Happy February, Dialophiles!
Tonight, the Dial brings you a stomping rock track from the early 90s, a jam
that would have sounded perfectly at home on any Bad Company LP from the mid
‘70s! Crank up your speakers for Cry of Love, and “Bad Thing”!
“Just a new way, you got over me, you got it all wrong… just a new song,
that I gotta sing, you got over me… just a new way!”
“Bad Thing” proved to be
anything but for the Raleigh, North Carolina based band, as it quickly rose to
a #2 smash hit position on the US Mainstream Rock chart. Despite this success,
the track wasn’t pushed to Top 40 radio, therefore, no Hot 100 position was
earned for this truly deserving track. Bad Thing was pulled from the 1993 debut
LP Brother, which also contained Cry
of Love’s “Too Cold in the Winter”, a
#13 on the aforementioned MR chart, and their biggest hit, the MR chart topping
“Peace Pipe”.
“God, you’re so wrong, when you wanna play, but way down inside, you
wanna stop while you’re playing, girl.”
Featuring Kelly Holland’s
bluesy lead vocals, “Bad Thing” describes the aftermath of a breakup, one in
which the guy is critical over how quickly his former girl “got over” him,
though he makes sure to declare that he’s much better off without her, a point
that defines the chorus. However, Holland’s ad-libbed lyrics over the final
seconds may actually indicate that the guy really does miss her… or, is at least bored
without her in his life. Consider the following:
“No, ain’t got no hard feelings now, baby, no, no. I’m just sitting
round baby, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Twenty years ago, I worked at
the Square Circle record store in St. Charles Towne Center Mall in Waldorf MD,
and Brother was played rather frequently in store… on cassette tape, as a
matter of fact. I always looked forward to hearing the song that reminded me of
a mix of Bad Company and Deep Purple with a soulful influence, but I eventually
forgot about it when the tape was retired from the playlist. Years later, the
opening “Just a new way, you got over me,
you got it all wrong” verse popped into my head, but I couldn’t pull any
other lyrics, chorus included, which made tracking it down rather tricky.
I vaguely recalled that the
band name was “(blank) of (blank)”, and for some reason, I was convinced the
first word was “house”. I thought I was on to something when I located the band
House of Love… I was so close, but yet so far. Every few months I would search
the internet for songs by House of Love, House of Lords, and any other “House
of …” band name (at least I knew darn well it wasn’t a House of Pain track!), until last year, in which
that opening lyric finally came up in a search engine, and I discovered the
band was CRY of Love.
“No more of a bad thing… No more of a bad thing… No more of a bad thing… No more, no more, no more!”
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