Sunday, July 3, 2011

1000 SONGS - DAY 79: SONG # 109

DAY 79: Songs from one of my favourite albums

Kendra Smith was the singer and bass player of Opal, a band she had formed together with David Roback and that she later left during a tour. She was then replaced by Hope Sandoval and Opal was renamed to Mazzy Star. Before her Opal days, she had been a member of Dream Syndicate, yet another one of my fav bands (feat. Steve Wynn). Happy Nightmare Baby was released in 1987, the year that Kendra Smith left the band. I own the vinyl version and I have listened to it quite a lot in former days. Ther are rumours, that Ms. Smith is now living in a cabin in the woods without electricity a.t.l., but at least she has a My-Space-profile. The site on fb showing her name clearly is a fan-project; there is no more information to be found than a copy of the Wikipedia-article on KS there. Updare january 2022. in 2017 Smith reappeared in public an joined the reunion of Dream Syndicate and in 2018 she added a song to the soundtrack of some movie.



Let us start with the title track, Happy Nightmare Baby:


Another one, Supernova, one of the songs on HNB that breathes in a kind of T.Rex style:

This is even more true of the opening track, Rocket Machine:


Magick Power. on the other hand, has some early Pink-Floyd organ atmosphere to it:


I have also done statistics concerning the first 100 tracks on my 1000-songs project, that add up to 75 songs (with 25 alternative or cover versions), to know more about the details, follow the link: The first 100 tracks and 75 songs (Dec. 23 - Feb. 06). There you can also read, that I have added two "Bonus Tracks" during that time. So, it is a good moment to add another one, the "Empty Box Blues" from Opal's "Early Recordings":

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