July 30, 2007

750 Times The Same Song: It's All About The Lilys

Lilys[This is our 750th post. We're celebrating by fixating on one of our favorite bands, Kurt Heasley's long-running musical nebula known as Lilys. As we hold the band in such high esteem, we expect the Lilys' music is a subconscious yard stick we measure everything against. Weird but true. -- Ed.]

We've swapped emails with people lately about the Lilys' transcendent guitar bliss-out "Ginger" being used in the soundtrack to a recent car commercial. We certainly love hearing what is perhaps our favorite song of all time unexpectedly pop up on the TeeVee. Still, we dislike having it tied to the promotion of a luxury brand that the reductionist in us believes exists solely to enslave blah blah blah (incidentally, "Ginger" was also used to promote a popular branded fragrance in the mid-'90s). But we digress. Our point is, we were looking around for the car commercial to post when we learned that the Lilys' MySpace hacienda has been updated of late and is offering for free download the amazing tracks "The Hermit Crab" and "Dandy." The former is from the peerless 1995 record Eccsame The Photon Band, and the latter from perhaps the best EP ever released, 1994's A Brief History Of Amazing Letdowns. To save you the trip, we're posting the two tracks below. Both records were released on Spin-Art and to our knowledge both records are out of print. Fortunately, they are available at ITunes and Rhapsody (come on EMusic, pony up for the Spin-Art catalog -- especially the Small Factory stuff, which no one seems to have digitally).

Curiously, the Spin-Art Records web site seems to have disappeared; the label does maintain a MySpace dojo, but we think eschewing a real web site is an odd choice for such an established label (especially since they haven't logged into their page since April). Did the label shut down when that one fellow started TuneCore? No matter, what is important to know today is that ITunes has for sale the Lilys record The Lilys, which is the UK version of Precollections with three additional tracks recorded with producer Mike Musmanno. This record isn't available domestically, even though it appears Rainbow Quartz was involved with the release somehow, so unless you want to pay import prices, ITunes is your best choice for getting The Lilys. As far as an update on the band, the Lilys' MySpace suggests Mr. Heasley relocated to Florida at some point last year. There's no word about future recordings, although there is one live date listed: Nov. 23 in Somerset, England.

Lilys -- "Dandy" -- A Brief History Of Amazing Letdowns
Lilys -- "The Hermit Crab" -- Eccsame The Photon Band
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[buy Lilys records from ITunes here]

Lilys: InterWeb | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

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