My Insipid Record Collection – The Waterboys

I didn’t know much about The Waterboys until somebody at The CD Store I managed in 1986 started playing them from time to time.  I can remember, one of my favorite DJs from all my time in Boston, Morning Guy Tai at WFNX playing The Waterboys fairly often during his stint as the Morning Drive guy from 1985-1997.  No offense to all who have come and gone since, the morning show hasn’t been the same since.  Just my two cents.  Anyway, Tai was a fan of The Waterboys and played several of their tracks fairly often including “The Whole of The Moon, A Girl Called Johnny, Fisherman’s Blues and World Party.”   I had seen their CDs in my store (1983′s The Waterboys, 1984′s A Pagan Place and 1985′s This is The Sea), but  I didn’t really know much about them except for “The Whole of The Moon” from This is The Sea.

Some of you may know Karl Wallinger, The Waterboys’ keyboardist, went on to form the band World Party in 1986.  Private Revolution, their first CD, was an absolute smash hit.   In a strange bit of irony I ended up seeing World Party at The Paradise (May 16, 1990) before I finally saw The Waterboys later that year at The Orpheum (November 14, 1990).  Pound for pound, World Party, which was a mixed bag of folk, funk and blue-eyed soul, was much more of a commercial entity than The Waterboys ever were.   “The Whole of The Moon” though, was an iconic tune that far surpassed the output of either band as far as I’m concerned.    Not that “Fisherman’s Blues” isn’t an awesome tune, but “The Whole of The Moon” is on another plane and I loved World Party.   Wallinger, in addition to stints in The Waterboys (1983-1986) and World Party (1986-1993, 1997-to present), he played in a band called Quasimodo that spawned a couple of members (Dave Sharp and Nigel Twist) who later surfaced in the successful Welsh rock group The Alarm.   Kurt also contributed to Sinead O’Connor’s brilliant debut CD The Lion and The Cobra (1987) while simultaneously working on material for World Party.   He was musical director for British version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and later fulfilled the very same role for blockbuster movies such as Clueless and Reality Bites to name just a few.   Karl suffered a serious aneurysm in 2000, but he continues to work to this day after many years of rehab learning how to speak all over again.

The Waterboys, led by Mike Scott, carried on post Wallinger with their highest selling CD ever in 1988′s Fisherman’s Blues.   Early Waterboys’ music was not quite the Irish and Scottish folk fest that Fisherman’s Blues was and the critics either loved this record or hated it.  There was no inbetween.  I bought it, of course, because “Fisherman’s Blues” was a brilliant single.   According to Wikipedia The Waterboys used many local Irish musicians that routinely performed in the Irish cities of Dublin and Spiddal where they had set up shop to record this record.    There were four more tracks on Fisherman’s Blues than on This is The Sea due to the three year layoff regrouping from the personnel changes.   Personally, I could see both points of view regarding this record.   I had no real track record or frame of reference to go on, but 1990′s Room To Roam had two soft rock hits called “A Life of Sundays” and “A Man is in Love.”   The Waterboys never again had that major league thump that had made them so popular.   The Waterboys turned into Mike Scott’s solo project and the 1993 release Dream Harder, while carrying on The Waterboys name, was basically a Scott solo album in much the same way the 1990 “Replacements” album All Shook Down was Paul Westerberg’s last grasp at The Replacements name.   They may well have been contract fulfillment pieces for all I know, but it just didn’t feel right ya know?

OK, I know nobody is going to read this with all the year end 2009 lists being posted daily so I’ll end this post by saying Merry Christmas to all of our readers (we can count you now so thanks for moving over to WordPress with us!).   I’m going to have to put up some kind of year end piece next week and I’m cramming for that dreaded post as we speak.    In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these Waterboys’ classics.

The Waterboys – The Whole of The Moon.mp3

The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues.mp3

The Waterboys- Fisherman’s Blues.mp3 YSI

Buy or download The Best of The Waterboys ’81-’90 from Amazon here.