Platinum Weird

On August 22 a group called “Platinum Weird” was supposed to release their first album in the USA (as I knew due to seeing them on VH1Classic “Hangin With Dave Stewart, which I DirecTivo’d on July 14, 2006.) Yesterday we were out and stopped at Best Buy to check it out and buy it most likely. There was something there, but not a full album. It was something entitled “Selections: Past & Present” and there was no price sticker on it, no sign-age to say a thing about it. I didn’t turn it over and look at the back because I barely had it in hand and my DH took it and said he was going to go pay for it right then. OK.

So then I went checking end caps to see what was there, nuthin’. DH called me and said he wanted to leave, so I asked him, “How much was the CD?” He said, “It was free.”

Huh?

It was. Totally, but you go through checkout and get a reciept, no money exchanged at all. It was considered a Promo of some sort, but there wasn’t a bit of sign-age in the store to indicate that, and who would know that it was a FREE Promo unless they picked it up and expected to pay for it since they were LOOKING something by that group, expecting a new album most likely, as was I. I hadn’t looked online for any info about the group one bit before hand, and only learned the “hyped up marketing story” afterwords, the story I heard on VH1 was not totally “truth” but mostly not much hype at all. It wasn’t that it was hype but that some parts of data seemed to be missing or not fully made obvious, like is that video they showed, is it from 1974, or is it a hype-connected one made recently, is the “voice” the girl from 1974 or someone recently contracted to portray the girl in 1974, voice or body or both. That part is a mystery, from what I can find out online.

There is a place online that interveiwed both people in the group, and it has less hype than anything else online:

blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/10/065902.php

What’s on the CD is good. Two songs are the same, yet different. One is from the current group. The other is tagged “Original ’74 Recording” — the track is “Will You Be Around”. There is one more track on the CD, “Happiness”.

The point here is, the group now is here — this time in space. There is a connection to a past group of something that did something, but didn’t use the name “Platinum Weird” but it was a name being “kicked around” by them (as was said by Mr. Stewart in that interview.) The music they have is now, they have stuff they say is from the past. Is it? Was it mostly written back then, and partially recorded? Is that what is on the disc I got, was that “Original ’74 Recording”, track 3., is that really from then, or is it something else, the hype thing?

Who wrote the music? What else do they have? Some people have the “album” already, or a cut of something “older” supposebly. The I-Tunes Store has had something, or did in July, at least. I don’t know really what it was, since I didn’t look then, and didn’t know to, and I don’t use I-Tunes anyhow (ick.) I do know it’s not the same as what is out on CD Promo right now. There is other stuff on different sites, like the Platinum Weird MySpace site, and other places no doubt. I would like to understand it, as in is some of this music actual recordings from 1974? If not, were these songs originally written around 1974 at least, some recorded but not all or none recorded, only modern mystery hype recordings?

A straightforward approach to this would make more sense, and be enough appeal to me to listen to what the music is. I like the idea of it without the “background story”. It stands just fine with in modern times with no ties to backtimes. In fact though, ties to 1974 are fine, just that to kick it off it would have made more sense to have a straight true story told of the history of the band, how it became, and then if they wanted to LATER for FUN make up movies and mystery hype, fine, but make sure it’s touted as fiction for fun.

In the end it’s just a marketing ploy, I wanted to get the music based on the very little I heard about the music on that VH1Classic Hangin With show from July.

DH liked it enough too, the music, when I played it last night in the van on the way home. He actually said “Ah, this is the sort that YOU could do” and he never connected to my ideas before, that my ideas for a band and how it would sound are so different yet not, because in effect it’s me and other people I’m talking about to create a band with, non know people, even I don’t know who they are, and my place in life hasn’t had me writing music, but I’ve had a lot of performances in my first 27 years of life. I could do things in so many genres, but facts are facts, who I am is a rich voice with great range and definite crafty skill of voice. And that is best suited to some form of Alternative Rock, hard with melodic harmonies, and mostly that melancholy edge which Platinum Weird so well uses, and it’s always been something that attracts me, the few that can do melancholy well. (Ah, The Cure)