This One's For ... My Blog's Birthday!!

Well, boys and girls, can you freakin' believe that I've been doing this blog for a whole year already?!? I sure freakin' can't! And as a very special "blogiversary" treat for you, I'm uploading a whole album's worth of MP3's!! True, it's something I'm normally strongly against -- in fact, I've just recently deleted the link to one particular blog from my list here because I realized that they regularly post full albums that are in print and very easy to find -- sorry, but that's just not cool.

So, why this time? Well, there are extenuating circumstances in this case ... so this may very well be the only time you see me do this. You see, the album in question is (as far as I can tell) very very rare, has been out of print for over ten years, and I seriously doubt it will ever be put back into print again. So, I can't see any reason why the label or the artists or anyone in between could seriously object to my posting it. Besides, I feel it oughta be heard by every boyband fan out there.


OTT
"THIS ONE'S FOR YOU"
(Sony/Taiwan, 1997)


Tracks 1 through 8 (29MB)
Tracks 9 through 16 (27MB)

Several years ago, I went on a brief eBay binge, in which I bought two or three huge lots of CD-singles from UK sellers. The final bids on the lots were fantastic bargains but, as you can imagine, shipping those heavy boxes to the USA was really expensive (which is one reason I was forced to put a quick end to that practice). But even including the shipping costs, I roughly figured that I got over 200 singles (and not one unplayable one amongst them, though a few were a bit nicked up) for less than 80 cents each, which was a pretty decent deal for a music nut like me. Almost all of those singles have since been sent on to various new homes, but I did end up finding a couple of artists that I've been enjoying ever since, one of them being UK boyband OTT.

For being a band that scored a good few Top Ten UK singles in the late '90s, there's surprisingly little information on the web regarding OTT. About all I can tell you about them is that they were from Ireland, and that one of the lads left the band before they released their one and only album (five guys appear on the covers of some of their CD-singles, while only four are seen on others), which I'm not sure was even released anywhere other than Southeast Asia. Sure, in a way there's a reason that they've been mostly forgotten -- their songs and vocals were kind-of forgettable to begin with -- but if you're like me, boybands are kind-of like pizza: even when they're bad, they're still pretty darn good! I managed to snatch up this album on eBay many months ago in what I think was a fluke of good timing, because I've been searching intermittently for it ever since (just out of curiosity) and have never again been able to pull up any results on eBay, GEMM, or any other similar web marketplace.

I do have to say that, while most of the album is mediocre, OTT did record one single, "The Story Of Love", that I think ranks with some of the best boyband singles ever, like Phixx's "Strange Love". As an added bonus, I've included the single remix of the track (what I affectionately call "The Westlife Remix", just 'cause it sounds a lot like Westlife sounded back in their early days), which in my opinion is far superior to the album version. Additionally you'll find "Kiss And Tell", a B-side from another of their singles, which I think is my second favorite of their songs, and which I was disappointed wasn't included on the album. These two tracks I've re-tagged as tracks 15 and 16 on the album, just 'cause I'm a bit of a neat-freak about my iTunes library. Anyway ... enjoy, and here's to another year of Thnairg's World of Music!!