Nothing to report… except…

Yes, I love this video because of its cheesy retro sci-fi “made in the basement” style.  I also love that thing it does… which seems unique to videos from ’90s no-hit wonders, somehow…. where you have lots of flashing pop-art doing that stop motion thing while random words pop up.  They did it at the end of Reality Bites in the Pizza Hut commercial.  They sort of did it with the whole OK Soda thing.  You know exactly what I’m talking about.  Like here’s a bunch of Day-Glo pop art and a monkey and random words like “memory” and “fantasy”, and it’s all moving really fast?

I’m not sure who did that thing first, but I really want to know, because it’s always fascinated me.  Nothing says “it’s 1994 and I’m in art school” like that kind of editing.

Yes, that’s Boston’s own Tanya Donelly, lead singer of legendary local band Belly, singing back-up vocals here with the Catherine Wheel.  My completely unfounded theory is that Julie Kramer, veteran mid-day DJ at WFNX, had something to do with this, as she loves Catherine Wheel more than life itself and, I’m pretty sure, she used to hang out with Tanya Donelly as the Boston Phoenix *always* had a thing for Belly and the Phoenix owns WFNX.  Then again, my other completely unfounded theory is that I was somehow indirectly responsible for Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer getting together.  Not in any direct way – it’s more of a butterfly effect kind of thing.  I’d explain it to you, but it would probably involve a Glenn Beck-ish chalkboard thing and you know what forget it.

This is such a good “it’s summer, let’s drive somewhere” song.   Go listen to it while you do that.

When Kasabian’s first album came out in 2005, we all thought they were original and huge and powerful and important and all that stuff.

Well, if you ignore the douchebaggy “comeON, comeOn!” at the top of this track…. it’s basically proto-Kasabian.

There really was a time – from roughly 1997 through 2001 – when white dudes thought that every single piece of recorded music, needed a vaguely hip-hoppish “comeON, comeON!” somewhere in there.  Didn’t matter what you were doing.  Rap, rock, punk, folk, everything.  “comeON, comeON!”    Somehow, we thought this was acceptable.  There’s probably recordings of the Boston Pops out there where Keith Lockhart is heard jumping up and down, waggling his baton threateningly at the crowd on the Esplanade, going “comeON, comeON!”  And he’s probably wearing baggy khakhi shorts while he does it.

Moving past that, this isn’t a bad song.  I saw ManBREAK once -  it was 1997.  The writing was on the wall for “alternative music.”  Headlining the show was Live, in their waning Secret Samhadi days, at exactly the time they started taking themselves really bloody seriously.  At the same show, Luscious Jackson played a great set.  Originally, the first act on the bill was going to be Fun Loving Criminals ( you know, the “Scooby Snacks” people) but they had to back out of the show at the last minute because their record label imploded or something.  So, they were replaced by ManBREAK.

Here’s ManBREAK’s legacy in a nutshell….

1) They’re the band that opened for Live and Luscious Jackson instead of Fun Loving Criminals.  That’s pretty much all you ever need to know about ManBREAK, except

2) They were kind of a harbringer of things to come.

Listening to “Ready or Not” – it’s clearly not nu-metal doof rock – it’s catchy and cool and kind of Madchester by way of Scotland – but it’s a sign of things to come.  Meaning… let’s look at that original line-up.  Live, Luscious Jackson, Fun Loving Criminals.  Take all those bands.  Put them in a blender.  What do you get?  ManBREAK.  Now, take that blended stew of yours, and drain out all the melody and “meaning” of Live, the funky, jazzy, punk feminism of Luscious Jackson, and the quirky, cool sense of humor of Fun Loving Criminals.  But leave the loudness, the hip-hop influence, and the “comeON! comeON!” in.  Then add the unwashed jock straps of an entire high school football team , and stir.

What you’d get would probably sound a lot like Limp Bizkit.

And that’s not fair to ManBREAK, because they seem like nice fellows.  I mean, just look at their hats.

There’s no use walking on eggshells, folks – the story of For Squirrels is one of the most ridiculously depressing stories of one-hit wonderdom ever.  Not just within the ’90s alternative arena – ever.

It basically shakes out like this: a bunch of kids in Florida got together, like kids all over the country, to goof around and play guitar.  Most of their songs were kinda dumb and silly, and their big hit was an acoustic-folk version of the rap classic “Mama Said Knock You Out” by LL Cool J.

They started playing local coffee houses and actually got the chance to open for a real band.  And they blew.   They didn’t have it, they weren’t serious, and everyone could tell.

So the band sat down and decided, look, let’s go big or go home.  Let’s shit or get off the pot.  Let’s be the biggest band in the world, or die trying.

And the truly terrible thing is, that’s precisely what happened to them.  They recorded a pretty good album called Baypath Road – lots of REM influence, which got them signed to Sony.  Sony ponied up the money for their major label debut Example.   And, holy Cobain, that’s a great record.  Start to finish, it’s 10 songs of pure jangly guitar bliss, with bursts of glorious punk aggression.   They’re starting to sound less like REM, too, by this point.  They’re starting to sound like For Squirrels.

Jack Vigliatura ‘s their lead singer, a stocky formidable guy with an undeniable ear for an amazing hook.  As someone who pretends to write songs in his spare time, I’ve learned more from his vocal and lyrical style than I’d care to admit.   He writes songs about disenchantment, megalomania, Florida, and death.  And Kurt Cobain.  Ostensibly.  It’s more of a tone poem.   But it’s obviously great – there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here, including a nice contrast between the verse and the chorus that makes the tune feel way more like an anthem than it should.

Seriously, they almost made it.  There’s nothing that says that, in an alternate universe, this band isn’t as big, as fondly remembered, as any of those other bands in your collection.   And then, one horrible day in September of 1995, they’re driving back home from a show at CBGB’s in New York, when their van blows a tire, flips over on I-95, and kills Jack, bassist Bill White, and Tim Bender, their tour manager.

Let’s get overtly metaphorical here, because we can: their last show is at CBGB’s in New York – traditionally, the place where bands play just before they break big.   Their album is about to be released by Sony.  The band is driving home to Gainesville, Florida.  Their van flipped just south of Savannah, Georgia.

It takes seventeen hours to drive from New York, NY to Gainesvile, FL.   For Squirrels were about three hours from home when their van flipped.   They almost made it.

When you listen to Example now, you can’t help but notice that Jack sings a lot about death.  “By the grace of God go I, into the great unknown”, thus goes the chorus of “Mighty KC”.   “Stark Pretty”, which is probably the album’s best song, has “every single action/I am death defied… death defied.”   “Gone, and not forgotten/Gone, and not forgotten/Do I hear the sound of a plane crash/Do I hear the sound of a copter/is it real or am I dreaming?”  - that’s the second verse of “8.02″.

When the album was released – a month after the accident - Entertainment Weekly panned it for that exact reason, saying that it was creepy hearing a young man, gone before his time, singing so much about death.   Also, they said the band was generic.

Bullhockey.  For Squirrels will have their renaissance, mark my words.   The whole album is bloody amazing and you should pick it up the next time you find it in the $1 CD bin.   Me, I bought the record in November of 1995, just before Thanksgiving, junior year of High School.  I know this because I bought it the same day I got Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the epic 2 disc Smashing Pumpkins album that tried really, really hard to define a generation.

Being totally honest with myself – and you – between the two albums, I’ve listened to For Squirrels’ Example a lot more often.

If we gather, if we fall over the great unknown

things are gonna change in our favor.

So – the video.  It’s cut together with Super 8 footage shot by the band and their families, projected onto an actor who’s supposed to be Kurt (in the afterlife?) watching the story of a young band who deserved better.   And now you know what “For Jack, Bill, and Tim” means.

Oh, the record labels… In the long tradition of hilariously ignorant decisions made by people who should totally know better (see: Gates, Bill, re: comment on 640k; Records, Decca, re: rejecting the Beatles because guitar music was on the way out; Union, Western, re: “the telephone is of no practical use”) they really really really really really should have gotten their collective act together sooner.  I know, I know, I’ve been saying this so long I’m beginning to sound like a broken record industry, but come on.  Someone should have called a meeting the second Real Player was invented, and the bullet points at that meeting should have looked like this:

• This is a free computer program that plays music over the internet.
• Explain concept of “internet”
• Explain concept of “computer”
• Explain that yes, while it’s even plain to complete technological illiterates like yourself that Real Player blows, you should still hear me out.
• Presentation of computer from like 5 years ago that could barely display a grainy image file.
• Presentation of brand new computer that can play a fricking video.  That I just downloaded.  For free.  Sure, it took me about 3 days, and it’s only 30 seconds long, but hear me out.
• Explanation that this is because technology increases incrementally, and not because of magical elves.
• Conclusion: one day, someone will invent a program that allows your customers to steal everything you make, and everyone will do it because it’s really easy and no one feels guilty about it because you’ve been overcharging for years. Perhaps you’d like to take certain steps to rectify that before some kid from bloody Northeastern of all places invents that program and destroys your business like a horde of termites ransacking a once grandiose and vainglorious slave plantation until it crumbles under the weight of its own obsolescence?  Maybe?

That meeting did not happen.

What does this have to do with anything?  Well, that’s where the record industry is now, but before then, it almost sank itself by snapping up every single band of 3 or more kids with flannel shirts and guitars they could find, thus leading to a glut of no-hit wonders that had one single that barely made it past the 2am on WFNX phase. And a lot of those bands released exactly one record, which didn’t get promoted because there were already a million other acts the label had to throw their weight behind, and then sank into obscurity, having tasted the big time for about twelve seconds.  Then the labels started folding.

Then nu-metal happened.  A lot of smart, creative, slightly geeky kids *loved* “alternative rock* when it first broke.  Not just loved – made it their lifestyle – because here was an entire genre of music created by, and for, ordinary, bright, socially awkward folks.  Maybe not book smart, but definitely not ignorant and certainly creative in their own ways.   After a while this fell out of fashion and you got bands like Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach, and smart alterna-kids stopped listening to the radio because all the new bands seemed to be fronted by the assholes who used to beat them up in middle school.

Then Napster.  Then the end.  And a lot of these baby bands got crushed between the wheels of inevitability.

The thing is – a lot of those baby bands had at least one or two really great songs… and that is why we’re here today.

So… song one:  “The Pope Does Not Smoke Dope” is a real obscure one and a real oddity.  I saw it on the legendary Rage TV on Boston’s TV 38 in about 1995 – it’s very similar to that Primitive Radio Gods tune, or maybe the mellower moments of Blur or London Beat.  Either way, it’s great stuff, and someone should find this dude and tell him.  He’s somewhere in Ireland right now, probably managing a hip club or a hip pub or a hip peat bog or some such thing.  It’s an enjoyable, chill tune and in the video, he’s either a ghost or a hologram, so I totally approve.

<— That’s the only picture of Gregory Gray out there.  On the whole internet.  Seriously.   He’s that evasive.

So cut the crap – get real sweetheart

The pope does not smoke dope – even if he should.

Yep – it’s the Doctor band.

There’s actually a collection of  a whole bunch of Doctor Who related shirts courtesy of our friends at io9 – any of which would be acceptable.

I wear a size M, folks.

Yep, folks, looks like we’ve made it to post 500 on ol’ Geek USA.  We’d throw a party, but seriously, no one’s reading this crap anymore.

However, today something happened that, frankly, has never happened, ever.  I made it to work *early*.   You know all those modern conveniences we humans have invented?  All those wonderful machines we own and patronize in order to drag our sorry, sagging asses around this great big blue world?  The cars and trains and buses we drive or ride every day in order to get places on time, and sure, maybe we’re burning up the Earth’s resources and polluting the air to do it, but that’s the price we pay for a civilized society where everything moves at the speed of light?

Yeah – f**k that noise.  I biked to work and got here *early*.

I’d love to drop some snark and say “Boston’s the only place where it takes an hour to drive 5 miles,” but apparently, Atlanta and Dallas have it worse.  I know DC does.  If you ever plan on getting on the 495 in DC during rush hour, I recommend packing your car as if you were planning for a space mission.  The words “recycled urine” may be in your vocabulary sooner than you think.   It won’t be pleasant.

But anyway… of course I love Boston, especially all of the adorable little quirks that make our town so darn special.  Like our adorably hideous city hall, which High Fallutin’ Architecture Monthly actually named “The Ugliest Building In America.”  Awww.

First of all, my Mother was a tour guide there back in the 60s when it first opened, and she has some theory about how it was designed to represent the water and the earth and democracy.  I don’t know.  Every time I go in there, I feel like an extra in MC Escher’s production of 1984: The Musical!  Still, I have a certain fondness for the place, which means that I want someone to buy me this shirt.

That’s brutal, y’all.

Song: “I Want An Alien For Xmas”

Band: Fountains of Wayne

Event: Solstice party, my parents’ house, annual event/Christmas Eve, same

I first heard this song in college.  I don’t remember where – it was either something Matt and Jeremy played on U Maine campus radio station WMEB, 91.9 (“Redefining ALTERNATIVE!”) or it was on Napster.  Ah, Napster.  Anyway, it was around Christmas, end of Fall term, I was probably wearing a big long coat and driving to Dysarts.  I know that I definitely *did* come home for Christmas that year with a tape (yes, a tape) of alt-rock and folk Christmas songs that I taped off my computer, which we played while we trimmed the tree. And “I Want An Alien For Xmas” was one of them.

My parents do Christmas really well – they perform music at church and have a big caroling party every year, on Dec. 21 (the winter solstice.)  Everyone hangs out and plays music and drinks hot cider.  If the dream of the ’90s is alive in Portland, the dream of the ’60s is alive, for one night a year, in Westford.  One year – I don’t remember which – I played “I Want An Alien For Xmas.”  The kids loved it.  The grownups loved it.  Somehow, it became The Song I played every single year.   Well, that and “The Christians and the Pagans”, which has become another wonderful tradition.

But I hear “Alien For Xmas” by Fountains of Wayne and I think of my godfather’s kids, Rebecca and Maria and Sandra, jumping up and down and asking me to play it each year with joy and wide-eyed wonder in their eyes and hearts.  It should be noted that Rebecca now works for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Sandra has a MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and Maria is a college sophomore.  I kind of accidentally started a tradition.

I also think of my grandmother – I definitely played it for her for the first time in December of 2001.  She adored it, and every year, on her birthday, which happened to be December 24, she insisted I play it.

day 08 – a song that you know all the words to

song: “We Didn’t Start The Fire”

artist: Billy Joel

really?:  yep.

No real story here – I’m just bragging.

By the way – this song might sound like just a list of stuff, but it’s way better written than you think it is.  You know why Billy ends the first verse with “Satayana, goodbye!”?

OK, so,  Billy’s doing the typical baby boomer thing of thinking it’s all about him and his generation, so he’s listing all the historical and cultural events he can think of since the year of his birth, 1948.  By the end of the first verse, it’s 1952, Billy’s four years old, England’s got a new queen, Rocky Marciano’s the champ, Liberace’s a star, and Satayana’s dead.

Who the hell is Satayana?

George Satayana.  Spanish-American writer and philosopher.  Came up with that immortal phrase “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

Which is the whole point of “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”   Billy’s intentionally dropping an obscure reference he hopes you’ll look up, and when you do, you’ll figure it out, man.  And he gets there at the end of the first verse! Pretty cool.

day 09 – a song that you can dance to

song: “Borneo”

artist: Firewater

can you dance to it?: Totally. And so can you.

day 10 – a song that makes you fall asleep

song: “Neon Sky Rain”

artist: Vector Lovers

sleep in a good way?: Oh yes.  This is wonderfully calm, blippy, ambient electro.  Enjoy.

day 11 – a song from your favorite band

song: “Sing”

artist: The Dresden Dolls

First saw them in 2003,  the year they won the Rock and Roll Rumble.  Thought that, with Amanda’s songwriting and Brian’s drumming and the whole aesthetic, they had the potential to be cult heroes.  Saw them with an audience of about 50 people at the late, lamented SkyBar.  Saw them with an audience of about 30 people playing a radio show.  Saw them in the basement of the Middle East back when you could smoke in bars in Cambridge.  Saw their CD release party at the Paradise.   Saw them play bigger and bigger venues, like Avalon and The Roxy.  Two years later, saw them open for Nine Inch Nails at the Orpheum.  The year after that they were touring the world.  Amanda Palmer released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2008 on her own, became a social media icon/genius, and married Neil Gaiman.

There’s something really gratifying about being right.
day 12 – a song from a band you hate

song: “She Loves Me Not”

artist: Papa Roach

For some reason, I can’t access any of my original comments from Facebook past Day 20, but I think I said something like “the perfect song to listen to you while you lurk in a trailer park with a sock full of pennies because that b***h owes you money and tonight, she’s gonna pay, man.”  Which was icky and violent, but totally sums up how I feel about this band: they always seemed to me like they were about to go beat their wives.

day 13 – a song that is a guilty pleasure

song: “Part Of Your World”

artist: Skye Sweetnam

Oh, come on: this cover totally rocks.  Sure, it’s from Disney Mania 3 or some such evil thing, but holy crumbs it’s good.

(to be continued)

But…. wow.

Wow, Gov. Walker.  Wow.  Do you give a SHIT about how evil you look?  Do you Republicans care about how you come across to – let’s be honest here – the MAJORITY of Americans who were opposed to what you were doing?

This was never about money.  This was about screwing the unions so your corporate boyfriends could get their way.

You look evil.  You look like the world’s biggest assholes to 66% of the country.  The rest are too busy whacking off to Fox News.

YOU DON’T CARE HOW EVIL YOU LOOK.    A State House full of protesters.  Teachers.  Cops.  Fucking firefighters.  The people you call “the heroes” every 9/11.  Now, bless your souls, you’ll be able to cut their salaries, cut their benefits, make ‘em work 16 hour shifts and teach 50 kids at a time, and they won’t be able to complain.  It’s ok – it’s not like they have REAL jobs, like (for instance, just grabbing something out of the air here) one of the very part time Directors of Blue Cross/Blue Shield who pulls in about $1 million a year.  But that’s ok – that guy works for a living.

They teach your kids.  They patrol your streets.  They save you when your house is burning.  They gave up a raise, they gave up not having to pay into their pensions, they gave up everything, but they wouldn’t give up their ability to bargain.  And you fucking stripped it from them anyway.  Har har.  That’ll sure balance the budget, won’t it?  Hmm… we could raise the tax rate on the richest 1% by about 3 points, maybe…. orrrrrrr we could fuck over some teachers.  Well, now.  Ain’t you a Real American Patriot?  Ain’t that just what Thomas Fucking Jefferson would have wanted?

YOU DON’T CARE HOW EVIL YOU LOOK.  It just blows my tiny little mind.

Theme: A Song That Reminds You Of Somewhere

Artist: Guster

Song: “Parachute”

Where: Exploration Summer Program, 1995 and 1996 (or Explo ’95/’96)

Already wrote about this song here.