Francine: Forty on a Fall Day

Back in 2000, when I was just a wee intern at the Boston.com, I was working on the now defunct "mp3.boston.com" (don't try to go there). We tried to do what is, in theory, a wonderful idea, but in practice, was about 4 years too early. Bandwidth wasn't at the point where EVERYONE could download massive files quickly and home storage needs were just creeping into the triple digit gigabyte counts. But I digress.

A CD came across my desk, like so many others, of a local band, in this case, Francine. I gave every band a listen, even though I'd come to know that 98% of them just sucked. The harder a band tried, I noticed, the less impressive they were.

I popped the disc into my linux box at work, affectionately called oakgrove, and ripped it. What happened next gave me hope, a strong belief in local music:
Here were 16 tracks of a surf-rock nature, coming from a Boston band, and they were GOOD, with 5 out of the box, Top40-sounding-ish tunes that were fun. Needless to say, I listened to the album non-stop for a month.

My favourites include Set of Dune, which, I believe, actually has to do with someone's work on the set of the movie Dune; Trampoline, with an infectious, simple drum beat that just brings foot tapping to any party; Jet to Norway just opens with such a great guitar riff that you know you'll want to pull some air guitar; and Pop Warner, a story of taking a lady friend to a pop warner game, the song gets bonus points for lyrical reference to "Joan Jett's 82 version of 'Crimson and Clover'".

In the end: I felt this from the beginning, and continue to feel it now: This album has mass appeal. It doesn't sell out to the lowest common denominator, but even they would be hard pressed to find a track or two they don't like. Clayton Scoble's vocals compliment the feel of the music just right.

On the web: Grab this album, and their two others, at qdivision.com. Sorry, no bootlegs from them... yet.

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