My Top 1000 Songs #825: One Big Tree

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Yeah, sorry, this one's probably pretty unique to my college experience, so move right along if you weren't knee-deep in New England college music circa mid-80s.

Three Colors were a Boston band who managed a few singles and EPs (later collected on One Big CD, which is probably out of print by now). Their big "hit" (or at least the one that got some regional/college radio airplay, and even snuck onto late night MTV) was "One Big Tree," off the band's eponymous 1985 EP. For a Boston band, they manage to sound a lot more like a European new wave act here--kinda the polar opposite of Mission of Burma and the other more guitar-oriented Boston bans of the era--with a percolating keyboard groove and crooning vocals. Throw in some wiggy saxophones, and it sounds more like the great lost English Beat single than something out of the Northeastern indie scene.

I have dim memories of the band playing a party when I was a freshman or sophomore. The details of the night have long since faded, but the song stuck--as it will with you, as that percolating groove is an insane nugget of ear-candy.

Live: