Nothing strikes more fear in the hearts of partygoers than when some jamoke breaks out an acoustic guitar. Nine times out of 10, it's a total cringe-inducing moment. But in the hands of a professional, the acoustic guitar can be used for good, not evil. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new music from Superchunk, Allo Darlin' and the Jeanines in hour 1 and quality acoustic jams in hour 2. They're the bomb!
MacGruber, we've only got 30 seconds left:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Superchunk - Is It Making You Feel Something/Songs in the Key of Yikes
The Bug Club - How to Be a Confidante/Very Human Features
Lifeguard - A Tightwire/Ripped and Torn
Hotline TNT - Julia's War/Raspberry Moon
Hallelujah the Hills - Gimme Midnight (Ace of Diamonds)/DECK: Diamonds
Queens of the Stone Age - Running Joke/Paper Machete /Alive in the Catacombs
Model/Actriz - Poppy/Pirouette
Allo Darlin' - Stars/Bright Nights
Jeanines - You Can't Get It Back/How Long Can It Last
Hopefully you've emerged from your July 4 celebrations with all your fingers intact. Things are a little iffy right now but I suppose things could always be worse. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about America in hour 2. It's not always pretty, but it's the only America we've got.
This playlist has a solution:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Guided By Voices - Dear Onion/Strut of Kings
The Folk Implosion - OK to Disconnect/Walk Thru Me
MJ Lenderman - Rudolph/Manning Fireworks
Redd Kross - Stunt Queen/Redd Kross
Johnny Foreigner - Orc Damage/The Sky and Sea Were Part of Me (Or I was Part of Them)
Ex-Hyena - Shapeshifter/A Kiss of the Mind
Ekko Astral - Head Empty Blues/Pink Balloons
Sharp Pins - Is It Better/Radio DDR
Buffalo Tom - Rifled Through/Jump Rope
Bodega - City is Taken/Our Brand Could Be Yr Life
Shellac - Scrappers/To All Trains
Cloud Nothings - The Golden Halo/Final Summer
Sonny Vincent and Rocket from the Crypt - Daily Procedure/Vintage Piss
Clone - Immutable/CL.1
Gustaf - Happiest Thought/Package, Pt. 2
Beth Gibbons - Beyond the Sun/Lives Outgrown
Mary Timony - Untame the Tiger/Untame the Tiger
Hour 2: America
Bob Mould - American Crisis/Blue Hearts
The Menzingers - America (You're Freaking Me Out)/Hello Exile
The Nation of Ulysses - The Sound of Young America/13-Point Program to Destroy America
Living Colour - Which Way to America?/Vivid
Motorhead - Stone Deaf in the USA/Rock N' Roll
Smashing Pumpkins - Geek USA/Siamese Dream
Prince and the Revolution - America/Around the World in a Day
R.E.M. - Little America/Reckoning
Nick Lowe - American Squirm/Labour of Lust
The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America/Boys and Girls in America
Speedy Ortiz - American Horror/Real Hair
The I Don't Cares - King of America/Wild Stab
Iggy Pop - American Valhalla/Post Pop Depression
Pointed Sticks - American Song/Part of the Noise
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Mourning in America/The Brutalist Bricks
Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
4th of July (1994)
My first memory of a July 4th celebration was in 1976. I was 9 years old and we were on vacation in Florida, so it was the first time I'd ever been in the U.S. on the 4th. It also happened to be the Bicentennial, so things were extra amped up. I remember we had sparklers and there were big fireworks displays. But then a few days later, we were back home in Canada and I didn't think about it much. Of course, as it turned out we ended up moving to the U.S. at the end of '81 and have been here ever since.
I've never been a particularly jingoistic person, but I can appreciate the value of independence. That said, my favorite songs related to July 4 are never the typical ones. I have a few that I always tend to listen to, but Soundgarden's "4th of July" is my favorite, probably because it's not really about the holiday at all.
Soundgarden got their start in the early '80s around Seattle with a band called the Shemps that included bassist Hiro Yamamoto and drummer and singer Chris Cornell; after Yamamoto left, the band added guitarist Kim Thayil to replace him. After the Shemps split up, Cornell and Yamamoto started jamming together and were joined by Thayil, and the trio formed Soundgarden in 1984. Scott Sundquist took over on drums in 1985 so Cornell could focus on vocals. The group's first three recorded songs appeared on historic 1986 comp Deep Six on C/Z Records; it also featured songs from Green River, Skin Yard, Malfunkshun, the U-Men and the Melvins. Eventually Sundquist left the group and was replaced by Matt Cameron.
After releasing the Screaming Life and Fopp EPs on Sub Pop in 1987 and 1988, Soundgarden signed with SST and released their debut Ultramega OK in 1988. The band's sound was very heavy, balancing proto-punk influences like the MC5 and Stooges with hard rock touchstones like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. The band then signed with A&M and made Louder Than Love, a heavy album that both embraced and lampooned the metal scene. Right before the tour began, Yamamoto quit the band and was replaced by Jason Everman, who had briefly been the second guitarist in Nirvana.
Everman was fired after the tour and replaced by Ben Shepherd, who joined in time for the recording of the band's epic 1991 release Badmotorfinger. Cornell's careening vocals made songs like "Outshined," "Rusty Cage" and "Jesus Christ Pose" even more powerful. The album came out at the same time as Nevermind and Ten, but eventually audiences caught up with it. Soundgarden toured heavily for the album, opening for Guns N' Roses and Skid Row and then joining the 1992 Lollapalooza tour.
But the biggest album for Soundgarden was 1994's Superunknown, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and spawning the hits "Spoonman," "Black Hole Sun," "The Day I Tried to Live" and "Fell on Black Days." I quickly tired of the songs that got the most airplay like "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman," but the deep cuts on this album were my favorites.
One of those was "4th of July," which starts with a slow, grinding guitar intro before Cornell sings quietly about an apocalyptic vision.
"Shower in the dark day, clean sparks diving down/Cool in the waterway where the baptized drown/Naked in the cold sun, breathing life like fire/I thought I was the only one, but that was just a lie/'Cause I heard it in the wind/And I saw it in the sky/I thought it was the end/I thought it was the 4th of July."
The song picks up steam as the vision continues, with Thayil's sludgy guitar leading the way.
"Pale in the flare light, the scared light cracks and disappears/And leads the scorched ones here/And everywhere no one cares, the fire is spreading/And no one wants to speak about it/Down in the hole/Jesus tries to crack a smile/Beneath another shovel load."
Cornell told RIP magazine in 1994 that he wrote the song about an acid trip he had. "One time I was on acid, and there were voices 10 feet behind my head. The whole time I'd be walking, they'd be talking behind me. It actually made me feel good, because I felt like I was with some people...It was kinda like a dream, though, where I'd wake up and focus once in a while and realize there was no one there. I'd go, 'Oh fuck, I'm hearing voices.' '4th of July' is pretty much about that day. You wouldn't get that if you read it. It doesn't read like, 'Woke up, dropped some acid, got into a car and went to the Indian reservation.'"
Soundgarden released one more album, 1996's underrated Down on the Upside, before splitting up in 1997; the band later blamed tension among the group members and burnout from the music business as reasons for the breakup. In the years afterward, Cornell released solo albums and formed Audioslave with three-fourths of Rage Against the Machine. Cameron joined Pearl Jam in 1998 and remains in the band. Thayil and Shepherd both worked on various projects.
The members of Soundgarden got back together in 2010, headlining Lollapalooza and then releasing a new compilation album. In 2012, they released a new studio album, King Animal. They had begun work on a new album in 2016, but the following May, Cornell was found dead after a show in Detroit. That was the end of Soundgarden.
I caught them on the Badmotorfinger tour at Avalon in Boston in early 1992, then at Lollapalooza that summer in Mansfield and one more time at Fitchburg State College in the summer of '94. The band was pretty impressive, to say the least. It's too bad Cornell isn't still around to enjoy the legacy he helped build.
Soundgarden's "4th of July" isn't your typical flag-waving anthem, which is perfectly fine by me. I'm a big fan of sludgy dirges about acid trips.
On this holiday weekend, it's a good time to celebrate what's great about this nation of ours. To my mind, it's the fact that there's so much to explore and do. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about different locales across the USA in hour 2. Fire up the grill and enjoy.
Pretty sure Beavis and Butt-head would hate most of this playlist:
Hour 1 Artist - Song/Album
White Reaper - Last 4th of July/White Reaper Does It Again
Beeef - Firework/A Beeef EP
Philadelphia Collins - Dogsbody/Derp Swervin'
Palehound - Molly/Dry Food
Titus Andronicus - Come On, Siobhan (Mixtape mix)/Sorry for the Delay
MAFF - Blue Seas/Maff
Thee Oh Sees - Holy Smoke/Mutilator Defeated at Last
The Drums - I Can't Pretend/Encyclopedia
ThinLips - Nothing Weird/Divorce Year
Joanna Gruesome - I Don't Wanna Relax/Peanut Butter
Barrence Whitfield and the Savages - Incarceration Casserole/Under the Savage Sky
Spider Bags - Japanese Vacation/Live on WFMU
Natural Velvet - Scars/Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
Kudgel - Chicken Pump/Chicken Pump 7-inch
Swirlies - Tree Chopped Down/Blonder Tongue Audio Baton
Buffalo Tom - Treehouse/Big Red Letter Day
Chris Whitley - Some Candy Talking/Din of Ecstasy
Hour 2: Coast to coast
The Walkmen - Lost in Boston/A Hundred Miles Off
The Hold Steady - Hostile, Mass./Almost Killed Me
Aerosmith - Bone to Bone (Coney Island Whitefish Boy)/Night in the Ruts
Jesse Malin and the St. Marks Social - Burning the Bowery/Love It to Life
The Lemonheads - Poughkeepsie/The Lemonheads
Bad Brains - Banned in DC/Bad Brains
Spoon - Chicago at Night/Girls Can Tell
Lefty's Deceiver - Cincinnati on Replay/Cheats
Max Webster - April in Toldeo/Universal Juveniles
Pavement - Pueblo/Wowee Zowee
Maritime - Air Arizona/Human Hearts
The Twilight Singers - Fat City (Slight Return)/Blackberry Belle
Liz Phair - South Dakota/Juvenilia EP
Drive Like Jehu - Bullet Train to Vegas/Yank Crime
Rancid - Olympia WA/...And Out Come the Wolves
Eagles of Death Metal - San Berdoo Sunburn/Peace Love Death Metal
Les Savy Fav - Sleepless in Silverlake (Acoustic version)/Root for Ruin
July 4th means a lot of things to Americans, and one of the most common ways we celebrate it is to fire up the ol' barbecue grill. And hopefully, listen to some good music. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I featured an hour's worth of songs about America, and not the Lee Greenwood flag-waving stuff, either. And hopefully you can dig 'em any time you're preparing some fine cuisine.
Fire it up:
Hour 1 Artist - Song/Album
Japandroids - Fire's Highway/Celebration Rock
Wolf Parade - Language City/At Mount Zoomer
A.C. Newman - Drink to Me Babe Then/The Slow Wonder
The Pursuit of Happiness - Completely Conspicuous/Where's the Bone
Brian Jonestown Massacre - Vad Hande Med Dem/Revelation
Parquet Courts - Duckin' and Dodgin'/Sunbathing Animal
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!/Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
Paul Westerberg - Drop Them Gloves/PW & the Ghost Gloves Cat Wing Joy Boys
Black Grape - Kelly's Heroes/It's Great When You're Straight...Yeah
Faith No More - Everything's Ruined/Angel Dust
Mastodon - Aunt Lisa/Once More 'Round the Sun
Aerosmith - Lick and a Promise/Rocks
Thin Lizzy - Thunder and Lightning/Thunder and Lightning
Hour 2: Independence Day
X - 4th of July/See How We Are
Frank Black - Freedom Rock/Teenager of the Year
David Lee Roth - Yankee Rose/Eat 'Em and Smile
Bad Religion - American Jesus/Recipe for Hate
Circle Jerks - Fortunate Son/Unfortunate Son
Circle Jerks - When the Shit Hits the Fan/Unfortunate Son
Big Black - The Ugly American/The Hammer Party
The Nation of Ulysses - The Sound of Young America/13-Point Plan to Destroy America
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Loyal to My Sorrowful Country/Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead
Cat Power - American Flag/Moon Pix
R.E.M. - Ignoreland/Automatic for the People
Descendents - Statue of Liberty/Milo Goes to College
XTC - Statue of Liberty/Live in Ann Arbor 1980
Soundgarden - 4th of July/Superunknown
Phil Lynott - Ode to Liberty/The Philip Lynott Album
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited/Highway 61 Revisited
Neil Young - Rockin' in the Free World/Freedom
Editor's note: Through the Past Dorkily is a recurring feature that looks back at the embarrassingly dorky diary I kept as a 16-year-old in 1984.
Saturday, June 30, 1984
Song of the day: Mirror, Mirror - Def Leppard
I hadda get up at 6. I was sacking for at least an hour this morning. I hate sacking!
I work tomorrow from 12-7, Wed from 3-10, Friday and Saturday 3-10.
I called Jeremy after I got home. He said [cute girl's] party is on Wednesday (damn!). He said his party is on Thursday (I think) and she would be there. [His girlfriend] said [cute girl] is dumping her old boyfriend. Good deal.
- The Barbarian
Sunday, July 1, 1984
Song of the day: The Last in Line - Dio
Got up at 9 and went to church. Me and JP took the wine and bread up the aisle this morning.
At work, [supervisor] said I could have Wednesday off. And he said I could have vacation starting July 14. Good deal!
I met [cute girl] twice while working today. She was looking good! She said her party was now on Thursday and that they are going to Canobie Lake on Tuesday. She said [Jeremy's girlfriend] would fill me in on the details.
Awesome. I don't have to work until Friday!
- The Barbarian
Monday, July 2, 1984
Song of the day: Anything You Want, You Got It - April Wine
Top 5 at Five 1. Lights Out - Peter Wolf 2. Round and Round - Ratt 3. Sunglasses at Night - Corey Hart 4. Worthless Thing - Elvis Costello 5. The Warrior - Scandal
Slept in today. Didn't do much of anything. Jeremy called and said that [cute girl's] party is on Tuesday and Thursday. Tomorrow we're supposed to meet her at Canobie Lake Park at 6. Mom said I could go. I hope she gets home before 6!
Nice beach day today.
- The Barbarian
Tuesday, July 3, 1984
Song of the day: Lights Out - Peter Wolf
Top 5 at Five 1. Lights Out - Peter Wolf 2. Missing You - John Waite 3. Sunglasses at Night - Corey Hart 4. My Oh My - Slade 5. Smuggler's Blues - Glenn Frey
Good deal. The day went by uneventfully. It was hot, humid and sunny. But around 4:30, it started raining. I called Jeremy and he said we were still going. Then Mom called and said she was coming home late. When Dad got home, I managed to talk him into letting me take the car to Canobie. Boy, am I glad he did! We got there at 6:30. [Cute girl] was looking good! A bunch of guys from the party a month ago were there.
[Cute girl] was pretty receptive! By the end of the evening, we were holding hands! We went on all the rides together. I bought her a balloon. We went on the roller coaster 3 times, the flume 3 times and lots more. Things are looking up! Thursday's party should be interesting!
Tomorrow we're going to the beach.
I like! I like! I LIKE!
- The Barbarian
Wednesday, July 4, 1984
Song of the day: Star Spangled Banner - Jimi Hendrix Top 5 at Five 1. Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen 2. Deeper and Deeper - The Fixx 3. Star Spangled Banner - Jimi Hendrix 4. Rock Me Tonite - Billy Squier 5. Round and Round - Ratt
Boy. First, it took me until 10 to talk Dad into giving me his car. Then me, Jeremy and his girlfriend headed for Hampton Beach. About 15 miles from it, cars were lined up. So we turned around and went back. We went to [Jeremy's girlfriend's] house and swam in her pool all day. It was great! I had lunch there and went home at 4. When I got home, I washed the cars. Then I had dinner and went back to [Jeremy's girlfriend's] at 7 to watch TV. Unfortunately, we couldn't get ahold of [cute girl]. She must've gone out with her family somewhere. Oh well. We watched MTV. I saw Whitesnake (Slow an' Easy), Def Lep (Me and My Wine), Rush (Dist. Early Warning). It was great. We also watched Jaws 3 and this stupid flick called Summer Camp. We left at 11.
Big day tomorrow.
- The Barbarian
Thursday, July 5, 1984
Song of the day: Gimme All Your Lovin' - ZZ Top
WOW! What a day. It started off quietly but ended with a bang! After taking Mom to work at 12 and then getting my paycheck ($91.09), having lunch and all that, I went to [cute girl's] party. And boy, am I glad that I did! First, we had a massive water balloon fight. Then it started to rain heavily. We went in and I whomped on Tony in Intellivision baseball. We had pizza for dinner. To make a long story short, after everyone else left, me and [cute girl] got real close1 She is awesome! We were kissing a lot! Things are definitely looking up!
[Cute girl], you are awesome!
- The (bitten by the love bug) Barbarian
Friday, July 6, 1984
Song of the day: Hangover - Max Webster
[Cute girl, cute girl, cute girl]. Boy, am I lucky! I called her twice today. Once from home for a couple of minutes, and once at work during my break. She is awesome!
[Guitar-playing buddy] comes back from his vacation tomorrow. [Cute girl from school] is back from hers. Man, she's almost as brown as me!
They pulled it off. Jeremy and his girlfriend spent the night at his uncle's house. Those two are animals! Ha ha!
Mom said that I might be able to get a car before summer's over, if I save up my moolah! I hope so.
- The Barbarian
Saturday, July 7, 1984
Song of the day: Missing You - John Waite
What a boring day. All I did was watch tennis on TV and go to work. I didn't even have time to call [cute girl], dammit! Plus it rained all day.
All in all a lousy day.
- The Barbarian
Postscript: Ah, here we go again. It didn't take me much to get me in love puppy mode. Yeesh. Can't you just feel the setup for a big fall again? Still, she WAS pretty cute. "Sacking," of course, refers to the ancient art of grocery bagging. It was pretty much considered the shittiest job in a store full of shit jobs. By comparison, my regular Market Basket gig of stocking shelves was pretty cool. We got to go out back and screw around every so often and swipe a soda here and there. And the night crews (still to come) were even better. But whenever things were crazy or somebody had called in sick, they made us go up front and bag groceries and man, was it awful. Inevitably, you had old ladies with 57 cans of cat food that you had to distribute among enough bags so they weren't too heavy, but you also had to make sure there weren't too many bags to carry. The worst. With two working parents, I was put in the perpetual position of having to beg to use one of the cars. It was easier to deal with my mom, but every so often, I had to work on my dad, and that wasn't an easy task. Fortunately, after he got home from work, he never went anywhere, so it was just a matter of getting permission. Still, took a lot of time and effort. It's easy to forget nowadays that Peter Wolf's first post-J. Geils band solo album was a big deal. Definitely went with a dance vibe:
I'm not the most jingoistic guy on the block. I think that comes from being born elsewhere and realizing that life in other countries isn't the godforsaken hellscape that it's often painted out to be by would-be "patriots." In my book, there are good and bad things about living in every country.
But there's also a reason I became a U.S. citizen 21 years ago. It's a great place to live and you're free to voice your opinion if you disagree with how things are done. Of course, just because you voice your opinion doesn't mean things will necessarily change, but at least you're not thrown in a gulag for offering a dissenting take.
I'll take America with its freedom AND its flaws over just about anywhere. But that's because I'm used to living here. I certainly enjoyed Canada and never would have left if my dad hadn't moved us. But now that I've been here for so long, I don't want to move back. This is my home, a place where I can raise my kids, earn an honest living, live in peace and grill food and drink beer in my backyard whenever I want. There's something to be said for that.
