Great Lost Bands of the PowerPop Era: Martha and the Muffins

Blast from the Past: Over at Perfect Sound Forever, we see a recent interview with Martha and the Muffins!

PSF: When you wrote "Echo Beach," did you think that people would still be listening to it years later?

MG: The song has legs and we could have never anticipated that. If somebody had said then that song is going to be as popular 25 years on, I wouldn't have believed it. But I can see in retrospect how it has appealed to people. My father always said one reason he thought it was a hit is because it's nostalgic, and any song that has nostalgia in it hits a chord with people. And I think to some extent he's right. We're also the only Canadian band or artist to make Mojo magazine's list of "100 Singles You Must Own" ("Echo Beach" was #67). (In Canada) we have an award called the Juno, and we won two of them, one for the song "Echo Beach" – I think it got single of the year in 1980.

PSF: How popular was "Echo Beach" when it was released?

MJ: It did really well (in England). We just sat at home in Canada and got phone calls every week saying "It's at number 22!" "It's at number 18!" It made the top ten. It didn't actually make number one, but it was very popular and sold like 500,000 copies of the single. It was quite a whirlwind. But there was no followup (hit). The followup was chosen by the head of the record company, which was DinDisc at that time. And the band really didn't agree with her but she went ahead anyway with a song called "Saigon." I think (the single) probably should have been "Paint By Number Heart" or "Indecision." After the success in England, Canada followed suit and throughout Europe and in Australia, everywhere it was released the song went top ten as well.