Kill Your sons...

I know, I know "Kill Your Sons" is originally a Lou Reed tune, but I had a Tommy Keene EP called Run Now way back in the day that contained a live cover of this song. It was brilliant. As was/is Tommy Keene. Keene is one of those criminally overlooked songwriters who's been toiling away at the edge of a small amount of fame for years. Thinking about Tommy takes me back to my days growing up in DC. Tommy Keene got his start playing the DC club scene, in fact he may still live in the DC area. When I was a little new wave nerd in DC you could always count on Tommy to be at every cool show playing 9:30 Club. He was a visible part of the scene and he played great music. He has accumulated quite a discography over the years as he's swung from REM style jangle to baroque pop with tinges of Americana and back to jangly power pop. The last record of his I bought was 1998's Isolation Party which was very good. He's currently pushing a collection of rarities and b-sides called Drowning which is released by Not Lame Records. It's worth mentioning that Not Lame has been fighting the good fight for a lot of years now. They bill themselves as setting the standards for power pop which alone should be reason enough to at least check out the website.

These two songs are taken from his album "The Merry Go-round Broke Down":

Circumstance

Hanging Over My Head