Fig Dish

UK folks, copies of Love Songs are now being distributed by Code7 and available via Juno Records!

FIG DISH - That's What Love Songs Often Do (30th Anniversary Edition) Vinyl at Juno Records. Buy That's What Love Songs Often Do (30th Anniversary Edition) at Juno Records. In stock now for same-day shipping.

Later 2025.

✅ Brat Stop

For those who celebrate.

Hello!

There are still tickets left for FD's upcoming shows with Letters to Cleo:

July 24th @ the very famous X-Ray Arcade in Cudahy, Wisconsin: https://xrayarcade.com/calendar/2025/07/24/Letters to Cleo

July 25th @ Subterranean in Chicago
https://wl.eventim.us/event/letters-to-cleo/647150?afflky=BKBGManagementCo

July 26th @ Wicker Park Fest, Chicago
https://www.wickerparkbucktown.com/wicker-park-fest/

Also, you can pre-order the 30th Anniversary vinyl reissue of THAT'S WHAT LOVE SONGS OFTEN DO here (along with new T-shirts)
https://forgeagainrecords.bandcamp.com/album/thats-what-love-songs-often-do

FD INFLUENCES VOL. 1, ISSUE 3: Picking the burrs off of my socks (Mike)

At the beginning of 6th grade I had a pesky and insatiable urge to learn an instrument. No one in my house had displayed any musical talent, want, or interest at all, so this was a request that seemed to have come from far out in left field. I chose the saxophone for reasons unknown to me, as they were to the million other people who chose the same instrument during that time, judging from how many middle eights were jammed with that wailing wind or bleating blast. Maybe I had heard the twice-times sax break solo in “Baker Street”, or “Miss You”, or “The Logical Song”, or “Year of the Cat”, et al. one too many times from the backseat of my parent’s Chevy Vega. So began a 1-page chapter in a very short affair between me and that gobble-pipe. Having mildly chased my sax dreams for the better part of a hectic and passionless 2 or 3 weeks, I gave up, predictably, neither understanding the instrument, nor why anyone would want to play it. At least I returned it brand new. My mother was not pleased, despite that spectacular display of consideration on my part.

However, I did find that listening to music with a more dedicated and passionate ear was something I liked to do, and I at once set about destroying my young credit history by signing up for a records and tapes club that I am probably still a member of. As such, I was exposed to many very bad musical things, and some pretty good things, too, upon which I built a musical foundation. This was a solid time for this for me and, despite having a reputation as being all fey and hairdos, the 80’s kind of crushed. What really stuck for me, from then, a bit before, and the surrounding eras:

Georgie Fame – “Yeh Yeh” – Not the original, sure, but this was the one my grandfather listened to. He had typical musical taste for a guy born in the earliest part of the 1900’s (Ray Conniff, Bert Kaempfert) so his having this 45 was an outlier. It’s a weird British sketch of Latin Soul that somehow sounds like a game show theme.

Henri Mancini (with Fran Jeffries) – “It had Better be Tonight” – Only Mancini is Mancini and this is my favorite thing he ever did. The movie version is just so perfectly campy and delightful and evocative of a time and place just out of reach. I adore this.

Van Halen – “Little Guitars” – One of the records everyone hates, with an intro that shows off something that we maybe didn’t need to know about but is still, nevertheless, impressive. Even though it is the second-best guitar curlicue on this album it is a delightful, driving, almost comprehensively Van Halen song.

Big Country – “The Storm” – I saw this tour as a curious little 13 year-old at the Park West and it was gigantic, heroic, celebratory, and more. Watching Stuart Adamson and Tony Butler sing and play together sent chills up my spine that I still feel today when I hear this song.

The Records – “Starry Eyes” – WMET played the crap out of this. They were right. This is what I imagined all business trips were like until about 10 years ago.

Peter Gabriel – “Games Without Frontiers” – My locker in the HS natatorium had been graffiti-ed on the inside with “I go swimming," the title of a Gabriel song featured on “Plays Live” (and was just recently released as a studio version from 1981). I didn’t know much about Gabriel’s history with Genesis back then or what the meaning of or thought behind the court jester face close up cover of “Plays Live” was all about, but I went out and bought the 45 for “Games…” and spent the next few weeks trying to learn French phrases, decipher who plays with what, and who wins in the end. Blake and I stole an idea from this song many years later.

Tears For Fears – “Songs From the Big Chair” / “The Hurting” – When “Songs” came out, I went to Busch Records to buy it and the guy behind the counter scoffed at me and said the usual, “Their first record is WAY better, dude.” So, I bought that one, too. Is it? I don’t think so, really, but I guess we are supposed to. I saw them at Aragon on the “Songs” tour and, even draped in cascading mullets and trench coats, tons of gated reverb, and an abundance of Stratocasters, they were fantastic live.

The Cure – “Dressing Up” – I thought “The Top” was great. There, I said it. The nightly anthem for those of us that went to Medusa’s. For me, anyway.

*Torch Song – “Don’t look now” – This was basically a highlight of every night at Medusa’s - a Goth-aspirational Chicago juice bar of some legend that specialized in dark wave and electro-adjacent music that was a haven to kids like me - and a bit tricky to find back in those pre-internet days. [see Figure 1 below] I found it one day at Wax Trax (price tag still on it!) and many years later realized that William Orbit was in this band. It sounds like it.

Yaz – “Don’t Go” – “Speak & Spell” is the best DMode record and Vince Clarke is why. This is equally about his vision as it is about Moyet’s astounding voice. From DM, to Yaz, to Erasure, Clarke couldn’t make anything but magical, memorable, distinctive songs.

Clan of Xymox – “Muscoviet Musquito” – All of the 4AD comp “Lonely is an Eyesore” from 1987 is kind of maybe not altogether that good taken as a whole. It doesn't hold up musically (vis-a-vis songs) but the excitement of hearing such weird, stylistically experimental stuff at the time overcame that shortcoming. Leave it to the Dutch to intentionally (?) spell all the words wrong but get the song right.

Dead Can Dance – “Spleen and Ideal” – Want to be a slightly mopey kid at the suburban library doing homework but trying to look interesting and cool and also a little dangerous even though you have swoopy blonde hair that is tinged green not by Manic Panic but by exposure to chlorine? Slap this bad boy on your pioneer portable CD player and behold as the spell is cast to an audience of no one. De Profundis, indeed.

Everything But the Girl – “When All’s Well” from “Love Not Money” – Tracey & Ben have been a part of my life ever since I was introduced to them on this record, with this song. An iteration of a band with Rick and I in it tried out and were not accepted for our HS talent-a-thon with this song in 1987. In London in around 2002 at the bar Pharmacy (or was it called Army Chap then?), about 6 of my friends and I collectively shat ourselves when we realized Ben Watt was also at the bar. That same night I kneed a guy in the plums because I thought he was being a slimeball to a friend’s wife. As it turns out he was asking where the restroom was. It was also the first night Absinthe was re-legalized in the UK, so I have an excuse.

OMD – “Souvenir” – I sat in the front row of the Thompson Twins concert at the Rosemont Horizon so that I could see OMD open for them. It’s the first and only time I’ve ever sat in the front row. I’ve now seen them too many times to count, and I do not tire of them, or especially of this song, which I think is their masterpiece. The tape loops, the melody, Martin Cooper’s vocals…I just cannot stop hearing it for the first time.

The Connells – “Darker Days” – I didn’t know all the whos and whys of this record until much, much later. The Don Dixon, the Elvis Costello and, eventually, the Mitch Easter. This is a dark but peppy, melodic and lyrically dense, compelling record that holds up tremendously. We played “Hats Off” in the autos courtyard to a gape-mouthed audience more than once.

-MW

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02xeMZGn4CybFhmW78avza?si=6a9695a4c263484a

*Torch Song, "Don't Look Now" (unavailable on Spotify). Content Warning: video may not be appropriate for those sensitive to infrared, blurrophobia, or 80s editing technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6piSnoWGtjo

Figure 1

Album Review of That's What Love Songs Often Do on the Dig Me Out podcast!

Fig Dish - That’s What Love Songs Often Do | 90s Rock Podcast Big hooks, bigger guitars, and the confidence to open with a waltz: Unpacking Fig Dish’s production dream team and why they didn’t break through

Part 2 of the LIFERS Song Imploder episode featuring a track-by-track discussion of THAT'S WHAT LOVE SONGS OFTEN DO. This is (more or less) about side 2 (or, more accurately, sides 3 and 4 of the vinyl reissue).

225. LIFERS - Fig Dish Promotional Obligation Part 2: The Revenge This week it’s the conclusion of our special Album Imploder episode commemorating the 30th anniversary reissue of Fig Dish’s THAT’S WHAT LOVE SONGS OFTEN DO. Rick, Mike and Blake are still on hand as

"Hotdogs, Fireworks, and Fig Dish": On the latest episode of the LIFERS podcast—hosted by some guys named Scott Lucas, Ben Reiser, and Gabe Rodriguez—Fig Dish attempts (emphasis on 'attempts') to do a track-by-track analysis of their debut album, That's What Love Songs Often Do. This is Part 1 of a 2-part series.

224. LIFERS - Hotdogs, Fireworks, and Fig Dish! It's 4th of July - so that means it's time for hot dogs, fireworks, and Fig Dish! On the eve of the 30th Anniversary re-issue of That's What Love Songs Often Do (first time on vinyl), 3/4s of Fig Di