Top 19 -- Veruca Salt: American Thighs

We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19  I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*

* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.

On the list of these 15 or so albums (it actually might be more, I'm having a lot of fun writing these blog posts), this might be the album that I've listened to the least. I like it a lot, but this album and this band is really an amalgam of all the female bands that came out in the mid-90s that I enjoyed. From the Breeders to Juliana Hatfield to Belly to L7 to Garbage to Liz Phair to Jewel (yeah, I know) to Letters to Cleo to the Cranberries to Luscious Jackson to Hole*, there was something about a woman with a guitar that just got me. 

Yes, all of these women were good looking and I'm sure that had something to do with it initially. And I know that sounds chauvinistic but beauty sort of wears off once you buy their CD and spend a lot of time listening to it. I'm not sure why the record industry started pushing female-lead bands, but I'm glad they did. It was a great alternative to the male-dominated rock songs that were ruling the charts at the time. 

What made the female-lead rock band explosion so interesting is that for years, the music industry seemed to ignore females and guitars. Through the 80s (when I was growing up in music), rock and roll was male dominated. If you were a woman, you played pop. Maybe some R&B. The only women who rocked were Joan Jett, Lita Ford (who both were in the 70s sexploitation band "The Runaways") and Pat Benatar. They were considered anomalies and curiosities, not real "rockers" like Warrant or Winger. But they were. Those women fucking rocked harder than a lot of guys, because they had to. But they never seemed to be taken too seriously. 

* Did I like Courtney Love? No. Like a lot of "serious" music fans, I spent a lot of the 90s blaming her for the death and subsequent profiteering of Kurt Cobain. Even before Cobain took his life, Love was cast as the Yoko Ono of the 1990s. Was this fair? I don't know. Possibly. Possibly not. Cobain was a troubled guy and I think that people who put their faith in him as the voice of a generation couldn't face that it was him that was letting them down, so they turned their vitriol towards Love. That being said, Love was also a loud, obnoxious, opportunistic, drug addled mess (though it's funny, we tend to worship men who are loud, obnoxious, opportunity, drug addled messes -- but that's a discussion for another day). But her band rocked. Whether Cobain or Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan wrote their songs, it doesn't matter; Hole fucking delivered. And I think that what was so maddening about Courtney Love. If she was a no-talent, it would be easier to dismiss her. But she was talented and she controlled the narrative and sometimes that's tough to wrap your brain around. 

Veruca Salt was fronted by guitarist Nina Gordon and Louise Post with drummer Jim Shaprio and bassist Steve Lack marking up the rhythm section. You didn't really see Shapiro and Lack very much, the focus was on Gordon and Post. Their first single, "Seether" was a pretty big hit on MTV and that's when I first discovered the band. I recall hearing the single in 1994 and that's all I thought about. 

I bought the album some time later and it's excellent, my favorite song of the 90s is on it: "Number One Blind". The video only aired on MTV a handful of times, which is borderline criminal. It really captures a time in my life when things were in a strange upheaval of where I knew that I was in one place, but I wasn't going to be there for too long. My educational journey was ending soon and the real world was coming on fast. I was an English major, but what the fuck does that get me in the job world? 

The chorus, "Levolor, which of us is blind?" is haunting and has continued to stay with me for a long time. Not just because of the words, but the way that Gordon so ablely sings it. The dueling guitars through out the song also bring a sort of sadness that adds to the melancholy and diachotomy of the lyrics. "Be my blind. Be it all the time. Be it night or day. Take my sun away. Away." There's a push and pull in this song that just grabs me. I can't explain why or how, but every so often you land on a song that just nails you right. 

"Number One Blind" from Veruca Salt does that. 

A few years ago the band reunited (there was a rumor that Gordon and Post dissolved the band because one found out that the other was sleeping with Foo Fighter Dave Grohl) and I wanted to see them. This was during our time in Burlington when we had close to zero friends, so I couldn't ask anyone around here. None of my college friends wanted to go and for some reason, I didn't feel like going by myself, so I asked the priest who married Aly and I if he wanted to go. Our priest is an incredibly nice man, whose close to my age and has incredibly awesome musical taste. He deferred too. What sucked about not seeing them is that they played "Number One Blind".

The following year the came back into town in support of their newest album "Ghost Notes" (which is actually pretty awesome, you should check it out) and we suddenly had a group of friends in town. I asked my friend Ken if he wanted to go (he had never really heard of them before) and he agreed. And it was a great show. They didn't play "Number One Blind", but that was okay. The club that we saw them, the Paradise, is pretty small so we got really close to the band. And again, they ripped it up. 

Top 19 -- Pearl Jam: Ten

On Facebook I was asked to list my top ten all-time albums that most influenced me. Since I can't list anything without a huge explanation, this is it. Not only that but I'm writing about my Top 19 instead of my Top 10. 

Here's what I wrote on Facebook today: "Here's another quick story: for a long time Pearl Jam was my band. For a long time, Pearl Jam was everyone's band. When I rolled up to Merrimack College in the fall of 1992, it seemed that everyone had one CD: Pearl Jam Ten. It didn't matter where you were from, what you looked like, you had Ten. And you played it, a lot. When you got drunk, you tried to sing like Eddie Vedder. When you went to a bar and there was a cover band, they played Pearl Jam songs. Then Kurt Cobain died and Eddie Vedder decided to live and people sort of forgot about Pearl Jam. But like the Simpsons, Pearl Jam continues to pump out new material and while they're nowhere near the zeitgeist anymore, they're still alive."

Yes. I ended that post of a Dad Joke. I don't care, the opportunity was there and you're god damn right, I took it. 

I think that Pearl Jam gets a bad rap sometimes. And it all comes back to the fact that Kurt Cobain died at 27 and Eddie Vedder didn't. I'm not the world's biggest Bill Simmons fan, but a number of years ago he wrote something to the effect of before Cobain died, Pearl Jam was indisputably the biggest rock band in the world. Nirvana released "In Uetero" and Pearl Jam lapped them with "Vs" until April 5, 1994. When Cobain died by suicide, he--and his band--was frozen in amber and instantly propelled into the "voice of a generation". 

Pearl Jam? They released some great stuff, got into a fight with TicketMaster, famously didn't make any videos and just kept trucking along. The general public forgot about them, which is something that I think that they wanted, and then the backlash began, which is something I don't think that they wanted but at the same time I don't think that they really cared about. The backlash basically centered around Pearl Jam not being Nirvana. Which I think is a little unfair. 

Pearl Jam and Nirvana will always be intertwined. There are reasons for that and some of them are valid, but there were also a lot of differences between the two groups. Even though they hailed from the same city, were cornerstones for a "new" kind of music and had a lot of the same friends and influences, PJ and Nirvana wasn't Yankees-Red Sox, Dodger-Giants, Cardinals-Cubs, no matter how much the press tried to present them as such. Yes, Cobain called them frauds or something similar, but he recanted. 

Pearl Jam and Nirvana got famous at about the same time but once they reached their pinnacles, they chose different paths to being remembered. 

I've been a Pearl Jam fan for a long time, I'm not as much as a fanatic anymore, but I still really like them. The reason? Hearing Ten brings me back to college. It reminds me of the times when as a scared freshmen, I'd wander from room to room on the hall looking for people who were similar to me. Even though it was ubiquitous, hearing "Ten" was a sign post. I mean, if they liked Eddie and the boys, how bad could they be?

Yes, Pearl Jam was grunge, but I think that they thought that they were more than that. I think that they wanted to follow in the footsteps of The Who rather than The Ramones. And they did. They still sell out shows every time they play. They still put on great concerts (I've been to six). They give a shit about their fans. The one thing that they carried from the 1990s that I wish more bands would do is their sincerity. They stand for something and I think that Pearl Jam believes the things that they say which is refreshing. 

Call it corny if you want (and plenty of people will) but I wish that more bands did that.

Good Songs XXII

Strange Days – The Doors

Suzy Greenberg – Phish

Over the Hills and Far Away – Led Zeppelin

Only Happy When it Rains – Garbage

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite – The Beatles

Ants Marching – Dave Matthews Band

Run Through the Jungle – Credence Clearwater Revival

Glorified G – Pearl Jam

Theme from Shaft – Isaac Hayes

March of the Pigs – Nine Inch Nails

The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion) – Grateful Dead

Who Will Save Your Soul – Jewel

Tears of a Clown – Smokey Robinson

Supernova – Liz Phair

Free Ride – Edgar Winters Group

In Bloom – Nirvana

Is There Any Love In Your Heart – Lenny Kravitz

Kids in America – The Muffs

Unbelievable – EMF

Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd

I’ll Stick Around – Foo Fighters

Take the Money and Run – Steve Miller Band

I really didn’t want to graduate college. Like at all. My last semester of college was supposed to be my funnest, a culmination of 17 years of school, but I spent a lot of time dreading May 19 and worrying about the days beyond. I enjoyed Merrimack College, especially my senior year when I really liked the classes I was taking, loved where I was living and had a lot of fun with my friends. I had no idea what I was going to do with my English major (and Visual Arts minor!), had zero job prospects* and did not look forward to moving home with my parents.

* When I think of how I used to apply for jobs back in 1996, it feels like I’m talking about 1892. Every Sunday night I’d open the Boston Globe Want Ads, circle the jobs that I wanted, print out a cover letter and resume, stuff it into an envelope and mail it to the company. Sometimes, I’d open the Yellow Pages and send an unsolicited letter and resume to every publishing company I could find. Before companies discovered the ultranet, it was hard as hell to find a job back in those days.

I love my parents and it was cool as hell for them to take me back, but I had just spent the better part of four years living in close proximity to my best friends and didn’t have to answer to anyone. Now it was back to a world of free food, free laundry service and no bills to pay. Ugh, the agony.

My parents also were nice enough to buy me a car after I graduated school. I’m not what you call a car guy, at all. I use my vehicles to get from Point A to Point B and I honestly don’t care what it looks like, as long as it’s reliable. My first car was a light blue 1988 Ford Tempo that my dad (who was a traveling insurance adjuster) beat the hell out of before it was passed down to me. It ran, though not always at the times I wanted it to. So when I was able to get my own set of wheels I wanted something fast and I wanted something sporty—something that was the complete opposite of my personality. I got that when I purchased my 1987 Honda Prelude Si.

I know that we’re not talking a Ferrari or Camero, but that car was the first and only car, that I really loved. Jet black and fast as a rocket, my ride was essentially a two seater (the back seat was technically there but it was extremely tight) and with the seats being so low to the ground, I felt as if in I was in the most supped-up sports car. However, less than eight months after I bought it, I blew out the engine*, but after a new one was put in, the thing ran like a dream for years.

* This was to the only malady to happen to Jet Black (which is what I called my car--my first car was called Baby Blue [because I thought I'd get a ton of babes] my third car was called Norrin Radd because it was silver and Radd is the real name of the Silver Surfer. Yes, I know.), the first week I had it, I had to replace the driver’s side door when I jumped out of my car and forgot to put it in gear—the Dukes of Hazzard were on and I was pumped. The car lurched forward into my friend’s father’s boat and there was a massive hole in the door (the boat was fine). Apparently this was a thing with me and new cars because the very first day I had Baby Blue, I smashed into a DPW truck when I was too busy staring at a girl in spandex and not watching what was in front of me. I smashed the truck’s light and busted up my fender. Did I mention I took the car after my parents told me not to because it was without plates? Because that’s exactly what I did.

I did what any person with a new car and no job did, I delivered pizzas. And this playlist was the Good Songs tape* I created when I was bringing pizzas and subs to the fine people of Newburyport, MA in 1996.

* The only difference between this playlist and the actual Good Songs tape is that I included TV theme songs between every other song. The 90210 and a majority of the 70s and 80s crime themes were particularly awesome driving music. BTW, I bought five TV Theme CDs (they were kind of expensive too) one year because I thought it would be a cool conversation starter if a girl looked at my disc collection. No one ever mentioned them.

That summer was the best that I ever had as I either aimlessly floated around my pool on Fun Island (a gigantic yellow tube), played Wiffle Ball, went to the beach or watched TV until it was time to deliver pizzas from 4:00 to 8:00. After that, I went drinking with my friends. I do wish that I saved some of that money and went to Europe that fall, but I didn’t have the courage to go by myself, so I essentially threw the cash away. But this tape was the sound track of my summer. I think that there was a part two of this playlist, but I can’t seem to find it.

The song on this tape that sticks out like a sore thumb is Jewel’s debut, “Who Will Save Your Soul”. I am pretty sure that I chose this song mainly because I found Jewel extremely attractive because as a song, it’s not very good. The lyrics, the guitar playing; it’s all really basic and clichéd. I think that this was a hit because of Jewel’s story, she was a homeless in Alaska! and made her way to California where she was discovered and given a record contract. Or something like that.

People love stories like that and if they star a good-looking girl, even better. And I was caught up in that. I remember using some college graduation money to buy “Pieces of You” at Newbury Comics and trying really hard to like it. I thought that it might say something about me if I could like this album. But I couldn’t do it. I thought that it was terrible and couldn’t stand the over-serious writing, the elementary guitar playing and her voice wasn’t pleasing either. I didn’t hate Jewel, but by the end of the summer, I was pretty sick of her.

Another CD I bought on that Newbury Comics excursion was Garbage’s premiere effort, “Garbage”. Unlike “Pieces of You”, I thought that this CD was excellent. I loved how lead singer Shirley Manson’s voice paired with the rest of the band’s sound. It was sexy, it was unapologetic, it was really awesome. “I’m Only Happy When It Rains” was one of three popular hits from the CD (“Queer” and “Stupid Girl”), but the whole album is something that you should check out if you haven’t.

Their sound softened a bit over the years, but Garbage’s first album was something special. One of the things that were so cool about the group was how innovative it was, and with super producer Butch Vig (he was behind such bands as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, among others) it’s no surprise that Garbage had a sonic sound that was unlike anything on the radio at the time.

Pearl Jam might be one of my favorite bands of all time and I’ll probably write more about them in another entry, but I am conflicted about “Glorified G”. The first time I bought “Vs.” this was the one song that I came back to again and again and again. I liked the bouncy rhythm, the guitar riff, the lyrics were something I was interested in and it was just a good tune.

But one day my roommate was making fun of another friend of ours and he said something to the effect of, “Yeah, I bet that your favorite Pearl Jam song is ‘Glorified G’!” With the implication that GG was not “serious enough” for real Pearl Jam fans and was thrown on the CD to please teeny-bopper PJ followers. You know, the ones that don’t really get “Daughter”. In any event, that throw-away line from a long-forgotten fight, got to me and I never told anyone that I liked that song, lest they think that I wasn’t a true fan of Eddie and the boys*.

* Yes. This is something one contemplates when one doesn’t have anything to really worry about.

But my love for this song didn’t go away and I felt pretty bold putting this song on a tape that was going to get a lot of airplay. Especially in the summer with the windows and moon roof rolled down. But by then, I had a boxful of Pearl Jam bootlegs and if anyone attacked my fandom, I could show them my collection. “Would a teeny-bopper fan have Pearl Jam, live in Atlanta from April 1992? Huh?”

I’ve made my peace with the song (I’m still a supporter!) but during the last five or six years, the song has taken on a new meaning. The number one sports radio show in the state is “Felger and Mazz” and as far as sports talk goes, the show is okay. There’s your typical daily HOT SPORTZ TAKE but sometimes they can dial it back and have good conversation about the day’s event. The song that opens up every hour on the Felger and Mazz tape is a loop of the opening guitar rift, so when I heard it today I expected to be assaulted with a diatribe on why the Patriots are so cheap or why David Ortiz is a wimp or why the Bruins and Celtics are hopeless suckbags.

I was pleasantly surprised to not hear any of that.

Trent Reznor moved to 10050 Cielo Drive Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles when he was working on “The Downward Spiral”. You might remember that address as the home of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. And you might remember that a very pregnant Tate and her pals were brutally slaughtered by Charlie (no relation to Shirley) Manson’s zombie death squad in August 1969. The word “Pig” was written  in blood on a door of that particular house. You might also remember that the day after the Tate killings, another of Manson’s group mutilated Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. Before leaving the house, Susan Atkins carved the word “PIG” into the stomach of Leno with a fork.

Reznor wrote a song called “March of the Pigs”.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I know that when I was younger I thought that it was cool that Reznor did this because it was spooky (okay) and anti-authoritarian and all that fight-the-power bullshit. But now that I’m a little older, glorifying a mass murder might not be the best thing to do. And I’ve read interviews where Reznor essentially feels the same way.

The song is still really good, I love the driving, industrial beat – it was a staple of any gym mix that I’ve made through out the years. But the sentiments behind it may be a bit off. 

Good Songs XIX

Box of Rain – Grateful Dead

Would? – Alice In Chains

No Excuses – Alice In Chains

Low – Cracker

Loser – Beck

Killing in the Name Of – Rage Against the Machine

Me and Julio – Paul Simon

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon

You Can Call Me Al – Paul Simon

New Style – The Beastie Boys

Verse Chorus Verse – Nirvana

Spin the Bottle – Juliana Hatfield

Mrs. Robinson – The Lemonheads

Into Your Arms – The Lemonheads

L.A. Medley – Jane’s Addiction

Been Caught Stealing – Jane’s Addiction

My Time – Jane’s Addiction

Rock & Roll – Jane’s Addiction

Sympathy – Jane’s Addiction

Fee – Phish

Linger – The Cranberries

If this playlist or mix tape had a smell, it would reek of Keystone Light or Milwaukee’s Best. This tape was created sometime in the spring of 1994 and it features a lot of the songs that my friend Archie and I would listen to while we sat in our dorm rooms, played cards or Sega Genesis and drank.

When I went to Merrimack College in the mid-1990s, the school was in a strange place. It was beginning a transition from a small Catholic college that didn’t have many students living on campus, to what it is now: a medium-sized Catholic college with a good amount of kids living on campus. There were advantages to attending a small college: most people knew who you were (which could also be a disadvantage) and the classes were smaller. But there were disadvantages; mainly the social life could be incredibly dull*. 

* Merrimack did have fraternities, but there was no need for them. Merrimack was located in North Andover and Andover, MA and both towns had laws strictly forbidding frat houses – not that it would matter, the rent for places in those two towns were astronomical. Many of the fraternity houses were located in the next city over: Lawrence. Freshman year, the parties were fun but as we got older, the parties became lame. The frat dudes didn’t want us there, which is understandable since we were guys. Who wanted more guys at a party? We’d end up paying $5 for a cup of skunky beer, which was refilled after you waited in line for 20 minutes, the cops would inevitably show up around 10:00 and we’d have to go home. After awhile, it wasn’t worth the trip to leave campus.

There were parties in the on-campus apartments, but we were sophomore guys and never got invited because, again, who wants more guys at a party? And most of my friends didn’t have the cash or the fake IDs to get into Boston bars. Therefore we had to drink in our tiny dorm rooms—which by the way, were dry, so we had to sneak our alcohol past resident assistants working the front door, days in advance*.

* I’m not even going to front and nostalgically say how sweet each beer tasted because you had to work to bring it up to your room. It sucked. There was nothing fun or romantic or cool about sneaking beer into your dorm room. Take this from a person who was busted doing this.

Archie had good music taste and we listened to a lot of Jane’s Addiction that spring – he was a big fan of the band. And I became obsessed with the group too, especially their first CD. Their first CD makes up a bulk of this tape and I’m surprised that I didn’t include “Jane Says” because I listened to that song a lot when I was a college sophomore.

Like I wrote about during the last entry, “L.A. Medley” hit me in a couple of areas: it comingled my old obsession (the Doors, most of the song was an “L.A. Woman” cover) with my new obsession (Jane’s Addiction), it was from a live bootleg CD (so exciting, so rare!), Perry Farrell was cool (he was the face of Lollapalooza) and the band had broken up (so I could wallow about missing them – I saw them play live twice in the coming years). Basically it had everything 1994 Byron was looking for in a group.

And I still think that 1994 Byron is right as Jane’s Addiction is a great group to listen to—especially their pre-Kettle Whistle/pre-reunion stuff. “Been Caught Stealing” was their break-through hit and was on heavy rotation on MTV back in the day. When I first saw it, the video seemed strange in that it featured a bunch of weird-looking people* ripping off food from a dimly lit and dirty supermarket. Added to that montage were quick shots of Farrell with nylons stretched over his head singing, which is an image that’s difficult to forget.

* Looking at the video now, the people weren’t really strange looking, they looked like folks you run into every day. Twenty five years ago, that looked “strange” because MTV was wall-to-wall beautiful people. On MTV, a person with normal body proportions and regular facial features looked grotesque and odd.

When grunge and alternative music exploded, I don’t know if Jane’s Addiction ever really got the mainstream credit that they deserved and that’s probably because they weren’t in the spotlight for too long. Both them and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were both LA-based bands that didn’t kowtow to the glitzy, hair-metal music that was popular at the time. Their sound wasn’t as polished, it was a bit more funky and sludgy at the same time (if that makes sense). The guitars were still fast, but the song lyrics were a bit more thoughtful, a bit more real than anything that Poison or Motley Crue were putting out at the time.

Jane’s Addiction broke up just a hair before the alternative music wave crashed into the mainstream. If they had stayed together, would they have been as popular as the Red Hot Chili Peppers? I don’t know. But it is interesting to think of a world where the RHCP broke up in 1991 and the JA kept making music together for over 30 years.

The Paul Simon tracks aren’t me thinking that I was Merrimack College’s answer to Lorne Michaels, but those songs were the ones that we listened to most when we were drinking. Now that I have children, “Me and Julio” has taken on a different connotation. The song was included on “The Muppets” (the Jason Segal remake – which was actually quite excellent) and my kids begged us to listen to this song over and over and over again. A request my wife and I complied with because, this song is awesome.

The Nirvana and Beastie Boy tracks are from an album called “No Alternative” which collected many of the best acts of the day—there was at least one song from every one of my favorite bands (Beasties, Nirvana, Soundgarden, the Breeders, Matthew Sweet) at the time, except for Pearl Jam—and the money was donated to AIDs relief. The Beastie Boy song is a live version of “The New Style” and the Nirvana cut is one of the “hidden tracks” that bands used to do back in the day.

A hidden track referred to a song being at the very end of the CD. It was never listed on the track list but sometimes, if you let a CD continue playing after the end of the last song, it would pop up. Sometimes, you’d have to listen for up to 20 minutes to get the hidden track, which was annoying (and scary – if you forgot that there was a bonus track) as hell, but it was a precursor to DVD Easter Eggs.

I told you that the 90s were a magical time!

It’s not often that something lives up to your imagination, but for one brief speck of time: I felt as that I had correctly foreseen my college experience. I made it through high school with decent grades, but I never studied for one test (aside from chemistry – God, I was terrible at chemistry). My philosophy was: I paid attention in class, I took notes, I did the homework; if I didn’t know the material at that point, then studying wasn’t going to help me. This is the rationale of a very lazy person.

However, I knew that college was going to be a different ball game, as I’d have to get serious and study because things were going to be much more difficult. The summer before college started, I was lying in my bed thinking about going to school outside of Amesbury for the first time and I began romanticized about late-night walks home from the library after cramming for a test. I had seen this scene a million times in countless movies about college and it seemed so cool: broken pencils and balled up papers, coffee cups stacked to the roof, the tell-tale signs of a person working his ass off to get a good grade. There was something very satisfying about it.

Fast forward to December of my freshman year, I was through studying for final exams (quick aside: not as glamorous as I envisioned!) and I was on my way home. It was snowing, but not very hard, there was a nip in the air and I was listening to the Cranberries “Linger” on my Walkman. And as I was walked down the street lamp-lined path to my dorm, it occurred to me that this was how I pictured this moment many months ago. Maybe not exactly, but the feeling of accomplishment that I imagined was exact. I felt good that I actually studied, I felt like I accomplished something, that I was finally becoming a responsible person.

After coasting through life and not really giving a shit, it was an amazing feeling that I did care.  

I once read that the sense of smell is linked most strongly to memory. But I think that a close second is your hearing, because every time I hear “Linger”; I feel that chill in the air, the snow falling gently on my face, the feeling of solitude and that sense of pride that one gets when they work hard and they’re prepared for the next day’s test.

As I was listening to that song this morning, I thought things may not be that great today, but they will be better tomorrow. It always is.