36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Three: Baby Don't Stay (Demo) by Voice of The Beehive

Don't call them baby..because even if you wanted to, they're
long gone.

And now...yet another Obscure Band That Only Released A Few Albums I Really Liked.

The Voice of The Beehive lasted roughly a decade, founded by sisters Tracy Bryn and Melissa Brooks Belland in 1987.  They never really got the fame I think they deserved, as they drowned in the morass of similar 'led-by-two-women-who-do-harmonies' bands that flooded the music market in the late 80's and early 90's.  They even got stuck with the 'dream pop' label that was affixed to people like The Darling Buds and Lush, even though I think their work owed more to harder 60's era rockers.

And you can kind of hear it on this song, which I first heard as part of a fan-made rarities compilations (that you can still locate at the apparently now abandoned blog GirlBandGeek).  There is a chunkiness to the guitar riffs in this breakup anthem, and a definite Chrissie Hynde-like sneer to the vocal delivery...and yet, there's also a melodic nature to this band that's very flavorful especially given what's surrounding those voices.  It's the sort of thing that made them so damn appealing to me, a sort of bitter-with-the sweet that I adore.

Even though the band did have some success with their single 'I Say Nothing' and their cover of the Partidge Family's 'I Think I Love You,' they never got the proper footing in the tumultuous early 90's music industry...although apparently the band didn't implode due to The Great Signing Massacre that felled so many indie acts of the time.  It seems they simply imploded all by their lonesomes, thank you very much, with all but the Belland sisters surviving for their last album, Sex And Misery in 1996.  After that, save for a few shows where they opened for The Wonderstuff in 2003, Tracy has been teaching and Melissa runs her own company.  Do I think there might've been more music in them?  Yeah...but maybe it's best that the Sisters Belland allowed their venture to expire naturally rather then keeping the corpse alive.  At least now I have a rather nice collection of wonderfully snarky and witty pop songs to enjoy.

And you know, I wish that the little girls of today had the equivalent of a Tracy and Melissa to look up to rather than a Katy Perry or a (Am I A Man Or Am I A) Lady Gaga.  These girls rocked, they were sexy without being objects, and they actually wrote songs that had, you know, actual thoughts expressed in them.

Thus ends the editorializing.  Here's the song....