Strange Tenants – Rude Celebration
October 11th 2006 12:22
The Strange Tenants are about to go on tour in celebration of 25 years together and have also released a four CD set to mark the occasion. When I received it I was pleasantly surprised – beforehand I was thinking 4 CDs was a bit of overkill. That thought was quickly dismissed however. It is a great gatefold package with 4 CDs packed full of quality listening. They aren’t 4 half hour CDs either – the least is 14 songs on the first, but the most hits high at 22 songs on the third CD.
The structure of the CD is as follows: The first is unreleased material recorded especially for this album. The next three are live sets from the first five years of the bands career. The tracks on the CD of new songs are of excellent quality. You may remember songs like Police Town and for me When Ska was King is the highlight. That being said, it is the live CDs that make this CD for me. It is the little things just as much as their cracking songs that make this package great too. For example on one of the CDs, you have the boys stopping the set to tell the bouncers to let their mates back in after them having been kicked out.
Of course 3 CDs of live material with the same songs wouldn’t be overly exciting, but worry not – from the six gigs in the eastern states you don’t have repetition. So what you get is all their classics such as Soldier Boy, Hard Times, Grey Skies etc and you also have the array of covers they have done over the times. It’s great hearing them do some ska greats like Rub Up Push Up, Solomon Gundie, Phoenix City and more on a tangent, House of Bamboo, amongst others.
I really love the classic Strange Tenants sound. You can tell it is influenced by the British and Jamaican sound, but it has its own quality too. They sing about Melbourne and I think singing about what you know is important in a ska band. They also give the impression that if they hadn’t have been up on stage, they would have been on the floor with all the fellow rudeboys, rudegirls and skins. It is great that these live recordings have been remastered both for me who is too young to have been there in the day, but also for those who were there and can take a trip down memory lane.
Check them out at: http://www.strangetenants.com/
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