The 15 year mystery... the U2-sound-a-like

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Carmanah

Carmanah

The Fly
Joined
Apr 15, 2001
Messages
134
Location
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Funny enough, I posted this a long time ago on Interference and it brought up some lovely discussions, but nobody was able to solve this crazy mystery.

So the story goes :)

In 1993 I recorded a song which, at the time, I thought instinctively was a new U2 song (Achtung/Zooropa-era). Hey, I was 12 years old at the time. ;) It had Bono's character and Edge's guitar and the whole Achtung Baby vibe going on... upon first listen, you'd think it was U2 too, in 1993!

I taped the song off a Vancouver (Canada) mainstream radio station in the middle of the afternoon. (Recently a former DJ of the station confirmed that it was recorded on Z95.3 FM, which was where you could hear U2, Lenny Kravitz, House of Pain, etc - those kinds of hits.) Unfortunately the DJ never announced the band or the song, but at the time I figured I'd find it sooner or later.

That never happened.

So the song sounds SOOO much like U2, but it's not U2.

It's not a U2 rarity - it was played on mainstream radio in the afternoon.

It's not a compilation featuring Bono or Edge - if it was, we'd know by now.

It's not a bootleg because again, it was being played on mainstream radio. The crappy recording (especially the first second or two) is the result of taping the song on a warped cassette and then making an mp3 out of it using crappy input cables.

It was taped on the radio in early 1993, meaning that the song had to be recorded in 1993 or earlier.

So here's the song.

It sounds like U2 at times, it's uncanny. This is why I really want to find out who it is. Who sounded like U2 during 1993, but wasn't U2? I'm curious to find out!

The lyrics, if you can figure them out, are not on any search engine. Try Googling them, and you'll just come back to my own forum postings trying to figure out this mystery.

I have a feeling the band is a one hit wonder that had a partial hit in the early 90's, and that was that. It was likely a Canadian band, but who knows, right?

I've asked countless DJ's (club/radio) and some die-hard musical trivial gurus who really have no clue.

For those that are curious, here's the song:

*link removed by Bonochick*

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! :angel:
 
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Strange... just add a dot mp3 to the end of it and it will work.

*link removed by Bonochick*

If that doesn't work, I tried uploading it to the site you recommended:

*link removed by Bonochick*
 
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Wow. I listened, and I've never heard it before. I'm very well versed in rock from that era, and I'm from Ontario, so I know most Canadian bands who were around back then, too. The singer's got a real David Gilmourish Young Lust thing happening for the first 40 seconds. It sounds like the bastard child of Floyd and U2. Could it be some regional one hit wonder? Was it even a hit, did you ever hear it on the radio again?

Good luck. I'm curious too.

ETA - okay, something about this song sorta vaguely reminded me of Moist. I checked to see if they were even around back then, and it turns out that they were, they formed in '92, wrote and recorded an indie cassette in '93, and were signed and recorded their first album in '94. I wonder if this could be something from the '93 work, and a DJ heard it and liked it. The singer doesn't really sound David Usher-ish, but who knows what he sounded like before he recorded in a studio, he may have been emulating other singers like Bono and Gilmour. And, Moist are from Vancouver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moist


Eta again - I just listened to some early Moist, and I really don't think the vocalist of your song is David Usher. :huh:
 
Carmanah said:
Strange... just add a dot mp3 to the end of it and it will work.

*link removed by Bonochick*

If that doesn't work, I tried uploading it to the site you recommended:

*link removed by Bonochick*
Click to expand...

MP3 tag worked! Does sound a lot like U2, and the singer does have a Gilmour thing going for a bit.
No clue who the hell it is, though. Now I wanna know. :waiting:
 
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VintagePunk said:
It's shit like this that keeps me up at night. :scream:
Click to expand...

Tell me about it! You're not the one who's been looking for it for over 15 years? ;)

BTW - I found my old posting from a LONG time ago:

http://forum.interference.com/f288/can-you-id-song-59178.html

Also... it's a bit funny about David Usher of Moist, as during the summer of 1993, the local Vancouver rock station 99.3 The Fox actually did play Moist's demo tape on the air. The reason I remember this is because they had a song called "Picture Elvis" that I particularly liked so I kept a mental note. Later on I was at Thunderbird Stadium for this Canada Day show (my first ever concert, ha!) and it was a show that had bands like the Pursuit of Happiness, the Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan (as a relative unknown), Snow (ha!), the Violent Femmes, etc... performing on the big stage. At the back of the stadium next to the Pepsi Taste Test booth was this tiny showcase tent... and I heard the opening notes to "Picture Elvis". Immediately I recognized the band as Moist.

So... there is a slim chance that the mystery song is in fact some local Vancouver band circa the early 90's that only had a demo that was somehow played once or twice... and I was "lucky" enough to tape it.

I do know for a fact that I heard the mystery song twice. I only taped it once, however.

As well, in my early teenage years, I was quite the fan of Moist, and no... that song was not a Moist song.

It really had to be an obscure band that didn't last beyond 93 or wasn't popular enough to have "when I left you, you said you loved me" immortalized into a Google search.

What's driving me crazy is that I too am very familiar with music trivial, especially local Vancouver bands, and bands from the early 90's... and generally never have to resort to 15 year searches online. But even Narduar the Human Serviette hasn't a clue...

... and it makes me want to search more!!
 
Downloading it now.

Did you ever call the radio station when you heard the song being played?
 
I love a good mystery.

Last year I had a similar kind of revelation. There was a song I first heard in mid-1995 on AM radio (of all places!) when I woke up one morning. I had the chorus with me for about 12 years without ever hearing the song again and I was never aware of the artist or title of the song (I assumed "With My Fingertips", as that was part of the main lyric).

Last year, I borrowed a copy of a Greatest Hits by this band of whom I liked about 2songs, and I scanned over the tracklisting and I saw "Fingertips" listed there. It finally clicked - I thought the vocalist sounded a wee bit familiar! I chucked the CD in the stereo and skipped to track 9, and I'd finally had my second listen of the song! Was an amazing thing. A real Cold Case, but it's great when you finally unsolve the mystery.

For the record: Fingertips - Things Of Stone And Wood.


I'll have a listen to this U2-esque song, though I doubt I will be able to shed any more light cause it's probably a Canadian band.
 
Carmanah, we don't allow people to post links like that.

http://forum.interference.com/f224/interference-policies-rules-187101.html

What are the rules on sharing music/MP3's/posting links, etc.?
The moderators at Interference.com would like to remind you that the trading of any commercially released song is strictly against the rules. This is also true of any song for which the artist has not authorized reproduction/distribution.

Universal Publishing is starting to make the rounds on fan sites.... and is looking for reasons to shut the sites, or parts of them down. This is why there is no longer a U2 Lyrics Archive and U2 Guitar Archive.

Our opinions of whether or not this is okay have nothing to do with this; this is strictly a legal matter. Therefore, we cannot allow people to use the forums as grounds to trade commercially released songs, and/or anything that imposes on the copyright of an artist's material.

What you do in private, via PM or email, we have no control over, however we can't have 'active links' to copyrighted music, compositions, etc.
Click to expand...
 
Just because we don't know it doesn't mean it's not commercially available, and therefore verboten. :wink:
 
Fair enough...

Suggestions on how others can hear this song clip legally? My aim was to post a streaming media link so others could hear it, not necessarily download it.

Another idea is to search up my Livejournal account (user: neverletmedown) or my flickr account (user: robynobotica)...

BTW - in regards to whether I called up the radio station, no I didn't do that at the time. I didn't think I had to. Like most songs back then, when I taped something unknown, I'd often find out the name of the song shortly afterwards. This is the one song that "got away", so to speak! :rolleyes:
 
No problem, Zoots. :)

Carmanah, since you can't post links on the board, the best thing to do would be able to take it off the board, as we can't control what you do in private. People who want to hear the song could indicate that in this thread, and then you could contact them. Basically...this last line from the section of rules that I quoted:

What you do in private, via PM or email, we have no control over, however we can't have 'active links' to copyrighted music, compositions, etc.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks Bonochick...


Okay, for all who want to hear this mystery song, just send me a private message and I'll send you the link. when I first posted this song on Interference back in 2002, it produced 11 pages worth of discussions and the more people heard the song, the more puzzled we all became and the more determined we were to figure out who it was. And it still hasn't been solved!

I'm still not giving up!! :p
 
School of Fish - Three Strange Days? Didn't this song come out early 90's? I don't know. You got me stumped, Carmanah. :hmm:
 
Cute Irish Bono said:
School of Fish - Three Strange Days? Didn't this song come out early 90's? I don't know. You got me stumped, Carmanah. :hmm:
Click to expand...

No, it's not School of Fish's "Three Strange Days". I own that song, so I know exactly what it sounds like. And, yes, it did come out in the early 90s, but it's not Carmanah's mystery song.
 
ETA: I asked for the link but...

Never mind. I have it in my email. The OP already sent it to me and I didn't see it.

:der:
 
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