And your ears shall hear…

So, I was happy hunting on Thursday again, at my new, favorite record store Discus, when what to my wondering eyes should appear?  No, not a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer! But a Riverside “Waterfall” promo single that I have never seen in my entire career of record shopping.  Yes, it’s a career.  But instead of making money, you actually give it away! Anyway, enough with the funny writing and the cheesy career comments, and back to the Adventures of the Cut Out Kid! Searching through the dirt and the grime of the old boxes, my fingers touched upon this Riverside promo that brought me back to the day I originally purchased this CD.  In a nutshell, Riverside was produced by Steve Lau who was the keyboardist in The Ocean Blue, a band that I was really into during the early 90’s, when Riverside debuted.  Since I was a big fan of the Ocean Blue and Steve Lau was  producing Riverside’s debut album “One,” I immediately had to go out and buy it.   I went out, bought the LP, and loved it!  It was in the same vein of most of the atmospheric pop that I was listening to at the time.   They also had a video for the single “Waterfall” which I kept seeing, and all these things  eventually led me to their live show.  They were just as good live, and very gracious when we met them.  They signed our CD’s and we told everyone we knew how cool they were.  They released a second video from “One” for the single “Cinnamon Girl,” and that was probably the last time we heard from Riverside.  So it goes, they recorded an incredible sophmore album, supposedly, but the band was dropped by Sire/Warner before it could ever be released!  How shitty was that, we never got to hear it!  I even remember my cousin telling me that they had made a second LP, but that it would probably never see the light of day.  Well thanks to the art of dumpster diving, I ran into a rare promo for “Waterfall,” which in turn brought all those memories rushing back.  I did a little research and found out that Riverside’s second record can be purchased at http://www.riversidetaste.com, through the lead singer, and that they even get together still to do some reunion shows.  I intend to get myself a copy of their second record “Taste” and have a little listening party. I will let you know how it goes.