Wylde Bunch

Occasionally I receive unsolicited email from bands under the strange impression that I can help them make the big time. I somehow even ended up on one group's mailing list. None of these folks ever bothered to check out this site because, if they had, they'd know that I am not a traditional mp3 blog and that the focus here is live music. Some are from bands who are promoting themselves while others originate with a marketing company. I've let all these emails fester in my mailbox until now and have actually been listening to samples.

Wylde Bunch is described as an alternative hip hop band. An 11-piece outfit, they hail from Los Angeles and, oddly enough, this proghead finds himself mostly enjoying the songs they have available at their MySpace page. Their tunes “Yeah Yeah (Stomp The Bleachers)” and "On Top" have been appropriated by Fox Sports and ABC/ESPN, respectively, for television broadcasts. Although these are the weaker of the 4 songs available to sample, each has something interesting about it. "On Top" has some fuzzy guitar and a little piano to close it out; "Yeah Yeah", with its soaring chorus, is made for sports TV but I liked some of the little things. For instance, the horns are great and the song has more than a touch of Sly and the Family Stone in it. Plus there's that marching band snare too. "Clash" sounds like a classic 60s rock song with its piano and harmonies. Kinda like "One" by Three Dog Night during the verses. "Lose It" sounds most like what people think of when they think of hip hop, but with some heavy guitar.

The brief nods towards rock work really well and the horns are great. Plus acoustic drums are predominant. There's a certain swing with a live drummer that's lost when rhythm is programmed rather than played. What really shines through in their music is fun. "Yeah Yeah", on the one hand, sounds like it was tailor made for a sports broadcast. But on the other, it's just relentlessly joyous in a more general way. Lyrically, these folks are optimists and when they turn inwards, it comes across as as genuine and not overwrought. Plus their trumpeter, Janey, is a looker.