The Ocean Blue
| The Ocean Blue | |
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA |
| Genres | Indie pop, dream pop, jangle pop, new wave |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Labels | Sire/Warner Bros. Records |
| Website | theoceanblue |
| Members | David Schelzel Oed Ronne Bobby Mittan Peter Anderson |
| Past members | Steve Lau Rob Minnig |
The Ocean Blue, formed in Hershey, Pennsylvania in 1986, is an American indie pop band that combines melodic guitars and synthesizers. Its core original members included David Schelzel (born September 26, 1967) on lead vocals/guitar, Steve Lau on keyboards/saxophone, Bobby Mittan on bass guitar and Rob Minnig on drums and vocals.
Its current line-up includes David Schelzel on lead vocals/guitar, Oed Ronne on keyboards/guitar/vocals, Bobby Mittan on bass guitar and Peter Anderson on drums.
The band's sound may be best described as jangly guitar-based modern rock. Influences include such bands as The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, R.E.M., Echo & the Bunnymen and New Order. The Ocean Blue's earliest shows always consisted of a healthy dose of covers by these bands. To this day, The Smiths and New Order covers still punctuate concert encores.
The members of The Ocean Blue first met in junior high school. They cut a series of demos while in high school, with Scott Stouffer sitting in on drums. They managed to get two of these earliest recordings, "On Growing Up" and "Wounds Of A Friend", included on a local radio station compilation in late 1986. The compilation also included very early work from friends and mentors of The Ocean Blue, noted local artists, The Innocence Mission. Rob Minnig would join as permanent drummer in 1987, and the classic line-up of Schelzel/Lau/Minnig/Mittan would continue through 1994.
The Ocean Blue's members were just teenagers and still in high school when they signed a three-album deal in 1988 with Sire Records, at the behest of Sire founder Seymour Stein. The Ocean Blue's self-titled album was recorded in London with producers John Porter and Mark Optiz, and many listeners were surprised to learn that the band wasn't British. The first single, the song "Between Something and Nothing", an Echo & the Bunnymen-sounding rocker, hit the top of the college and Modern Rock radio charts in the fall of 1989. The band's busy calendar included U.S. touring and an appearance on one of the first episodes of "Club MTV with Downtown Julie Brown". The follow-up single "Drifting, Falling" was also a top 10 Modern Rock radio hit, and featured a video of the band in various locations in and around their hometown of Hershey, Pennsylvania. The band's first two videos received massive rotation on the fledgling MTV show "Post-Modern MTV". The band later joined labelmates The Mighty Lemon Drops and John Wesley Harding on an extensive U.S./Canadian tour. All of this promotion helped the band sell well over 150,000 units of the record.
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