For the next month, The Daily Choice is going completely Bay Area.  Nothing else will pierce these sonic walls except for these sounds.  Well, unless something outstanding melts my face to the floor, ’cause you know I have to share a face-melter …

–

There’s been a lot of groups trying to do the reinvention of doo-wop thing; making a big old layer cake of fuzz and girlish harmonies and slathering it with jangly guitars and brushed drum kits.  A lot of people have been wearing this costume lately, but no one has been wearing it like Shannon and The Clams.  ’Cause this isn’t the doo-wop we’ve been given exposure to.  This is the doo-wop that the starched shirts of the music biz didn’t want no one knowing about. Shannon, and her magnificent clams, manage to capture the drunken demo recording of some aspiring 50s pop group.  The lead singer, all a shamble with a half drank bottle of Beam resting near her mic stand, can barely stand, but still manages to belt out the crooning high notes of her latest pop confection.  The rest of the band, hungover and scared, nervously pound the rhythm, just barely keeping it together.

But these tracks don’t come to light.  These tracks get put in dusty file cabinets and vaguely marked to keep away the lookie-loos.  Shannon and The Clams are these tracks.

This track “I Wanna Go Home” is off the band’s 2009 album of the same name on 1-2-3-4 Go! Records.  They’ve just put out a duo of 7″ on the same label, one being an amazing Christmas themed selection of tracks and you can listen to a bit of ‘em right here.

Shannon and The Clams - I Wanna Go Home

—

They’ll be playing with Seattle’s own bastions of awesomeness, Night Beats, this Friday at The Hemlock.  Not to be missed.