Heartache With Hard Work

Girl Right Next To Me – Goo Goo Dolls

If the only thing you know about the Goo Goo Dolls is “Name” and “Iris,” and that they have a terrible name, then you’re seriously missing out.  I’m not saying those two songs are bad (in fact, I love them both!), but they suggest a band occupied solely with bombastic, sappy, acoustic balladeering. Which couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Goo Goo Dolls, up until they struck gold with “Name,” they were a garage-rock band, deeply influenced by The Replacements and the more poppy side of late 80’s punk.  This track is from their 1993 record Superstar Car Wash.  It’s full of midwestern mid-90’s rock goodness: big, jangly guitars, a nice heavy bass line pushed up front, and far less polish than their later stuff.

For some other fantastic stuff of their’s check out “Slide,” “Ain’t That Unusual,” and “Stop the World.”

Sadly, in the last decade the band has turned into the previously-incorrect caricature, releasing records that steadily amped up the compression, producing punchy songs with absolutely no heart.

Orestes – A Perfect Circle

I’m not going to lie – I had a bit of a Tool fascination when I was younger.  Late high school / early college…those are prime years for boys to get into Tool and I was no exception.  I still maintain that Aenima is a great album, and even their later stuff (which has grown ever more bloated and prog-rocky) still has a lot to offer.  In fact, I may yet still do a Tool-specific post.

But for today, the subject is actually their spin-off band: A Perfect Circle–with songs written by their sometimes guitarist and sung by Maynard James Keenan.  Their debut record Mer De Noms had some of the same feel as Tool, but featured shorter, more tightly constructed songs, and a more straightforward rock dynamic.

I can’t say that it’s aged tremendously well.  Some of the best 90s music is absolutely timeless, and that’s not the case here.  You can almost hear the underlying screams of desperation: “it’s 1999 and the decade is slipping away from us.”  The alternative rock boom was already on the way out, as emo-kids and straightforward pop-angst were filtering in to replace the more deep (if not necessarily more genuine) tropes of post-Nirvana suicide-rock, and Mer De Noms was right there to mark the moment.

But that gives it a strange poignancy.  And never more than on this track.

The Freshmen – The Verve Pipe

This song is an almost perfect litmus test. For those of a particular age, it hit like a ton of bricks, capturing the complexity and pain of growing up. But for those who weren’t precisely situated, it’s over-the-top garbage.

I was just a year past being a freshman myself, and it came out right in the midst of the most tumultuous few months of my entire life—marked by some pretty extreme trauma (in the form of a car accident that almost killed one friend, seriously hurt several others, and probably would have killed me if I hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt), and the sort of relationships that can only emerge out of such shared pain and terror.

Almost a decade ago I wrote down some of my reflections about that night. I went back and read them today, and the following line really captures why this song matters so much to me: “For the first time in my life, I discovered what it means to have a friend, because before that night, I had never really needed anyone to love me.”

Just because it’s melodramatic doesn’t mean it’s not true.

This song is about that kind of feeling, which can only be provoked the dawning realization that out of nowhere you’ve become old enough to face genuinely adult problems.

So I rarely listen to it these days, because my better (more ironically distant and critically-aware) self understands how ridiculous a song it actually is. But when I do listen, I toss all that aside and embrace the moment. Basically, I still want to be the sort of person who is capable of feeling this song in my gut.

I think we’ve all got a song or two we feel that way about.

Be Mine – R.E.M.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi is, without a doubt, the last great R.E.M. album.  In fact, apart from Automatic for the People, it might actually be their best.

Their career progression was a bit odd. They went from mumbly-vocals and jangly guitars to massive, international superstars.  In that process, many bands would have taken a more ‘pop’ turn, churned out some ballads, and produced songs more easily digestible by the masses. For R.E.M., though, this was their most productive and brilliant period. Their sound certainly changed, but growing craftsmanship is very different from reduced quality.

Sure, there’s a few missteps along the way (the ‘rap’ on “Radio Song” – yikes. And “Everybody Hurts” is certainly a pretty song but it’s also lowest-common-denominator pablum). But the run of albums that includes Document, Green, Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster, and New Adventures in Hi-Fi is just stunning. I’m not even a big fan of Monster, but it’s a got a couple great tracks.  And the rest are all huge.

What marks the division between this record and the ones that came after? One possible answer is the departure of Bill Berry. I don’t know exactly how much of a role he played in writing and constructing their songs, but he certainly might be the X factor.

It also might simply be that the musical milieu was starting to break apart. By this reading, R.E.M. might have collapsed into their post-1996 form (a mediocre band with the occasional great song) far earlier if they weren’t riding the crest of a massive wave of musical creativity.   Spurred on by a cultural explosion of rock music back onto the mainstream, and a ton of bands releasing great records, they upped their game to compete.  This is the sort of argument that says Revolver was only possible because the Beatles were challenged by Pet Sounds to do something stunning.

Whatever the cause, the distinction is clear in the sound. Hi-Fi is full of jagged edges and brilliant turns. It’s long, extremely varied, and takes plenty of risks. It was also recorded basically live – the versions on the album were recorded from sound checks on a tour – which is a gimmick that doesn’t normally appeal to me that much, but works wonderfully here.  “Be Mine” is my favorite track–mostly for the glorious wall of sound in the final minute and a half–but you could just as easily go with the incredibly atmospheric “E-Bow the Letter,” the straightforward punch of “Bittersweet Me” or “So Fast, So Numb,” the wistful elegance of “Electrolite” or the pitch-perfect piano fills of “How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us.”  They’re all great.

Medicine – Orbit (from Libido Speedway)

The theme is ‘forgotten songs of the 90s’ but (of course) what counts as forgotten is all a matter of perspective. What some have forgotten may remain vital for others. And, many great songs may simply never have hit the radar at all for most people. Today I’m going to explore that angle, and delve into the bin of ‘forgotten almost at the moment of release.’

This track just about screams mid-90s. It’s got a bass-driven line that reminds me of Harvey Danger, a drum fill that could easily have come from Weezer’s blue album, and the loud/soft dynamic that was reborn in the wake of Nevermind. Bands like Orbit strike me as the logical ancestors of 21st century acts like The Strokes. “Medicine” can’t give you the raucous energy of the Pixies, but it hasn’t completely given up the ghost yet.

Whether the backbenchers of the 90s are preferable to their counterparts these days is obviously a subjective question. But for my money there is a lot more room for something evocative here than you’ll get from a bunch of Strokes knock-offs.

Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand – Primitive Radio Gods

This one is almost the epitome of the forgotten classic. In fact, its been that way since the very beginning. It was an old demo that the band had basically abandoned, eventually made its way into the studio, and was then released to utterly no fanfare. Then, the next year, it suddenly got noticed and became a massive hit virtually overnight.

It’s quiet, deeply reflective, but also somehow apocalyptic.  The sort of song that you’d play while waiting for the heavens to unleash themselves.

It starts with the sound of a record player dropping – and then it shifts into that distant drum beat with that B.B. King sample. It’s a perfect amalgam of several decades of musical history. It marks the demise of the record – and its rebirth in a new form. It connects the legacy of the blues to the more downtrodden textures that would grow into trip hop.  And then there’s the glorious bit at the end when you hear the crackly voice of the phone call, the ringing of the bells, the music just starting to swell, and he sings out the B.B. King bit, with a passion that utterly reconfigures the line, turning it into somewhat triumphant.

Ezra Klein (among others that I’ve seen) goes after Tim Pawlenty for his apparently weak response to the ‘why are you running for president?’ question.

In one sense this is fair.  It’s a stupid question, but it’s one of those necessary hoops you just have to jump through.  Everyone asks it, and your willingness to take it seriously as a question is a sign of your willingness to take the whole process seriously.

On the other hand, it’s a REALLY stupid question.  People want to be president because they are ambitious, and they want to be the most powerful person on the planet.  It’s not complicated.  Clearly there are MANY people who don’t want to be president.  And those people aren’t running, or even considering it.  But I bet there are millions who, if they thought they had a serious chance, would run.

By the way, I don’t really believe Pawlenty’s answer – that he seriously considered not doing it.  He seems like he’s been running for years at this point.  And given the way the field is shaping up, he’s got every reason to want to.  At this point he’s probably got something like a 15% chance of being the next president of the United States.

Some Might Say – Oasis

In some ways, it seems weird to bring up anything from Oasis as a forgotten classic. After all, they are still massively big in the UK, where voters in ‘best albums of all-time’ polls get into fights about whether Morning Glory or Definitely Maybe is the single best album in rock history.

Still, over here in the States, Oasis hasn’t really been relevant for over a decade. And while people probably still listen to “Wonderwall” or “Champagne Supernova” when they want a bit of nostalgia, I doubt that very many people regularly revisit this track. Which is a shame because it is a great song, and embodies just about everything that made listening to this band in the mid-90s so glorious.

Big, brash guitars. Muddy mixing that makes the whole thing sound like it’s been blown apart by a tornado and hastily reconstructed. The sneering lilt of Liam Gallagher, who can somehow make the utterly banal sound meaningful (seriously, how bad a line is “I’ve been standing at the station, in need of education in the rain”).  This is rock music like it’s meant to be played: with limited precision and a whole lot of energy.

So I’m spending the next couple weeks digging back through the 90s.  This entails looking back at myself in that time period.  What was I doing, who was I, what did I care about?

One thing that I cared about a lot in the 90s, but have paid almost no attention to for the last decade, is basketball.  Which means I had totally forgotten about this song:

That’s the Presidents of the United States of America (remember them?!), doing the song “Supersonics” sung to the tune of their modest hit “Supermodel.”

Like I said, I haven’t really paid any attention to basketball since about 1998, but I’m still plugged in enough to know about the theft of the Sonics from Seattle.  And apparently the franchise  is currently in the last four of the NBA playoffs right now. Here’s hoping they crash and burn.

I try to do a CD-length (old habits die hard) mix approximately once a season, of all the new stuff I’ve discovered in that time.  It provides the background for my life – and it produces some pretty durable memories.

If I hear, for example, “Taxi Ride” by Tori Amos, my mind immediately jumps to the spring of 2003, sitting in the Pasco airport at 5 AM waiting for a flight, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.  Or if it’s “Balcony” by Birdmonster I’m walking through the streets of Oaxaca in the summer of 2006.  Bob Dylan’s “Mississippi” puts me in a room at the Lexington Ramada (to which I will never return, inshallah). And so on.

I didn’t do a mix for the Spring, in part because I’ve been pretty low-key about listening to new stuff so far this year.  Very little has blown me away, and I haven’t really been digging like I usually do.   But another aspect of that is that I’ve been re-acquainting myself with some classics of my slightly-younger days.

That has included a major burst of R.E.M. – easily my most-listened-to band of the past six months – quite a bit of Oasis, loads of Nirvana, The Wrens, some of the deeper parts of the Modest Mouse catalog, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.  Basically it’s been an alt-rock binge.

But, it has just occurred to me, this isn’t a good reason to abandon a mix for the season.  It just means I should embrace the nostalgia of this moment.  So instead of making a mix of new things, I’m going to gather together a bunch of these slightly-forgotten tracks into one place.

It’s a tricky thing, because I’m not actually looking to populate the mix with my favorite tracks of the past 20 years.  I still listen to those regularly.  This mix will be for songs I adore, but which somehow fell off the radar for one reason or another.  So, no “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine” or Neutral Milk Hotel or “Heart Shaped Box” or “Across the Sea” and the like.

Here’s a few to whet your appetite:

Your Woman – White Town
Time Ago – Black Lab
Female of the Species – Space
Enjoy the Silence – Failure

I’ll be posting somewhat regularly on this theme over the next week or two, as I take a stroll down memory lane. I invite everyone to join me.  And to offer suggestions!

Remind me of some one-hit wonders from the 90s, or b-sides from big bands. What’s your favorite deep track from The Aeroplane Flies High?  What song is most worth holding onto from the DGC Rarities record?  Which version of “Fake Plastic Trees” is the best?  The one from The Bends, the acoustic one from the Clueless soundtrack, or the live one from the Tibetan Freedom Concert?  How good did that No Doubt record actually turn out to be?  What’s the best early techno song?  Is “Bittersweet Symphony” still rubbish?