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it's good

Doug Fieger, you wicked dead bastard

Why? Why in god's name must My Sharona be so fucking catchy enough for me to listen to it three times in a row? I think I'm gonna listen to it a fourth time..ooh yes.
Is their first album actually in any good?

oh Drunksongs blog-

How I miss thee

Along with Something I learned today, 7 inch punk, and Born in the basement(where'd that one get off to?), this blog opened me up to a whole slew of punk sub genres. It took a long, long time for me to determine who exactly my favorites were(the selection was overwhelming and back then, I could only judge whether I liked it or not based on "catchiness"),but they certainly introduced me to good stuff like Descendent's 'Merican and The Specials. God bless them.

Boys of Summer

This is the only Eagles associated song I will ever tolerate; it's an interesting parallel to songs The Descendants, particularly Silly Girl and Hope, all of which lament onof lost love, but Henley represents the regret that comes later in life. Rather than simply obsess over the girl who got away and vow that he's the only one for her, Henley pines for her while also realizing his juvenile foolishness("Don't look back, you can never look back"). Sure, he's still in love with her, but at least he's honest about his behavior, if not necessarily outright self loathing. There's a similar structure in Pulp's Common People(I'll get to that one later); Jarvis starts out berating his supposed love interest about how lower class people live, but as the song builds , he turns inward, revealing his hatred for himself and the way his life turned out. While Milo Ackerman had a whole 20 years or so in front of him during Milo Goes to College 40 something Henley was trapped between the nostalgia of youth and embracing a sad existence as an adult in the bleak year of 1985.

Am I a crazy weirdo

or do the lyrics to Dag Nasty's What Now allude to more than a bromantic friendship?:
silly boy
in over his head again
silly boy
doing his best again
silly boy
why don't you ever learn?
silly boy you
can't help getting hurt
behind us- lying and hiding
behind us - the lying and hiding

I know it's not much, you gotta hear the spoken word part to understand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqLSSdoW2Zc
Tell me yer thoughts

coming up sometime: Between The Descendents and Motley Crue lies The Donnas- an assessment

Emo saturday morning part 3: adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

Between 1993 and 1994, a few strange things happened: we got a new president who was just as bad as Bush I(trying to end the welfare program, starting an uncalled war with Bosnia when diplomacy and justice would have faired better,etc.), Cobain commited suicide*, Kafkaesque comic Bill Hicks succumbed to cancer, A young religious man named David Koresh went mad and took a bunch of women and children hostage, and Lorraine Bobbit cut off her husband's cock. Yes, it was a confusing, tumultuous time to be a young person and it certainly shows in these songs. Some have a poppier tone like Evergreen's Constellation while others accurately capture the fear and chaos brewing; listen to the manic howl of Indian Summer's Truman or the suspenseful clatter of Gauge's 38 cinder, that's the sound of desperation and the fear of what was to come.

*By the way, all that talk of Cobain being a spoiled rock star is somewhat diminished here in his suicide letter:
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/05/its-better-to-burn-out-than-to-fade.html

We see that he was in the throes of depression and for him, there wasn't much of a way out since no one really took the effort to reach out and say something until it was too late and they did it half assed.

Emo Saturday Morning part 2: Ren and stimpy (1991-1992)

This here's another short one, but I'm surprised how much I mined out of the first one with one glance at Fugazi's lyrics so here we go:

So we start with another blast of sincerity from Nation of Ulysses, an anarcistish emo/punk band from D.C. with their song Today I met the girl I'm gonna marry. Although this could also be an example of irony since they were quite supportive of Binki Kill, the famous riot grrrl band who eventually moved to D.C. from Washington. Either way, it's a passionate, desperate yelp for love and justice.

Next is Samiam with Clean, this one being a bit more brooding and angsty in the Nirvana sort of vein. Nowadays, everyone says the band's popularity was based on marketing and well, alas, that is true in the case of the grunge genre which they ultimately became a part of. Nonetheless, a glance at the lyrics shows that there's a tiny influence from Nirvana's Lithium, displaying that sort of everyday moping around the house feeling burnt out kind of mood:
http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/samiam/clean.html

Now, onto Jawbox which is slightly more intellectual as opposed to Lithium or Clean as it explores a relationship between two people, one person of which feels a sense of pity and sympathy for the other.
congratulations sister
you put yourself right over
though you don't think i understand
this sudden awkward rupture
this stuck-unhealing fissure
no love could possibly withstand
and i'd never say

it doesn't mean that much to me
glad anyway
to see you struggle free
This half sarcastic half sincere delivery really defines the tone of the first half of the decade; many romantic comedies of the era like Reality Bites or Singles tried and failed to mix existential dread with the wry observations of shows like Seinfeld. Yet, in the end, everything came out as insincere and smarmy with only the music and surprisingly, Children's shows like Pete and Pete or even Ren and Stimpy pulling this off the best.

Next: 1993-1994