Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CDXLI--Cracker: Low

Of this week's tune, I only have three words for my intro:  jangly fucking guitars!

Cracker formed in Redlands, California in 1990 when Dave Lowery joined with childhood friend Johnny Hickman after his original band, Camper Van Beethoven, had disbanded.  Within a year the band had a recording contract and released its first album in 1992 to critical and (some) commercial success.  The next year the band released its second, and most commercially successful, album.  They continued touring and recording through the nineties, though in 1999 Camper Van Beethoven reunited and Lowery has since performed alternately with both bands.  Both Lowery and Hickman have released solo albums.  For their career, Cracker has released nine studio albums, three compilations, an EP, five live albums, and eighteen singles.  They still tour regularly, with Lowery and Hickman the only constants, though the band hasn't released any new music since 2014.

"Low" was the first single released from their 1993 album Kerosene Hat.  The single would peak at #59 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album hit #59 on the Billboard 200.  They would be the highest charting single and LP the band would have.

Fun Fact:  After the band formed Lowery and Hickman moved to Richmond, Virginia where they rented an old house that's only source of heat was kerosene heaters.  Whenever they ran out of kerosene, Lowery would put on his winter coat and an old wool hat to make the cold, cold, trek to a nearby gas station to buy some more.  Thus it became his "kerosene hat," and hence the name of their second album.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know fuck-all what this week's song is about. I get that it has something to do with a woman, that's somewhat good ("like being stoned") and (maybe) somewhat bad ("like being low"), but I wouldn't swear to it.  No matter--it's got plenty of exciting jangly guitars, plenty of offbeat lyrics, and plenty of inspired vocals from Lowery.  As I was doing my half-assed research, a number of commenters on the song considered it a quintessential song from the nineties...and I think that's a pretty fair assessment.  But despite its connection to that era, it still sounds remarkably fresh--a great tune is a great tune regardless of when it was released, and "Low" is one great tune.

Lyric Sheet:  "Blue, blue is the sun/A brown, brown is the sky/A green, green are her eyes/A million miles, a million miles..."

Enjoy:

Republicans = Nazis

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCXXVII--Local H: Bound for the Floor

 The alternative movement of the 90's was probably the closest the music business has ever come to the wonder that music created in the 60's and 70's--there were oodles and oodles of exciting bands, exciting songs, one hit wonders, and more than a few sleepers.  This week's tune features one of those one hit wonders from alternative music's heyday....

Local H got its start as a four piece band in Zion, Illinois in 1990 when four high school friends got together and started a band...and that's the spirit that's keeps us coming back for more rock and roll.  By 1993 the band had evolved into a two piece outfit, and continues to record and tour to this day in that incarnation.  Guitarist Scott Lucas has teamed with three different drummers since Local H got its first recording contract.  For their career the band has released nine studio albums, 7 EP's, and two live albums.  They've also released 15 singles with only one of them breaking into the Billboard Hot 100.  Local H is known for its many tours, and for its quirky concert ideas, among them letting a fan choose an album title of theirs out of a hat and performing that album in its entirety before breaking into a selection of their hits, or having a contest where bands perform a cover version of one of Local H's songs and having the winner open up for them on one of their tour dates.  Good times, I'm sure.

Fun Fact:  Local H got its name by taking a word and a letter from two songs by R.E.M.--"Oddfellows Local 151" and "Swan Swan H."

"Bound for the Floor" was released as a single in 1996 from their album As Good as Dead.  The song was the most successful chartwise of their career, reaching #46 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album would hit #147 on the Billboard 200 (and was later certified gold).

"Bound for the Floor" is a teenage anthem about the frustrations of a lack of confidence...which is a frustration pretty much most teenagers can identify with.  Lucas lets every teen's favorite emotion (anger!) fly in his vocals, and his three chord rock rules the day with his guitar.  The drums bash throughout driving the song down the power pop highway, as the chorus simply and repetitively pulsates around your ears.   Add in that it's one of the few (only?) pop songs to use the word copacetic (adjective meaning "in excellent order"), and you have a golden nugget from the angst driven glory days of the alternative movement.  

Lyric Sheet:  "And you just don't get it, you keep it copacetic/And you learn to accept it, you know it's so pathetic..."

Enjoy:

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCXVII--Goo Goo Dolls: Name

 I've noted a time or two that occasionally we come across beloved songs in odd ways...my first recollection of this week's tune was hearing it on the radio as it awoke me.  Instead of hitting the snooze button I heard the guitar intro and lay there in bed, preparing to face another dreary day in the throngs of my depression, and gave thanks for such a wonderful bit of guitar to give me just a little bit of hope before I headed off to a job that by the time this week's single was released, I thoroughly hated, music business or not.

The Goo Goo Dolls formed in Buffalo, New York in 1986, starting out as a heavy metal, alternative, and punk amalgamation.  Eventually they hit their stride as a pop band, and have had a good deal of commercial success along the way.  John Rzeznick and Robby Takac have been a part of the trio since their beginning, with a couple of different drummers filling in along the way.  The band has won two Grammy Awards, and has had a number of world tours.  For their career, the Goo Goo Dolls have released 13 studio albums (four of which hit the top ten), and have released 29 singles (with three hitting the top ten).  They released their latest effort (a Christmas album) just last year.  While my interest in the band pretty much ended with this week's tune, it wouldn't be a stretch to call the Goo Goo Dolls the Billy Joel of alternative bands--and it wouldn't be a criticism, either.  They've both had a hell of a run and made plenty of music fans happy, which seems to me like it would make for a hell of an epitaph.

"Name" was released in 1985, and was the third single from their clever play on words album entitled A Boy Named Goo.  The single was the first hit of their career, and reached #5 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.   The album would peak at #27 on the Billboard 200.

Fun Fact:  Wal-Mart ceased carrying the above noted LP because of customer complaints about the album cover, which featured a young boy smeared in blackberry juice.  Customers thought the boy was drenched in blood.  Wal-Mart denies this claim, saying it discontinued the album because of poor sales...but I think most of us can smell bullshit when it's in the air.

One of the (few) drawbacks to doing Friday Night Jukebox is that occasionally you learn more than you want to know about a song or an artist...as is the case with "Name."  I always thought the song was about a couple of runaways, trying to find their way--and it turns out to be a song for the one-time MTV VJ Kennedy.  While I'll be the first to admit that I was born with the word "dork" branded into my forehead, on the coolness quotient of life a VJ ranks somewhere around the famed pocket protector.  That being said, the aforementioned guitar intro (a sound which to this day I can't figure out how Rzeznick makes his guitar do it)--emaycee fave acoustic, too--along with what could have been a compelling lyrical story line and Rzeznick's impassioned vocals make for one hell of a pop tune.  And if it's okay with the rest of you, I'm going to go on and pretend it's about two mixed up kids hiding from the law...and let it be another fine addition to the pantheon of songs in Friday Night Jukebox.

Lyric Sheet:  "We grew up way too fast/And now there's nothing to believe/And reruns all become our history/A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio..."

Enjoy:

454,000+ Dead Americans Because of Donald Trump's Incompetence

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CLXXXIX--Nirvana: Lithium

In hindsight, it's quite possible that what we saw in the 90's with the alternative revolution was the end of rock and roll as we know it.  And while there will always be any number of bands and performers who continue the tradition, it's hard to imagine rock and roll ever again being the be all end all of popular music (for better or worse...).  One thing is for certain, though--if Nirvana was the last of a breed, rock and roll went out with a bang and not a whimper.

It would be hard to underestimate just how influential Nirvana was in its rather short lifetime.  They literally were the linchpin of a musical revolution--I worked selling music when their second album exploded and our alternative music section went from maybe six to eight rows of CDs to well over a hundred over the next couple of years.  Though they were only together from 1987 to 1994 and only released three studio albums over the course of their short-lived career, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their initial year of eligibility (2014).  Even more amazing (to me, anyway) is despite their small studio output, they've sold over 75 million records worldwide.  Since their demise, bassist Krist Novoselic has gone on to become quite the political activist, and drummer Dave Grohl went on to quite a bit of success as the front man for the Foo Fighters.  The elephant in the room of all of this, of course, is the death of Nirvana's leader, the man who didn't want to rule the world, Kurt Cobain, by his own hand with a shotgun blast to the head.  It's easy to wonder what might have been, but in the end it's a lot harder to accept what was and that there are no guarantees that whatever output the band may have had had Cobain conquered his many demons, wouldn't have tarnished their legacy. 

Released as the third single from Nevermind, their generation altering 1991 album, "Lithium" would reach #64 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.  While the song did not have quite the commercial success of their biggest hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," here in the U.S.A., it did hit number one in Finland--who knew there were so many cool kids in Finland?

The easy choice would obviously be "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but oddly enough it was "Lithium" that turned me into a Nirvana fan.  My kid brother and I were on vacation in L.A. the weekend Cobain died and you couldn't turn on a music station without hearing all Nirvana, all day and all night, and my brother was convinced that Cobain had written the line, "I'm so horny, that's okay, my will is good" for the both of us because we were both single at the time and not having a whole heck of a lot of luck with women.  While my brother was most assuredly wrong, it did get me to listening to the song and despite having questioned whether their work was for people much younger than I (I was all of thirty-five) became a big Nirvana fan.  "Lithium" (supposedly the song is about a man who turns to religion after his girlfriend has died to keep himself from committing suicide) is really your prototypical Nirvana song, alternating between the soft and the hard, with excellent vocals from Cobain, and featuring perhaps more than most of their songs the talents of Novoselic (his bass playing is pretty much the backbone of the soft parts) and Grohl (his drumming is the driving force of the hard parts).  Taken as a whole, I wouldn't be afraid to say it is perhaps Nirvana's best song, though I'm sure plenty of others would disagree.  In the end, it's an existence questioning song from an existence questioning album, and as far as I know, the only song in history whose chorus is the word "Yeah" sung over and over (to excellent effect, I might add).

Lyric Sheet: "Light my candles, in a daze, 'cause I've found God..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CLXXXVIII--Pearl Jam: Black

Repeat after me...if there is any one subject upon which pop music can pontificate with the poets, it's that of a broken heart.  And this week we are featuring, beyond a doubt, bar none, and bet your bottom dollar the best song ever written on being the lover left out in the cold.

After an historic start (their debut album sold 13 million copies, and its follow-up, Vs., set a then record for most copies sold in its initial week), Pearl Jam has quietly continued to make music for the better part of 28 years, and continued the tradition of bands such as the Rolling Stones and The Who, on to REM and U2,  who have had long careers and continuously gave their fans the best that music has to offer.  There's a lot more to Pearl Jam's history than can be covered in a brief recap such as this, but four of the five original members are still with the band, with the fifth having been with the Pearl Jam for twenty years.  Through that time they've released ten albums, won a couple of Grammy Awards, lost an epic battle with Ticketmaster over the pricing of their tickets, toured worldwide and been featured in just about every music festival at some point, and were eventually elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility in 2017.  Pearl Jam has been something of an oddity, as the band as a whole has never been comfortable with its fame, and in fact, since its debut album, doesn't do much television, gives few interviews, and has completely refused, even when music videos were still an interesting vehicle, to do any more music videos.  And while the band may not have had quite the success they had in its early years, it has nonetheless thrived.  Kudos also to Pearl Jam for being strong supporters of a woman's right to choose (all five members are male, too), supporting numerous liberal causes, and helping the greatest President of my lifetime, Barack Obama, in both of his Presidential campaigns.

Released in 1991 on Ten, Pearl Jam's hella debut album, "Black" was never promoted as a single because the band refused to let the label release it as such, feeling the song was too personal in nature and that overplaying it would destroy the song's heart and soul.  The song has, though, gone on to become a fan favorite, and in 2011 was voted the ninth best ballad of all time by the readers of Rolling Stone (for whatever that award is worth...).

Written by Eddie Vedder with music by guitarist Stone Gossard, "Black," Vedder has said, is a song about first relationships.  Be that as it may, Vedder has written a song about a failed relationship that is succinct without being maudlin, using imagery such as clouds, broken glass, and children playing.  Vedder's vocals convey anger and hurt and sorrow with each breath, while the band keeps the music low key, but rises when Vedder's anger or hurt or sorrow rises, and follows his emotions concordantly throughout.  One of the things I noticed when listening to it this week in prep for this piece (other than how much I still really fucking love the song) is that there are very few rock and roll singers who can do as much with grunts such as ooh, ah, and uh as Eddie Vedder--it almost amazed me what can be done with a single syllable to capture a person's emotions.  The song closes with some doot doot doos (the lyrics say they're too doo doos, but it doesn't sound like that to me) somewhat reminiscent of the Stones "Sympathy for the Devil" which only adds to the spinning and swirling in one's head and one's gut at the time one realizes that a love is lost forever.  In the end, "Black" is a song not only about the bleakness today of a relationship's end, but also how it can also darken one's future in that life may well go on, but one's perception of it will never be the same.

Lyric Sheet:  "I know someday you'll have a beautiful life/I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky/But why, why, why  can't it be, can't it be mine?"

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee