The Fred Banana Combo - The Incredible Fred Banana Company
#646
1981 Housekeeping LISTENING POST DISCOVERY
The Fred Banana Combo
The Incredible Fred Banana Company
Genre: New Wave
4.25 out of 5
Highlights:
I’m in a Rut
The Captain
The Heartbeat and the Train
Little Red Wing
Requisite 80s cover: “Bird on a Wire”. Exactly what I want from a dank punk/new wave band.
What the actual fuck its this??
That really could be the whole review for 1981. Nothing makes sense. But this…we are in a weird place, man.
This is a German band that sounds like they want to be B-52s, especially since Fred and the gang was about to lose the narrative around Mesopotamia the following year.
This thing is a percussive hoot that never takes itself seriously and seems to want to be the soundtrack to a circus or a tv show. Or a tv show about a circus.
Like most of B-52s, it’s hit and miss but when it hits it’s delicious and when it misses it really doesn’t do so by very much.
Side two is more aggressively punk and reminds me of my first band, especially the Leonard Cohen cover. But “Little Red Wing” which is only available on the Drive, sounds so much like B-52s I would swear it was.
Much of this album was rereleased with newer stuff about 7 years ago and it’s on Apple Music but for the missing tracks from that (which are not as good, tbh) there is a Google Drive folder.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-best-of-the-old-shit-and-the-new-shit-deluxe-version/1027403751
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hBkkc-zILeYlIv-1wyDIujlgX9oT3OFT?usp=sharing
