Well howdy do! to whoever is reading this post this morning, which comes to you in the wake of a very fun and action packed weekend (Baking! Boggle! Geocaching! Merrymaking!) with my aunt and cousin who flew in from Seattle. It’s Monday now, and to wake myself up I thought I’d start with a Song of the Day. Except, today’s Song of the Day is going all haywire and turning into Album of the Week! Thanks to the recently acquired audio capabilities of this blog, and the permission of guitarist Chris Venables, I am pleased to share two songs every day this week (Monday-Friday) from the self titled album by The Cuban Heels.

So who are The Cuban Heels? you might ask. I’ll assume you did, and I’ll tell you a story of a quest for musical gold, filled with many ups and downs and more ups (got your cuppa ready?).

The Cuban Heels are a band I discovered upon my first ever foray onto the Strummerville website sometime last year. I was poking around the site listening to some of the music posted there, and stumbled across “11 Little Secrets,” and it prompted me to go digging deeper for more information and more of their music.

The first thing I discovered, thanks to “asking the Googe” (nod to Genie for the use of her term), was that there are a few Cuban Heels out there in the world. I weeded out the ones who were not the ones I was looking for (The Cuban Heels of the Netherlands, of Scotland, and of Australia). The Cuban Heels I was looking for were from Bristol, England.

I searched a little more and finally found their presence on MySpace (Happy!) and more tunes that drove me to look even harder for a full fledged album (“Garden Song” in particular fueled my search to a frantic level). I then came across a disheartening piece of information: The Cuban Heels were no longer active and were on an indefinite hiatus (Sad!). However, I also discovered they had played a reunion show not too long before I had learned of them, so I continued my quest. A few more bits of information were found (mind you, this was all in the space of less than 30 minutes, gotta love the internet), and eventually came the best bit of all. I found a post that Chris had made saying that anyone interested in some Cuban Heels music could send an email about a remastered cd he had put together (HAPPY!). So naturally my musical addiction tendencies and my frantic search for anything Cuban Heels culminated in a reply from me. The result? Not long after I received into my possession a full 17-track album by the Cuban Heels.

I’ve been wanting to share my spoils, and now with the blog’s abilities to upload and post music and the a-ok to share it with you, I thought I’d do just that via the first Tulip Tree blog Album of the Week. I’ll start by posting the first song off the cd, “Coming Around” followed by “Garden Song,”the song that drove my search to fever pitch. The first CH song I laid my ears on, “11 Little Secrets,” can still be found on their page on the Strummerville website.

The Cuban Heels – “Coming Around”

The Cuban Heels – “Garden Song”

Many many thanks to The Cuban Heels for their collective creation of the musical gold, and especially to Chris Venables for allowing me to post the music here. More to come tomorrow!