Orchestra JB

I remember Orchestra JB...I think it was only one guy, actually...I have a couple of rave comps from the late-80's with earlier tracks by him...(couldn't name them right now at gunpoint, though)...

I also hail from SE MI, though I do not ruminate on the current whereabouts of one Darren Revell...(I do wonder, sometimes, about Arthur Penhallow, though...I'm a bit older than you)...

Ruminate isn't the word...perhaps "occasionally wonder" is a better descriptor. Regardless, I am curious about the quality of the early rave comps. I looked it up and the name of the song is 'Come Alive", not "Open Your Eyes". I guess they (or he) is a group from Italy that composed a few dancefloor hits during the early '90s. This is the only song I've heard stateside, however.

How do you know that you are older?

"Standing on the center stage are eighty young men who have given you such hits as 'Pass the Overture To Joy,' 'Gimme Some More Night Music'..."

Also, I don't know if it's a pre-midlife crisis thing or what, but I recently made a list of early 90's songs that shaped my formative years (high school and college, excluding grunge of course). Some of the groups on this compilation: teenage fanclub, stone roses, chapterhouse, wolfgang press, charlatons, etc.

Does anyone else think that, given the number of exciting groups in the early 90s emerging from the Manchester/Bristol scene in England as well as the increasing attention in the music press to the "new British Invasion", Kurt Cobain (may he rest in peace) and the ensuing 'grunge' movement was one of the most untimely and unfortunate events in modern American music? Just think of all the great music we would have today had such bands been enabled to continue to explore that sound.

the one rave comp I can dig up here in my closet o' tunes has a track called "On A Love Groove" by Orchestra JB on it...it's a little more hip hop flavored than most rave tracks of the day, and has a great "Mr. Sandman" sample...I'm looking at the tracklisting of this comp, and seeing stuff like "3 AM Eternal", "Lamborghini" by Shut Up And Dance, Psychotropic's "Only For The Headstrong", and the wonderful "Stop Bajon" by Tullio de Piscopo, and I'm thinking, what a GREAT set of tunes, and what a great musical era this was...I'm not sure where we would be now if grunge had never happened, but it's an interesting question you raise...

I just assumed I was older, Matt, and that is confirmed by the fact that the early 90's were your college/high school years...(they were my grad school years)...