Today’s disc is the 1990 cover of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For by The Chimes. This was a big favourite with soul fans and chilling out ravers in that year and it was a hit in the charts too (number 6 in the UK). The Chimes had other lesser hits (Heaven and Love Comes to Mind) and one album (The Chimes). They were very much in the same vein as bands like Soul II Soul (and in fact their first single 1-2-3 was produced by Jazzie B and Nellee Hooper). Here is today’s track:
I was surprised to learn (all these years later) that this particular band called The Chimes* are two-thirds a Scottish band (James Locke and Mike Peden, the latter worked with the Lighthouse Family after this). I’ve lived in Scotland now for over 20 years but have never heard them mentioned in lists of Scottish bands. The singer, Pauline Henry, was a Jamaican-born Londoner and you can hear her talking about joining the band, and this track in particular, on this episode of the BBC radio show Soul Music. Each episode takes a song or piece of music and talks about the band/singer/composer but ordinary people’s relationship to the piece as well. It’s a great series, highly recommended, and it covers many genres, not just soul.
This song was written by U2, a band I think most of you will have heard of (oh, and they’re Irish). The song is from their album The Joshua Tree (1987) and was a hit single (number 1 in the US, 6 in the UK). I was always fairly neutral about U2 (didn’t love them, didn’t hate them) and I remember things like seeing them on The Tube in their early days and live footage of their gigs back when Bono seemed to be permanently up on the scaffolding. My favourite single of theirs was probably 1988’s Angel of Harlem but I never particularly sought out their music (and you didn’t have to in the ’80s, it was everywhere). Here is their version of today’s song (and OMG they look like babies – if ones in really big hats in some cases):
The Chimes cover of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For got me just at the right time, in the right way, and I’ve always really loved it – it feels more knowing than the average pop song. Much has been said about how Bono himself rated Henry’s vocal on this version (and he is quoted as having said something along the lines of “at last someone’s come along to sing it properly”). The lyrics can resonate with many of us much of the time and I particularly associate this one with long recovery sessions after very long nights out – in this case mainly in West London in the very early 1990s (I had a friend living there around this time and I used to visit her about once a month). We would listen to The Chimes (this track, Heaven and Love Comes to Mind), Innocence (Natural Thing), The Family Stand (Ghetto Heaven), Soul II Soul (various), Sunshine on a Rainy Day by Zoe, Hippy Chick by Soho and many more. It can take a long time to come down when you’ve been up really high and you need a lot of music to keep you company, soothe you, speak to you.
Again, I bought these 12” singles some years later, to play on the radio or in the backrooms of noisy clubs. In 1990 I had the cassette of the album The Chimes, played it in the car mostly, but both are long gone now (the cassette and the car).
Anyway, see you tomorrow when we’ll be taking to the air.
*There was another band called The Chimes in the US, a doo wop group from Brooklyn, started in the 1950s.
For the first intro post to this series go here.
No comments:
Post a Comment