Filter has had a much longer and more successful career than I ever would have guessed before doing my weekly half-assed research. They formed in 1993 in Cleveland when Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame advised his then guitarist, Richard Patrick, to work on another project as Reznor was going to be taking quite some time completing his latest album, and Patrick wisely listened. Little known facts would include that Patrick did a stint in rehab (which isn't all that surprising in the annals of pop music), and the fact that his brother is the actor Robert Patrick, known for playing the most current model of cyborg in the movie Terminator 2. Over the course of the last 27 years, Filter has gone through numerous incarnations with Patrick being the sole constant and has released 7 studio albums, two of which went platinum. Their single "Take a Picture" reached #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. Filter is still performing and released their latest album just this year.
Completely Not Fun Fact: The subject of "Hey Man Nice Shot" is R. Budd Dwyer, a State Treasurer in Pennsylvania who was convicted on 11 counts, most of which were fraud related, and then scheduled a press conference shortly before he was to be sentenced at which he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head on live TV. Some have tried to falsely claim that Dwyer was eventually exonerated, but there is absolutely no truth to this claim and it is speculated that Dwyer committed suicide so his family could still collect the death benefits he was due after a career in Pennsylvania politics (once sentenced his benefits would have been stripped away).
"Hey Man Nice Shot" was released as a single in 1995, from Filter's debut album Short Bus (for those wondering, short bus is slang for the smaller buses schools use to transport children with disabilities). The single would reach #76 (with a bullet!--no pun intended) on the Billboard Hot 100. Due to its proximity to the suicide of Kurt Cobain, many have claimed that the song was about Cobain, but as noted above it was not and Patrick has been adamant that the song was written years before Cobain's death.
Somewhere along the line in all of my schooling I was taught that we don't have to necessarily either agree or believe in the artist's statement to acknowledge their work as great art. I've thought a lot about this week's song and read the lyrics numerous times and still I confess that I'm not really sure what Patrick was trying to convey with "Hey Man Nice Shot." He's said that the song could be seen as callous, but in no way was he trying to glorify suicide. As for myself, it seems a bit callous to call out Patrick's vocals or the incredible bass line that runs through it in order to justify its inclusion in Friday Night Jukebox--maybe in the end the best I can do is to put it out there for folks to listen to and make their own peace with its subject matter. Perhaps sometimes art is more than what the heart and head can comfortably comprehend. And perhaps sometimes, as I've come to believe this week, art is just a picture of a moment in time that we must bear witness to.
Lyric Sheet: "I wish I would've met you/Now it's a little late/What you could've taught me/I could've saved some face...."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee
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