(a)Live, (and back) From Australia: Part 2

Elise and I being… well, being us, one of the early Australia topics we hit upon was music.

We actually started discussing it before Elise even returned, when she phoned me from an HMV to ask if I wanted her to buy me anything (including a t-shirt, at which point I calmly explained that HMV was not an Amoeba-like rarity, and that we used to have an HMV in Philadelphia that’s now either the Gap or City Sports, and that it’s basically just Tower Records with a Euro-skew).

Five or six years ago my eyes would have popped out of my head at the idea of all of the special tracks to be had down under, but in the iTunes age it’s not such a big deal; I advised that she pay more attention to the local stuff she wouldn’t be likely to find in the States.

Upon return Elise blithely informed me that Australia is for all intents and purposes her own personal radio utopia. They predominantly play the hits of the eighties, nineties, and today, plus an eclectic blend of local music.

As for the latter, Elise was psyched to hear a new Missy Higgins record on the radio, since we’re still on her last one here, and also came back singing the praises of The Waifs.

However, she was most excited by a band called Cream Vs. The Hoxtons.

What an unwieldy name for a band, I thought (and said).

She insisted they were worth the unwieldiness. She had caught their video several times, and they were seriously cool. I would totally like their single.

Despite their supposed cool factor, CvtH proved to be unfindable on domestic iTunes, and a Google search for their domain was equally fruitless. However, I noticed that we turned up a single hit for them on YouTube.

Realization dawned as I loaded the page. Dawned on me, anyhow.

“Honey,” I queried out to the hallway, where Elise was bustling about with her laundry, “I don’t suppose the video you saw was for ‘Sunshine of Your Love.'”

My room was suddenly filled with a a tan, lithe girlfriend trailing various and sundry laundries.

“That was totally it! Did you find them?”

I stared at her, agape.

“What?”

“Honey, I think their name is probably just The Hoxtons.”

“Why?”

“Because this is probably a cover of ‘Sunshine of Your Love.'”

“What’s that?”

Now I was growing a little flustered.

“It’s a song. A song by Cream.”

“Who?”

Slightly exasperated: “Like, you know, if some boring sitcom dad (or Giles) is going to sing along to one classic rock song not by a usual suspect like The Who or The Kinks or Pink Floyd, it will inevitably be this song. Or, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Possibly both.”

“In a god a the what now?”

At a loss for words, I fired up the YouTube clip, to be met by this:

We listened in rapt silence.

“Um, Elise, when does The Hoxtons song start?”

“What do you mean. We’re listening to it.”

“No, this is just a bunch of overly made up girls miming to ‘Sunshine of Your Love.’ By Cream. Can’t you tell that this is Eric Clapton?”

“Oh. Yeah, now that you mention it. Wait… I thought you said this song was by a band called Cream.”

(Here’s where I may have slammed my head onto my desk repeatedly.)

Suddenly, fifty-four seconds (and several thousand deceased brain cells) into the clip, extra drum beats and a horrific Euro-disco bassline are introduced into the song.”

“There, see,” Elise proclaimed, triumphant. “That’s it. That’s the Hoxton’s part.”

I listened for a few more seconds.

“Honey, now it’s just a lousy dance remix of Cream.”

“Oh.” Sheepishly. “I just thought she had a manly voice…”

(FYI, The Hoxton Whores are a pair of British house DJs slash remixers; they are not the band of leggy ladies depicted in the video, above.)