When I was eight and my brother and I were making our first independent explorations into popular music, we discovered something that we thought was unprecedented.
On a pop compilation LP we’d just purchased called “Big Hits ‘87” there was a song entitled “Living in a Box” by a band named Living in a Box from their debut album called – you got it – Living in a Box. This tri-level nomenclature blew our simple little minds.
In reality the song-album-band name combination wasn’t unprecedented at all. In the twenty years before Living in a Box, several well-known bands had released self-titled albums including a self-titled song: Black Sabbath, Talk Talk, Motorhead, and Iron Maiden all did it. Reaching further back, blues legend Bo Diddley did it in 1958.
Since the 1990s fewer bands have done it, and even when they do there seems to be a touch of irony involved: Wilco, for example, called their 2009 album Wilco (The Album) and included a song named “Wilco (The Song)” – with the parentheses presumably acting as indicators of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness.
Needless to say, I was very excited this past summer to discover a wonderful track called “Grand Falls Plaza” from an album named Grand Falls Plaza by a band called Grand Falls Plaza.
And if that wasn’t enough joy for one day, when I first heard the song I was in a town called Grand Falls.
My inner child was in heaven.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. It opens with ambient noise from a place that I have to assume is Grand Falls Plaza, Missouri. The recording is choppy and low-quality, making it feel like something someone recorded hastily on their phone, not wanting to forget a specific moment.
2. After about twenty seconds, a musical loop fades in. At first, the loop is hard to parse in terms of what key it might be in, leaving the listener with a hanging sense of expectation.
3. The groove that eventually fades in is so smooth and relaxing I could listen to it all day. Or name my band after it.
Recommended listening activity:
Walking down a street that has the same name as you.