Six Degrees of Seperation & Devolution Into Madness

I have this problem, and I don't think I'm unique in the digital age. With so much information at our finger tips at any given point in time, it seems to me that humanity has a new thirst for knowledge... Not necessarily USEFUL knowledge mind you, but with so much useless fact at our disposal the mind wanders in wholly new directions.

Example: In 1991, founding member, song writer, and keyboard player for Genesis, Tony Banks, put out a solo album called 'Still'. I own this album, and have never really given it a good hard listen, so I included the tracks on my iPod, hoping that through half-listened osmosis I may gain enough appreciation for the work to want to sit down and listen to the whole thing. That is yet to happen, no offense to Tony, but from what I've heard, the music is very dated in that late 80's/early 90's sort of way, which is totally fine, when I'm in that mood... I just haven't been of late...

Regardless, one track did catch my attention. A track on the B-side of the album, track #9, still on the front side of the CD, since CDs, you know, only have one side... Anyhoo, the track is called 'Back to Back' and I was struck by the lead singer, who sounded an awful lot like Pat Benetar...

Now if it was STILL 1991, and I was hearing this in the car, on the radio, off a mix tape, or elsewhere that I didn't have the liner notes readily available, I likely would just have thought 'Hmmm... That sounds like Pat Benetar' and let it be... That's what we did before the Internet... We thought about things, kicked them around in our minds for a few seconds, and then let them go, never to be thought of again. Alas my friends, this is NOT 1991, this is the Digital Age! A time in which anything and everything is available at the touch of a button. Exhibit A:

I'm listening to 'Back to Back', thinking the singer sounds like Pat Benetar, and instead of just accepting that as my opinion, and not really caring if I'm right or not, I allow my fingers to do the walking... No, I didn't grab a phone book, look up Pat Benetar, and give her a call to see if she sang 'Back to Back' on Tony Banks' solo album Still in 1991, I'm pretty sure she's unlisted, and doesn't live in my neighborhood... Instead, I went to the handy-dandy Internet, and typed 'Tony Banks Back to Back Singer' into the Yahoo search engine (sorry Google, I tend to go back and forth with my searching preferences). Yahoo directed me to an Amazon review, which directed me to Wikipedia, which told me that the Benetar impersonator on Tony's track is an Aussie song stylist by the name of Jayney Klimek.

Now MOST people, having found the bit of trivia they were searching for, would have forgotten this nugget of fact as quickly as they discovered it, and moved on to more important things, like refilling their coffee, or finishing the crossword-of-the-day calendar they've been neglecting all morning, but not ME! I, as I mentioned, have a problem...

Now that I've discovered that this haunting voice from 17 years hence, DAMN... 1991 was SEVENTEEN years ago... That's creepy... Huh? Oh...

Now that I've discovered that this haunting voice from 17 years hence is none other than the FASCINATING Jayney Klimek, whom no more than 90 seconds ago I'd never heard of before, I now need to know anything and everything about this woman's professional recording career... What I found was FASCINATING... I can prove it, because I typed FASCINATING all in caps, TWICE, well, now three times, so therefore it must be true...

If you have a problem, like I do, you've likely already clicked on the above link to Jayney's Wikipedia entry. If you have, you've likely already discovered the first nugget of trivia I'm about to drop on the heads of the blog-reading public... Two of Jayney's cousins are members of the Aussie rock band Jet. If you're not familiar with Jet, you really should be... Their 2003 release Get Born rocks their feet straight up the asses of the listening public... In all fairness, I myself am not too familiar with Jet's work beyond this album, but this one's good, and Jayney is related to people who play on it... In a word, FASCINATING. Other famous musical family members are also known for recording things, writing things and playing things. While this too is entertaining, I'm lazy, so if you want to know more, read about them yourself. Someone took the time to post a Wikipedia entry, the least YOU can do is read it...

Nugget of intrigue #2: In addition to Tony Banks, Jayney has also collaborated with Tangerine Dream, Paul Van Dyk, and Alphaville. I can only assume that by the conversion principles of the 'Alphaville Theorem' this makes her 'Big in Japan'.

I like it when people who sing wander around and sing with other people who either sing, or play instruments... It gives me something to obsess about, and while that frightens me in a deep seeded and dark way, I also find it... You ready? Get properly positioned now, because it's on it's way... FASCINATING...

Yet another infotainment joy nugget: This is the one that turns my 'problem' from simply a waste of time into a potential waste of money, although I'm fighting my base instincts to reach for a credit card and instead simply shilling to my sparsely populated public... You see, on some subconscious level, I have the feeling that if YOU go and listen to, and subsequently purchase something from Jayney's new band You Pretty Thing , then I won't have to... I will have done my part to support a relatively unknown artist with a famous family and an uncanny ability to have sounded like Pat Benetar 17 years ago...

You know you WANT to... Indulge in your Internet obsession, give Jayney a listen. It's the least you can do... After all, her vocal stylings were enough to send me on a tailspin of madness that I could only escape through completing a blog post... That's... well... I really have no idea WHAT that is... how 'bout FASCINATING...