Ben Lee "Pop Queen"

This week, I'm looking at artists that we came to play later in their career, asking the question "should we go back and play the band's earlier tracks?"

I can remember when "Pop Queen" came out, and I thought it was a little pop gem, that sounded great on alternative radio.

But compare it to the more modern day Ben Lee (see "Love Me Like The World Is Ending" below), it hardly seems polished, and in fact seems kinda primitive.

Through the long lens, while "Pop Queen" is an important song in Ben Lee's career, and it has its own shambolic charm, it probably wouldn't be up to snuff, to take this old song and put it in rotation at mvy . . .


See the video on Youtube.


See the video on Youtube.

Ben Lee "I Wish I Was Him"

Here's another Weekend Post:

Like the Vanishing Point in perspective drawing, the last 3 posts (one, two, three) culminate here:

This is Ben Lee (look at how young he was) singing a song, about Vineyard-connected rock star Evan Dando.

At the height of The Lemonheads popularity, little Ben Lee became a little famous for this song about Dando. Then Dando himself went on to cover it.

Ben Lee "Catch My Disease"

You know that old Chaos theory idea . . . a butterfly flaps its wings and starts off a chain reaction that ends up with a hurricane hitting the East Coast?

It's cool to see little things have a big effect.

I was familiar with Ben Lee from my modern rock show at my old station, where we played "I Wish I Was Him" and "Pop Queen."

When his "Awake Is The New Sleep" record arrived I was happy to see that he was on New West, a small but solid label, known for promoting quality artists.

New West has folks like Steve Earle and John Hiatt and The Old 97s---bands that will never sell a million records, but will always sell thousands.

But how would a less familiar name like Ben Lee fare? How could a smaller label have major promotional muscle?

Those thoughts crossed my mind in the flap of a butterfly's wing, Barbara played "Catch My Disease" on What's New For Lunch, and then I was on to thinking about something else.

Until a few days later when we got a call from the folks at New West for our support of Ben Lee.

Which was odd, because you don't usually get a call from a record company for just playing a song once.

But sometimes once is all that matters.

It seems that Vineyard frequenter David Letterman happened to be visiting the Island, and happened to be listening when "Catch My Disease" was on the air. The following Monday, he had his people book Ben on his show to play that song.

One play on mvyradio became a million eyeballs on Ben on CBS.

Sometimes it's fun to be the butterfly.