Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - "Bobby Malone Moves Home" 7"

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – “Bobby Malone Moves Home” 7”

Tomlab, 2006
Acquired: Live Show, New, 2007
Price: $5

Gone are the days when my finger was so firmly affixed to the pulse of the music world like that kid’s tongue to the flagpole in A Christmas Story. The simile is apt, as there was a certain amount of struggle involved. The same sort of struggle a shark has with the whole “have to keep moving or will die” bit. Is that even true? And then I graduated and spent the next three years listening to the Lemonheads. Trying to get back into the game is tough. Things have changed. Every band is from Brooklyn and inconsequential and I’m rekindling old relationships with bands I loved. Bands like Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, who by the way don’t exist anymore. Owen Ashworth is now recording under the name Advance Base and I somehow totally missed that happening. He even has a new album out AND produced some awesome beats for Serengeti’s Family and Friends album (another great artist I missed in my sabbatical, a rapper who I actually thoroughly enjoy listening to despite my steadfast “I appreciate rap and I can differentiate between good and bad enough to form an educated opinion but I just have no desire to listen to it” stance).

“Bobby Malone Moves Home” is one of the best tracks from Casiotone’s masterpiece Etiquette—an album where every track is fantastic. It’s a sad tune, a perfect anthem for the post-college with no job generation. B-side “Jeane, If You’re Ever in Portland” is the Daytrotter Session of a Twinkle Echo track and really sings with the full band instrumentation. A a sad and purdy little tune about a touring musician falling in love with a gal from Kansas. Maybe that’s why I love it so much. Because anything that references Kansas (in a positive OR negative way, mind you) kind of makes me go “OH OH I’M FROM THERE WANT ME TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT!?!!!). I think the actual reason I love this rendition of “Jeane, If You’re Ever in Portland” is because the Donkeys serve as Ashworth’s backing band which is, quite frankly, beyond cool.

Oh yeah! There was that whole tour where the Donkeys were Casiotone's backing band the whole time which is where I heard the Donkeys in the first place.