Day After Day #237: In a Big Country

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

In a Big Country (1983)

Sometimes a new song comes out and it just hits like a breath of fresh air. That was the case with Big Country's "In a Big Country," released in 1983. While a lot of attention was given to the fact that the Scottish band managed to work their name into a song, there was no denying that "In a Big Country" was a jubilant and anthemic ode to resilience.

After a brief stint as a five-piece, Stuart Adamson (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards) put together the core version of Big Country in 1981 with Bruce Watson (guitar), Tony Butler (bass, vocals) and Mark Brzezicki (drums). Butler and Brzezicki were already familiar faces thanks to their work on Pete Townshend's two solo albums, Empty Glass and All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes. The band worked with producer Steve Lillywhite (in demand for his work on the early U2 albums) and recorded its debut The Crossing. 

The band had a top 10 hit with "Fields of Fire" in the U.K., but didn't make an impact in the U.S. until "In a Big Country" was released here in the fall of 1983. Powered by the twin guitar attack of Adamson and Watson, the song literally jumped out of the radio. The guitarists used a pitch transposer to make their instruments sound like bagpipes, befitting a Scottish band singing about their big country. 

Adamson's fiery vocals and Brzezicki's pounding drums added to the majestic power of the song.

"I've never seen you look like this without a reason/Another promise fallen through/Another season passes by you/In never took the smile away from anybody's face/And that's a desperate way to look/For someone who is still a child/In a big country dreams stay with you/Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside/Stay alive."

The song's optimism is infectious as it gallops along.

"I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered/But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered/I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert/But I can live and breathe/And see the sun in wintertime/In a big country dreams stay with you/Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside/Stay alive."

The bagpipe effect was memorable, and reminiscent of AC/DC's classic "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock n' Roll)."

The song's video was also a big hit on MTV, featuring the band hunting treasure through the English countryside. "In a Big Country" hit #3 on the Billboard Top Rock Tracks chart and #17 on the Hot 100 singles, while the album went to #18 on the Billboard 200 chart. "Fields of Fire" got some play on MTV, featuring similar Scottish guitar sounds and rhythms. 

The band recorded their followup, 1984's Steeltown, with Lillywhite, which went to #1 in the U.K. but didn't resonate with American listeners, who were unfamiliar with a lot of the historical Scottish references in the lyrics. The album only reached #70 on the Billboard 200. 

Big Country toured both as headliners and support act for Queen and Roger Daltrey. Indeed, Brzezicki, Butler and Watson all played on Daltrey's 1985 solo album Under a Raging Moon. Butler also played bass on the Pretenders hit "Back on the Chain Gang" and along with Brzezicki played on Townshend's White City: A Novel album. In addition, Brzezicki played drums on the Cult's album Love and was in the video for "She Sells Sanctuary."

Meanwhile, Big Country released two more albums in the '80s that were hits in the U.K. but did not fare well in the U.S. After their fifth album flopped in 1991, Brzezicki left the band and the group was dropped by its label; the album wasn't even released in the U.S. There were three more albums in the '90s with varying success in the U.K. Adamson also moved to Nashville in the mid-'90s and released an alt-country album with singer Marcus Hummon as the Raphaels in 2001.

Adamson played a farewell tour with Big Country in 2000. In November 2001, Adamson disappeared. Dealing a relapse of alcoholism, the end of his second marriage and general depression, Adamson killed himself in December 2001 in a Honolulu hotel room. 

In 2007, Butler, Brzezicki and Watson reunited to play a 25th anniversary tour with Butler on lead vocals. They got back together in 2010-2011 with Mike Peters of the Alarm on lead vocals and released a new single. Butler retired in 2012 and was replaced by former Simple Minds bassist Derek Forbes. The group released an album in 2013. Peters toured with the band, but left later that year to focus on the Alarm and solo projects. There have been some more lineup changes over the years, but Big Country continues on.

Stuck In Thee Garage #543: August 30, 2024

If you think back to 30 years ago, things were very different (if you were alive then). The internet was something new and largely unknown by the general public, cell phones were gigantic and also only available to a select few, and the New York Rangers won their first Stanley Cup in 54 years. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs from 1994 in hour 2. It's a killer collection.

This playlist is a long way from Cheers:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Illuminati Hotties - The L/Power

Fake Fruit - Mucho Mistrust/Mucho Mistrust

Fontaines D.C. - Here's the Thing/Romance

The Hard Quartet - Rio's Song/The Hard Quartet

Horse Jumper of Love - Snow Angel/Disaster Trick

Phantom Handshakes - Stranger's Ride/Sirens at Golden Hour

Jack White - Bombing Out/No Name

Teenage Dads - Boarding Pass/Majordomo

Osees - Also the Gorilla.../SORCS 80

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Le Risque/Flight b741

Velocity Girl - Here Comes (Peel Session)/UltraCopacetic (Copacetic Remixed and Expanded)

Chime School - (I Hate) The Summer Sun/The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel

Islands - Arachnophobia/What Occurs

X - Smoke & Fiction/Smoke & Fiction

Shellac - Chick New Wave/To All Trains

Cloud Nothings - Mouse Policy/Final Summer

Bodega - Dedicated to the Dedicated/Our Brand Could Be Yr Life

The Lemon Twigs - Peppermint Roses/A Dream is All We Know

Hour 2: 1994

Superchunk - Water Wings/Foolish

Pavement - Hit the Plane Down/Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Frank Black - Calistan/Teenager of the Year

Beastie Boys - Get It Together/Ill Communication

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Dissect/Orange

Beck - Nitemare Hippy Girl/Mellow Gold

Shudder to Think - 9 Fingers on You/Pony Express Record

Guided by Voices - Echos Myron/Bee Thousand

Sloan - Worried Now/Twice Removed

Helmet - Speechless/Betty

Drive Like Jehu - Bullet Train to Vegas/Yank Crime

Dinosaur Jr. - Grab It/Without a Sound

King's X - Black the Sky/Dogman

Dambuilders - Colin's Heroes/Encendedor

Bad Religion - Infected/Stranger Than Fiction

Sonic Youth - Screaming Skull/Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

The Sons of Hercules - Piece of Mine/The Sons of Hercules

Grip it and rip it to hear the big show!

Day After Day #236: Maggot Brain

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Hit It and Quit It (1971)

I've already written about the wild and wooly career of George Clinton and his bands Parliament and Funkadelic, but that time I focused on a Parliament classic. This time around, I'm looking at Funkadelic, which played cosmic heavy funk rock (as opposed to the horn-drenched R&B of Parliament). 

Amazingly, Clinton was releasing both Parliament and Funkadelic albums just about every year in the '70s with a rotating cast of musicians, and then touring as Parliament-Funkadelic. For the first three albums, the core group included Clinton, keyboard wizard Bernie Worrell and guitarist Eddie Hazel. 

The band leaned into psychedelic funk on its third album, 1971's Maggot Brain, which features a wide range of styles, from Sly Stone-esque funk ("Can You Get to That") to Hendrix-inspired hard rock ("Super Stupid") to psycho freak outs ("Wars of Armageddon"). On "Hit It and Quit It," Worrell takes the lead vocals, aided by some supremely funky backup singers. The album captures the turmoil of the Vietnam-era early '70s.

Maggot Brain kicks off with the epic title track, a trippy 10-minute guitar instrumental featuring Hazel's mournful wailing. It starts with Clinton intoning solemnly.

"Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time/For y'all have knocked her up/I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe/I was not offended/For I knew I had to rise above it all/Or drown in my own shit."

The remaining 10 minutes features a guitar tour de force from Hazel, recorded in one take. Tripping on acid, Clinton asked Hazel to play as though he had just learned his mother died, and man, Hazel really wrings the emotion out of every note. Clinton faded out the other musicians on the track to highlight Hazel's playing, adding some delay effects. The result is one of the greatest guitar songs of all time, a true face-melting classic.

The song, and Hazel, have influenced countless guitarists, including Prince, Dean Ween, John Frusciante, Vernon Reid and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam. On Mike Watt's terrific Ball-Hog or Tugboat album, J Mascis plays an impressive cover of "Maggot Brain."

Hazel quit Funkadelic later in 1971 over financial disagreements, but he contributed to several Clinton-led projects over the next decade. He died in 1992 at age 52 from internal bleeding and liver failure.

Now in his 80s, Clinton has kept the P-Funk train rolling after all these years with an assortment of younger players. He moved away from the guitar-heavy sound of Funkadelic and leaned into R&B and hip hop in recent decades, but Maggot Brain remains a testament to a supreme melding of funk and rock.

Day After Day #235: Institutionalized

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Institutionalized (1983)

Every so often a song comes out of nowhere that becomes a generational touchstone. Even if it wasn't a hit in the traditional sense of the word, "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies captured the trials and tribulations of a suburban teen who wasn't fighting for his right to party but just trying to figure things out. Not only did the song become popular in many strange ways, it also introduced hardcore punk to the MTV audience.

Suicidal Tendencies was formed in 1980 in Venice, California, by singer Mike Muir. The band's lineup was ever-changing, but they eventually built an audience in the Venice area and signed a contract with indie label Frontier Records in 1983. Their self-titled debut came out in July 1983, combining hardcore punk with sped-up metal; the album was cited as an early influence for the big thrash metal acts that soon followed: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax. 

On "Institutionalized," Muir's verses are spoken and the choruses shouted, articulating the rage felt by many teens whose parents don't know how to communicate with them.

"Sometimes I try to do things/And it just doesn't work out the way I want it to/And I get real frustrated/And like, I try hard to do it/And I like, take my time, but it just doesn't work out the way I want it to/It's like I concentrate on it real hard/But it just doesn't work out/And everything I do and everything I try/It never turns out/It's like, I need time to figure these things out/But there's always someone there going/'Hey Mike, you know, we've been noticing you've been having a lot of problems lately, you know?/You should maybe get away/And like, maybe you should talk about it, you'll feel a lot better'/And I go, 'No, it's okay, you know, I'll figure it out/Just leave me alone, I'll figure it out, you know?/I'm just working on myself'/They go, 'Well you know, if you wanna talk about it, I'll be here, you know/And you'll probably feel a lot better if you talk about it/So why don't you talk about it?'/I go, 'No I don't want to, I'm okay, I'll figure it out myself'/But they just keep bugging me/They just keep bugging me and it builds up inside."

But his parents escalate the situation.

"So you're gonna be institutionalized/You'll come out brainwashed with bloodshot eyes/You won't have any say/They'll brainwash you until you see their way/I'm not crazy (Institutionalized)/You're the one that's crazy (Institutionalized)/You're driving me crazy (Institutionalized)/They stick me in an institution/Said it was the only solution/To give me the needed professional help/To protect me from the enemy, myself."

The most famous part of the song comes during a back-and-forth with the protagonist and his mother.

"She goes, 'What's the matter with you?'/I go, 'There's nothing wrong, Mom'/She goes, 'Don't tell me that, you're on drugs'/I go, 'No Mom, I'm not on drugs, I'm okay, I'm just thinking, you know? Why don't you get me a Pepsi?'/She goes, 'No, you're on drugs'/I go, "Mom, I'm okay, I'm just thinking'/And she goes, "No, you're not thinking, you're on drugs/Normal people don't act that way'/I go, "Mom, just get me a Pepsi, please? All I want's a Pepsi'/And she wouldn't give it to me/All I wanted was a Pepsi/Just one Pepsi/And she wouldn't give it to me/Just a Pepsi."

Los Angeles radio station KROQ gave it regular airplay in 1983 and it was ranked #23 on the station's top songs of the year. The song was featured on the Repo Man soundtrack in 1984 along with Black Flag's "TV Party," the Circle Jerks, Fear and Iggy Pop. This led to "Institutionalized" getting played on radio stations like Boston's WBCN, where I first heard it, and getting a video on MTV. The video features Mary Woronov, who was the principal in the Ramones movie Rock and Roll High School, as Mike's mom and Jack Nance of Eraserhead fame as his dad, and it brought Suicidal Tendencies to a whole new audience. 

"I'm sitting in my room, and mom and dad came in/They pulled up a chair and they sat down/They go, 'Mike, we need to talk to you'/And I go, 'Okay, what's the matter?'/They go, 'Me and your mom, we've been noticing lately you've been having a lot of problems/And you've been going off for no reason/And we're afraid you're gonna hurt somebody/And we're afraid you're gonna hurt yourself/So we decided that it would be in your best interest/If we put you somewhere where you could get the help that you need'/And I go, 'Wait, what are you talking about?/We decided? My best interest?/How do you know what my best interest is?/How can you say what my best interest is?/What are you trying to say? I'm crazy?/When I went to your schools/I went to your churches/I went to your institutional learning facilities/So how can you say I'm crazy?'"

Suicidal Tendencies even ended up playing the song in a scene from the Miami Vice episode "Free Verse," which aired in April 1986. Despite all this momentum, the band didn't release another album until 1987, leaning into more of a thrash metal sound. Although they alienated some of their punk fans, they were gaining fans from the metal community and were getting played on MTV's Headbangers Ball. In 1989, Robert Trujillo joined the band on bass (he later went on to play with Metallica), who brought a funk influence to the mix. Eventually, Muir and Trujillo formed a funk metal side project called Infectious Grooves. 

The band released several more albums before splitting up in 1995, then reuniting the following year. They've continued releasing albums and touring. The current lineup features Muir as the only original member left, with Trujillo's teenage son Tye on bass and Jay Weinberg (formerly of Slipknot and also Max's son) on drums.

There have been many covers of "Institutionalized" over the years, from Body Count to Amanda Palmer to an Alvin and the Chipmunks-esque version by The Radioactive Chicken Heads. It has also been sampled in Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill a Man" and referenced in numerous other songs.

As a teenage metal fan and straight edge dork at the time, I liked the song from the first time I heard it on WBCN. Definitely could relate to the parents not understanding me part, if not the institutionalization part. Even though Muir is now 61 and no doubt still performing the song, it still holds up.

Day After Day #234: Brick House

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Brick House (1977)

It's kind of amazing how you can go through life believing one thing and then one day learn you were wrong. "Brick House" by the Commodores came out when I was 9 and I have gone the nearly 48 years since then believing that Lionel Richie sang the song. It wasn't an outlandish belief, since he sang a lot of the group's hits before going solo. But sure enough, when I was researching this song, I found out that Ronald "Clyde" Orange was the lead singer on "Brick House." I suppose I could have just looked the song up on YouTube, but I never felt the need to until now.

The Commodores were formed in 1968 at Tuskegee University in Alabama, when two groups, the Mystics and the Jays, merged into a new band. They picked their name out of the dictionary. Richie and Orange, who joined in 1972, shared the lead singer duties. The group could play hard funk with the best of them, but they also had a strong pop sensibility. With their matching space funk outfits, the Commodores could have passed for a P-Funk clone, but they set themselves apart by writing pop hits like "Easy," "Three Times a Lady" and "Sail On." 

They became known more for their ballads, but "Brick House" established the group as funk legends. The second single from the band's self-titled album, guitarist William King was working on the lyrics and fell asleep. When he woke up, he found that his wife, Shirley Hanna-King, who was also as songwriter, had written a notepad full of lyrics. William King told the group that he had written the lyrics; eventually, his wife got a writing credit. 

"Ow, she's a brick house/She's mighty mighty, just lettin' it all hang out/She's a brick house/That lady's stacked and that's a fact/Ain't holding nothing back/Oh she's a brick house/Well put-together, everybody knows/This is how the story goes/She knows she got everything/That a woman needs to get a man, yeah, yeah/How can she lose with the stuff she use/Thirty-six, 24, 36, what a winning hand."

As you can see in the video below, Richie plays sax on the song, which has a killer groove. It's a go-to song for DJs when they want to get people on the dance floor. 

"The clothes she wears, her sexy ways/Make an old man wish for younger days, yeah, yeah/She knows she's built and knows how to please/Sure enough to knock a strong man to his knees/'Cause she's a brick house/Yeah, she's mighty mighty, just lettin' it all hang out/She's a brick house/The lady's stacked and that's a fact/Ain't holding nothing back."

The song's title comes from the term "built like a brick shithouse," which means, well, you have the measurements. 

"Brick House" went to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains one of the band's biggest songs. But once they started getting more success from love ballads, the Commodores leaned into it. The band took a hiatus in 1982 and Richie left to record a solo album and never looked back. The band kept going and had a hit in 1985 with "Nightshift," which paid tribute to the recently deceased Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson. They've only released three albums since then, but they tour regularly.

Richie had a lot of solo success, from his duet with Diana Ross on the single "Endless Love" and his three solo albums in the '80s, which were huge thanks to hits like "All Night Long," "Hello" and "Dancing on the Ceiling." He released seven albums after those, but those first three were the big ones. He also co-wrote "We Are the World" with Michael Jackson and in recent years has been known more as a judge on American Idol.

But it's Ronald Orange who provides the funk on my favorite Commodores song. The DJ at my wedding played it and it indeed filled the dance floor, which is a true test of the eternal funkiness of a song.

Completely Conspicuous 644: Secondhand Love

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about our favorite cover songs. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

• Jay's #7: Ty Segall with a ripper of a Neil Young cover
• Phil's #6: The live version of a Linda Ronstadt classic
• Jay's #6: An indie rock all-star band playing covers the Beatles played in their early days
• Greg Dulli, Thurston Moore, Dave Grohl, Dave Pirner, Mike Mills and Don Fleming
• Phil's #5: Phish covering the Stones
• Phish does tons of covers
• Jay's #5: An unexpected '60s cover from Husker Du
• Phil's #4: Coltrane with a wild twist on a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic
• Jay's #4: Stripped down version of an English Beat hit by Pete Townshend
• Phil's #3: Rage Against the Machine's explosive take on a Springsteen folk song
• Jay: Forgot about Rollins and Bad Brains covering "Kick Out the Jams"
• Jay's #3: Dirtbombs with a smokin' garage punk remake of Stevie Wonder 
• Jay's #2: Nirvana's Unplugged show featured several great covers
• Phil's #1: Epic length cover "Morning Dew" by the Dead
• Watching old videos from the '60s and '70s to guess how old the crowd members are now
• Jay's #1 and Phil's #2: Mind-blowing Who cover of little-know Mose Allison song
• Jay: Live at Leeds is the greatest live album 
• All four members of the Who at the peak of their powers

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Day After Day #233: Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now) (1992)

Smartasses of the world, unite! There are certain people in this world who have an incessant need to crack wise at any opportunity, regardless of whether the situation calls for it. 

I should know, I'm one of them. Somewhere in my basement, I have a report card from fourth grade in which my teacher Mr. Grummett writes, "Jay is a good student, but he needs to learn to keep his remarks to himself." My parents weren't thrilled, but I took it as a badge of honor. It's the reason I gravitated toward the works of David Letterman, Bill Murray and SCTV. Fortunately, I learned to tone it down after college. Being on like that 100% can be pretty goddamn annoying to everyone in your general vicinity.

Anyhoo, I can appreciate smartassery in music as well. David Lowery always brought that attitude to his music, whether in Camper Van Beethoven or in his next band, Cracker. Lowery and his childhood friend Johnny Hickman formed Cracker in 1990, just after CVB split up. They recorded a demo tape, added Davey Faragher on bass and Go Weatherford on drums and started touring. The following year, the band signed a deal with Virgin Records and using session drummers including the great Jim Keltner, they recorded their self-titled debut, which came out in 1992. 

Musically, the band was a little more straightforward than CVB, playing guitar-driven, Stonesy alt-rock adorned with Lowery's decidedly unserious lyrics. But Cracker was no joke. The band could play, from Hickman's hot lead guitar to its undeniably catchy choruses. The album featured great songs like "Happy Birthday to Me," "St. Cajetan" and "Don't Fuck Me Up (With Peace and Love)," but Cracker's lead single was a great mission statement.

"Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)" has just the right combination of snark and rock (snark rock, if you will) and it really stood out in the midst of all the oh-so-serious grunge moaning and groaning that was all the rage (hey, I dug that stuff, too). I was a fan of Camper Van Beethoven, so when I was watching 120 Minutes late one night and they premiered a new song from Lowery, I was already sold.

The song is fairly uptempo and right off the bat, Lowery's poking fun at those serious bands.

"I don't know what the world needs now/But I'm sure as hell that it starts with me/And that's a wisdom I have laughed at/I don't know what the world may want/But a good stiff drink it surely don't/So I think I'll go and fix myself a tall one/'Cause what the world needs now is a new kind of tension/'Cause the old one just bores me to death/'Cause what the world needs now is another folk singer/Like I need a hole in my head."

The songs picks up speed as Lowery continues to expound on what the world needs now.

"I don't know what the world may need/And I'll never grasp your complexities/I'd be happy just to get your attention/I don't know what the world may want/But your long sweet body lying next to mine/Could certainly raise my spirits/'Cause what the world needs now is a new Frank Sinatra/So I can get you in bed/What the world needs now is another folk singer/Like I need a hole in my head."

In a 2010 blog post, Lowery explained how the song, originally called "Folk Singer," came together. They played it for CVB producer Dennis Herring and he asked why they were wasting a song on not liking Tracy Chapman, and they explained that wasn't what it was about. Lowery then realized he needed to get to the point.

"I got it then. I had to make the words less subtle. It was never about not liking folk singers. It was about wanting to rock, and wanting to rock for the sole purpose of getting a girl's attention. Or even better, to get her in bed. I unwound the song into three neat little verses. Two misdirects about cars and drinking. Finally in the third verse, we get the truth."

"Teen Angst" resonated with listeners, going to #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and #27 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart (what's the difference between the two? Beats the hell outta me). The album didn't crack the Billboard 200, but the next Cracker album, 1993's Kerosene Hat, got up to #59, thanks mainly to lead single "Low." The song was all over the radio that summer and for years to come, and the video (in which Lowery is a boxer fighting comedian Sandra Bernhard and getting knocked out) got heavy play on MTV. The song made it to #64 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and became a signature '90s alt-rock classic. 

Cracker has continued on, releasing seven more studio albums since 1996. Lowery reformed Camper Van Beethoven in 1999 and has played in both bands since, often touring both bands together. I saw Cracker at the height of their fame in 1994 and then several times since, often with CVB. Cracker actually played last night down the highway in Gloucester, but I wasn't able to go.

Lowery has been lecturer in the University of Georgia's music business program. In recent years, Lowery has been an outspoken critic of Spotify, filing a $200 million class action suit against the streaming giant accusing it of knowingly distributing copyrighted songs without paying for mechanical licenses. Singer-songwriter Melissa Ferrick filed a similar lawsuit against Spotify and the two suits were consolidated in 2016. Spotify settled the suit, setting up a fund worth over $40 million to compensate songwriters and publishers affected. 

Even with all that serious stuff going on, Lowery remains a smartass. Kudos to you, sir.

Day After Day #232: 20th Century Boy

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

20th Century Boy (1973)

Glam rock was a short-lived genre when it first emerged in U.K. in the early 1970s, combining hard rock with flamboyant and often gender-bending fashion. David Bowie, Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Gary Glitter and Roxy Music were at the forefront, but the band that kicked it all off was T. Rex.

The group was led by frontman Marc Bolan, who formed the band in London in 1967 as a psychedelic folk act called Tyrannosaurus Rex. At first performing as a duo with percussionist Steve Took, in 1970 Bolan replaced Took with Mickey Finn, shortened the band name to T. Rex and started to play hard rock. 

Adding bassist Steve Currie and drummer Bill Legend, Bolan started to swap out his hippie clothes with shiny satin pants and shirts. A string of hits in the U.K. followed, including "Hot Love," "Get It On" (which in the U.S. was renamed "Bang a Gong (Get It On)"), "Telegram Sam," "Jeepster" and "Metal Guru." 

T. Rex started having success in the U.S. as well, with "Bang a Gong" charting in the top 10. In 1973, the band released Tanx, which introduced more soul, funk and R&B sounds, beating Bowie to the punch by a year or so. At the same time, T. Rex released the non-album single "20th Century Boy," which featured a sleazy riff, handclaps and ripping sax work from Howie Casey.

"Friends say it's fine/Friends say it's good/Everybody says it's just like Robin Hood/I move like a cat/Charge like a ram/Sting like a bee/Babe, I want to be your man/Well it's plain to see/You were meant for me/Yeah, I'm your boy/Your 20th century toy."

Bolan wasn't just charting a new course for rock in the '70s, he was also providing a template for countless bands to come. Not just bands like the ones I already mentioned, but the New York Dolls, Ramones, Kate Bush, Siouxsie and the Banshees, R.E.M., the Smiths and many more. Bolan was a monster guitarist, a good-looking frontman and a fashion icon all in one. He also brought an over-the-top sexuality to the role.

"20th century toy/I want to be your boy/20th century toy/I want to be your boy/20th century boy/I want to be your toy/20th century boy/I want to be your toy."

The song went to #3 on the U.K. Singles chart. T. Rex released its next album, Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow, in February 1974. While it went to #12 in the U.K., T. Rex was dropped by Warner Bros. in the U.S. without the album being released. The band was continuing its foray into blue-eyed soul and funk, as it did on its next three albums. In 1977, T. Rex released Dandy in the Underworld and toured with punk upstarts The Damned as opener and Bolan seemed energized. In September 1977, Bolan and his girlfriend Gloria Jones were out for the evening when Jones crashed Bolan's car into a tree, severely injuring her and killing Bolan at the age of 29.

The influence of T. Rex was felt far and wide. The Power Station, a supergroup featuring Robert Palmer, Duran Duran's Andy and John Taylor and Tony Thompson, had a huge hit with a cover of "Get It On" in 1984. "20th Century Boy" has been covered by numerous artists, including R.E.M., Def Leppard and Placebo (on the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack). 

Marc Bolan and T. Rex should have been bigger, but that's the nature of rock and roll sometimes. 

Day After Day #231: Wish You Were Here

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Wish You Were Here (1975)

By the mid-'70s, Pink Floyd had been through enough drama to last a band lifetime. Founding members Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright were all enrolled in 1962 at London Polytechnic to study architecture and started playing in a group with some other students. There were different lineups before guitarist Syd Barrett joined Waters, Wright, Mason and guitarist Bob Klose in 1963, with singer Chris Dennis joining soon after. 

The group had several names before settling on the Pink Floyd Sound in late 1965. By this point, Klose had quit the band and Barrett was playing lead guitar and singing. They eventually dropped "Sound" from the name and became part of London's underground scene, playing long instrumental jams and using psychedelic light shows. They signed with EMI in 1967 and released a few singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play"; the latter hit #6 on the U.K. singles chart.

Barrett's use of LSD had caused his behavior to become erratic, even as the band released its psychedelic debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The album was well received, going to #6 on the U.K. album chart, but Barrett was refusing to answer questions in TV interviews and in December 1967, Pink Floyd added guitarist David Gilmour as the fifth member of the band. The group's management announced that Gilmour would tour with the band while Barrett would write songs. The arrangement wasn't working so the band announced in March 1968 that Barrett was leaving. 

Waters and Wright began to contribute more of the songs that appeared on Pink Floyd's second album, 1968's Saucerful of Secrets, with Barrett contributing to three and Gilmour playing guitar on most. It wasn't as successful as its predecessor, but the band started to explore longer instrumental pieces like the nearly 12-minute title track. The next few albums began to get more experimental but continued to perform well in the U.K. and started to gain traction in the U.S. Gilmour was stepping up into a bigger creative role.

In 1973, the band elevated itself to another level of success with The Dark Side of the Moon, which was more concise than previous efforts while also exploring mental illness--both from the pressures of being in a touring band and Barrett's struggles. It was a monster triumph, going to #1 in the U.S. and selling over 45 million copies worldwide. "Money" and "Us and Them" were radio hits and Pink Floyd became one of the biggest bands in rock. Waters wrote all the lyrics, but split the lead vocals with Gilmour.

Their ninth album, 1975's Wish You Were Here, was mainly written while they were touring for Dark Side of the Moon. Waters wrote about the music business with "Have a Cigar" and "Welcome to the Machine," but much of the album was taken up by "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," a nine-part tribute to Barrett. 

But it was the title track that stands out as my favorite Pink Floyd song. "Have a Cigar" fades into "Wish You Were Here," as you hear a radio's stations being changed from one to another until you hear the intro to "Wish You Were Here." Gilmour played it on a 12-string guitar, first sounding like it was coming through an AM radio and then the radio effect fades and Gilmour starts singing.

"So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell?/Blue skies from pain?/Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?/A smile from a veil?/Do you think you can tell?/Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?/Hot ashes for trees?/Hot air for a cool breeze?/Cold comfort for change/Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war/For a lead role in a cage?"

Waters said he wrote the song about himself, but Gilmour has said he always sang the song thinking about Barrett. Later, Waters acknowledged that it was indeed also about Barrett leaving the band years before.

"How I wish, how I wish you were here/We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl/Year after year/Running over the same old ground, what have we found?/The same old fears, wish you were here."

The song wasn't a successful single per se, only getting to #68 in the U.K., but it's become a classic rock staple here and is usually found at or near the top of lists of the best Floyd songs. The album went to #1 in the U.S., U.K., Spain, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy and New Zealand.

Pink Floyd continued on, releasing Animals in 1977 and then The Wall in 1979, a double album epic about a rock star who gets hooked on drugs and transforms into a megalomaniac. Led by "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," which went to #1 in the U.S. and U.K., The Wall was another huge hit, topping the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks. Later, it was adapted into a movie starring Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats as Pink.

Even in the face of the band's massive success, tensions grew between Waters and the rest of the band. When they were working on 1983's The Final Cut, Gilmour didn't have material ready and Wright and Mason had minimal input, leading some to call the album a Waters solo release. In 1984, both Waters and Gilmour released solo albums. Waters left the band and there was a court battle over whether Gilmour and the others could continue on as Pink Floyd; eventually, the two sides reached an out-of-court agreement. A Gilmour-led Pink Floyd released A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987 and The Division Bell in 1994. 

In 2005, Waters reunited with Gilmour, Mason and Wright to perform as Pink Floyd at Live 8, a benefit concert in London that was organized by Geldof. Despite a huge offer to do a final tour, the group turned it down and went their separate ways. A year later, Barrett died at the age of 60, and two years after that in 2008, Wright died of cancer at 65.

In 2013, Gilmour and Mason took recordings made with Wright from the Division Bell sessions to make a new Pink Floyd album, The Endless River, which was released in 2014. There was no tour for the album, but in 2018, Mason formed Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets and toured Europe and North America playing early Pink Floyd material. Waters has continued to tour, playing The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall as a solo act.

Stuck In Thee Garage #542: August 23, 2024

Freedom can mean many different things to different people. It can mean freedom to choose, freedom to play rock songs in whatever order you choose, or freedom to escape the gangster who you just ripped off. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about freedom in hour 2. Now get on your bike and ride!

Zed's dead, baby, but this playlist kicks ass:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Field of Vision/Flight b741

Osees - Look at the Sky/SORCS 80

Fucked Up - Follow Fine Feeling/Another Day

Horse Jumper of Love - Today's Iconoclast/Disaster Trick

Charly Bliss - I Don't Know Anything/Forever

Velocity Girl - Crazy Town/UltraCopacetic (Copacetic Remixed and Expanded)

X - Flipside/Smoke & Fiction

Jack White - Archbishop Harold Holmes/No Name

Crack Cloud - I Am (I Was)/Red Mile

Guided By Voices - Serene King/Strut of Kings

Pedro the Lion - Modesto/Santa Cruz

Peel Dream Magazine - Lie in the Gutter/Rose Main Reading Room

Neutrals - Steven Proctor, Bus Conductor/New Town Dream

DIIV - Soul-net/Frog in Boiling Water

Phantom Handshakes - Quiet Quit/Sirens at Golden Hour

Swervedriver - These Times/Doremi Faso Latido

Swiftumz - Demoralized/Simply the Best

Hour 2: Freedom

Frank Black - Freedom Rock/Teenager of the Year

Ty Segall - Freedom/Ty Segall

PUP - Free at Last/Morbid Stuff

Prince - One Day We Will All B Free/Welcome 2 America

The Dears - Find Our Way to Freedom/Gang of Losers

Ween - Freedom of '76/Chocolate and Cheese

Rage Against the Machine - Freedom/Rage Against the Machine

The Cult - Wake Up Time for Freedom/Sonic Temple

Thin Lizzy - Freedom Song/Fighting

Morphine - I'm Free Now/Cure for Pain

Sebadoh - Break Free/The Sebadoh

Grinderman - (I Don't Need You to) Set Me Free/Grinderman

Gord Downie and the Sadies - I'm Free, Disarray Me/And the Conquering Sun

Chain & the Gang - Free Will/Best of Crime Rock

Ceremony - We Can Be Free/In the Spirit World Now

Husker Du - In a Free Land/Savage Young Du

Free your mind and the rock will follow HERE!

Day After Day #230: X-Static

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

X-Static (1995)

There are people who enjoy being in the spotlight and there are others who would rather avoid it. When Nirvana was on top of the world for that short stretch from 1992-1994, Kurt Cobain alternately hated and loved the attention; at least that's how it seemed from the outside. Of course, he was dealing with a lot of stuff at the time, so when he committed suicide in April '94, it was shocking but it was entirely surprising. 

Meanwhile, Dave Grohl was in the background, a lanky goofball who was more than happy to let Cobain get all the attention while he pounded the shit out of the drums. He had previously been the drummer for DC punk act Scream, joining the band when he was 17. Grohl replaced Chad Channing in Nirvana after Scream broke up in 1990 and soon the band recorded their second album, Nevermind, and well, you know what happened after that.

There were hints that Grohl could do more than just be an amazing drummer. In the summer of 1991, he went to WGNS Studios and recorded four songs, playing all the instruments. He combined them with six songs he had recorded in late 1990 and gave them to Jenny Toomey, co-founder of the cassette label Simple Machines. He didn't go by his own name, instead going with the name Late! and the album was called Pocketwatch and released in 1992. The album flew under the radar at first, but as Nevermind blew up, people started to find Pocketwatch. 

A few of the songs turned up in different versions later. "Color Pictures of a Marigold" was re-recorded with Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic and released as "Marigold" on the B-side of Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" single. The song "Winnebago" showed up as a re-recorded B-side during the first Foo Fighters release. And "Friend of a Friend" was re-recorded for the Foo album In Your Honor in 2005. I acquired a bootleg CD of the Pocketwatch album around 1999 and quite enjoy it. It's raw and tuneful; you can hear echoes of Nirvana but also the roots of what would emerge in a few years.

After Cobain's suicide, Grohl wasn't sure what he wanted to do next. The first performance he did was playing with the Backbeat Band at the MTV Video Music Awards in June 1994. Backbeat was a 1994 movie about the early days of the Beatles in Germany and the soundtrack was recorded in March 1993, featuring an indie rock all-star cast including Grohl, Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum, Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Don Fleming of Gumball and Mike Mills of R.E.M. They played some of the covers the Beatles played in the Hamburg clubs such as "Money," "Long Tall Sally" and then added on "Helter Skelter" at the end of the show.  

Not long afterward, punk legend Mike Watt invited Grohl to play drums on Watt's album Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, which featured another collection of indie icons including Moore, Pirner, Henry Rollins, Evan Dando and Frank Black. Grohl enjoyed playing on the album and decided to work on his own project with producer Barrett Jones, who worked on Pocketwatch. He booked six days at a studio in Seattle, singing all the vocals and playing all the instruments. The only outside musician on the album was Dulli, who was in the studio watching the recording when Grohl asked him to play on the song "X-Static."

Grohl was invited to play drums with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on Saturday Night Live in November 1994; he turned down an invite to become the band's permanent drummer. He was reportedly considered as a possible replacement for Dave Abbruzzese in Pearl Jam and played on a few songs with them in Australia in early 1995, but the band decided to go with Jack Irons and Grohl decided to focus on his solo career.

Grohl originally planned to remain anonymous and release the album under the name Foo Fighters to give the impression it was a full band, much like Stewart Copeland did with his Klark Kent project years earlier. Grohl planned to keep it a low-key release, pressing 100 LPs and 100 cassette tapes of the session; he handed the tapes out to friends for feedback. Eddie Vedder played two songs from the tape in January 1995 on the Pearl Jam Self-Pollution Radio broadcast. Eventually, the tapes circulated through the music industry and labels grew interested, with Capitol Records signing a deal with Grohl.

Nine of the songs on the album were written before or during Grohl's time in Nirvana, recorded on home demos. The songs written after Cobain's death were "This is a Call," "I'll Stick Around," "X-Static" and "Wattershed." There was plenty of the loud-soft-loud dynamics popularized by the Pixies and Nirvana, a bunch of punk-pop rippers that ranged from hardcore punk to sweet pop confections. 

For the full band, Grohl recruited bassist Nate Mendel and drummer WiIliam Goldsmith of Sunny Day Real Estate (which had recently split up) and former Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear. In the spring of 1995, the Foo Fighters went on their first tour opening for Mike Watt and also (except for Mendel and along with Eddie Vedder, whose band Hovercraft was the first opening act) serving as Watt's backing band. I was lucky enough to catch this tour in Boston in late April at the old Avalon club on Landsdowne Street; promoters were asked not to use Grohl or Vedder's names to promote the show, but word had gotten out anyway. The Foo Fighters played songs from their forthcoming album, which none of us had heard anything from yet, and we were blown away. The album came out in July and the Foos returned to Avalon as headliners in August, a show that I also saw.

The first single was "This is a Call" and it was an immediate hit. There was a hunger for anything Nirvana-adjacent and the first Foos album certainly fell into that category, but there was also a strong pop sensibility that helped it stand on its own. The album spawned a few more rock radio and video hits in "I'll Stick Around" and "Big Me." Some critics complained that it was too unpolished, but I liked the raw power of it. People read a lot into the lyrics, even though many of them were written years earlier or off the cuff.

"X-Static" is a quieter song, with droning guitars and Grohl's rhythmic pounding drums, picking up in intensity even as it maintains a steady chug. 

"Leading everything along/Never far from being wrong/Nevermind these things at all/It's nothing/Couldn't find a way to you/Seems that's all I ever do/Turning up in black and blue/Rewarded/All the static that we are left."

Grohl has said he didn't put a lot of thought into the lyrics on this album, but later would find meaning in them.

"Take it back for them to keep/Fallen into something deep/Not that I had made that leap/Anointed/All the static we are left/Where have all the wishes gone/Now that all of that is done/Wish I would've felt I've won/For once."

When the band played it live, which wasn't often after that first tour, they would play it even quieter and slowed down.

The Foos toured into the spring of 1996 and then went back into the studio with producer Gil Norton (Pixies) to work on the second album. After the band laid down rough mixes, Grohl took them to Los Angeles to finish his vocals and guitar parts; while there, he replaced most of Goldsmith's drum tracks with his own, angering Goldsmith, who then left the group. Taylor Hawkins (who was drumming for Alanis Morissette and who I also saw in 1995) joined the Foos in time for the 1997 tour of The Colour and the Shape. The album was an even bigger hit, with "Monkey Wrench," "Everlong" and "My Hero" becoming radio staples. I saw the band twice on this tour, in Boston and Portland, mainly because Rocket from the Crypt was opening the shows. 

Since 1997, I haven't seen the band again. I've liked a few of the subsequent albums (One by One, Wasting Light), but I've found a lot of their music has become uninteresting to me. Meanwhile, Grohl has become the face of rock music, even as rock music has become an afterthought, dwarfed in popularity by country, pop and hip hop. The Foo Fighters are reliable purveyors of meat-and-potatoes rock, the .38 Special of alt-rock. They play huge venues like ballparks and arenas, sell a decent amount of albums and merch, and you can find Grohl popping up everywhere from the Muppet Show to talk shows to being a talking head in 97% of the music documentaries made since 2000. 

I don't begrudge the guy his success. He seems like a nice guy (but don't tell that to William Goldsmith) and I appreciate his work ethic, but I'm just not interested in his music anymore. But throw on those first two Foo albums or the other two I mentioned and I can dig it; it's just that a lot of their recent music has become very generic. It's okay, I've got plenty of other stuff to check out.

Day After Day #229: Din

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Din (1995)

The music industry likes to pigeonhole artists into categories that are easy to understand. This one's a folksinger, this one is country, this one is a blues singer, this one plays hard rock. But when you decide that you don't want to stay in one box, you can run into some problems, at least if you're on a major label. That's what happened to Chris Whitley, whose career zigged and zagged in interesting directions until he ran out of time.

Whitley was born in Houston but moved around a lot as a kid after his parents split up. He began playing guitar at 15 and at 17, ended up busking on the streets of New York City. After four years in 1981, a Belgian travel agent gave him a free plane ticket to Brussels and got him in touch with a local promoter. He formed a band there called A Noh Rodeo with his girlfriend Helene Gevaert and her brother. Whitley eventually married Gevaert, had a daughter, Trixie, and then moved back to the U.S. in the late '80s. 

Producer Daniel Lanois heard some of Whitley's music and had him record at Lanois' studio in New Orleans, which eventually led to Whitley scoring a deal with Columbia. Whitley's debut album, 1991's Living with the Law, featured the single "Big Sky Country," which became a minor hit, getting up to #35 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. The rootsy Americana sound, boosted by Whitley's National steel guitar work, connected with the mainstream rock world; blues-based artists like Eric Clapton, John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy were still getting a lot of attention. 

I liked Living with the Law, but ultimately, I was more drawn to the heavier and dirtier (not necessarily grungier) sounds that were coming out a few months after the album was released in July '91. Whitley agreed, calling the songs too precious and cleaned up from the way he normally plays them. It took four years for the next Whitley album to come out, and it was very different from his debut. 

Din of Ecstasy was a heavy rock album, steeped in distortion and murk, and it turned off a lot of fans of the airy sound of his first release. Lyrically, it was a lot darker as well, since the four years in between albums included drug addiction and a divorce. Whitley rebelled from the blues gunslinger image he'd had on the first album, leaning into influences like Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana and producing an album that a lot of the blues crowd hated. Me, on the other hand, I loved it. Whitley was clearly going through some shit and pouring it into his music, which lined up with the darker edge of artists like Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails that were huge in '95.

In 2014, Din of Ecstasy co-producer Danny Kadar posted an alternative version of the album on SoundCloud that doesn't include the post-production effects that he said watered down the songs. It's cool, but I still like the original. I was one of the few, because the album totally stiffed commercially. 

"Din" is an uptempo rocker with lacerating lyrics.

"Well, when I got your letter, I could not contain/The urge to go beyond our inheritance again/And the drug of ages, in pages of your pen/I got to put it down/Maybe you got glazed by all the shit you had/To taste for to descend, to let me in/Maybe it's okay now if you turn and run away."

In interviews at the time, Whitley called the album more vulnerable than his debut, even as it's much louder and more aggressive.

"Anesthetic days of crusades and consent, the idiot intent/And though our love was likely your disease is so competent/You're so proud of the few risks you've taken, child/But no it's nothing new, we all continue/Maybe it's okay now/If you turn and run away, well, yet again/Vacant above the din, vacant above the din."

Other highlights of Din of Ecstasy included "O God My Heart is Ready," "Narcotic Prayer" and a gnarly cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Some Candy Talking." The one and only time I saw Whitley live was on the tour for this album, in October 1995. I went to a Bruins game earlier in the evening and then drove over to the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge, where I joined about 25 others as we got our faces melted off by Whitley and his band. It was probably a little too loud and a lot of the vocals were drowned out, but it was a pretty amazing experience as the waves of guitar noise washed over us. 

Whitley's third album, 1997's Terra Incognita, combined the blues sound of his debut with the rock edge of Din of Ecstasy, but it didn't make much of a dent and Whitley was dropped by Columbia. Whitley responded by recording a solo acoustic album in his father's Vermont barn; the raw Dirt Floor was released in 1998 on indie label Messenger Records. He began drinking heavily but continued releasing albums fairly regularly. In 2001, he moved to Germany to live with his new girlfriend and recorded two albums there. He continued touring and releasing albums despite being in pretty rough shape. In 2005, he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and died in November at the age of 45. 

Whitley's daughter Trixie began playing drums at age 10 and by the time her father died (she was 18), she was writing and recording her own music. She released her first EP in 2008, has worked with musicians including Lanois, Robert Plant, Marc Ribot and Joe Henry, and has released five solo albums. She also drew the cover of Din of Ecstasy.

Ultimately, Chris Whitley left us too soon, but he left a lot of great work behind for us to enjoy.

Day After Day #228: So Says I

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

So Says I (2003)

Being anointed the Next Big Thing is never an easy thing to deal with. There's a lot of pressure and expectations that come with that label, and almost inevitably, the band either implodes or just sputters out.

In 2004, a young indie band called the Shins suddenly found itself in the spotlight when the movie Garden State, directed by Zach Braff of Scrubs fame, had a character (played by Natalie Portman) tell Braff's character that the Shins' "New Slang" will "change your life." While the movie wasn't a huge success, it was an indie hit and it gave the Shins a sales boost for their first two albums. Sadly, they would never be able to parlay into more than that.

The Shins was formed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by singer-songwriter James Mercer, originally as a side project to his band Flake Music, which was around from 1992-1999. Flake Music was touring with Modest Mouse when the Shins were signed to Sub Pop. The Shins started as a duo with Mercer and drummer Jesse Sandoval, who also played in Flake Music.

Sub Pop released "New Slang" as part of its Single of the Month series in February 2001 and it got a lot of attention, leading to the label signing the Shins to a full contract. The band, which had added Neal Langford on bass and Marty Crandell on keyboards, released its debut album Oh, Inverted World in June 2001. The album also included lo-fi indie pop inspired by Elephant 6 bands; highlights included "Know Your Onion!" and "Caring is Creepy." It received critical acclaim and fan buzz and hit #168 on the Billboard 200.

Mercer was forward thinking when it came to business, licensing "New Slang" to a number of outlets, including a McDonald's commercial that ran during the 2002 Winter Olympics. He caught heat and was accused of being a sellout, but he used the money to relocate to Portland, Oregon, where he bought a house and built a basement studio. Langford was replaced by Dave Hernandez of the band Scared of Chaka.

The Shins followed up their debut with 2003's Chutes Too Narrow, which found Mercer and crew playing psychedelic folk and pop. Mercer's high-pitched voice was unique, carrying the songs to a new level. "Kissing the Lipless" and "Mine's Not a High Horse" got a lot of hype, but I liked "So Says I." The song was a little more rocking than their other singles, with Mercer's falsetto soaring over electric guitars as he sings about life under communist and capitalist economic systems.

"An address to the golden door/I was strumming on a stone again/Pulling teeth from the pimps of gore/When hatched a tragic opera in my mind/And it told of a new design in which every soul is duty bound/To uphold the statutes of boredom/Therein lies the fatal flaw of the red age/'Cause it was nothing like we'd ever dreamt/Our lust for life had gone away with the rent we hated/'Cause it made no money, nobody saved no one's life this time."

The computer-animated video for the song featured groups of penguins divided into Communist and capitalist roles.

"So we burned all our uniforms/And let nature take its course again/And the big ones just eat all the little ones/That sends us back to the drawing board/In our darkest hours/We have all asked for some/Angel to come/Sprinkle his dust all around/But all our crying voices they can't turn it around/And you've had some crazy conversations of your own."

"So Says I" got a boost when the band played it live in an episode of Gilmore Girls.

"We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs/But we still can't just behave ourselves/Even if to save our own lives/So says I/We are a brutal kind, whoa/'Cause this is nothing like we'd ever dreamt/Tell Sir Thomas More we've got another failed attempt/'Cause if it makes them money/They might just give you life this time."

Chutes Too Narrow performed better than its predecessor, hitting #86 on the Billboard 200 and #82 on the UK Albums chart. It also made a lot of critics' year-end best album lists. Then came Garden State. The movie was okay, but I thought it was self-important and trying to speak for a generation of lost 20somethings. I was 36 when it came out and we had just had our second kid, so I guess I wasn't the target audience. At any rate, the Shins name-check came off as trite to me. I certainly enjoyed their music, but I don't know if I'd call it life-changing.

The band waited three years before releasing their next album, Wincing the Night Away, in 2007, but it still debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200, the highest chart position reached by a Sub Pop album to that point. The lead single "Phantom Limb" was good, but it's generally considered a lesser effort than the previous two albums. 

After the tour for the album, Mercer fired the other three band members, saying that the band had always been his project and the rest of the group were just hired hands. Since then, Mercer has worked with different musicians, releasing albums in 2012 and 2017. He also teamed up with Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton to form the band Broken Bells, releasing three albums. 

The Shins released a 20th anniversary reissue of Oh, Inverted World in 2021 and played the album in its entirety on tour the following year. While they may not have been the Next Big Thing or changed anyone's life, the Shins have proven to have a solid career...even if their first two albums are still their best.

Completely Conspicuous 643: Cover Me

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about our favorite cover songs. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

• What makes a good cover?
• Be true to the song, but bring something of yourself to it
• Jagger and Bowie's cover of "Dancing in the Streets" is godawful
• In the '80s and '90s, used to get 45s or cassingles (or CD singles) to get B-sides
• Phil's honorable mention covers: U2, Courtney Barnett, Nirvana, Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Etta James, Beatles, Stones, Bjork, Aretha, Pearl Jam, CSNY, Cowboy Junkies
• Nirvana's MTV Unplugged has several great covers
• Zeppelin covered a lot of songs on their early albums, with or without giving credit
• Jay's honorable mentions: The Clash, Hendrix, Pretenders, U2, Charles Bradley, Thin Lizzy, Bjork, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Living Colour, Soft Cell, Johnny Cash, PJ, Deep Purple, Urge Overkill, Violent Femmes, Anthrax, Breeders, Cheap Trick, Malkmus and Elastica, Iron Maiden, Queens of the Stone Age
• Phil's #10: Stevie Ray Vaughan takes on a guitar god's classic
• Jay's #10: Dinosaur Jr. makes a Cure song their own
• Phil's #9: Zeppelin's first album features a cover that was previously done by Joan Baez
• Judas Priest also covered a Baez song
• Jay's #9: A signature Blondie song was actually a cover
• Phil's #8: A timeless classic from the late '50s by the Flamingos
• Jay's #8: Sinead O'Connor made the definitive version of a Prince song
• Phil's #7: Faces with a powerful Temptations cover
• To be continued

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.