Jackie Chan movies are infamous for their end credits which feature outtakes from all of Jackie’s amazing stunts. Rumble in the Bronx is no exception. In fact if you watch closely you’ll see him actually break his ankle while attempting to jump off a bridge pylon onto a moving barge. The music playing behind this montage of mayhem was my first introduction to today’s HMSOD band… Ash hail from County Down in the northeast tip of Northern Ireland, and they’ve been bashing together punky rock n’ roll since 1992. The band’s first album, Trailer, was released when frontman Tim Wheeler was only 17 years old. Primarily a three-piece (except for a nine-year period when they added a second guitarist), one gets the feeling that Ash is a band that lives and breathes and eats and drinks and pukes rock n’ roll music. They frequently tour to the point of total exhaustion, disappear for weeks at a time on beer-soaked, sex-filled binges of mythic proportions, and yet seem to be involved in one musical project after another including soundtracks for movies, video games, and their most recent endeavor: the A to Z Singles Series in which the band plan to release 26 digital-download singles every fortnight between October 2009 and the end of 2010. So far 12 songs have been released. Phew!
There’s tons of great music to choose from this band’s catalogue, but today’s Happy Medium Song of the Day goes all the way back to 1996 and Ash’s second album, 1977. The song is “Girl From Mars” and it was the band’s first Top 40 single, reaching number 11 on the UK singles charts. Maybe that’s why NASA used it as the hold music on their telephone lines for a while.
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