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Hello Amsterdam (Audio CD),11 April, 1995
List price $11.98
Different Sides of AMC / 4
The most interesting things about this EP is that it showcases some startlingly different sides of American Music Club. Their full-length albums are masterpieces of cohesiveness, but this one spreads the band all over the stylistic map in a way that can't help but shake the listener up a little bit.The version of "Hello Amsterdam," though ostensibly different from the one included on "San Francisco," sounds about the same to me: raucous, straightforward rock, and a tribute to ABBA, no less. Then you have the nervous energy of "I Just Took My Two Sleeping Pills," followed by the comic and cynical bitter of "The President's Test" (supposedly written about a guitar-shop encounter between Mark Eitzel and members of the power-ballad band, Tesla). Then you've got a beautiful cover of the old pop classic, "On a Clear Day," a move that might have prefigured Mark's inclusion, on his solo "60 Watt Silver Lining," of the "Dusty in Memphis" arrangement of another pop standard, "No Easy Way Down." The EP's final two tracks are a more passionate rendering of "San Francisco"'s "The Thorn In My Side," and then a real AMC rarity, a non-Eitzel song, in "Elbow Deep." All in all, this EP's cheap and has some really good songs on it. Probably not the best introduction to AMC (any of their albums would work better in that capacity, I think), but if you're already a fan, you can't help but like "Hello Amsterdam" for its stark contrast to the tonal consistency of most of the group's albums; this one's really all over the place.
Song "Why Won’t You Stay?"
Will this night fulfill all the promises
And bury us in peace
Will it leave us free and forgetful
Or at least bring some sleep
Your eyes don't catch the little things
As they narrow on your fall
I'm checking your pulse 'cause you're so quiet
I'm kissing you but you don't feel it
Why do you do this to me?
Showing me all that I'm good for
Is to watch you sleep as lifeless as an angel
She was the most beautiful cloud
That ever passed before the face of a girl
Seems like nothing's too good for this life
Some things are too good for this world
And our names and our faces
Well they're just spare change
In memory of a soul
Kept dropping spare change
Why won't you stay?
In memory of a little girl
Who was far too much in love with the world
And who didn't really wanna stick around for the end
Why won't you stay?
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