Despite the fact that it came out in 1987, and on the semi-major label Relativity, Dali Does Windows may be the most obscure album I've ever liked.
It's sort of fun to try to pick out the reasons why nobody has heard of Defenestration. There's the fact that their first album on a more-or-less major label was their last album on a more-or-less major label.
Or that it was their last album period.
There's that remarkably nondescript cover, and the band name that's more or less meaningless to most people, unless they've studied Bohemian history.
Did I mention that they were from that hotbed of indie rock, Norman, Oklahoma?
Dali Does Wndows failed to hit, and it failed to hit miserably. I'm sure I've missed some of the reasons why, but one of them was not that the music sucked. It's not great all the way through, but "Watch the Hearts Break" and "Bedlam Revisted/She Has No Soul" are outstanding, pretty much as good as anything else the late '80's produced.
It's sort of embarassing to admit, but I was a college disk jockey. What made it embarassing was that the station didn't actually have a transmitter. The signal was supposedly carried through the campus wiring. Which might have worked--if even the Rathskellar had bothered playing the station. But they didn't--so the job was basically talking to yourself. I will say they had good equipment, and music sounded good in that room. I made a bunch of mix tapes, and discovered a bunch of music, mostly from lists CMJ sent on.
Defenestration was one of the bands I discovered through my access to the carts and lists made available to the station, and so was Timbuk 3. If the rest of the world has forgotten both bands, I have not.
Anyway, for what it's worth, Defenestration were:
Tyson Meade - Vocals, and Guitar on the two best songs
Todd Walker - Guitar
Chris Ward - Drums
Joe Kollman - Bass
File under: Eighties Alternative
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