Top 19 -- Jane's Addiction: Jane's Addiction

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.

By the time I started my second semester of my junior year at Merrimack College, I was done with two of my roommates. And they were done with me. We had lived together for two years and those peccadilloes that we thought were funny and quirky when we were sophomores were now annoying and grating. We spent a lot of time with each other going all the way back to freshman year, but these last four months were a slog or passive aggressive bitterness. 

I was a dick and would get really drunk every weekend at some party and go on and on about how "they missed out" and how the party at the apartments "was just so fucking good." My roommates were homebodies and didn't like going out, so I knew what I was doing and which buttons to hit. They were getting into jam bands like Phish, the Grateful Dead, Blues Traveller and Dave Matthews and I'd constantly tell them how bad these bands were while listening to my music (Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Public Enemy) over and over again at loud volumes. 

And then they'd do stupid shit to me too. Like rearrange the room that my roommate and I shared. One day my roommate let his girlfriend, who I couldn't  stand, wear one my hats--which when I spotted her across campus with it, I went fucking bananas when I got back to our suite. "Who the fuck do you think you are, thinking that your girlfriend can wear my 1961 pinstriped Cincinnati Reds hat? That's my hat, not yours," which is pretty much word-for-word something that I once said in all seriousness and anger.  

So the feeling was more than mutual when around March of 1995, I just wasn't interested in hanging out with them that much any more. One of the guys that I really started hanging out with a lot during this time, was a big Jane's Addiction fan. He especially loved this album and before we'd go out on Friday and Saturday nights, we'd end up playing drinking games and listening to this album over and over and over again. 

When I was doing some research on this album, I found out that this was recorded in late January 1987 and released that May, which seems like a pretty quick turnaround. And it sounds like it. Even though the Wikipedia page said that the crowd noises were goosed by a Los Lobos audience, there is an energy here that you don't get in a lot of debuts. I think that's because most debut albums aren't recorded live. 

Jane's Addiction is very much a Los Angeles band. During their ascent they were sharing the Sunset Strip with all of the hair metal bands that called LA their home: Motley Crue, Poison but mostly the second-wave of hair bands that were coming up in the late 80s like Warrant and Slaughter. For Jane's Addiction not to copy that style of both dress and music is a remarkable tribute to Jane's Addiction classic lineup of Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, Stephen Perkins and Eric Avery. 

By the time that I had found Jane's Addiction and really enjoyed them, they had released two other albums, headlined Lollapalooza and broken up. So to me, Jane's Addiction was the "band that got away". Between drinks, my friend and I spoke a lot about how awesome it would be to have seen Jane's Addiction and how stupid it was for them to break up. "They had so much more left in the tank," I probably said. 

Over the years, I saw Jane's Addiction twice: once was a really good show, the other was a complete shitshow. They reunited in 1997 and played a college tour. My friend and I went with his girlfriend and a few other friends to see them at Brandeis University, which is outside Boston. Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea was subbing for Avery, so I was incredibly excited about this show. I wasn't alone. The show was held at a smallish gym that was packed with people eager to see the reunited band. I don't think that Brandeis understood what kind of concert that this was going to be because even I could see that security was lax and the barrier between band and audience was barely existent. 

Navarro came out and played the first note to either "Mountain Song" or "Ocean Sized" (I can't remember, it was a long time ago) and the entire audience rushed the stage at once. Farrell begged for the crowd to back up, finished the song and the band left the stage citing safety concerns--who could blame them. About an hour and change later, the band came out and played a handful of acoustic songs and that was it. Curfew came and Jane's was gone. 

A few years later, I saw Farrell's second band, Porno for Pyros during the WBCN River Rave, which was an all-day festival. There was a rumor that Navarro and Flea were going to jet up from Washington DC to reunite with Farrell, but it never happened. I'm not sure where I heard that, but I was taking it as gospel and was completely disappointed when Farrell and his band left without Flea and Navarro playing a note. 

The last time I saw Jane's Addiction was at Lollapalooza 2003. The show was great and nothing went awry. They played all of the songs that I wanted to hear without any shenanigans and it was great. I guess third time is the charm. But after spending money and time waiting to see a good Jane's show, it put to rest any romantic notions of the mercurial band. It sucks when you are disappointed by a performance and there's nothing fun about saying, "Yeah, that show was a complete disaster. But at least I have a cool story!" 

I'd rather have heard a good show. 

To wrap this blog up, I want to say that my roommates and I made up during the following year. We didn't room together and that was for the best and we became better friends. I still text with these guys a few times a week and we joke about how we were assholes to each other when we were younger. It sucks, but it happens. Looking back on it, when you're in your late teens and early 20s, it's probably not a good idea to room with the same people for more than a year. You're way too self-absorbed for anyone to handle you for more than 12 months. Add in the crucible of the cinder block or a small dormitory suite, alcohol, other illicit substances, the pressures of school and the opposite sex and this was  tinder box. I'm surprised that we didn't murder each other. 

Good Songs XXVII

Pop Song ’89 – REM

Jingling Baby – LL Cool J

Paint It Black – Rolling Stones

Let’s Go Crazy – Prince

Don’t Drink the Water – Dave Matthews Band

Flagpole Sitta – Harvey Danger

I Am the Walrus – The Beatles

Sure Shot – The Beastie Boys

Rock & Roll – Led Zeppelin

Bulls on Parade – Rage Against the Machine

Number One Blind – Veruca Salt

School Days – Chuck Berry

The One – Tracy Bonham

Calling Dr. Love – KISS

Mountain Song – Jane’s Addiction

Moonlight Drive – The Doors

Where It’s At – Beck

Manic Depression – Jimi Hendrix

Alone + Easy Target – Foo Fighters

With Plenty of Money and You – Count Bassie and Tony Bennett

Deeper Shade of Soul – Urban Dance Squad

Rape Me – Nirvana

Rhinoceros – Smashing Pumpkins

I Wanna Be Just Like You – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

If you look at two of the last five songs on this mix, guess which movie I was really into at this point in my life? If you said “Swingers”, you win a no-prize. At this time in my life, it was no surprise that I obsessively watched the adventures of Mike, Trent, Sue, Rob and Charles. They were around the same age, they were in the same weird limbo between career and college, they drank a lot, played Sega and looked for girls. This was all stuff that my friends and I did. The only difference is that they were in Los Angeles and I was in Boston.

The style was consuming for awhile; I tried being a martini drinker, dressing nice(r), listening to swing music (I bought the Swinger soundtrack AND a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy CD), but it didn’t stick. By the summer I was back to my beer-drinking, slovenly-dressed, rock and rap ways. It was a nice suit to try on, but it didn’t fit.

This was a pretty decent Good Songs, on this listen I enjoyed pretty much all of the songs* and it’s one that I’ll probably fire up again. What I found interesting, is that not only do Count Bassie and Tony Bennett make their first appearance on the penultimate Good Songs tape but Prince, Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones do too.

* I haven’t heard DMB’s “Don’t Drink the Water” in years, but I remember it being one of the last songs of his that I actually enjoyed. On this relisten, I can say that the song is excruciatingly terrible. It’s plodding, masturbatory, directionless and the lyrics are so ham-handed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Porky Pig was listed as a co-writer. Even the uncredited background vocals of Alanis Morissette doesn’t help much—though the way I felt about her at this point in my life, I’m sure it was a strike against the song. I always thought that it was DMB’s fans that drove me away, turns out it was him all along.

I wonder what took me so long to include the Rolling Stones on a Good Songs tape? The answer to that question is because I don’t own any of their albums, tapes, CDs, 8-tracks or MP3s (except for this one). It’s not because I don’t like the Rolling Stones, they’re an all-time great band, but I’ve never been inspired to transfer money from my wallet to a store’s cash register in exchange for one of their albums.

This isn’t a situation like Bruce Springsteen or Pink Floyd where I’m not crazy about their music, but I get why they have fans. I like the Stones and all of their hits and I’m sure I’d be crazy about their deep cuts too. But the Rolling Stones seem to be everywhere and they’ve never left us, which I think is the big differentiator from other bands that are seemingly everywhere like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin*.

* The Who fit into this mold too and I don’t own anything by them either, despite really enjoying their music. There’s a lot of great Who songs and they’re different and they’re loud and they’re smart and they have great lyrics and music, but I’m just not a Who guy. There’s not even a Who song on any of the 28 volumes of Good Songs, which is kind of surprising. I also don’t have a Tom Petty song on any Good Songs tape, which is even more surprising.

But the Rolling Stones won’t go away. The Beatles’ songs are still everywhere but the band broke up, John and George died, as a collection of individuals they did their own things. And some of that thing includes Beatlesque stuff, but they aren’t coming back. Same with Zeppelin. John Bonham is dead and Robert Plant—for whatever reason he’s giving this week—doesn’t want to reunite with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.  

This is my problem with bands like the Stones or the Who, they’re old (in their 70s) and they’re still touring. And yes, they’re still pulling in fantastically large crowds and are selling out arenas all over the Earth, but at some point, enough is enough. One could argue that these bands love what they’re doing and they’re moved by the spirit of the music. But when was the last time the Who or the Stones played at a small club? They’re playing in places designed to get as many people as they possibly can for as much money as they possibly can.

And that’s fine, I am not of the mind to tell a person when he or she has too much money*. But at the same time, it starts to look a little embarrassing, doesn’t it? I understand that baby boomers and the like will still feel youthful as long as Mick and Keith are prancing around a stage at Madison Square Garden like they did almost 60(!) years ago. But they’re not fooling anyone and they haven’t for quite awhile. Aside from Lorne Michaels or a few investment bankers, who thinks that Mick Jagger is cool**?

* Around the time that I created this mix tape, Led Zeppelin announced that they were going to lend their song, Rock & Roll, to a Cadillac commercial. It made me so angry and I mentioned that to my roommate, who was an accountant at a (then) Big Six accounting firm in Boston. We had a heated debate on selling out and how much money should a band make and whether commercial music is art. Not surprisingly I was on the liberal side of the argument and thought that this was abhorrent as Page, Plant and Jones had plenty of money and were ruining their song. My roommate said I was crazy and that pop music is a commodity and if someone wants to buy it, they should get cash for it. I was adamant that he was wrong, but after going over that debate, I was the one who was wrong. There is integrity among artists, but there’s never a time when one has “too much money” and for me to suggest that was dumb and naïve.

** Keith Richards will always have some semblance of coolness only because of what he’s done in the past. As a person, right now in 2015, Keith Richards isn’t really cool at all. He's old, he's broken down, unintelligible and is miming his way through old age. But the life that Keith Richards has lead is undoubtedly cool, so it carries over into his present day-to-day life. And I know how ridiculous it sounds for a 40-year-old man to be judging who or what is cool, but it’s my blog and it’s what I do.

 

As I get closer to the end of this project, the idea of youth and nostalgia is becoming more and more clearer. No one wants their youth to end—actually I should amend that, no one wants the youth that they have encased in amber (like the dinosaur DNA hidden in the mosquito in Jurassic Park) to end. But like that dinosaur DNA, if you try to replicate that youth now, it would go horribly wrong. And that’s what the Rolling Stones and their ilk are caught up in—though caught is probably the wrong word. Maybe partake? I don't know.

Audiences have long struggled when it comes to deciding how they want their entertainers to age. Do you want them to keep going on and on and on and on doing the same stuff year after year, decade after decade like the Stones or the Who? Do you want them to evolve as people and as artists so that their new stuff sounds nothing like their older stuff that you grew up with, like the Beastie Boys did before MCA died?

I don’t have the foggiest idea and often go back and forth on the topic as there are pros and cons to both sides of the argument. The Rolling Stone solution (for lack of a better term) is good because you can pay for your seat, hear the songs that you love, take a stroll down memory lane and for awhile feel like you’re young again. No one wants to hear a new Paul McCartney song or a new Stones song because you love the old ones so much and don’t want to sacrifice a hit for a song that will probably suck*.

* Musicians are like athletes. They peak in the late 20s and by the time they’re in their 30s (especially if they’re successful) it’s all downhill. There’s nothing worse than a millionaire trying to remember what it was like when he or she was poor.

But at the same time, that visage of nostalgia is smashed when you look on the Jumbotron and see octogenarians singing about banging chicks, taking drugs and being street fighting men. It’s embarrassing. And after the embarrassment wears off you look around and see all of the old faces and it dawns on you that you’re old too. That realization, juxtaposed with the music echoing your youth can be a real mindfuck down depression road.

The Beasties solution is the other side of the coin where you know you need to change, you do it and hope that your fans come along for the ride. It would have been real easy for the Beasite Boys to release License to Ill 2, LtI 3, LtI 4 and so on. The records would have sold a bunch, they’d have made a lot of cash and they’d be the heroes to bro-frat boys everywhere. But they realized that that wasn’t who they were and they changed it up for “Paul’s Boutique”, which was so far ahead of it’s time (it’s probably my favorite album ever) that it was a bomb.

No one knew what to do with a non-wiffle-ball-bat-raping Beastie Boys.

They released “Check Your Head” and their audience started to catch up. By the time they released “Ill Communication”, the Beasites were back on top and they were given carte blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted. 

Full disclosure: I love the Beastie Boys, they're one of my favorite acts. So I think that the way that their career trajectory went was probably the way I'd do it if I was in a band. But it was a struggle to go from hasbeens to geniuses and I bet they lost a lot of fans who thought that they “sold out” or “got weird”. Not a ton of bands can do this and the road to Cleveland is littered with acts who tried to switch it up and got left in the dust. If MCA hadn't died and the BBoys toured until they were 80, I'd probably line up to see them (though I'd have wondered if maybe they should change their names) so maybe it has more to do with the generation. On the whole, Baby Boomers are obnoxious and I've been waiting for them to exit the stage since I was a teenager, so there's a good possibility that I'm transferring my frustration with a whole generation on a five dudes from England. 

Because I get why these nostalgia shows are so popular. The last two concerts I saw were Living Colour (who played the entirety of their first album from front to back) and the Kings of Rap Tour (De La Soul, Ice Cube, Public Enemy and LL Cool J), so it’s not like I’m trolling for new music every weekend. It’s cool to take that DeLorean back to 1993 and relive your youth, I get it. I mean, I do it once or twice a year at most, but I wonder if it takes a toll on the artist?

And as terrible as this sounds, the only solution is death. Not your death, of course—that's crazy, but the death of your favorite rock star, which is terrible thing to wish for. But with the death of an important band member, that band stays crystalized in amber forever.

I’m not a person who puts too much stock in legacies—I think for the most part people who talk about that stuff are full of shit—but do you know how terrible the Doors would have been if Jim Morrison lived? He was would have spent the 1970s doing one embarrassing thing after another, recorded sloppy albums with messy poetry and it would have been bad. The 80s and 90s would have seen a revitalization in the Doors (like our 80s and 90s) and there would have been reunion concerts and Morrison being paraded around on talk shows like some relic from the dangerous past.

Jim Morrison, the one that we know, could have only existed in one time and that was the late 1960s. People had a higher tolerance for bullshit back then and the stuff he used to pull was considered whimsical and free-spirited.

“He doesn’t kow-tow to the Man, man.”

But you know who the Man is? It's us. If you paid money to see the Doors and Jimmy decided to tie one on or whip out his penis and the show was cancelled after two songs? That sucks, no matter how good of a story it is. You paid to hear music, not some drunk slurring through his songs*. I went to a Jane’s Addiction show where security was a joke and a crush of people bum rushed the stage in the opening minutes. The concert was postponed for an hour and when the band came back, they played for 40 minutes (all slow jams) before splitting. I felt ripped off.

* I know I wrote about this in a previous entry, but I bought a Jimi Hendrix/Jim Morrison "bootleg" that I thought was going to be magical. It was terrible. Hendrix was way too wasted to play the guitar and when he brings Morrison on stage to sing some song, Jim is too drunk to remember the words. I felt as if both of the ripped me off from beyond the grave. Stupid hippies. 

It’s almost better to go out early and leave a pretty corpse.

A few things:

Harvey Danger – When this song came out, I had a girlfriend and she said that every time she heard “Flagpole Sitta” she thought of me. I’m not sure why and I’m not sure if she still feels that way, but it was an interesting observation to make*. That got me thinking, I wonder if there are other songs that people associate with me? I know that there are a ton that I associate with people I know. I should probably make a list, I bet that would be interesting.

* My friend Ryan’s sister Keri said that every time that she hears Living Colour, she thinks of me. That’s probably because when I was at Ryan’s house, I’d make him play Vivid over and over and over again. It’s probably a PTSD thing. Sorry about that, Keri.

Veruca Salt – This song (Number One Blind) is on a very short list of my favorite songs of all-time. It wasn’t particularly popular, it doesn’t hold any special significance to an event that happened in my life, but for some reason I really love it. Okay, it’s the guitar solo at the end, so awesome. If I end up drinking too much and have my laptop in front of me, I will watch this video (only shown on MTV five times) on a loop.

REM – I put this song on here because it reminded me of a really tough time in my life and how I get past it. I was living in Winthrop with some friends and I couldn’t take my fund accounting job any more, so I quit (for the second time in four months). It felt awesome to leave and the last day was fucking great. However, after two months of no job, that awesome feeling was not so awesome anymore. I missed my work friends, I missed having money and I was getting worried that I’d never find a job.

I found one. For about a month I worked as a sales associate at J. Crew in Danvers, MA. There was nothing good about this gig: the commute sucked, the job was mind numbing, the money was horrible, no one there liked me and I used to let Gordon College coeds steal as much stuff as they wanted because I was so apathetic. But the muzak played “Pop Song 89” a few times during my shift (also George Harrison’s “What is Love?”) and it was the only good parts of my miserable day.

Things eventually got better, I ended up getting a job that I loved which lead to better jobs and experiences but when I hear both songs now, I think about those long, sad days and how tough it was.  It’s been a difficult few months for yours truly, but after listening to these two playlists and remembering where I was when I created them, I know that things are going to get better. There is some darkness in every life, but you have to keep plugging away and push and eventually that spring light is going to come cascading in.

I’m sure of it.

Good Songs XXV

Stop! – Jane’s Addiction

Closer – Nine Inch Nails

Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie

Down With Disease – Phish

South of the Border – The Simpsons

The Summer Wind – Frank Sinatra

The Choice is Yours – Black Sheep

Louder Than A Bomb – Public Enemy

I Stay Away – Alice In Chains

Drive In, Drive Out – Dave Matthews Band

Egg Man – The Beastie Boys

Rocket – Smashing Pumpkin

Never Tear Us Apart – INXS

Deeper Shade of Soul – Urban Dance Squad

The Reflex – Duran Duran

Let’s Stay Together – Al Green

Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana

Crush With Eyeliner – REM

Love Fool – The Cardigans

Crazy – Seal

NOTE: When I typed the words "Dave Matthews Band and Phish" into the Google machine, the second picture came up before the first picture. The first picture, if you don't know, is Dave Matthews and Phish lead singer Tre Anastasio. Infer what you will from that.  

This is part two of a two-cassette tape set that I created in the spring of 1997. You read about the first half in Tuesday’s mammoth entry. I don’t think that this Blog post is going to come anywhere near 3,000 words, so let’s dive right in.

This tape has two bands that I don’t like very much anymore: the Dave Matthews Band and Phish. Add the Grateful Dead from last entry’s mix and you have an unholy trinity of jam bands that love nothing more than to waste their audience’s time. That’s my biggest issue with jam bands as a whole, I don’t like being at a concert and waiting 20 minutes to hear the next song.

And this goes double for bands that I do like, I have a Led Zeppelin live CD and there is a 33-minute version of “Dazed and Confused”. You know how many times I’ve listened to that track? Never. Not once. You know why? Because I have better things to do with my time than listen to Jimmy Page act as if he’s never seen a guitar before. Moby Dick is on that album too. Who wants to listen to a 20-minute drum solo? TWENTY MINUTES of John Bonham banging on the drums. You’re right Slater, you do need strong acid to handle that shit.

Actually my problems aren’t entirely with the bands—I likea bunch of the Dead’s studio stuff*, there are a handful of Phish songs I can tolerate and DMB, ugh—but it’s the fans of these bands who, for the most part, drive me crazy. Dead fans are the most benign of this lot, as they get high, trade tapes and stay smiling in the corner. Though there are some exceptions. When I was in college, nothing was worse than the newly minted Dead fan, the guy (and it usually was a guy) who “just found the Dead”. Ugh. There’s not a more annoying person alive than the person who was recently baptized in lake Jerry. And they’re all so eager to convert you. No, I do not want to hear the Dead live in Munich from 1973, Larry—especially if the band is going to jam on a “Box of Rain” for 37 minutes. 

* Do I think it takes talent to jam on a song for more than 10 minutes? Sure. But lots of things take talent and there are a lot of things that I don’t have the patience to watch. Much less spend $100 for a ticket. The Dead have some good music, some nice harmonies and wrap songs up in less than five minutes on most studio albums. I enjoy that. Music isn’t like baseball, I don’t want it to go on forever. Like David Spade once said, “Play the song like it is on the record. NO TRICKS!” Ugh. I can’t believe I quoted David Spade. See what you’ve done to me, Grateful Dead fans?

On a personal note, I had to live through that very sad day in August of 1995 when Jerry Garcia died. That was a truly troubling day. Not because Garcia died, but because I had to listen to every two-bit Dead fan cry about how “Jerry” and how his death was “really going to affect them”. No. You got over it, just like people got over the death of Kurt Cobain, John Bonham and Shannon Hoon. You just got extra high that night, because “that’s what Jerry would have wanted”. The same Jerry Garcia who died of a drug overdose, yup that’s exactly what he would have wanted.

I was working in the Merrimack College library that summer and my friend came in all dejected. I lived with this guy for a year and he knew about my musical taste and he solemnly said, “Dude. Dude, did you hear? Dude, did you hear about Jerry? What a bad day. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t sit in class.” Ugh. You just started liking this band six months ago, which was a year after your Saigon Kick phase. You’re going to be fine.

The one interesting aspect of the day Jerry Garcia died was that Dead member Bob Weir was at the Hampton (NH) Beach Casino that night performing with his band. Since I lived six miles from the venue at the time, I took a drive to see what the scene was like.

I wasn’t a big fan (obviously) but the scene was sad as hundreds of people from around the area came to sit outside the small theater to pay their respects to the man that they loved so much. That was amazing because Hampton Beach is about as far away from the Dead’s stomping grounds as you could get. But people were sad and didn’t know what else to do with their grief but they collectively thought to go to a place where they knew that there would be a collective of their people. And that was nice. There were tons of television crews outside, interviewing Deadheads and talking to them about Garcia and his impact on their lives. That was therapeutic too, I imagine.

I did try hard to be a jam-band guy when I was in college. I did. I tried my best to grow my hair out*, not care about my appearance, and really get into the music, man. But I couldn’t. I just don’t have the patience. And no band tested my patience more than Phish.

* This was a disaster. When my hair gets long, it gets incredibly bushy. I already have a long head, I don’t also need a house plant sitting on the top of it.

The first few dozen times I heard Phish, they were okay. They had some interesting melodies, clever-ish lyrics and a nice mythology. “Dude. They’re from Vermont and they love their fans because they let them tape their shows for free and someone I know knows someone who knows them and he says they are really good people.” But my college roommate was really into Phish and he got my other roommates really into Phish and he got some of my hallmates really into Phish. After a while, it was wall-to-wall Phish, around the clock. And when they weren’t playing Phish, they were talking about Phish. “Do you know that Phish drummer John Fishman plays the vacuum cleaner on stage?” That makes sense, because they both suck.

After a few months of listening to Phish and the endless supply of bootlegs* that my roommates procured, I couldn’t take it any more. The interesting melodies had become ponderous, plodding guitar solos that had become boring and masturbatory. The clever-ish lyrics had devolved into a bunch of random words thrown on a page and sung quickly to masquerade the fact that they held zero meaning. By 1995, the sight of the Phish logo made me want to gut some neo-hippies.

* I will say this, Phish fans were one of the first to understand the power of the internet. One of my roommates used to logon to Usenet (a prehistoric Reddit) and scour alt.music.phish for people trading tapes. He’d contact them, they send a tape (often for free) and my buddy would have two hours of new music to listen to. That was Jetsons-like in 1995.

This leads me to the question: if I hated a band so much in 1995, why did I constantly add them to a mix tape over and over and over again? I can’t answer that question. Maybe I just liked these particular songs. Maybe on some level I enjoyed being the only anti-Phish outsider* and listening to the songs reminded me of my college friends. I don’t know why I did it then, but listening to Phish now, maybe I took my hate for the band a little too far.

* To be truthful, I did enjoy being the Big Bastard on this one. I remember one night where my frustration got the most of me and ripping into Phish in front of my roommates, deriding the bands’ entire catalog as a “four assholes mindlessly noodling on their instruments”. I had to leave the room because I thought that they were going to hit me. And looking back, they had every right to. I was being the asshole that night, not Tre Anastasio.

I’ve seem to have made my peace with Phish and the Dead in the last few years, but I can’t do it with Dave Matthews. I don’t know whether I just outgrew them or what, but listening to a DMB song now is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Like the Phish phungus, DMB was brought into my life by the same college roommate – he also was fond of Blues Traveller (before they went commercial), Rusted Root (I still can’t believe they nabbed a national commercial), God Street Wine, New Riders of the Purple Sage and another band whom I can see the cover of their CD but can’t remember the name. Each band was terrible, aside from Dave Matthews.

We played “Under the Table and Dreaming” a lot in my room during the spring of 1995 and I liked it. In fact, I liked Dave Matthews quite a bit; eagerly anticipating their follow-up to UtTaD, “Crash”, watching their videos on MTV and seeing them in concert in the fall of 1996 (which was really good—though the next day I saw Pearl Jam in concert and that was wayyyyyy better). Yeah, DMB were a jam band, but they were an interesting jam band – they had a saxophone AND a violin! That made for some totally different music.

I don’t consider myself a hipster—and if you look back at these Good Songs entries, I’m sure you don’t either—but as DMB got more and more popular, I liked them less and less. Which is dumb, I know, but I couldn’t stand to be lumped in with the same people who I saw at the second Dave Matthews Band show I went to. I stood behind one girl who screamed for “Satellite” for the entire show. By the end, she was losing her damn mind pleading and yelling for “Satellite” over and over and over and over again. Side note, the group did not play “Satellite” that night and the wailing banshee went home very sad.

It was at the very moment that I decided, “I don’t want to become part of this” and started to distance myself from the band. I bought the group’s third album and half-heartedly gave it a listen, but I was done. My friend was a super Dave fan at the time and he got a bunch of tickets to a show in Foxboro* which I went to. But I only stayed for the opening acts (Ben Fold Five and Beck) and then I went back to the party bus that he rented to transport us to the gig. I’m a notorious cheapskate, if I paid money to see a movie that turns out to suck, I’ll stick with it, but I didn’t feel bad about leaving that show early on that night.

* The Dave Matthews Band is the first band I’ve ever seen in concert where the shows moved to progressively larger arenas. First one was at the TD Garden, second was at GreatWoods and the last one was at the old Foxboro Stadium.

I am all done with Dave.

The rest of this tape is still really good. Some quick hits:

The Simpsons – they actually didn’t sing “South of the Border”, Gene Merlino did, but I first heard it on the “Kamp Krusty” episode and it blew me away. Maybe it was because that episode was one of my favorite episode endings of all time, “Get ready for two weeks in the happiest place on Earth! TIAJUANA!” and then the drum hits. What a song.

Beastie Boys – this song reminds me of a lip sync my friends did in high school, but aside from the high school nostalgia the song itself is pretty awesome. This whole album (Paul’s Boutique) was the beginning of a long stay at the top for those guys—even though no one knew it at the time.

Duran Duran – “The Reflex” is the best pop song of the 1980s. I believed it when I was in fifth grade and I continue to believe it now. DD may have bottomed out in the 90s (find their album of covers) but they knew what they were doing when they were famous.

Good Songs XXIII

I Can’t Even Tell – Soul Asylum

Hurricane – Bob Dylan

Sex Type Thing – Stone Temple Pilots

Hey Joe – Jimi Hendrix

Connection – Elastica

My Hero Zero – Lemonheads

Disarm – Smashing Pumpkins

No Woman, No Cry – Bob Marley

Stand – REM

The Summer Wind – Frank Sinatra

The Maestro – The Beastie Boys

LA Medley – Jane’s Addiction

Linger – The Cranberries

Night of the Living Baseheads – Public Enemy

Love Rears Its Ugly Head – Living Colour

Fire Woman – The Cult

Cut Your Hair – Pavement

Warped – Red Hot Chili Peppers

I Will Follow – U2

This edition of Good Songs is a continuation of the last edition of Good Songs, complete with the TV Theme Songs* between every other song. It was created in the Summer of 1996 when I didn’t have much to worry about other than starting a career, getting out of my parents’ house, wondering if I’d ever find a girlfriend and battling the ennui of being done with school.

* I still can’t believe that I spent about $100 buying a bunch of TV theme song CDs. I mean I guess that I can believe it; I love television and this is something that I’d totally do (and in fact, did). But I’m not sure what I was trying to accomplish here. I wouldn’t play them at a party, that’s insane. I wouldn’t listen to them over and over and over again like a Beatles CD, that’s even crazier. Best case scenario: I’d listen to discs once and put them back on the CD shelf. God damn, 1996 Byron, you sure knew how to waste money.

Even though my birthday is in September—and for the most part I don’t like my birthday—I love September. Football starts, baseball season is coming to a head and as much as I enjoyed my summers, by mid-August I was bored and wanted to get back to school (both high school and college). Despite coming at the end of summer/beginning of fall, September has an air of regeneration and newness.

Going to class was enjoyable because of the promise of actually sticking to a resolution that you were going to “bear down this year and get back on track”. Playing on a sports team was fun because the weather was nice and you didn’t totally despise your teammates quite yet. Going to parties (usually outdoors) was awesome because of the weather and the fact that you actually had things to talk about. Not to mention that there were new girls to talk to; a whole class of new girls that just started school—girls that might not have any idea of who you are and who might think you’re cool because you’re older.

This September freshness wilted as the days got shorter, but whenever I think of a time being completely happy, content and full of hope, I’m usually picturing some time in September.

September 1996 was different. For 17 years, it was engrained in my consciousness that September is when I was supposed to go back to school. But it didn’t happen that year because I graduated college in May. School was over for me, summer had passed and I was unemployed and alone.

A few years before I graduated college, my friend Brownie and I were playing Sega and bitching about the women at our colleges—as guys are wont to do. His older brother, who had graduated from college that year, heard us complaining and said something to the effect of, “college is the best place to find a girlfriend; they’re all  your age, you have a ton in common with them, they’re in the same income bracket and they’re literally all around you. When you graduate, it’s hard to find girls with the same interests.”

That bit of information stuck with me and now that I was out of college, it scared me. I had no idea where to meet women*, for so many years scores of girls were all around me. Now I was back home and there was no one. And even if there was a woman that I liked, I didn’t have the confidence to speak to her (no job and living with mom and dad will do that to a guy), so I was in the moebius strip of wanting a girl, but not being able to talk to one**.

* There was a farm stand about a few miles from my house. One day after I went to the gym (I went to the gym a lot because I was so bored) I stopped there to buy a Gatorade. The girl who worked there was cute and I couldn’t get the nerve up to ask her out. So even though it was out of my way, I’d stop by there every day to buy a Gatorade all with the intent of asking her out. I’d pound the drink on the way home and throw the empty bottle on the passenger side, vowing not o clean up the mess until I asked her out. I dumped the bottles three weeks later, numberless.

** The college I went to was about a half-hour from my house and the bars where we used to drink were about the same distance. Thursday nights were the big bar nights and I had a lot of fun going to these holes-in-the-wall and blowing off steam. During the Autumn of 1996, it would be about 11:00 at night, I’d be lying in bed and I’d legitimately wonder if I could make it to one of these bars for last call. Just stop by have a drink, talk to old friends and see where the night took me. I’m glad I never did it because that would have been the worst mistake of my life. Just thinking about it now is embarrassing as hell.

On the first day of school I sat in my house by myself. My parents were at work, my brother was starting his college experience in Western Massachusetts and none of my friends were around. I felt lonely and useless, as if I should be going somewhere or doing something, contributing to the betterment of myself or society. At the very least I should be experiencing something cool, like traveling across country or bumming around Europe for a month. But I was too afraid to do either of those things by myself*. There was a lot of shoe gazing and pity partying.

* I wish I had more courage during that time in my life to travel more. It’s the one thing I regret most.   

I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, ashamed that I was delivering pizzas without any direction. Fighting that feeling in my belly that it was time to go back to learning, that vacation was over until next summer. Looking back, the problem wasn’t that I was unsure about an unsettled future, it was that I had no schedule. One of the things that I like about school was that it was a structured environment; you get up, you go to class, you come home, you do homework, lather, rinse, repeat. I’m a person who abhors surprises and cherishes regularity. That September I was set adrift without any sort of roadmap. I’d try to convince myself that I missed the learning or I missed my friends (both true) but what I really missed was the day-to-day monotony. When every day is a vacation from the norm, nothing is really special.

To cheer myself up, I would drive to Hampton Beach with my dog and go for a walk. Since it was September, there was barely anyone there—even in the middle of the day. My dog and I would take long walks where I would glumly think about my future. The summer work schedule of 4:00 – 8:00 pm, so idyllic a month ago, was a cruel reminder of how pointless my life was. Eventually September turned into October which turned into 1997 and things got on track; I found a job, I moved out, the life of not being a student became normal. I guess that I grew up, but listening to these songs again brings me back to that time of complete and total uncertainty.

I know that Beck’s “Loser” is often held as the anthem for slackerdom, but Soul Asylum’s “I Can’t Even Tell” might be a better representation of that ethos. It has the same unattached point of view of the singer’s life mixed with a sense of frustration that Loser doesn’t posses. Loser seems proud of it’s title, while Soul Asylum lead singer David Pirner seems to be genuinely confused and unsure of what his life has become. This is confusion is seen from the singer osculating from accepting and almost celebrating his lot in life (“No one sees what I see, this is my blessing”) to wailing about his existence (“Is that what life’s about? I can’t even tell.”).

Yes, it’s typical 90s navel gazing wrapped in a clichéd “thoughtful” approach to the examined life and its minutia—this was the main theme for Kevin Smith’s first film “Clerks”—but at this time in my life, it felt as if this song was speaking directly to me. In the mid-90s, the intelligent approach to pop culture was always to be depressing, which is a simplified generalized statement, but it was true. The good bands sang depressing songs, good films were about depressing subjects, same with books and stand-up comedy were rants about how the world was completely fucked up. Even the fashion of the day was depressing, bulky sweaters and flannels for the ladies, same for the guys. The only thing that was still bright and shiny was TV, but that was considered a wasteland full of vapid, pretty people with idiot problems. Yes, there were plenty of other cultural touchstones that celebrated fun and enjoyment but it wasn’t taken too seriously. To be depressed meant you were thoughtful and serious and caring.

It’s no wonder I spent a good part of 1996 completely bombed or depressed.

Here are some quick hits before I hang myself with a guitar string:

The Lemonheads: I chose this song because Schoolhouse Rocks was something that I really loved as a kid. And without YouTube, this was literally the only way that I was going to be able to hear those songs again. I’m writing a blog series about a bunch of old mix tapes, so you know that I’m pretty interested in nostalgia. Here’s another example. And Evan Dando and Melissa Auf der Maur (one-time bassist for Hole) have a pretty fun give-and-take during this song. It’s bouncy, it’s sugary, it sounds like a lot of fun—like watching five straight hours of TV on a Saturday morning fueled by bowls of Trix and Lucky Charms.

Bob Marley: I already wrote about him, but I cannot hear this song without thinking of the scene from “The Office” (American version) where receptionist Erin (played by the awesome Ellie Kemper) emphasized the wrong words and added misplace punctuation to the song’s title, completely changing the meaning: “No, woman. No cry.” I’m sure that’s exactly what Marley had in mind.

REM: at first listen, this would be a song that I wasn’t too keen on. It was a little too shiny and happy for this person. But along came “Get A Life”, which was a TV show from the early 90s about a psychotic grown-man (the brilliant Chris Elliot) who lived with his parents and had a paper route and everything changed. “Stand” was the theme song for this TV show* and it beautiful juxtaposed what the show was about with the cheerfulness of the tune. I heard the song enough that I grew to like the song on its own merits.

* I was trying so hard to be so clever, a full TV theme song on a tape littered with TV theme songs? You rascal! Ugh.  

Frank Sinatra: this was before the whole “Swingers” fad swept the nation. I genuinely liked Sinatra, Dean Martin and the entire Rat Pack because it was so much different than what was popular during those days. My friend Brownie also liked them too and we’d listen to the Best of Sinatra while aimlessly driving around Amesbury in his 1978 (I think) Chevy Malibu. Once we took a ride with one of our friends to Hampton Beach and blasted it while cruising the strip. “We’re never going to get girls now,” my friend moaned from the backseat. You’re right Sluf, it was Frank Sinatra that was stopping you from getting laid that night. BTW, there is no doubt that this was my favorite Sinatra song because Martin Prince sang it on "The Simpsons". Man, I don't think anything has had more of an influence on me. 

Red Hot Chili Peppers: this is the only album that former Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro played on and it was a huge departure from RHCP’s normal funky, bass-soaked sound. I may be one of the only people who really enjoyed the hard, fast, guitar rocking direction of “One Hot Minute” because it’s universally ignored by RHCP fans. Bass solos can go straight to hell.

U2: this was U2’s first US single and I still think it’s one of their best songs. It’s not completely self-indulgent, it’s not overly serious, it doesn’t have something bigger to say; it’s just a good rock song. I don’t even know if Bono can write a song like this anymore (I seriously doubt it) but I wish that he would. Actually, strike that, I don’t wish that he would, I wish that U2 would just be done. There’s no need for bands to be closing in on 35 years of making music, that’s just overstaying your welcome.