Under The Radar Vol. I: The Stereo

I find that while I do share a ton of favourite bands with most of my best friends, there are a multitude more where it seems like I'm the only person in the world (re: southern Ontario) that listens to them. As is the case with most things that you become obsessed with, you always want to share them with everybody you know, because there are few things that feel better than getting somebody as into something as you are. This is really hard with music though, because most people already have fairly specific tastes when it comes to tunes and they generally roll their eyes whenever you say "Wow! You have to listen to this!", myself included. Unfortunately for me, music is one of the things I know most about, so it winds up being one of the things I like to talk about a recommend, but it seems like nobody every cares to listen.

But I swear I'm good at recommending music!* So my thought was that I would start on series here on Imu^ where I write little synopses of some of my favourite, more obscure bands and explain why I like them and why you should like them too. Now, you may ask yourself "But Timmy, don't like more than half of your posts consist of that already?" and I would reply "Yes. But now it has a name!" I also want to focus more on broken up, forgotten bands than current ones. It will probably end up being a whole lot of never-made-it third wave ska bands, so bear with me.

VOLUME I: THE STEREO

I chose The Stereo as the first entry in this because I seriously am the only person I know, aside from Boston/Baltimore's own John Flynn, that listens to them and I can't for the life of me understand why. They have everything my friends like in music! Big pop hooks! Distorted guitars! Solos! Cleverly crafted pop song structure! Lots and lots of love-like feelings in their lyrics! They were what inspired me to start this series because I keep coming back to them and they keep being a perfect rock/pop band.

The story of the beginning of The Stereo is an interest on if you are as into ska as I am. In the early days of Fueled By Ramen*, there were two especially great ska/punk bands on the label: The Impossibles and Animal Chin. While both of these bands were obviously primarily ska bands, both definitely had a bit of power-pop (in the sense of Weezer) to them, which really set them apart from their peers, in my opinion. They both also had very talented song-writer/singer/guitarists at their helms in Rory Philips and Jamie Woolford respectively. Both of these bands also broke up at roughly the same time, while on the same label. After the demise of the two bands, both singers started to work on more straight poppy rock music on their own until somebody at Fueled By Ramen had the stroke of genius to recommend that two start working together on songs. What resulted was the wonderful band known as The Stereo.

The two did essentially everything on The Stereo's debut album Three Hundred themselves and released it in 1999. Right away you can see all the influences that were subtly hinted at in their ska bands (Weezer, Billy Joel, The Raspberries), but now they were free to be as poppy and hooky and rocky as they could imagine. The end result is fucking amazing and so catchy that it's impossible to do anything but smile and air-guitar for the entirety of the record.

For example, the lead track:

The constant chugging guitars! The amazing vocal hooks! The lyrics that make me want to put this song on for somebody that I care about! The "Woo!" right before the guitar solo! THE FUCKING GUITAR SOLO!

It's also easy to see how more or less every band (especially Fall Out Boy) heard this and thought "Okay, let's play guitar and sing just like that." after hearing this album.

The Stereo went on to fill out their lineup and record two more albums, despite the departure of Rory after Three Hundred, before breaking up in 2004. Though I haven't been able to track down a copy of Rewind+Record (impossible to find anwhere), I can vouch that New Tokyo Is Calling is every bit as good as Three Hundred and just as deserving of a spin and the best example I can think of for that is this cut from the album:

Every time I listen to that song I think that if I were to write a pop song, that is exactly what I would want it to sound like. The vocal hooks in the chorus and verse are amazing, I can't enough of the main riff and the stop/start rhythm of the song is amazing.

I don't really know how else I can sell you on this if it doesn't sound like something you would into already. If you like old Weezer, this is a poppier version of Blue Album. They're a louder, faster version of Billy Joel. A punker version of Cheap Trick. It's very clear when listening to it that Jamie, and on Three Hundred Rory, have really honed their craft and are expert song-writers. Every song transitions perfectly from verse to chorus to bridge to whatever else. If you start listening to a song and aren't that into it, chances are you'll be belting out the chorus in a minute or two.

And man, THE GUITARS. HOLY MOLY, THE GUITARS.

These release are a little hard to find, as the band has really fallen off the map^, so your best bet to track them down would be to just buy them. But man oh man, will it ever be worth it.

*See: How much Bomb the Music Industry!, Less Than Jake, Smoking Popes, etc. that Brian listens to. Can I take credit for Selly's interest in The Wonder Years? Party Pat's interest in Municipal Waste?

^Oh, you know that shit is gonna become a thing.

*When they were started by Vinnie of Less Than Jake, Fueled put out more or less an even mix of ska and pop-punk. Eventually they moved towards the latter and started bathing in money, but I absolutely love their early output.

^They reunited to play the Fueled By Ramen 15th Anniversary show in 2011, which is how I found out about them. Despite the band still sounding amazing, nobody in the audience seemed to care as they were all there to see Paramore.