Океан Көгі: Американдық инди-поп тобының тарихы

American indie pop band

The Ocean Blue is an American indie pop band formed in Hershey, Pennsylvania in 1986. Its original members included David Schelzel on lead vocals/guitar, Steve Lau on keyboards/saxophone, Bobby Mittan on bass guitar and Rob Minnig on drums and vocals.

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 noted local artists the Innocence Mission, who were friends and mentors of the Ocean Blue. 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 still in high school when they signed a three album deal in 1988 with Sire Records, at the behest of Sire founder Seymour Stein. Their self titled debut album was recorded in London with producers John Porter and Mark Opitz. 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 first single, "Between Something and Nothing", peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, while its follow up, "Drifting, Falling", peaked at No. 10. Two videos were made for the songs and both received rotation on PostModern MTV. The band joined the Mighty Lemon Drops and John Wesley Harding on an extensive tour of the U. S. and Canada. All of this promotion helped the band sell well over 150,000 copies of the first record. After recording in several New England studios with Pat McCarthy engineering and co producing, the band released their second album, Cerulean, in 1991. The singles "Ballerina Out of Control" and "Mercury" both charted on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, at Nos. 3 and 27, respectively. While Schelzel remained the predominant songwriter of the band, Ronne composed two tracks and sang lead on his song "Behind". See was released to lukewarm results, with the record company cancelling plans to film a video for the second single, "Slide", although the band embarked upon a U. S. tour. In 1999, the band recorded and self released their fifth album, Davy Jones' Locker. Two years later, the album was re sequenced, re mastered and re released on March Records, with March releasing both "Denmark" and "Ayn" as EPs, each featuring three new B sides. Shortly thereafter, drummer Minnig decided to leave the group after fourteen years, and Peter Anderson, a friend of the band from Minneapolis, was brought in for live shows and, eventually, permanent recording work. In 2004, the band released the diverse six song EP Waterworks on What Are Records?. That year, the group performed select dates around the U. S., recruiting the Owls' saxophonist Brian Tighe. The Orange Peels' Allen Clapp contributed music and production duties to the EP and, to reciprocate, Ronne and Anderson contributed to Allen Clapp and the Orange Peels' 2005 album Circling the Sun. In October of that year, Schelzel recorded a solo version of Adolphe Adam's 1847 Christmas classic "O Holy Night". This song was available only as a digital download via the band's website for the 2005 holiday season. In late 2005, the Ocean Blue's entire five studio album catalogue, as well as the Waterworks EP and the band's first four videos, became available for purchase on iTunes. On June 1, 2006, the Ocean Blue's Schelzel/Mittan/Ronne/Anderson line up played its first ever South American concert, with a show at Teatro Rajatabla El Llonja, Barranco Lima, Peru. In July 2010, the Ocean Blue's long unreleased studio track "City Traffic" was uploaded to Dailymotion and YouTube, with an accompanying homemade video.

In December 2010, the band's website announced that a new record was in the works. The website also offered a free Christmas download of a newly recorded cover version of the ancient Basque carol "The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came", performed by Schelzel and Don Peris (of the Innocence Mission). In December 2011, the band's website announced that another free Christmas download—performed again by Schelzel and Peris—was available via the band's Facebook page. The release was a cover version of "Walking in the Air", a song written by Howard Blake and first showcased in the 1982 animated film The Snowman, adapted from Raymond Briggs' noted 1978 children's novel of the same name. On January 12, 2013, the band performed their first concert since 2006 at the Korda Records Showcase in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Korda Records was a new independent label formed by several artists, including Schelzel.) On March 6, 2013, the band released "Sad Night, Where Is the Morning? ", the first single from their forthcoming album, to radio and in digital and physical formats. On March 19, the Ocean Blue's sixth album, Ultramarine, was released on Korda. The band embarked upon a tour of key markets in the U. S., followed by dates in Paraguay and Peru. On September 9, 2014, the band reissued their 2004 Waterworks EP as a full length album, expanded with the addition of three extra tracks. The band supported the release with a six date US tour. In 2015, the band worked with Sire and Rhino Records to reissue their first three Sire albums on vinyl. The band marked the occasion by performing the first two albums in their entirety at limited concerts throughout the U. S. Also that year, Rhino made "City Traffic" available for digital download on iTunes. The following year, the band embarked upon a full South American tour. In June 2019, the band released their eighth full length album, Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves, on Korda. They also released a video for the song "Therein Lies the Problem with My Life". A concert tour is planned for late 2021, postponed from 2020 due to the global COVID 19 pandemic.