Timbuk 3: Sample The Dog
[purchase]
I've blogged about Timbuk 3 in more personal terms here before, citing my mid-adolescent self, using the work of these early alternative radio, mostly-acoustic new wavers to mine the story between us, and how we find ourselves in music.
But though other tracks on sophomore album Eden Alley are more radio-ready, and still others more edgy and weird, this is the cut that I spun more than anything that year, out of sheer joy. It's nothing deep or wise or pithy, really - just a typically cynical, self-reflective song about intergenerational dissonance in the emerging cable-TV age, and about sampling, and its ability to resonate the inner workings of the heart, with a surprisingly slow, syrupy undertow that proves just how broad and viable the future of alt electro-acoustic hybrid music would be, released on the cusp of the mass market hip hop emergence. The song, and its accompanying video, are fun, and boingy, and just dark enough to matter; a perfect way to access memory lane, and a perfect sample of what music on the edge of folk, pop, and college alternative was doing in 1988.
