Categorized | The Surprise Box

HANNA CRANNA w/ JOEY MOLLAND – Surprise Box 20

Posted on 06 January 2012

All right!   Two bits of cool news!

First, there’s material coming  from HANNA CRANNA very soon!  It’s been many years since Hanna Cranna released anything and, while it’s trite to say, I know it will be  ‘worth the wait’!

Second, to celebrate that, leader Stephen Bunovsky is letting Pop Pioneers enjoy a song from Hanna Cranna that features Joey Molland from Badfinger playing on it.  This live track is, in fact, two Badfinger songs – “Money” and “Flying”.

Get Listening – DOWNLOAD NOW – Right Click And Save – HERE

===============================

Hannah Cranna’s A Real Nice Parade is a sampler record of the band’s recorded history from 1995 to the present.  In addition to the five new originals recently recorded by Hannah Cranna, the album contains selections from their two releases on Big Deal Records, quality demos, as well as a 1997 live recording of Badfinger’s Money/Flying featuring Joey Molland of Badfinger as a special guest on vocals and guitar.  A Real Nice Parade has already been selected as the IndepenDisc cd of the month for January 2012.  The band plans to play whenever they can to support this labor of love!

Hannah Cranna was a bit anachronistic during the 90’s – they sounded nothing like the Seattle bands that so dominated the music scene, in fact, their music harkened back to the then ultra uncool pop of The Beatles, The Kinks, Badfinger, Big Star and Buffalo Springfield – pure pop sounds that have enjoyed a great resurgence after the noise-drenched ’90’s. Their songs had strong, original melodies in a decade pretty much bereft of them. The first album, “Better Lonely Days” received a lot of praise for its unique pop sound, in fact the Ventura County & Coast proclaimed their songs could, “stand with anything Buddy Holly or those Beatles ever wrote”. Hannah Cranna’s packed showcase at the South by Southwest that year was one of the Austin Chronicle’s picks for the festival. Better Lonely Days was a well-received, critical success…”Hello” was picked up by about 80 radio stations and was even in regular rotation on WPLR in New Haven, CT – a major FM classic rock station. The eponymous second outing featured legendary Badfinger guitarist/singer/songwriter Joey Molland (also guitar player for George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Star in some of their solo work) as the producer. A somewhat darker tone pervaded this record, evoking a sense of melancholy reminiscent of Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” or George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” – even still, there was always a thread of humanism running through their music and in the end it was the uncompromising devotion to making great music that really set them apart.

6 Responses to “HANNA CRANNA w/ JOEY MOLLAND – Surprise Box 20”

  1. Steve Bunovsky says:

    You can find Hannah Cranna’s A Real Nice Parade at http://www.cdbaby.com or http://www.independisc.com…Also, check out our facebook page…the cd is a sampler and contains 6 new tracks, 5 previously released tracks, and the unreleased live track with Joey Molland. Enjoy!

  2. Steve Bunovsky says:

    Sorry, the Independisc link is http://www.independisc.com – highly recommended.

  3. Roland Cyr says:

    Steve – great news that HC is back!! I’ll have to head over to CDB to check it out.
    Loved the two discs you guys did in the 90s. But does this mean that The Naomi Star is done? I never heard anything more after Through the Eyes….but wow, three cool albums there.

    –Roland
    the powerpopster

    • Steve Bunovsky says:

      Hi Roland, Never say never! TNS is me and my two cousins – Paul and Dan Kohler and I’d love to do another record with those guys if time allows…That’s so cool that you have all those records…hope you enjoy the new HC tracks too! Cheers.

      • Roland Cyr says:

        Well, seriously, how many great power pop bands has CT produced? 🙂 lol….ok, there have been a few others, most notably The Broken Hearts, right in my area. Anyway, I wish I had been to some of the classic HC shows. One of my engineering managers in the early/mid 90s was a HUGE fan of yours, never missed a New Haven-area show, and turned us all on to your tunes. I try to do the same for music fans that I know…and all these years later, I still make sure that HC and TNS songs regularly play in my ‘history of power-pop’ iTunes playlist…..and I FINALLY got around to ordering the new HC sampler disc from KOOL KAT! Can’t wait to hear the 5 new tunes…