Monday, August 25, 2008

Another indie pop double post featuring Pam Berry: Glo-Worm & Best Friends Forever

I'm finally home again for a last little bit before heading back to school after being gone for almost two months. All this travelling brings to mind some BFF & Glo-Worm songs.

I mentioned Glo-Worm in my Black Tambourine/Vivian Girls post a while back because singer Pam Berry was in both Black Tambourine & Glo-Worm. She went on to Glo-Worm after Black Tambourine ended and subsequently played in the Pines, the Shapiros, and so forth. They also play yummy pop goodness but are cleaner than her previous band.

Glo-Worm started out as a two-piece with Pam & Terry, formerly of St. Christopher. They didn't play live to much but managed to release a few singles that were compiled on Glimmer. Glimmer was released on K, and the singles were originally released on great pop labels like Slumberland, and one was part of K's International Pop Underground series. Glo-Worm called it quits when Terry & his wife moved to Australia.



The first song on Glimmer, "Travelogue" is the one that especially hit home during my globe-trotting summer... not that I had any international summer romances or anything. You can read about Pam's love of foreign places but fear of planes in this interview. As far as I know, she now resides in London (her husband is English, I think).

The album features a few covers: "Friday I'm in Love" (originally a Cure song), "Downtown" (Petula Clark), & "Crazy Town" (Velocity Girl).

More than a decade later, Best Friends Forever also call the mind the whole on the road thing with "Eisenhower Is the Father." This and "Travelogue" are really more love songs than they are about traveling, but both still work for me.



I've mentioned before (in that same Viv Girls/BT post) that I don't like a lot of current pop, but BFF are again a clear exception. They hail from Minneapolis and have always been two real best friends. Jes & Bri have always been in the band with a rotation of percussionists. They were another band whose tour I missed this summer (on both coasts I think), so I'm hoping they'll head out on the road again soon. They've got a few Midwest dates left on their tour, so check 'em out if that's your locale.

"Eisenhower Is the Father" is about the interstate highway system and is on Romance Conflict Adventure. The album was released on Plan-It-X (but is not like the label's usual folk-punk) last summer. There are also other songs about being on the road like "Tour Magic."



Glo-Worm- Glimmer
Buy it from K
Best Friends Forever- Romance Conflict Adventure
Buy it from No Idea

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That's all for now. Foot Village & company tonight. More info here. Brian Miller, who's in Foot Village, also runs Deathbomb Arc. He helps out on Gang Wizard's new release God-Time-Man Universal Continuum Calibration Disc, which is out tomorrow on olFactory, Lost Treasures of the Underworld, Green Tape and Tanzprocesz. Other all-stars in this Gang Wizard line-up include Eva of Kevin Shields. Check it out.

Also, listening to records again rules.

2 comments:

Cassette Gods said...

sweet! yr coming to the foot v show tonite? please say hello

fyi - foot v is playing FIRST at 9:30 so that our friends on tour, tent city, dont have to play first.

xmt said...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wva074MGZi8