust. That I remember more than one song here is a plus.

So in essence I'm finally giving this a proper intentional listen. History will has already passed judgment on the band, and it's not a gushing blog about a band no one really heard in the first place is going to make a difference. The same is true if I decided to be as dismissive as my old friend Scott and label this a steaming pile of crap.

Let's set the record straight and give props where props are due. This is a really good record. It's very '80s, and it's very cool. Structurally the guys are colouring a little out of the lines the result being a surprisingly organic feeling album that still used a lot of technology. It's a rock record with an alternative feel. This was probably better received on college radio, but that seldom translated into wider success. Then again success is a relative thing. Many of the bands who've impacted me had little impact on the charts or radio - but they still had an audience and a fan base.

The band was anchored by Brent Bourgeois and Larry Tagg and were augmented by Lyle Workman on guitar, who's style was wonderfully suited to this style of music, Scott Moon on keyboards and Mike Urbano on drums. The guys were all solid players, and almost all of the guys went on to other endeavours after the second album failed to gain a wider audience.

This was a pleasant surprise and I found myself really enjoying the album. From the opening track "Changed" to the oddly progressive "Let the War Begin" all of the songs are solid, and there aren't any misfires to distract from the experience. As to the two songs I did remember, they were even better in the context of the rest of the album.