The London Suede-The London Suede (1993)

Artist: The London Suede

Title: The London Suede

Label: Columbia/Nude

Format: CD

Cat #: CK 53792

Year of Release: 1993

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1993

Sold Price: $3.49

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 10/1/20

Discogs Last Sold: 5/31/20 NM/NM $6.43

Low: $1.50

Median: $4.12

High: $6.43

Current low price:  $3.92 VG+/VG+

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 7

Have/Want: 115/51

Where Sold: Santa Barbara, CA

Time it took to sell: 9 years

Where and When Bought: saved from the street

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: C

Sad To See It Go?: No

"Dave, do you want these CDs?  If not I'm going to put them out on the street!" Every once in a while I'm reminded of an old roommate on a spring cleaning binge 10 years ago.  This week it was in the news that this copy of The London Suede had finally sold after many years.

I had this on my hard drive already as Suede since that is their proper name, if not for another Suede forcing them to be The London Suede in the US.  Even with it being on my hard drive, until now, I never bothered to listen to them.  Over the years various Brit-pop has won me over.  Pulp, Blur, heck even Oasis had their charms for me.  I appreciate the mid-90's guitar heavy approach devoid of electronics, canned drums, or even keyboards.  One track, "Sleeping Pills" had tasteful strings, and that was enough variety for me.  Still, the record fell flat.  The vocals annoyed, but initially I could not put a finger on why.   I did a headphone listen and my mind started to drift around the 3rd song.  I looked at the allmusic.com review on my phone and saw not only did this get a 5 star rating but they considered 3 songs to be a triptych of perfect singles.  The writer was trying to say that a mix of Bowie, Glam and extra theatricality is somewhat desirable.  I like Bowie and T Rex, but their level of musical theater are sufficient.   I threw the phone across the room and focused hard on the music coming out of the headphones for the rest of the record, and still I heard nothing exceptional.  In fact, the voice still annoyed me.  It was then I realized what this was a precursor of that got on my nerves.  It bothered me so.  What was that voice like?  Skipping Radiohead and straight to Coldplay.  The essence of middling.

And thus a quarter century plus of ignoring Suede has come to a close.   And here's to at least another quarter century that I won't hear them, but hopefully shall still walk this earth avoiding them at every turn as I have the last quarter century.