Sometimes these "lost bands of the 1990's" are downright invisible. I can't even find any cover art! A preliminary Google search turned up a lot of conspiracy theories (note to self: do not use "moon" and "paradox" in the same search). With the power of quotation marks, I found a few scraps, two of which were left by yours truly. I spun a couple songs from this EP back in my radio days and one of the stations aggressively archives all playlists. Even playlists that are over 15 years old.
I will tell you what I do know. Back in the mid-1990's I had a very Web 1.0 website hosted by my college. Somehow it managed to get indexed by every pre-Google search engine, something I was probably cool with because the notion of spam hadn't crossed my radar yet. Consequently I would get e-mails saying "ah, I see you like such-and-such" and interesting conversations would ensue. I struck up a friendship with a gentleman in Manchester over our mutual admiration for the early Glenn Hughes band Trapeze (for what it's worth we are now Facebook friends). Anyhow, noticing my involvement in college radio, he mentioned a new band he was helping promote in the UK called Cola Moon and sent over a copy of their debut EP. I figured "what the hell" and gave it a listen - pretty good for a bunch of high school kids (note: they are now in their 30's). We gave them a lot of airplay in 1998 (even reported them to CMJ, their first press in the USA) and I carried them back to California, and that's where those Google search results came from.
It was very enjoyable to listen to the four songs of Welcome to the Paradox. I have to say that they still hold up after all of these years. Over time, my "favorite song" opinion has shifted from "Tangerine Tower", through "Route One", to "Robber's Dog", an aggressive rocker that has stuck with me through the years. I'm not sure what the lads of Cola Moon are up to these days, but they can take comfort that somebody out there is still playing their music and enjoying it!
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