Day After Day #28: Victoria

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

Victoria (1969)

There were many bands that were part of the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, but the artists who had the biggest impact were the obvious ones: the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. Next on the list is the Kinks, a truly great and influential band that never really got its due. The band emerged with a bang with 1964's "You Really Got Me," which featured a distorted Dave Davies guitar riff and solo that influenced countless hard rock and garage acts to come. Lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies was charismatic and a brilliant writer. Hits like "All Day and All of the Night" and "Tired of Waiting for You" soon followed. 

But the Kinks were a combative lot. The Davies brothers often didn't get along, and an onstage fight between Dave and drummer Mick Avory led to Dave getting knocked out after Avory whacked him with his hi-hat stand. After a tour of the U.S. in 1965, the American Federation of Musicians refused permits for the Kinks to play shows in the U.S. for the next four years, which was a huge blow to the band's prospects here. The ban was believed to result from an incident on Dick Clark's TV show Where the Action Is when the band got into an altercation with a TV executive and a punch was thrown.

Forced to tour everywhere but the U.S., the Kinks continued to make quality music, moving away from rockers and producing songs steeped in social commentary and interesting characters like "A Well Respected Man," "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "Sunny Afternoon." The band garnered respect from their peers and critical praise for the most part, but sales weren't strong. In 1969, Ray Davies flew to the U.S. to negotiate an end to the touring ban and the band made plans to do an American tour that year. 

Before the tour began, the Kinks recorded the album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), a concept album that was supposed to be the soundtrack of a TV show that was never produced. "Victoria" was the third single released in the U.K. but the first in the U.S. Ray's lyrics look at the hardships of British working class life in the 19th century while their Queen was expanding the British Empire across the world ("From the West to the East/From the rich to the poor/Victoria loved them all"). Despite it all, the working class loved Victoria and Britain ("Though I am poor, I am free/When I grow I shall fight/For this land I shall die"). 

Despite the satirical bent, the song is stirring, following a bluesy riff and tidy solo into the bridge celebrating the "land of hope and Gloria/land of my Victoria," which features horns and great backing vocals from Dave Davies.

The song reached #62 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., their highest position since "Sunny Afternoon" hit the top 20 in 1966. The song made it to #33 in the U.K., and was also a hit in Canada, Australia and Sweden. "Victoria" has since been covered by the Fall, the Kooks and Cracker.

The long-awaited tour didn't go well, but the album did well enough to propel the Kinks into their next album, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (aka Lola Versus Powerman), which featured the top 10 single "Lola." The next 15 years was a roller coaster of success and struggle for the band. The late '80s and '90s were dry times for the band, and the last Kinks performance took place in 1996. The Davies brothers have resisted any further reunions.

My personal experience with the song "Victoria" came in 2000. My friend Bob was hosting a Halloween party at his house in Allston Rock City, and he and other friends of mine were going to play a set in his basement. Our friend (and my co-worker at the time) Ric suggested that we open the show with a short set of Kinks covers; we decided to do a parody of the Gallagher brothers of Oasis, with me playing Liam on vocals and he as Noel on guitar. We called ourselves Cirrhosis and worked up three '60s-era Kinks covers: "Victoria," "A Well Respected Man" and "Where Have All the Good Times Gone." In between songs, we argued and called the audience "fookin' stoodents." It was great fun and it made me appreciate the greatness of those songs even more.

Day After Day #27: Crosseyed and Painless

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

Crosseyed and Painless (1980)

By the time Remain in Light came out in October 1980, the Talking Heads were already in the midst of an incredible run of terrific albums. This album was their fourth and their third with producer Brian Eno and the band's sound was evolving...from nerdy post-punk to funk to African polyrhythms, as well as the burgeoning hip hop scene. 

Already dealing with tension between frontman David Byrne and the rest of the band, the Heads agreed to record the new record in the Bahamas, where bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz were temporarily living. Instead of writing music to Byrne's lyrics, they decided to work up instrumental jams that combined rock with African music. Once back in New York, Byrne was struggling with writer's block. He had guitarist Adrian Belew come in and add solos to the instrumental tracks. Horns and percussionists were brought in, as well as Nona Hendryx on backing vocals, for whom Jerry Harrison had produced an album. 

Byrne experimented with stream-of-consciousness lyrics and was influenced by preachers and early rappers. "Once in a Lifetime" got the most attention, as it was the lead single and it had an iconic video that became a staple on MTV, which launched in August '81. After a few more singles, "Crosseyed and Painless" was released, along with a Toni Basil-directed video that didn't feature any of the band members but instead young street dancers.

The song's protagonist is paranoid and anxious, railing against the information overload that's got him on edge. Byrne's rap in the song ("Facts are simple and facts are straight/Facts are lazy and facts are late") were influenced by "The Breaks" by OG rapper Kurtis Blow. 

Instrumentally, the song incorporates tons of percussion: cowbell, congas, electronics and even the rhythm guitar. Belew doesn't play a typical solo, but instead sweeps through the song with big flourishes. The groove is tight and incredibly funky, which explains why even though it didn't land on the U.S. Hot 100 chart, it hit #20 on the Billboard Dance chart. Remain in Light got up to #19 on the Billboard album chart and went gold.

When the band toured the album, they brought an extended lineup that included Belew, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, Busta Jones on bass, Steve Scales on percussion and Dolette McDonald on vocals. The resulting tour was incredible and thankfully was captured by a camera crew for a TV broadcast of the Rome show. Belew is masterful, ripping hot solos and adding guitar squeals and feedback throughout the songs, which capture all the funkiness of the studio versions and extrapolate them into a musical experience that needs to be seen as well as heard. 

After the tour, the Talking Heads took a hiatus and didn't reconvene for a few years, releasing Speaking in Tongues in 1983. Thanks to the top 10 hit "Burning Down the House," the album was a big hit. The tour was documented by Jonathan Demme for the film Stop Making Sense, which led to the live album of the same name. That was the band's last tour, although they released three more albums before breaking up officially in 1991. The divide between Byrne and the other members grew too great and they didn't reunite until they were inducted in the Rock Hall of Fame in 2002 and played three songs. Stop Making Sense was released in IMAX theaters last fall and all four members appeared together at a live Q&A and for some interviews, but no other collaborations appear imminent.

The popularity of videos of the Remain in Light tour on YouTube led to Harrison and Belew putting together a tour playing that album in full and selected other Heads hits. Backed by the jam band Cool Cool Cool, the show played to theaters in much of the country last year (I saw the Boston show at the House of Blues and it was excellent) and more dates have been announced for later this year.

Talking Heads did a lot over a relatively short period of time. Remain in Light and "Crosseyed and Painless" is the peak, in my opinion.

Day After Day #26: No Excuses

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

No Excuses (1994)

When people typically think of the Seattle rock scene in the early '90s, they tend to think of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. The term "grunge" was used as a catch-all for the bands coming out of the Pacific Northwest, but it was probably more applicable to the fashion (ripped jeans, flannel, etc.) than any commonality of sound. Sure, there was an emphasis on guitar rock, but beyond that, the four aforementioned acts were pretty different. Nirvana came out of a punk background, Pearl Jam was influenced by the Who and Zeppelin, Soundgarden were equal parts Sabbath and Melvins, and Alice in Chains came out of the world of metal.

AIC never tried to hide its metal roots. The band's debut, 1990's Facelift, first caught on when the lead single "Man in the Box" started getting airplay on MTV's Headbangers Ball and later was moved into the regular rotation. The band toured with Van Halen, Poison and Extreme before getting the opening slot on the Clash of the Titans tour, which featured Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer. 

But it was the 1992 EP Sap that got the attention of the alt-rock masses. The other Seattle bands all released albums in the fall of 1991 that were getting hot in early '92. AIC had entered the studio to record a song for the Cameron Crowe movie Singles but used the opportunity to demo some other songs, including the ones that ended up on Sap. These were mainly acoustic-based and featured guest spots from fellow Seattleites Ann Wilson of Heart, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Mark Arm of Mudhoney. The EP was released without promotion but sold well anyway because of the whole Seattle thing going on. The unique harmonies of singer Layne Staley and guitarist-singer Jerry Cantrell gave the band an interesting and hypnotic sound.

AIC's second album Dirt was released in September '92 and was a huge success, despite its dark focus on depression, drug addiction, pain and other fun subjects. Staley had been dealing with heroin addiction while drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike Starr were battling alcohol problems. The album hit #6 on the Billboard 200 and charted for 102 weeks. It can be a tough listen, especially songs like "Sickman," "Junkhead" and "God Smack," which Staley wrote about his addiction issues. After touring for most of 1993, the band went into the studio again with new bassist Mike Inez and recorded another mainly acoustic EP, Jar of Flies. 

Once again, the lyrics were dark but the arrangements were quieter and cleaner. The lead single "No Excuses" is very different from what one would consider a typical Alice in Chains song. Instead of a downtuned and dirty riff, the song features jangly acoustics and Kinney's syncopated drumming. Cantrell wrote the song, which seems to detail the ups and downs of their friendship, which certainly had been stressed over the last few years.

"Yeah, it's fine/We'll walk down the line/Leave our rain, a cold trade for warm sunshine/You my friend/I will defend/And if we change, well I love you anyway."

The song hit home for me. At the time it came out, I was going through a down period. I had split up with my girlfriend the previous spring and eventually moved into a house a few towns away, renting a room. My job had also changed so my hours were 5 a.m. to 1 p.m., so I basically had upended my entire life. I was off kilter because of the weird hours, I wasn't seeing my friends as much and I was living in a house with three strangers. I was definitely depressed and was developing an ulcer. But when "No Excuses" came out, I adopted it as a personal mantra: stop moping around and making excuses. Coincidentally right after it came out, I moved back to Beverly and in with some friends, and I switched back to a reporting job with normal hours. My stomach problems went away and life got much better. I'm not going to credit AIC with all of that, but "No Excuses" helped.

I saw two memorable AIC shows in their prime. My brother and I caught them right after Dirt came out in November '92 in a great show at the Channel (R.I.P.) in Boston. Staley had broken his leg in an accident and performed the show from a wheelchair, except for one point where he was hanging from an overhead pipe. The following summer, we saw them play at Lollapalooza '93 at an old Air Force base in Quonset Point, Rhode Island. That show was one big mosh pit; there was nowhere to get away from it and you basically just spent the whole time trying to avoid crowd surfers as they passed overhead. 

Things got darker for the band in the years that followed. Staley's drug use got worse. He was able to record vocals for a side project called Mad Season and a self-titled AIC album that was released in 1995. They didn't tour for the album, but later did an MTV Unplugged acoustic set and opened four shows for the reunited original KISS lineup. Staley OD'd after the fourth show and the band went on hiatus. While Staley battled addiction and became a recluse, the other members worked on solo projects. Staley died in April 2002.

AIC reunited in 2008, recruiting William DuVall as its new vocalist and releasing three albums in the years since. They remain a working band, although their last album came out in 2018. DuVall has done a good job, but nothing can touch the band's early '90s heyday. AIC has a lot of memorable songs, but "No Excuses" captures both sides of their sound.

Day After Day #25: A Good Idea

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

A Good Idea (1992)

How do you follow up a legendary first act? If you're Bob Mould, you keep building on the legend. After the acrimonious split of his first band Husker Du, Mould went in a different direction with 1989's Workbook. 

The loud guitar noise of Husker Du was mostly replaced with acoustics and other instrumentation. His next album, Black Sheets of Rain, was a heavier, pissed-off affair that didn't resonate with the record-buying public and saw him get dropped from Virgin Records. After a solo tour of Europe, Mould wrote songs that were more melodic while retaining their heaviness. In late 1991, he teamed up with bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcom Travis to form Sugar.

The timing was ideal for Sugar, as Nirvana and other bands had made alternative guitar rock popular. Sugar's first album, Copper Blue, came out in September 1992 on Rykodisc in the U.S. and Creation in the U.K. and it was an immediate hit. It hit #10 on the UK albums chart and was eventually named Album of the Year by NME. Videos for the songs "If I Can't Change Your Mind" and "Helpless" got airplay on MTV and Mould was venerated as an inspiration by folks like Kurt Cobain.

Copper Blue combined punk with power pop, creating a big-sounding anthem-packed record that appealed to the guitar-starved rock fans of the day. The funny thing was because the median age of alt-rock fans had dropped into the pre-teens (it was definitely strange to be standing in a Newbury Comics checking out the same music as the 10-year-old next to me), many of the people who were digging Sugar had no clue about Husker Du.

Mould's unique nasal bark of a voice also set the band apart from the many others plying their trade at the time, and he was aided by an experienced rhythm section (Barbe had played in Mercyland while Travis was known for Boston-area bands the Zulus and Human Sexual Response).

Copper Blue, which was reissued in 2012 by Merge Records, has been called a perfect record and I can't argue with that. "The Act We Act," "Helpless," "Changes," "Hoover Dam," "If I Can't Change Your Mind" are all bona fide classics, melding pop sensibilities with guitar fury. Mould has called "A Good Idea" an unintentional homage to the Pixies' "Debaser," which makes sense since the latter band recruited Kim Deal with an ad looking for someone who was into Husker Du and Peter, Paul and Mary. 

Lyrically, the song is dark, with the narrator watching a couple frolicking in a river before the guy drowns the woman he's with, but musically, the song is upbeat in true Pixies fashion. "Some things are best left alone/Sometimes I'm best left alone/And sometimes I see you in the water/At night at night at night."

After the success of Copper Blue, Sugar released the Beaster EP, which was a collection of darker songs leftover from the Copper Blue sessions. A second album followed, 1994's excellent File Under: Easy Listening." I saw them on that tour at the Orpheum in Boston. I had front row seats for that impossibly loud show, but the biggest thing I was struck by was that my friend and I were the only people in the entire front section standing. It was an amazing show and I couldn't understand the lack of engagement.

Sugar split up a year later and Mould has continued releasing solo albums. After a brief embrace of electronic music in the early to mid-2000s, he has returned to heavy guitar rock for the last 15 years or so and it's been glorious. Backed by the killer rhythm section of Jason Narducy on bass and Jon Wurster on drums, Mould has released excellent albums and played punishing live shows, several of which I've seen. They came through Boston with a 20th anniversary celebration of Copper Blue, playing the entire album front to back and it was amazing. His latest album came out in 2020. Last fall saw a solo electric tour on which he debuted new material, so expect a new album out in the next year or so. The legend continues on.

Day After Day #24: I Wanna Be Your Dog

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

I Wanna Be Your Dog (1969)

There's a lot of debate about the origins of punk. Was it the Sex Pistols or the Ramones? The New York Dolls or the MC5? The Fugs or Death? A good argument can be made for the Stooges out of Detroit. They often get tagged with the descriptor "proto-punk," but for my money, they had all the elements: A truly out-there frontman in Iggy Pop, unpredictable live performances, unrelentingly loud and raw songs. 

The band formed in 1967 and released its self-titled debut in August 1969. The album was full of in-your-face rippers like "1969" and "Real Cool Time," but there was also a 10-minute drone dirge that was definitely influenced by producer John Cale's band the Velvet Underground and Nico, who Iggy was dating at the time. The band was not well received at the time: critics trashed the album and it didn't sell well. 

The first single was "I Wanna Be Your Dog," a furious 3-minute rocker that features a three-chord riff that Ron Asheton plays continuously throughout the song. John Cale plays piano while the rhythm section (bassist Dave Alexander and drummer Scott Asheton) drives the beat. Iggy sings about getting together with his lover and getting wild; some have interpreted as a bondage/subservience thing. Who the hell knows? 

"So messed up, I want you here/In my room, I want you here/Now we're gonna be face to face/And I'll lay right down in my favorite place/And now I wanna be your dog."

The riff just burrows into your brain and stays there, as it should. There have been so many performances of this song over the 54+ years since it first came out, by Iggy and many others, and it's the riff that's eternal. Ron Asheton came up with it, reportedly inspired by the opening riff of "Highway Chile" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. 

But of course, the real X factor is Iggy. The sheer energy he puts into every performance, on record and in concert, is amazing. Whether he's rolling around on stage, smearing himself with peanut butter, cutting himself with glass or jumping into an unsuspecting crowd at 65 years old, the guy IS punk rock. He's 76 now and still releasing albums and touring. I saw him in 1991 at the WFNX Best Music Poll concert at the Orpheum in Boston and again in 2016 on the Post Pop Depression tour, backed by a killer band including Josh Homme, Matt Sweeney and Matt Helders. Both performances were incredible. Iggy gives it all every goddamn time.

As I mentioned, "I Wanna Be Your Dog" has been covered numerous times, including by Sid Vicious on his album Sid Sings, Gary Oldman when he played Sid in the movie Sid & Nancy, Sonic Youth a few times, Swans and it even showed up in a scene in the movie Cruella. But for me, it always comes back to that original album performance, which must have blown some minds back in 1969.

Day After Day #23: Intro/Sweet Jane

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

Intro/Sweet Jane (1974)

Lou Reed's been gone more than a decade now, but his presence still looms large. His years with the Velvet Underground were legendary (and I'm sure they'll be discussed here in more detail at a future date), but today's entry looks at the early years of solo Lou. In the fall of 1973, Reed had just released his album Berlin, a rock opera about a doomed couple struggling with drug addiction and abuse. The critics didn't get it and the album sold poorly, leaving Reed disillusioned. 

But he put together a killer band for his European tour in late '73, featuring lead guitarists Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, and they combined Reed's newer material with classic Velvet Underground songs. Rounded out by Prakash John on bass, Pentti Glan on drums and Ray Colcord on keyboards, the band delivered stirring performances and a big rock sound. The entire backing band (minus Colcord) ended up becoming Alice Cooper's band for a few albums, thanks to the Bob Ezrin connection (he produced Berlin and a bunch of Cooper albums).

Returning to the U.S., Reed's performance from Dec. 21, 1973 at the Academy of Music in New York City was recorded for the Rock 'n' Roll Animal album. The original version of the album consists of five songs, four of which were VU originals. A remastered version released in 2000 includes two more songs, and other songs played during the concert were released in 1975 on Lou Reed Live.

The RNR Animal version of "Sweet Jane" is very different from the VU original, which is a mellower yet still potent song on the 1970 album Loaded that's probably the band's most recognized song. After Reed left the band shortly before Loaded came out, he continued to play "Sweet Jane" in concert. Many bands have covered the song, most notably the Cowboy Junkies with a slower version.

But the arrangement on RNR Animal is a majestic rocker, especially with the extended intro that features Hunter and Wagner on twin lead guitar soloing while John's nimble bass runs underneath. The intro goes on for 3:30 before Reed comes out on stage and starts singing "Sweet Jane." The song, which runs in total nearly 8 minutes, became a staple of FM rock radio, especially if the DJ needed to run out for a smoke or bathroom break. 

There's plenty of debate about what "Sweet Jane" is actually about, but one interpretation is it's a younger person looking at an older couple derisively and then realizing they're not that different after all.

"And there's even some evil mothers/They'll tell you that life is just made out of dirt/And women never really faint/That villains always blink their eyes/And that children are the only ones who blush/And life is just to die. But everyone who ever had a heart/They wouldn't turn around and break it/Anyone who played a part/They wouldn't turn around and take it."

The rocked-up version of the song rubbed some people the wrong way, with an NME writer calling the album and Lou Reed Live "the ultimate insults, Reed wrecking the rare beauty and affirmation of his greatest songs by turning them into cliche ridden hack heavy metal mutations." To which I say: Lighten up, Francis. It's a different arrangement, for sure, but there's no denying it kicks the requisite amounts of ass while still being respectful to the songs. The entire RNR Animal album, to these ears, is one of the greatest live albums ever. 'Nuff said.

Stuck In Thee Garage #512: January 26, 2024

Just because everything went great on your first album is no guarantee the same thing happens on your second. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played sophomore slump busters in hour 2. No worries about living up to expectations here. Unless you keep your expectations low.

This playlist has twice the secondhand smoke:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Office Dog - Big Air/Spiel

Sleater-Kinney - Needlessly Wild/Little Rope

Laura Jane Grace - Birds Talk Too/Hole in My Head

Lupo Citta - Machine Operator/Lupo Citta

Porno For Pyros - Agua/Single

Folly Group - I'll Do What I Can/Down There!

Sprints - Ticking/Letter to Self

The Lemonheads - Seven Out/Fear of Living

The Bevis Frond - Leb Off/Focus on Nature

Mary Timony - Dominoes/Untame the Tiger

Dharmacide - Horses/Divorces /Single

Topographies - Chain of Days/Interior Spring

The Umbrellas - Toe the Line/Fairweather Friend

Cindy Lawson - Don't Come Crying to Me/Don't Come Crying to Me

Ghoul Talk - I Just Like to Watch/I Want to Consume

Coastal Pig - Deaf Boy Likes Your Cigarette/Glass Crime Terror

Hit Bargain - Cheat Grass/A Dog A Deer A Seal

Hour 2: Sophomore albums

The Jam - The Modern World/This is the Modern World

Kaiser Chiefs - Everything is Average Nowadays/Yours Truly, Angry Mob

Titus Andronicus - No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future/The Monitor

The Nation of Ulysses - Presidents of Vice/Plays Pretty for Baby

Living Colour - New Jack Theme/Time's Up

Run the Jewels - Close Your Eyes (and Count to Fuck) (feat. Zach de la Rocha)/Run the Jewels 2

Morphine - Buena/Cure For Pain

Mark Lanegan - The River Rise/Whiskey For the Holy Ghost

Smashing Pumpkins - Mayonaise/Siamese Dream

Japandroids - Younger Us/Celebration Rock

Dinosaur Jr. - In a Jar/You're Living All Over Me

Pavement - Gold Soundz/Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

PUP - Pine Point/The Dream is Over

Soundgarden - All My Lies/Ultramega OK

Hot Snakes - LAX/Suicide Invoice

Drive Like Jehu - New Math/Yank Crime

You put the lime in the coconut and CRANK UP THE ROCK. 

Day After Day #22: Romantic Rights

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

Romantic Rights (2004)

Twenty years ago was the peak of the MP3 blog era. In the wake of Napster and MP3 sharing, music nerds all over the world were creating blogs and posting MP3s of new and interesting stuff. I was all over it. It was a great way to discover new music as well as get rare tracks and bootlegs. I was downloading songs from artists like TV On the Radio, the Hold Steady, the Black Angels, Midlake, Neko Case, Jenny Lewis and on and on.

One such discovery was a noise rock duo from Toronto called Death from Above 1979 (they've also gone by DFA 1979 and Death from Above at different times), comprised of bassist Jesse Keeler and drummer/vocalist Sebastien Grainger. The band's debut was the 2002 EP Heads Up, but it was their debut album, You're a Woman, I'm a Machine, that really made a splash. 

Two-piece bands were becoming all the rage thanks to the White Stripes (although Ween and the Spinanes had already been around for a while). In the early to mid-2000s, the Black Keys, the Kills and Lightning Bolt all emerged, with Japandroids showing up a few years later. But Death from Above and Lightning Bolt stood out because they were bass-drums instead of guitar-drums and were both louder than the guitar acts, with DFA79 being the more tuneful of the noise rock acts.

On "Romantic Rights," the lead single from You're a Woman, I'm a Machine, Keeler's fuzz-driven bass is the lead instrument, all monstrous Sabbath riffs and stuttering squeals while Grainger pounds the skins and yowls, "I don't need you, I want you." Loud, yes, but eminently danceable as well. The song builds into a frenzy and kicks about as much ass as humanly possible.

"Come here baby, I need your company/We could do it and start a family/She was living alone unhappily/We could do it, it's right romantically."

The song hit #57 on the UK Singles Chart, but got plenty of other attention. It was used on the MTV show Human Giant and on the soundtrack for the videogames SSX On Tour and NBA 2K15. 

In March 2005, DFA79 played "Romantic Rights" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and when Grainger stepped out from behind the kit to sing, Late Night drummer (and E Street Band legend) Max Weinberg ran across the stage to take over behind the drums. Weinberg, dressed as he always did in a three-piece suit, struggled to get the jacket off before pounding away while Grainger stood on top of the bass drum belting out the vocals. A truly electric performance.

DFA79 split up in 2006 and reformed in 2011, releasing a tremendous album The Physical World in 2014 and two more since. I still haven't seen them but I need to, because they definitely put on one hell of a performance.

Day After Day #21: Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

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

Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) (1979)

There have been many interesting artists over the decades, but few have been as interesting and unpredictable as Neil Young. Sixty-plus years in, he's still going: Making new music, releasing old music that's never been heard before, touring. He's made incredible music on his own and with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He's been a huge influence on bands in genres including folk, country, electronic and hard rock and everything in between. He's worked with artists as varied as Devo, Emmylou Harris and Pearl Jam.

Young has so many great songs in his catalog that it's difficult to pick just one. In the 1970s, he took many detours, most of them rewarding. One of my favorites was 1979's Rust Never Sleeps, which featured live versions (recorded the previous year) of solo acoustic songs on the first side and electric rockers with Crazy Horse won the second. An accompanying movie documented the tour, as did a double live released in November 1979 called Live Rust.

The Rust Never Sleeps album begins with the acoustic "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and ends with "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)." Side 2 of the album was already filled with heavy rockers, but the final song features a riff that is super-distorted and sludgy. The song actually came out of a collaboration with Devo for Young's movie Human Highway. Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh came up with the term "rust never sleeps," which Young used in the song. Inspired by punk rock, Young used "Hey Hey, My My" as a rallying cry against the stale arena rock that was in style in the late '70s.

"The king is gone, but he's not forgotten/This is the story of Johnny Rotten/It's better to burn out than it is to rust/The king is gone but he's not forgotten."

The song has been covered many times, including by Oasis, System of a Down, Dave Matthews Band and NoMeansNo, and the line "It's better to burn out than to fade away" was famously quoted by Kurt Cobain in his suicide note. Upon hearing that, Young said he wouldn't perform the song anymore, but the surviving members of Nirvana got him to change his mind. 

It's kinda perfect that Young followed up the release of Rust Never Sleeps with a decade full of truly weird projects, including an album filled with vocoders, synths and electronic beats (1982's Trans), a rockabilly album (1983's Everybody's Rockin'), a traditional country record (1985's Old Ways) and a horn-driven jump blues joint (1988's This Note's for You). He then closed out the decade with Freedom, which echoed Rust Never Sleeps and led to a resurgence in popularity for Young. He was embraced by younger acts, touring with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion and even making an album with Pearl Jam.

I was finally able to see Young in concert five years ago at the Wang Center in Boston, playing solo on a number of instruments and telling stories in between songs. It was pretty great. But I wish I could have seen that Rust Never Sleeps tour. Thankfully, we've got the concert film.

Completely Conspicuous 630: Goin' Against Your Mind

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about the music of 2006. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

• Jay's non-top 5s: The Black Angels, Mission of Burma, Twilight Singers, The Tragically Hip, Girl Talk, Iron Maiden, Lemonheads
• Phil's #5: Beck's last really good album, especially the first half
• Jay's #5: First solo release from Pulp's Jarvis Cocker
• Phil's #4: Last Drive-By Truckers album with Jason Isbell expands their world view
• Jay's #4: Expansive and excellent outing from TV On the Radio
• Phil's #3: Droney, psychedelic fuzz from the Black Angels
• Jay's #3: Yet another great one from the Hold Steady
• Phil's #2: Sharp debut from Jack White-led Raconteurs
• Jay's #2: Sweeping double album from Sloan, chock full o' power pop goodness
• Phil's #1: Guitar greatness from Doug Martsch and Built to Spill
• Jay's #1: Audacious debut from Arctic Monkeys
• Arctic Monkeys caught on with a whole new audience
• Favorite songs: "I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor" (Jay), "Goin' Against Your Mind" (Phil)

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 #20: Common People

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

Common People (1995)

We didn't feel the impact as much over here, but in the mid-'90s, Britpop was all the rage across the pond. Oasis and Blur got most of the attention, but there's a strong argument to be made that the best band to emerge from that scene was Pulp. 

The band had actually been around since the late '70s, when frontman Jarvis Cocker and Peter Dalton formed a band that sounded like a combination of ABBA and the Fall. Pulp's career really got into gear in 1992 with the release of their third album Separations, which had been recorded three years earlier. After getting some good notices, the band signed to Island Records and released His 'n' Hers in 1994, which reached #9 on the UK Albums Chart. Pulp opened for Blur on a U.S. tour. 

But it was 1995 when Pulp hit the big time, at least in the U.K. The album Different Class entered the UK Albums Chart at #1 and won the 1996 Mercury Music Prize. The biggest splash from this record came from the lead single "Common People." The song pokes at rich folks "roughing it" by hanging out with the "common people." Cocker came up with the lyrics after meeting a Greek art student while taking a college course. There's been plenty of speculation about who the song is about; Cocker says he doesn't remember.

"You wanna live like common people/You wanna see whatever common people see/Wanna sleep with common people/You wanna sleep with common people like me/But she didn't understand/She just smiled and held my hand."

Musically, "Common People" starts with a simple keyboard line before launching into full guitar anthem mode. The song ended up hitting #2 on the UK Singles Chart. While it didn't chart over here, "Common People" gave Pulp a bigger profile in the U.S. Meanwhile, the band was huge in the UK but tensions were rising and Cocker was growing disillusioned with the trappings of fame. The followup, 1998's This Is Hardcore, also did well, reaching #1 in the UK and #114 on the Billboard 200 album chart in the U.S. Pulp released We Love Life just after 9/11 in 2001 and it was received well critically but less successful commercially. The band members then went their separate ways before reuniting for shows in 2011 and again last year. Cocker has released four well-received solo albums, the most recent being 2017's JARV IS.

"Common People" has been covered a few times, most notably by William Shatner on his 2004 album Has Been, which was produced by Ben Folds. The song starts off with Shatner's spoken-word interpretation before launching into a guitar-driven rocker featuring Joe Jackson on vocals. It's actually pretty good. Other covers have been done by My Chemical Romance and Libitina.

The song has done well in listicles from the likes of Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NME and in fan polls. Talk about a lasting impact. "Common People" still packs a sarcastic punch.

Day After Day #19: Flash Light

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

Flash Light (1977)

Coming off the psychedelic end of the '60s, the 1970s were a lot of things: Messy, sweaty, wild and wooly. It was the Me Decade. After decades of repression and conservatism, people were just doing whatever they felt like. 

One of those people was a songwriter named George Clinton, who started out as a doo wop singer in the '50s and was a staff songwriter for Motown in the '60s before eventually forming two groups in 1970: Parliament and Funkadelic. With a rotating cast of musicians, Clinton explored different sides of funk. Parliament was horn-driven R&B while Funkadelic played psychedelic guitar-heavy funk rock. Each act released albums but they would tour as a combined group called Parliament-Funkadelic, or P-Funk. The group included some amazing players including Eddie Hazel, Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, Bernie Worrell, Fred Wesley, Garry Shider and many more.

Throughout the '70s, Clinton explored a space-themed "funkology" with recurring characters like Dr. Funkenstein and Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk, and concepts involving UFOs, Afrocentric themes and of course, feeling the funk. The P-Funk stage show included an actual spaceship that would drop from the ceiling and upwards of 20 people on stage at any given time. Sure, disco was in full effect in the mid- to late '70s, but P-Funk was way beyond that. There was a lot there and it could be overwhelming at times, but the mission statement was clear: Free your mind and your ass will follow.

One of Parliament's biggest hits was "Flash Light" from the 1977 album Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome. The album closer details how the group defeats the evil Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk by getting him to dance. "Most of all he needs the funk/Help him find the funk."

The song features a supremely funky bass line that many assume is played by Bootsy Collins, but it's actually played by Worrell on synths. Clinton handles lead vocals on the song, which hit #1 on the R&B charts and #16 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song has been sampled more than 60 times, including by Digital Underground, Salt-N-Pepa and Aaliyah.

By the early '80s, there was plenty of legal confusion from the multiple band names and groups, so Clinton dissolved Parliament and Funkdadelic as official groups. But he continued to release albums and tour under the name George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars. Parliament was reunited in 2018 to release a new album, Medicaid Fraud Dogg.

I didn't discover P-Funk until the '80s and didn't see Clinton until 2018 when he brought the show to the Cabot Theater in Beverly, Mass. He was 77 at the time and did most of his performing sitting in a chair, but the band was tight and the show was terrific.

But if you want to get a real sense of the P-Funk insanity, go on YouTube and watch some of their live performances from 1970s. It's just amazing stuff, super-tight extended jams, crazy costumes and all. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to be in the audience for one of those shows, but I do know it was pure, uncut funk. 

Day After Day #18: Cure For Pain

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

Cure For Pain

When people typically think of the rock scene circa 1993, they think of the grunge/alt-rock explosion. Lots of dudes wearing flannel and ripped jeans, playing depressing heavy guitar dirges and shaking their long hair around. There was some truth to that, but there were also some true alternatives to that narrative. 

One clearly original sound was coming out of Boston from the band Morphine. The trio featured a low-end sound built around Mark Sandman's deep croon and two-string slide bass, Dana Colley on baritone sax and Billy Conway (who replaced Jerome Deupree) on drums. Morphine incorporated jazz and blues into their rock songs, calling the sound "low rock." Sandman didn't sound like any other contemporary singer, preferring to deliver his mysterious tales of debauchery, infidelity and other vices, and he played his bass like a guitar to create a unique sound.

When Morphine released its second album Cure For Pain in 1993 it was a good time for Massachusetts-based acts, as Dinosaur Jr., the Lemonheads and Buffalo Tom were also finding success with excellent albums. But Morphine just exuded coolness as it delivered these film noir-esque sounds that were made for the nighttime.

The band's members weren't newcomers to the Boston music scene. Sandman and Conway had been members of Treat Her Right, a blues-rock act that had a local hit in 1986 with "I Think She Likes Me." Colley was previously in the band Three Colors and Deupree was a member of the Hypnosonics with Sandman. 

Sandman was also an innovator when it came to his instruments, playing basses with one, two or three strings and different tunings, and sometimes pairing bass strings with guitar strings to create the "basitar," "tri-tar" and "guitbass." The band The Presidents of the United States of America later used the basitar and guitbass to much different effect than Morphine and had some success with songs like "Lump" and "Peaches."

Released on Rykodisc, Cure For Pain wasn't a huge commercial success but it found some footing on college radio and MTV, where the band even hosted an episode of 120 Minutes. Morphine's sound was tailor-made for movie and TV soundtracks, with songs from the album appearing in such varied productions as the movies Spanking the Monkey and Ulee's Gold, and episodes of The Sopranos, Beavis and Butt-head and Daria.

Songs like "Buena," "Thursday" and "A Head With Wings" were all grabbers, but the title track stands out for its mournful elegy about pain and how we deal with it. Dana Colley reported posted online that the song was not about hard drugs, but instead getting rid of the drugs people use to take the edge off life like caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, etc. Whatever the case, the song is stirring and memorable.

"Someday there'll be a cure for pain/That's the day I throw my drugs away/When they find a cure for pain."

Morphine began touring heavily and released the album Yes in 1995 before signing with DreamWorks in 1997. Like Swimming came out that year and the band had just finished its final studio album, The Night, in 1999 when Sandman had a heart attack on stage in Italy and died shortly afterward at the age of 46. The band immediately broke up and The Night was released in 2000. There have been some Morphine-related projects to celebrate the music of the band, including Orchestra Morphine and Vapors of Morphine. Conway passed away from liver cancer in 2021 at age 65.

Sadly, I never saw Morphine live, even though they played countless shows in the area. I was a fan from the release of the Cure For Pain album and just never got it together, always figuring I'd catch them another time. Sandman's death was a shock to the local music community; the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Brookline Street in Cambridge's Central Square is named after Sandman, right outside the Middle East nightclub/restaurant. It's a lesson I've learned more than a few times: see your heroes while they're still around because you never know when they'll be gone.

Day After Day #17: Mystery Achievement

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

Mystery Achievement (1980)

It's not easy to achieve perfection right off the bat, but Chrissie Hynde did it. The Akron native has lived an interesting life, that's for sure, even before she founded the Pretenders. She was a student at Kent State University, playing in a band with Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, when the Kent State massacre happened in 1970; the boyfriend of one of her friends was one of the four shooting victims. She moved to London a few years later, wrote for NME and worked at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's clothing store Punk. There were some failed attempts at joining bands and bouncing around the London punk scene before she formed the Pretenders in 1978.

Teaming with guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, bassist Pete Farndon and drummer Martin Chambers, Hynde released the first Pretenders single, a cover of the Kinks' "Stop Your Sobbing," in January 1979. "Kid" followed in June and then "Brass In Pocket" in late '79, with the album released in January 1980. "Brass In Pocket" was a huge hit, reaching #1 in the U.K. and #14 in the U.S. In Canada, where I was living at the time, it hit #5.

It was an interesting time for me, because my parents took me out of school for six weeks so we could visit relatives in India. I was in 7th grade and I had a bunch of homework with me, but it's awkward to just be plucked out of school for so long. December to March is the ideal time to visit India because it's not too hot there then. Things really start heating up in March and the summer is monsoon season. So off we went and it was good and all (also the last time I've been over there), but when I returned in late January/early February, I felt like a stranger in some respects. It was just weird to miss whatever was going on socially. One of the things I missed a lot was popular music. At the time, India was a little behind on pop, so I remember hearing a lot of ABBA, disco and stuff like that, but none of the rock music I was into. 

I was unfamiliar with the first two Pretenders singles, so "Brass In Pocket" was my introduction to the band. It was everywhere in early 1980, especially on radio. Hynde conveys confidence and attitude that was in short supply from women in the rock world. The album had more of the same, but it also revealed a wide range of musical styles, from punk to new wave to pure pop. Start to finish, the album is incredible, especially considering it was a debut. I could have gone with any number of songs from this release, but I chose the album closer "Mystery Achievement."

Driven by a pulsing bass line from Farndon, the song features Hynde singing about being on the cusp of fame. "Mystery achievement/Don't breathe down my neck, no/I got no trophies on display/I sign them away/I mean what the heck." Honeyman-Scott elevates the song with incredible lead guitar work, ripping inventive solos throughout the song. A truly exhilarating way to end a record.

The band released its second album, Pretenders II, in August 1981, but it wasn't long before trouble set in. Farndon was fired for excessive drug use in June 1982; two days later, Honeyman-Scott died of heart failure because of cocaine intolerance. Less than a year later, Farndon was found dead in his bathtub after taking heroin and passing out. Hynde and Chambers regrouped and added new members, including guitarist Robbie McIntosh, and released Learning to Crawl in January 1984. The album was a worthy successor to the first two, featuring "Back on the Chain Gang," "My City Was Gone" and "Middle of the Road." 

Hynde has released nine Pretenders albums with varying lineups since 1986. There have been highs and lows, but she has soldiered on, with the latest album coming out last fall. Still, Hynde and the Pretenders can't be faulted for getting it right the first time out. That first album is a masterpiece. Mystery achievement unlocked.

 

Day After Day #16: Touch Me I'm Sick

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

Touch Me I'm Sick

A lot was happening in the summer of 1988. Medical waste was washing up on beaches in the greater New York area, Michael Dukakis was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, Wrigley Field had its first night game and Wayne Gretzky was traded to the LA Kings. 

I spent the summer as a reporting intern at the Peabody Times, a small daily newspaper in Massachusetts. I was commuting from Kingston, NH, to Peabody, which was about 45 minutes each way, and getting great experience as I worked in what I expected would be my career for life. The Times had three full-time reporters in addition to me, so I was doing a lot of puff pieces and stuff like that but I didn't care. I was having a blast. But by early August, one of the reporters took another job and suddenly I had to the opportunity to cover some more interesting stories. I went back for my senior year at UNH in the fall, but I impressed the higher-ups enough that they offered me a job before I even graduated. 

Album sales that summer were dominated by the likes of Van Halen, Def Leppard and Guns N' Roses, while the singles chart was topped by Steve Winwood, Cheap Trick, Debbie Gibson and Michael Jackson, among others. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, a scruffy group of outcasts called Mudhoney released its first single, "Touch Me I'm Sick" on the Sub Pop label on Aug. 1. 

A full three years before grunge mania captured the music industry's attention, Mudhoney was delivering the template: yowling vocals, guitars drenched in fuzz and distortion, pummeling bass and rapid-fire drumming singing about disease and sex for two and a half minutes. The band has cited the Stooges and the Yardbirds as direct influences on the song, which launches into a razor-wire riff and doesn't let up. The cover of the single was a toilet bowl. The band had originally planned to make "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More" the A side and "Touch Me I'm Sick" the B side, but wisely reversed it.

It wasn't long before college radio picked it up and the song became an underground hit. Sub Pop sold out of its initial pressings of the single and the band later included it on the Superfuzz Bigmuff EP. Sonic Youth and Mudhoney ended up releasing a split single where SY covered "Touch Me I'm Sick" with Kim Gordon on vocals and Mudhoney covered SY's "Halloween." Mudhoney soon became the premier act on Sub Pop. Soundgarden had been on the label but left for SST in '88.

Mudhoney's members weren't new to the Seattle scene. Arm and guitarist Steve Turner were previously in Mr. Epp and the Calculations and Green River (with future Pearl Jammers Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament). They teamed up with bassist Matt Lukin, who was previously in the Melvins.

The band released a self-titled album in '89 and Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge in '91 before signing with Reprise in '92. By this point, pretty much every band in the greater Seattle area and beyond was getting signed to a major. I first saw them play at the Paradise in Boston in 1992 with my brother, and again the following year at Avalon on the Piece of Cake tour (and several more times over the years). While Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were blowing up, Mudhoney was sort off to the side watching the frenzy and laughing. They didn't appear in Cameron Crowe's Seattle-set movie Singles, but they contributed the excellent "Overblown" to the soundtrack, making fun of the whole scene. And even though they poked fun at Chris Cornell being "shirtless and flexing," the band was friendly with him and pretty much everybody else. They opened for Nirvana and Pearl Jam, they appeared as themselves in the Chris Farley movie Black Sheep and they just kept playing the messy fuzz-rock they always had.

As grunge petered out in the late '90s, Mudhoney was dumped by Reprise. Lukin left the band and they added Guy Maddison to replace him. The band has sporadically released albums on Sub Pop over the last 20 years, including last year's solid Plastic Eternity, and have toured behind them. Arm is the manager of the Sub Pop warehouse now.

It's been 35+ years, but Mudhoney's still playing loud, messy and fun music. They've outlasted many of their contemporaries and they still sound great. And their best song is still "Touch Me I'm Sick." 

Stuck In Thee Garage #511: January 19, 2024

Back in the late '70s, Journey was all about lovin', touchin', squeezin', but not everybody goes for that. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about touch in hour 2. It's easy to remember. 

This playlist rhymes with...

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Superchunk - Everybody Dies/Single

Sprints - Cathedral/Letter to Self

The Bevis Frond - Focus on Nature/Focus on Nature

Folly Group - Bright Night/Down There!

Mary Timony - The Guest/Untame the Tiger

Topographies - Arch/Interior Spring

Militarie Gun - Do It Faster/Life Under the Gun

The Umbrellas - Goodbye/Fairweather Friend

Pile - Only for a Reminder/Hot Air Balloon EP

The Jesus and Mary Chain - jamcod/Glasgow Eyes

Lupo Citta - White Bracelet/Lupo Citta

Health - Children of Sorrow (feat. Willie Adler)/Rat Wars

The Menzingers - Try/Some of It Was True

The Lemonheads - Fear of Living/Single

Guided By Voices - Jack of Legs/Nowhere to Go But Up

Golden Apples - Guard Stick/Bananasugarfire

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Sierra Nevada/Fronzoli

Hour 2: Touchy

The Cars - Touch and Go/Panorama

The Buzzcocks - Why Can't I Touch It?/Singles Going Steady

Rocket From the Crypt - Your Touch/RFTC

Consonant - Who Touches You Now?/Consonant

Pile - Don't Touch Anything/Magic Isn't Real

The Big Sleep - You Can't Touch the Untouchable/Son of the Tiger

Motorhead and Girlschool - Please Don't Touch/The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Fucked Up - Touch Stone/Glass Boys

The Hellacopters - I Wanna Touch/High Visibility

Lifter Puller - Touch My Stuff/Fiestas + Fiascos

Robert Pollard - Touch Me in the Right Place at the Right Time/Space City Kicks

Peter Gabriel - I Have the Touch/Security

Sweeping Promises - Pain Without a Touch/Single

IDLES - Ne Pas Touche Moi/Ultra Mono

Ovens - Losin' Touch/Ovens

Against Me! - Don't Lose Touch/Searching for a Former Clarity

LISTEN TO THE ROCK MACHINE HERE!

Day After Day #15: Bastards of Young

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

Bastards of Young

In the fall of 1985, I was a college freshman. There was a lot being thrown at me, namely because I foolishly thought it was a good idea to be a chemical engineering student. I was quickly disabused of that notion after a few months of calculus, chemistry and physics courses. Meanwhile, I was making new friends, drinking a lot of beer and navigating life as an 18-year-old. 

Naturally, I was clueless about a lot of things. One of those things was the music of the Replacements. They weren't getting played on any of the rock radio stations that I listened to, so I had no idea that their fourth album Tim came out on September 18, three days before my birthday. Of course, plenty of other people were Mats fans. This was their major label debut for Sire, but their previous three releases had been getting critical acclaim as their sound evolved from snotty punk to a ragged and raw rock sound that echoed the Stones, Faces and Big Star as much as it did the Ramones or the Damned. I jumped on the bandwagon with their next album, 1987's Pleased to Meet Me, when "Alex Chilton" started getting some mainstream radio play. 

As for Tim, it was one classic after another: "Hold My Life," "Kiss Me on the Bus," "Waitress in the Sky," "Swingin' Party," "Left of the Dial," "Here Comes a Regular" So many great songs. But the one that captured the angst of a generation was "Bastards of Young." Singer Paul Westerberg wrote it as much about his sister leaving their hometown of Minneapolis in search of success as it was about feeling alienated about life in general. Some have called it a Generation X anthem and it's hard to argue otherwise. Right from the start, the mission statement is clear: "God, what a mess, on the ladder of success/Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung/Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled/It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten/Wait on the sons of no one, bastards of young."

The "slacker" descriptor for Gen X didn't really come along until the '90s, but "Bastards of Young" sums it up pretty well (even though Westerberg is technically a Baby Boomer). In the 80s, the Boomers were all about wealth accumulation and the Gen Xers, at least at that time, were less motivated to follow in their footsteps. Certainly the Replacements didn't chase the almighty dollar, even as they signed with a major. In the great band bio Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, author Bob Mehr writes about how the band continually sabotaged their own success. Repeatedly when they were on the verge of breaking through, Westerberg and crew would rebel by playing intentionally bad shows or getting too drunk to play, or both. 

On this day in 1986, the Mats played on Saturday Night Live, which usually results in a record sales boost and increased attention for musical acts. But in classic Replacements fashion, the band spent the day drinking with host Harry Dean Stanton, then cranked their amps louder than the show wanted while playing "Bastards of Young." To compound matters, during the song Westerberg was caught on mic shouting "Come on, fucker!" to guitarist Bob Stinson. They later all switched clothes and played "Kiss Me On the Bus" while totally drunk. SNL producer Lorne Michaels was outraged and banned the group from playing the show ever again. Westerberg did play on SNL as a solo artist in 1993.

Bob Stinson was kicked out the band later in 1986 and Pleased to Meet Me was recorded as a trio, with Slim Dunlap joining soon afterward. The album was critically acclaimed but only reached #131 on the Billboard album chart. The next two albums, Don't Tell a Soul and All Shook Down, veer toward Americana and more mainstream sounds, but never got the band over the hump and by 1991, the Replacements split up. Westerberg went solo and bassist Tommy Stinson forged on with the bands Bash & Pop and Perfect. There was a reunion from 2012-2015, with an EP and a handful of shows, but by June 2015, they were done.

Last year, the Replacements released a reissue of Tim called the Let It Bleed Edition, featuring a new mix of the album by producer Ed Stasium. Although some fans argued the original was better, I dug the new, fuller sound of the reissue. 

Generation X is old now, as are the surviving Replacements. But we're all still bastards of young.

 

Day After Day #14: Surrender

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

Surrender

Growing up in the 1970s was something else, man. I'm not coming at this from some "you kids are soft" vantage point; it was just different. I'm not going to go into all the differences, but for the purposes of this post, I'm going to talk about live albums. The '70s were all about live albums and they totally made careers. 

Sure, you had the Who and the Stones releasing some of the best live albums of all time, but if you were a struggling artist, sometimes a live album was what it took to convince music fans that you were all that. KISS had a good gimmick but their first three albums were duds. It wasn't until Alive! was released in the fall of 1975 that the band broke through, even as they were savaged by critics. The album hit #9 on the Billboard 200 chart and stayed on the chart for 110 weeks. Peter Frampton had four albums under his belt and little success before he released Frampton Comes Alive! in 1976. It ended up going to #1 and becoming the best-selling album of the year, selling over 8 million copies in the U.S. alone. It has sold 20 million worldwide. 

Then there's Cheap Trick, straight outta Rockford, Illinois. Formed in 1973, the band released its self-titled debut in early 1977, chock full of excellent, hard-edged power pop, but it didn't register with fans. The band had a gimmick, namely the matinee idol good looks of singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson and the dorkier look of guitarist Rick Neilsen and perpetually smoking drummer Bun E. Carlos. Zander and Petersson would be featured on album covers while Neilsen and Carlos would be goofing off on the back covers. 

A second album, In Color, came out in September '77 and emphasized the pop side with songs like "I Want You to Want Me" and "Southern Girls" but again, it didn't meet with success in the U.S. But it was big in Japan and the band played two shows there in April 1978, just before the release of its third album, Heaven Tonight. Played in front of 12,000 screaming fans, the shows were recorded for a live album intended for a Japan-only release that fall. Cheap Trick At Budokan was later released in the U.S. in February 1979 and after the live version of "I Want You to Want Me" was released as a single, it took off. The song was everywhere that spring, hitting #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and #2 on the Canadian singles chart. The live version was fuller than the studio one, with a faster tempo and heavier guitar. The second single was a cover of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame," which hit #35 on the charts. 

At Budokan was a monster success, peaking at #4 on the Billboard 200 and selling over 3 million copies; it went to #1 on the Canadian album charts. Several other songs received tons of airplay on FM rock radio, most notably "Surrender," which was on Heaven Tonight. The song was a modest success when first released, hitting #62 on the Hot 100 chart. But again, the live version surpassed the studio one. The song is a classic teen anthem, contrasting the teen narrator and his parents, but then notes that "Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright/They just seem a little weird/Surrender, surrender/But don't give yourself away." Doesn't get much catchier.

The band followed up the live album with Dream Police later in '79. The title track was a big hit (and I bought it on 45) and it signaled a heavier sound for the band, who started headlining arenas. Petersson left the group but they kept going with a couple of replacements. None other than George Martin produced the next album, 1980's All Shook Up, which went gold. The first half of the '80s saw the band in a downturn, still releasing albums but having less and less success. Petersson returned in '87 and the band started working with outside writers for the 1988 release Lap of Luxury and sure enough, they scored a #1 hit with the ballad "The Flame" and also got to #4 with a cover of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel." 

However, the '90s were a struggle for Cheap Trick, with more lackluster albums. In 1997, they went back to basics, ditching the outside songs on their second self-titled album. It was a strong release but didn't sell much. The following year, the band released the full version of the Budokan album and re-released their first three albums, playing three-night stints in multiple cities and doing a different album front to back each night (I saw them play In Color at the Paradise on that tour). They're still going, albeit without Carlos. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

Cheap Trick headlined the first concert I ever attended, in July 1984 in my hometown at the time, Kingston, New Hampshire. They sounded great, but sadly they were an afterthought compared to the bands on the rise who opened for them: Ratt, Twisted Sister and Lita Ford. After Ratt left the stage, half the crowd left the fairgrounds. I moved up to the front and managed to get a Nielsen guitar pick (not a huge feat since he constantly flicks them into the crowd at every show). I didn't care that they weren't that popular anymore. At Budokan definitely still ruled in my mind.