Tuesday, May 5, 2009

"Boy or a Girl" by Imperial Drag

This being a busy week, I thought tonight I would simply post a video. In this case, that video is "Boy or a Girl" by Imperial Drag. For those of you who have never heard of Imperial Drag, they were a glam rock/powerpop band circa 1994 to 1997. Imperial Drag arose from the ashes of Jellyfish, perhaps the best powerpop band of the Nineties besides The Posies. After Jellyfish broke up, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr. teamed up with guitarist Eric Dover (who had played with Jellyfish on tour) to form Imperial Drag. Imperial Drag was inspired by such glam rock bands as Sweet and T. Rex from the Seventies, not only in the style of their music, but in the image they cultivated as well. They released a self titled debut album in 1996. The album produced one hit, the song "Boy or a Girl, which went to #30 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart and to #54 on the United Kingdom's Singles Chart. While "Boy or a Girl" did well, however, the album Imperial Drag did not. The trend towards powerpop in the early Nineties was coming to an end, and Imperial Drag's glam rock image was out of step with the the post-grunge bands of the late Nineties. Imperial Drag disbanded in 1997. In 2005 a compilation demos and non-album tracks by Imperial Drag simply called Demos was released through the now extinct Weedshare music service.

As to the video to "Boy or a Girl," it was directed by Nick Small, who also directed the videos for "Little Baby Nothing" by The Manic Street Preachers and "Kung Fu" by Ash. Small designed the video as an homage to the Russ Meyer movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (which as everyone knows, was co-written by Roger Ebert). Anyhow, without further ado and courtesy of YouTube, here is "Boy or a Girl..."

1 comment:

Jim Marquis said...

Great song. I love the glam sound.

Have you ever heard "Greetings from the Gutter" by Dave Stewart (formerly of the Eurythmics)?