Hotwired (The Soup Dragons, 1992)

Back in the 1990's, while I was listening to decidedly uncool Iron Maiden and other similar bands, I let my sister handle the trendy of-the-moment stuff. Consequently, as I piled up more and more music, she would go through routine purges as those cool bands eroded into yesterday's news. Figuring this would be a good way to acquire some music I only so-so cared about without having to pay for it, I convinced her to just give them all to me. This was one of them!

Honestly, I pretty much forgot about this album upon acquisition. In fact, to be able to write anything more here, some instant Internet research was required. So here's the deal. This album kind of gets lumped into the whole mess of 1990's alternative (the most loaded of words), when in fact, in 1992 it had the misfortune of going up against the signature album of the decade, Nirvana's Nevermind. In fact, the Soup Dragons, who had nothing to do with what was happening in Seattle (they were from Scotland for God's sake), had actively turned away from the fuzzy indie rock of the 1980's that in part built the "alternative" scene of the 1990's. While Nirvana harnessed all of the angst of an era, the Soups adopted a bouncy uptempo sound you could really tear up the dance floor to. No grunge-punks allowed here!

What was good enough was no good by 1994. The next album, which featured just frontman Sean Dickson with an overpriced army of session musicians, royally tanked, resulting in the "disbandment" of the Soup Dragons (which by this time meant that Dickson elected not to record any longer under that name). The various members of the band (from this album anyway) fanned out into a number of different bands in supporting roles, while Dickson launched a new band, which has been dormant since around 2001.