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The Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda Files: Why You Should Hail Caesars

ceasarscover.jpgTime for another installment of the Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda Files, where we raid our archives in search of a lost gem.

Artist: Caesars
Album: Paper Tigers, 2005
What happened: When Caesars' spastic "Jerk It Out" was earmarked for a nationwide iPod ad campaign, the Swedish group seem poised for a breakthrough here in the States. But while the Astralwerks-issued Paper Tigers got some favorable notices, Caesars couldn't capitalize on their "Jerk" jump-start, and the album languishes around the $1 range on Amazon.
Why it should have been a hit: Granted, there's no shortage of pop-savvy Swedes out there, but Paper Tigers was full of fuzzed-out charm, and tracks like "It's Not The Fall That Hurts" and "Out There" sound as though they were recorded in the bottom of some Scandinavian music-lab bunker 50,000 feet underground:

Caesars - It's Not The Fall That Hurts [MP3]
Caesars - Out There [MP3]
Caesars [MySpace]

12:38 PM on Tue Feb 20 2007
By Brian Raftery
676 views
4 comments

Comments

  • Image of Chris Molanphy by Chris Molanphy at 01:37 PM on 02/20/07
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    "Jerk It Out" was floating around as long ago as 2002-03, when it got used in a beer commercial (Michelob, I think). It shows you how damn catchy the track was that I even noticed it, when I generally barely notice suds ads at all. I downloaded it in the summer of '03 and put it on my mixtape for that year; by the time Apple put it in the iPod ad, I'd been grooving to it for a year and a half or so.

    It was also featured on an earlier CD, 39 Minutes of Bliss, which I got a comp of back in '03. The rest of the disc did nothing for me, but maybe with Paper Tigers they got it right the second time.

  • Image of Tyler Knew and Turk! Wendell Ate Won Too by Tyler Knew and Turk!... at 01:46 PM on 02/20/07
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    Thanks for that tidbit.

  • Image of brasstax by brasstax at 01:58 PM on 02/20/07
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    I think it was a vodka ad, btw. Set in a laundromat.

    No, my bad. I just looked at the cd I bought around that time, and it was actually "(I'm Gonna) Kick You Out" used in the commercial I saw, which must've been from 2000-01 or so. I snatched up everything I could at the time, but remember being disappointed with a lot of the band's newer material.

    Seek out the band's album Youth is Wasted on the Young.

  • No commenter image uploaded by Riley at 02:24 AM on 02/21/07
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    i love the realism of this article

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