{"id":8461,"date":"2016-12-30T15:09:17","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T22:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=8461"},"modified":"2016-12-30T17:40:32","modified_gmt":"2016-12-31T00:40:32","slug":"one-2-one-sals-birdland-artificial-joy-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=8461","title":{"rendered":"One 2 One \u2014 Sal\u2019s Birdland \u2014 Artificial Joy Club"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a teenager in the ’80s in Canada, I got a lot of my music from the music video cable TV station MuchMusic.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One of the pop acts I remember was a duo called One 2 One<\/a>.\u00a0 I remember them primarily because I thought the singer was hot, and she had a great and unique voice.\u00a0 I was thinking about one of their songs the other day and decided to look them up on YouTube.\u00a0 It turns out that they were responsible for quite a few great songs that I remember from the 80s, as well as some from the late 90s too under a different name.<\/p>\n

I decided to put together a collection of music by that duo (the singer named Louise Reny<\/a> and the guitarist and producer Leslie Howe<\/a>) and I ended up finding a bunch of great pop songs in the process and one amazing song that’s currently among my favourites.<\/p>\n

These were all sourced from YouTube videos, and sadly, the audio quality for most of them was pretty bad.\u00a0 But amazingly I’ve been able to edit them to sound great.\u00a0 After more than 15 years of audio editing I’ve got quite an arsenal of tricks and techniques to make songs sound better.<\/p>\n

So here’s a track by track rundown of that collection and my impressions of the music and production on each one.<\/p>\n

One 2 One<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

01 There Was a Time<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is one of those songs that I didn’t realize they had recorded.\u00a0 It’s pretty great ’80s synth-pop.\u00a0 The lyrics are pure fluff, but it’s ’80s synth-pop.<\/p>\n

02 Angel in My Pocket<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This might be their biggest “hit”, though they were really only big in Canada.\u00a0 It’s a really great pop song.<\/p>\n

03 Black on White<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I had never heard this song before, but it’s another great pop song.\u00a0 From what I’ve read, the album these came from won some awards, but I’m wary of such things because they can be utterly meaningless.<\/p>\n

04 Hold Me Now<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the song I was thinking of that got me started down this rabbit hole in the first place.\u00a0 I remember watching the video for this song<\/a> back in 1988 and getting just the biggest crush for the blonde chick singing the song.\u00a0 Well you gotta admit she’s perty.\u00a0 I also remember there was this girl I went on a road trip with that same year who was dressed up pretty much exactly like that, with the hat and the boots and short jeans.\u00a0 The ’80s were weird.\u00a0 This is another great pop song, probably my favourite that the band put out in this incarnation.<\/p>\n

05 Love Child<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A cover of a song by the Supremes, I can’t say it’s my type of thing.\u00a0 But it’s performed well.<\/p>\n

06 Do You Believe<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another synth-pop fluff song, not bad for what it is.<\/p>\n

07 We’ve Got the Power<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

With this one I find a song that really grew on me, despite some kind of clunky lyrics that try to be inspirational.\u00a0 I like it fine.<\/p>\n

08 Peace of Mind<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The lyrics to this one are really, really dumb.\u00a0 They try to be profound but end up sounding, well, stupid.\u00a0 Other than that, it’s a great melody.<\/p>\n

09 Friends<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

We’re veering into “Adult Contemporary” territory here.\u00a0 Cliche lyrics that end up meaning nothing, but I read somewhere that a teeny-bopper Alanis Morissette sings backup vocals.\u00a0 It’s really hard to tell though, because the vocals are overdubbed and layered up so thick.<\/p>\n

10 Big on Emotion<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This song tries to sound kind of rockin’ but misses the mark.<\/p>\n

Sal’s Birdland<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

11 California Au Revior<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The duo shifted gears and reformed as an “alternative band” called Sal’s Birdland<\/a>.\u00a0 The timing for this was of course the early 90s, so no surprise there.\u00a0 What is surprising is just how amazing this song is.\u00a0 I was not expecting to find such a genuine and heartfelt statement like this from a band who was churning out cheese just a few years prior.\u00a0 In “California Au Revuoir”, the band manages to capture the sound of boredom, longing, regret and hope, all at once.\u00a0 It’s kind of stunning to hear actually.\u00a0 Finding this song is what made me decide to make this collection actually.<\/p>\n

12 Not Like Madonna<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This one is more standard “alternative rock”, with lyrics about the singer’s refusal to be like, well, Madonna.\u00a0 Decent alt-rock but nothing special.\u00a0 I found this track in very low quality, probably ripped at 96kbps, but I managed to make it sound good.<\/p>\n

13 So Fucking Happy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another standard alt-rock track, but the sound quality of this one was even worse, and it still sounds pretty bad as a result.\u00a0 The music and lyrics are average, but the line “I got a heart that’s packing heat – it’s always loaded” is pretty cool.\u00a0 I imagine this was ripped as an mp2 file more than 2 decades ago and has been kicking around the internet ever since, traded by angsty teens and nostalgic adults who used to be angsty teens in the 90s.<\/p>\n

Artificial Joy Club<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

14 Sick & Beautiful<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sal’s Birdland changed their name to Artificial Joy Club and they were a little more successful.\u00a0 In fact their album “Melt” was one of the top Canadian albums of 1997 from what I recall.\u00a0 And this song was everywhere too.\u00a0 It was so pervasive that I remember getting quite sick of hearing it actually.\u00a0 Which is too bad, because this song might just be the best thing the duo ever did.\u00a0 The lyrics certainly are the best I’ve heard in any of their songs.\u00a0 It’s nice to hear this again after not hearing it for nearly two decades, now that it’s not been overplayed by commercial radio.<\/p>\n

15 Crawl<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A track that’s totally new to my ears.\u00a0 It’s quite good, though a little straight-down-the-middle alt-rock.<\/p>\n

16 No Shame<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I really like this one too.\u00a0 It’s got some highly personal and sometimes nonsensical lyrics, and a nice analog synth solo.\u00a0 One of their best.<\/p>\n

17 Spaceman<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A very tuneful pop song kind of like the ones they used to do, but with their current sound and with lyrics about coming down from a drug high.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And that’s a pretty decent overview of what they were about.\u00a0 The original production on their music was a little thin and washed-out sounding, but I blame the ’80s for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being a teenager in the ’80s in Canada, I got a lot of my music from the music video cable TV station MuchMusic.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One of the pop acts I remember was a duo called One 2 One.\u00a0 I remember them primarily because I thought the singer was hot, and she had a great and unique […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,510],"tags":[578,576,577],"class_list":["post-8461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-reviews","tag-artificial-joy-club","tag-one-2-one","tag-sals-birdland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8461"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8469,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8461\/revisions\/8469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}