Some people seem to think that 'alternative' indie music is somehow aesthetically purer or culturally more authentic than mainstream pop music. But I've always thought that it has the same cheap faddism as pop fluff; it's just less blatant about it.
Take Considering a Move to Memphis by the Colorblind James Experience, for example. That song got a lot of radio airplay by both John Peel and Andy Kershaw. Enough even to sucker me into buying the album. It's just an indie novelty song. Like the Birdy Song or Save Your Love, but a bit more down-tempo and understated.
And Considering a Move to Memphis is the only half-decent track on the album. Normally I quite like jokes without punchlines — in the tradition of Lawrence Sterne, say — but the little sketches in these songs are so flatly unfunny that they're just not funny.
Perhaps I'm missing something. I see the band did two Peel Sessions in 1988 and 1989 (after this album came out), and there's a blog about their history even though Colorblind James himself died in 2001.
Considering a Move to Memphis has some half decent lines, as well as a few fairly clumsy rhymes. My favourites are:
When I arrive in Memphis
I'll put a sign out on the door:
'It's O.K. to disturb me -
That's what I came here for'
It made the dizzy heights of Number 47 in John Peel's 1987 Festive 50.
My version is vinyl (mint condition!), and doesn't have the extra tracks on the CD version listed in the MusicBrainz entry.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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