A 52 Week Autobiography Through Music Week 26 – Gruppo Sportivo
A 52 Week Autobiography Through Music – Week 26 – Gruppo Sportivo from Pancycle on Vimeo.
This week as I mentioned in the video is a special one for me in that I am referring to a band that I not only love what I was 15 but I Have been actively listening to again over the last year. Gruppo Sportivo had some but limited success in the United States and as such it was not so easy to find their albums. So it was by pure chance that I discovered “Design Moderne” in a record store in Colorado Springs and I am certainly glad that I did. After buying only one of their other records called “10 Mistakes” I didn’t pursue the band further. It occurs to me that there was a strange period of time during which I stopped listening to the radio and the Internet was not yet a thing. It was during this time that I could say I really lost track of what was happening in current in pop music. Absent a good source for discovering new music for staying current with what bands were doing I really fell out of touch. Certain groups like Gruppo Sportivo took a long time to release previous albums digitally so it has been only within the last year that I heard some of the group’s older music for the first time. I guess it’s also true that I became quite lazy about discovering new music for quite some time and in fact it is because of this blog that I have this renewed interest in and passion for discovering new music and rediscovering older music.
I love the fact that Hans Vandenburg, has continued to write and produce music both for Gruppo Sportivo as well as under his own name despite not being widely known. If artists like him only continued producing music as long as they got radio play, had hits, record contracts and a lot of money the world would be far worse off. Thank you Hans and Gruppo Sportivo for having a vision and producing so much wonderful music!
This is a fantastic and fun band, well worth listening to. As usual you can find some more biographical information in the links below – in particular the wikipedia link.
http://www.grupposportivo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruppo_Sportivo
!0 Mistakes was the first one I bought. Mission a Paris is from that album, and I like a song called Henri. I think I started doing a thing that If I noticed an album with female band members, that was not pushing the ‘sex sells’ idea, then it would catch my attention. This, Romeo Void, Cocteau Twins, and others. Even in basic rock and roll, the Suzie Quatros, a band called Fanny, the Pretenders etc. would sound interesting to me. It seemed like a slightly different approach to things.
So, we’ve already covered the first half of your autobiography through music!
Always a treat to read.