What better way to start 2024 than with the man who sung New Year's Day?
Yes, it's everyone favourite singer named after a Dublin barber shop - Bono - who with U2, recorded the song New Year's Day in late 1982 ahead of their 1983 album War.
And that will kick off another of our musical journeys through Six Degrees Of Kevin Shields - we are taking a meander from our beginning with Bono, through to the king of shoe gaze, via some pretty random musical connections.
New Year's Day was released as a single by U2 in January 1983, reaching UK number ten, making it their breakthrough hit. It had originally started life as a love song for Bono's (Paul Hewson) wife Alison, but by time of recording had morphed into a tribute to the Polish Solidarity movement.
The music video had been shot in Sweden in December the previous year, directed by fellow Irishman Meiert Avis. He directed a number of other videos for the band, including Where The Streets Have No Name and With or Without You. He has also worked with the likes of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande and Steve Earle - and produced commercials for Toyota, Pioneer and Lexus.
U2: New Year's Day - here
(Official music video)
The scene in the New Year's Day with the four band members riding on horseback across a snowy landscape, is not all it seems. The lads were so cold from filming the previous day, that their horseback roles were in fact filled by four Swedish teenage girls!
Meiert Avis directed the video for Back To The Wall from the 1988 album Copperhead Road by Steve Earle. This was his third album, and Earle is credited as being one of the pioneers of the alt-country scene (with bands like Uncle Tupelo), fusing hard rock, rockabilly, punk and folk music into what Rolling Stone called "power twang". His tunes have been covered by many of the folk / country greats, including Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Levon Holm, Bob Seger and Emmylou Harris. The closing track on Copperhead Road, Nothing But A Child, was a duet with Maria McKee.
Steve Earle: Back To The Wall - here
(Official music video)
Maria McKee was another early mover in the scene that would become known as Americana, forming her band Lone Justice in 1982. They put out two albums before splitting in 1987.
Interestingly, at the age of nineteen, she wrote the song A Good Heart, which became a UK number one for ex-Undertone, Feargul Sharkey. She went on to sing backing vocals on Robbie Robertson's debut eponymously titled solo album and feature in the video for Somewhere Down The Crazy River, which was directed by Martin Scorsese.
Her 1989 solo album, Maria McKee, included legendary folkster Richard Thompson on guitar and Steve Wickham (The Waterboys) on fiddle. But it was her 1990 hit, Show Me Heaven, that she is probably most remembered for. This featured on the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman film, Days Of Thunder. And another of her songs made the movies in 1994, when Quentin Tarantino selected If Love Is A Red Dress, Hang Me In Rags for his classic, Pulp Fiction.
Maria McKee: Show Me Heaven - here
(Official music video)
Also included on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack is a cover of Neil Diamond's Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon, by alt-rock band, Urge Overkill. They were formed in Chicago in 1986 by Nash Kato (Nathan Kaatrud) and Eddie Roeser, while they were at Northwestern University. They took the band name from lyrics in the song Funkentelechy by Parliament.
Urge Overkill: Girl, You'll Be A Woman - here
(Live in 1994)
The song in question originally appears on their 1992 Stull EP, their last independent release on Touch And Go Records, before signing with Geffen. The EP title refers to the Stull Cemetery just west of Lawrence, Kansas, a place steeped in local legend as one of the seven portals to hell! Lovely.
Urge Overkill were one of the support bands that featured on Pearl Jam's tour following their second album, Vs. The US tour was notable as they kicked off their long running feud with Ticketmaster over the inflation of ticket prices through various admin fees, that were pricing many fans out of live music. The tour was also almost wrapped up early, following the death of close friend, Kurt Cobain, in April 1994. Other support acts across the tour included The Rollins Band, Butthole Surfers, Mudhoney and American Music Club.
American Music Club formed in San Francisco in 1983, with Mark Eitzel joined by Scott Alexander (guitar), Greg Bonnall (drums) and Brad Johnson (bass) - although they would subsequently go through many line up changes, with Eitzel being the only ever present. Their 1985 debut, The Restless Stanger, is seen as the first ever slowcore album - slowcore being a minimalistic and atmospheric sub-genre of the alt-rock scene.
American Music Club: Room Above The Club - here
(Audio only)
Eitzel would later co-write the song Incidental One, for Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip - one of a series of albums put out by the AIDS organisation, Red Hot. The song featured him reciting his lyrics over a guitar piece laid down by none other than..... KEVIN SHIELDS.
Kevin Shields & Mark Eitzel: Incidental One - here
(Audio only - short and atmospheric)
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