Gone Digital: The Vibrators, Marcus Miller, Climie Fisher, The Mother Station, and Babylon Zoo
If it’s Tuesday, then it must be time for Gone Digital, our weekly look at five recent additions to Rhino’s digital catalog. As ever, the types of music we’ll be covering will be all over the place, but that’s Rhino for you: we’re all about variety!
• The Vibrators, WE VIBRATE (1976): Although they released their full-length debut LP in ’77, these pop-punk icons released their first single in ’76, and this is it. In addition to “We Vibrate,” you also get the classic “Whips and Furs,” along with “Bad Time.”
• Marcus Miller, MARCUS MILLER (1984): Known more specifically as a jazz musician nowadays, this self-titled sophomore album by Miller was from a time when he was delivering tunes that deftly blended jazz, R&B, and funk. Yes, his fashions on the album cover scream “1980s,” but the music is still solid, particularly “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend,” which subsequently became a dance-floor favorite.
• Climie Fisher, LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING (2020): First of all, we don’t want to hear your complaints about the lack of parentheses around “Everything,” because they’re just not there for the title of this compilation, and that’s all there is to it. Also, if you’re wondering how we managed to come up with the track listing for this compilation, we can assure you that there was both rhyme and reason involved, but it still doesn’t mean that it matches up with any previous version of the LOVE CHANGES (EVERYTHING) album. That said, it’s still got a lot of ‘80s British pop that you may not have heard, so given it a spin.
• The Mother Station, BRAND NEW BAG (1994): So underrated that they don’t even have their own Wikipedia page, this Memphis-based band was signed to EastWest in ’92 after a stunning turn at the SXSW Music Conference, and with production by the legendary Joe Hardy, it’s nothing less than a cryin’ shame that it didn’t make much of a ripple commercially. Check out “Put the Blame on Me” first, and if you don’t love it... Well, we won’t even tell you what to do if that’s the case, because we don’t think it will be!
• Babylon Zoo, THE BOY WITH THE X-RAY EYES / “Spaceman” EP (1996): To be frank, Babylon Zoo’s full-length album was already available in our digital catalog, but we did just add the “Spaceman” EP, and that’s a good enough excuse to trumpet them both. Although the song was a massive hit in the UK, it failed to match that success in the States, but it’s a great – and, yes, spacey – album that’s worth checking out if you don’t know it.
