Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Teenage Wristband (2003)
The rock world is full of unappreciated geniuses. Robert Pollard. Ted Leo. The dudes in Sloan. PJ Harvey. Kim Deal. And Greg Dulli. Certainly, they're all appreciated by their fans (including me), but in a just world, they'd all be superstars instead of revered by a small but fervent substrata of music nerds.
I've written about Dulli a few times for this feature already. He's mainly known for his first and current band The Afghan Whigs, as well as his one album with buddy Mark Lanegan as the Gutter Twins. The Whigs were a Cincinatti-based buzz band in the early '90s and were one of the first non-Seattle acts to be signed by Sub Pop. After two albums, they scored a deal with Elektra, releasing three excellent albums. Dulli was known for his soulful rasp and his dark and cynical lyrics about relationships, as inspired by Prince as he was by the Replacements, the Stones or the Beatles (he was the voice of John Lennon on the soundtrack for the 1994 Beatles biopic Backbeat).
But in the early 2000s after the Whigs had split up, Dulli spent his time playing in the Twilight Singers, a group he formed as a side project in 1997. The Twilight Singers started as a solo vehicle with a revolving cast of musicians, especially on the second album, 2003's Blackberry Belle. Dulli wrote the album as a tribute to his friend Ted Demme, a film director (The Ref, Beautiful Girls, Blow) who died in 2002 after suffering a heart attack. Guests on the album include Lanegan, Kamasi Washington, Petra Haden, Apollonia (yes, THAT Apollonia), Matthias Schneeberger and Alvin Youngblood Hart.
"Teenage Wristband" starts with a dramatic piano intro before the band kicks in. The song builds in intensity as Dulli sings of being tempted by a woman to go for a late-night drive.
"You say you want to go there, ride then/I did and I loved it/Say you don't want to be here, leave then/Time comes to get gone/Say good morning to another set of creatures/My dear, I'm gone/She said, she said/You want to go for a ride?/I got 16 hours to burn/And I'm going to stay up all night, all night, all night."
Apollonia and Haden sing backups as Dulli contemplates the offer, while the band chugs along.
"Tell your mama fever come back again/Look what you started/And break it easy to your boyfriend/She said, she said, she said/You want to go for a ride?/I got 13 hours to burn/And I'm going to stay up all night, all night, all night/She said, she said/You want to go for a ride?/I got no more money to burn/And I'm going to stay up all night, all night, all night."
It's an all-timer of a driving song and quickly grew into a fan favorite. Dulli put together a touring version of the Twilight Singers featuring Jon Skibic on guitar, Scott Ford on bass, Jon Nooney on keyboards and Bobby Macintyre on drums. The band released a covers album in 2004 before coming out with Powder Burns, another great album, in 2006; Mark Lanegan joined the group for the Powder Burns tour, along with guitarist Dave Rosser.
There was one more Twilight Singers album, Dynamite Steps, released in 2011 before Dulli reformed the Afghan Whigs in 2012. The Whigs have since released three albums, including 2022's How Do You Burn? The band toured this past summer and included "Teenage Wristband" in the setlist, and the Dulli diehards were pleased indeed.
Dulli may not have wide name recognition, but if you get it, you know he's the real deal.
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