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memories

This (Re-Listening) band is for lovers

There were two highlights to my day. First, and this came late in the day, so you can tell how quite things were otherwise, we took a nice long walk after I got in from the office. The temperature was mild-trending toward warm and the views were just right for the back half of May.

That’s on the path behind our house, which winds through the neighborhood and connects to other paths and sidewalks that will take you most anywhere in town, if you are willing to walk or run there. The path system, let’s call it, continues to grow, and all of that access is one of the more wonderful features of Bloomington, even if we tend to haunt one particular section of them.

The path closest to our house does stop on one end. If you walk behind some of the new developments you can pick up another part of the paved route, but first you must walk over grass. The horrors!

City or county, and I’m not sure which, because this spot is right at the line, takes good care of this area. There’s always a walkable, mowed stretch through here. They do take pretty good care of their multiuse corridors here.

The other highlight was that, when we came back in from our walk, we ran into our neighbor. It looks like we’ll be sitting out and chatting with them tomorrow evening. They’re funny, witty, have just the right sort of enthusiasm and are polite enough to laugh at all of the better-ish jokes. So, good neighbors.

We’re making good progress, of late, catching up on the Re-Listening project. Writing one of these every day has helped. And, believe it or not, we’re only two discs behind right now. The point here, of course, is a quick breeze through of all of my old CDs. I am listening to them in the car, in the order that I first came to own them. This is fun for memories and singalongs and good filler for the site. They’re not reviews, but whimsy, as most pop music should be.

So it is 1998 or 1999, though this is another 1997 disc. I remember specific things around this record, firstly that I came to find the band through streaming an alt station out of Atlanta. And this really gets down to two groups of people. OK, musicians and two other groups of people. Record label A&R types and the music programmers that put up with them.

In the 1990s there were maybe six or eight real programmers of what was left of alt rock. There were other stations, but they were following the leaders. One of those guys was in my hometown, but another was just a short car ride away, the late Sean Demery, who was the music director at WNNX, 99X Atlanta. Here’s a guy who was doing the morning drive, realized there was a guy already in their building who would be a better morning jock, and stepped away from that to take on the afternoon shift. This is all but unheard of. But Demery was also the guy who, a few years earlier, turned that station on its head, and made it the mad hatter of musical taste that it was. As his AJC obit says, “Demery helped turn 99X into a hugely successful station in the 1990s, a ground-breaking blend of Gen-X insouciance, goofiness, sophistication and musical diversity which cemented loyalty among its listeners.”

That’s where I found him, doing wild stuff in the afternoons. I had a small town morning show that was punching above its weight because I was inspired by guys like Demery, who like a few other pros’ pros were willing to spend a few moments listening or offering advice. The people that taught me broadcasting said, on the first day, that “dead air was the work of the devil.” Demery walked away from his microphone mid-sentence for a punchline, or to make a point. He’d play the same song over and over when he had a hit, and in those days he was never, ever wrong.

He was a pirate working for corporate media. A confounder, the tail end of a now-dead art, a visceral force of taste, the match that made the spark. The sounds that maintreamed into modern rock, the strains that influenced the generation that came after, his colleagues sold it for revenue, but in the 1990s Sean Demery was one of the few people in the country putting it before us. (Demery wrote, “99X never referred to itself as an Alternative station until after 2000 which is funny because by the time some consultant decided we should call it Alternative it had become a music and cultural norm.”)

And so it was with Guster. Here’s three guys from Massachusetts, with an incessant rhythm section of … bongos?

“Airport Song” was the debut single from their second studio album. People like Demery helped push it to 35 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart. “Goldfly” was an independent release, but this was the album that got them picked up by Sire Records and Warner. It was all edgy, a bit ragged and spotty in places, and everything on it fits the moment.

I think, for about three years, this was what I listened to when I exercised or mowed the lawn, all of which comprised most of my music listening.

Now, I bought this late, because their third album was coming out. But this one will always be a favorite.

And I got to see them live for the first time not too long after that. They’re a band best seen live.

That explains why I’ve seen them three or five times. In fact, a Guster show was on our calendar for the day that everything shut down in March of 2020. I found out at the box office of the local venue. And so it was happy and sad, in May of 2021, to see them live in a documentary format. It was a hint and a reminder and just a great, great band. I’ve watched them their whole career, through the alt and the boop boop beep boop, the Beatles pastiche and everything else.

Probably I would have found them somewhere else, but I found them because of Sean Demery and the legendary 99X.

Go see them this year, because I can’t.

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23
May 23

We play the song “Crazy Life” at the end of this post

I took this photo the other day, and I keep forgetting to publish it. That’s too bad, because it’s a great nod to the apparent lack of thoughtfulness of others. This is outside our building on campus, and these are handicapped parking spots, as you can see from the blue lines and the sign.

All of which makes this installment of Hoosier Hospitality amazing.

You can’t really move scooters unless you rent them, of course. The wheels are effectively seized to prevent free rides. So you have to muscle them around, which is what I had to do. But, on the off chance that anyone needed the space, at least someone was thinking about you.

I can say this about Hoosier Hospitality: it’s alliterative.

We haven’t run the tab feature in a few weeks, and my browser is groaning under the pressure. This is the place where I am memorializing pages that I might want to refer to again, but might not earn a bookmark.

The 25 best documentaries of all time, ranked:

The documentary genre is a more varied one than many people give it credit for. As a type of film, documentaries do usually aim to inform or educate about some kind of non-fiction story or topic, but that’s not their sole purpose. Some aim to evoke certain feelings or experiences more than anything else, others aim to present an argument or point of view in a persuasive manner, and others are mostly concerned with simply entertaining audiences the way a work of fiction might.

Furthermore, some documentaries aim to do a combination of the above, or maybe even none of the above, instead opting to do something else entirely. Exploring the world of documentary filmmaking can be a truly eye-opening thing to do, and reveal worlds or unique perspectives that aren’t as easy to explore through other genres.

James Brown’s historic concert, staged 24 hours after Martin Luther King’s assassination, is now restored and free to watch online. This show helped calm down Boston somewhat. It’s a legendary performance.

6 do’s and don’ts when buying used scuba gear:

Ok, so you’ve decided to buy your own scuba diving equipment. Whether you are newly certified or a seasoned diver, used scuba gear may seem like a great opportunity to save some money. Buying secondhand diving equipment can either be the greatest deal of your life or the biggest mistake, the difference is knowing what to look for.

We like to look out for you guys, so here are 6 tips to buy used scuba gear:

How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’:

Deep in the Mojave desert, about halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix, a sparkling blue sea shimmers on the horizon. Visible from the I-10 highway, amid the parched plains and sun-baked mountains, it is an improbable sight: a deep blue slick stretching for miles across the Chuckwalla Valley, forming an endless glistening mirror.

But something’s not quite right. Closer up, the water’s edge appears blocky and pixelated, with the look of a low-res computer rendering, while its surface is sculpted in orderly geometric ridges, like frozen waves.

“We had a guy pull in the other day towing a big boat,” says Don Sneddon, a local resident. “He asked us how to get to the launch ramp to the lake. I don’t think he realised he was looking at a lake of solar panels.”

We return to 1998 in the Re-Listening project. For the blissfully uninitiated, I am going through all of my CDs in the order in which I acquired them. It’s a stroll down a musical memory lane. It’s fun. And I’m writing and sharing some of it here. These are not reviews, because the web definitely doesn’t need another quarter-century-too-late alt band review. But they are a good excuse to post videos, pad out some content and have a little fun, which is kinda the point of most music.

This record is from 1997, but from what surrounds it in my old CD books I know I picked this up the next year. I imagine I got it from one of the two independent music stores that were in town at the time, but I don’t remember that part, here. This is one of the alt bands that personified the 1990s, and you can hear that immediately in the first track.

Toad the Wet Sprocket saw this record, their last for more than a dozen years, climb to number 16 on the Billboard 200, both on the strength of what had become a dedicated fan base, but also the single “Come Down,” which settled nicely in the top 40 in the U.S. and in the top 10 in Canada.

That song was so ubiquitous I was certain Toad was putting it on every record, and every musical coordinator had it in shows, movies, and commercials, but apparently not. I can only blame myself, and the A&R people at Columbia Records who had this on the air somewhere within ear shot every 17 minutes of my early 20s.

And here’s Glen Phillips doing “Throw It All Away” solo. I can never decide if this, or the full band, is the better version.

The answer, of course, is which ever you hear live.

The whole record is a fine continuation of Toad the Wet Sprocket’s work. The production is great, it’s hard to argue with the instrumentation. Glenn Phillips and Todd Nichols are in full throat. Everything works and there’s a little something for every mood. But I am always listening to Coil to get to track 11.

This is what I wrote when I finally, finally saw Toad the Wet Sprocket live last year.

I don’t know if “Crazy Life” was my first protest song or the first for my slice of my generation, but I’m pretty sure it was the first one I really noticed. The first one I read about. And I read a lot about Peltier. I’ve never really settled on how I felt about it, not really, but this is Wounded Knee.

The Eighth Circuit thought a jury would have acquitted him had information improperly withheld from the defense been available, yet the court denied a new trial. And if you really dive into the story it’s easy to question how the system was used. But I don’t know, not really. None less than Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama have campaigned for him, though, and that means something.

The point is, this song made me look it up, and think, and ask questions of things in general and specifically. And I probably shouldn’t like a pop song this much, but anything that scrapes your brain for a quarter of a century is worth noting.

And I love Todd Nichols’ sound.

Toad have released two records in the years since, 2013’s “New Constellation,” which was a crowd-funded album, and the Starting Now (2021). Some of their other work, and re-work, will show up later in the Re-Listening project. And like Chris Spencer says at the end of that 1997 video, you can catch them on tour this year, too. We did, twice, last summer, and I’m a little bummed I won’t get to see them this time out. But you can!

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3
May 23

After a long time, it got here quickly

My mind wanders better when I ride my bike on the road, as opposed to when my bike is mounted on the trainer indoors. I don’t know why that is. It seems like the opposite should be true. Indoors, I am in a small 8 x 10 light-blue room. There are a few windows showing the backyard, which is quite nice, but it remains a static condition. Lately 90 minutes is the extent of time I want to stay in that unchanging way, but the only thing my wanders to then is, “How much longer?” Where does my mind go the first 75 or 80 minutes?

It is an honest mystery, one that hasn’t occurred to me until after today’s hard-easy bike ride on roads and under sunny skies. Today, I spent about an hour pondering the nature of suddenness. It was 61 degrees and the world felt big with possibilities. This is finals week. Young people are graduating. Graduating? Already? Can that really be the case? So suddenly? People are saying so long, or see you next fall.

How did we get here so suddenly? This feels rapid.

Coming to realize that this is May — that the term is ending, that summer will soon begin, that my schedule can simplify itself, that the weather is maybe finally growing consistently nice, that these are things to be enjoyed and savored, and they are here before me, now — is a small elation. Remember the feeling, as a kid, you had when you thought you were getting away with something? It feels like that kind of giddy.

And how can that be the case? Why, just the other day was spring break, and that felt exactly the same way. Where did this semester, this year, the last three of them, go?

You almost don’t even notice the little voice saying, “Finally … :

I thought on this for most of my ride, but came up with no real answers. You’d think, riding on open roads, you’d spend time concentrating on other things. The wind, your lungs, the sound of your tires on asphalt, how that black Audi deliberately executed a dangerous close pass. But, no, it was the nature of the notion of time. Except for the places where I was riding through curves and turns, and passed that one farm that was a little light on the fragrance of nature, today. Does the livestock know what time of year it is?

Anyway, shadow selfie.

And, later in the evening, having realized how my conscious wandering mind acts on the road versus on the trainer, I have to wonder why. I asked the shadow. He was characteristically zen about the whole thing. Maybe that’s by design, too.

Time to dive back into the music for the Re-Listening project. It’s all of my old CDs, in their order of acquisition. And this is one I listened to twice before I started writing about it here, because there are no rules or expectations here, and I like this record. We journey back to the early fall of 1998 and the third major label release by Better Than Ezra, “How Does Your Garden Grow?” They got dropped by their label right after this record, where they parked two songs in the top 40, again proving the ridiculousness of the music industry.

“At the Stars” made it to 17 on the Modern Rock chart. If you had time for another 1,500 words on this, I’d argue it’s a part of a long-running trilogy-plus arc throughout the band’s catalog. Or you could just imagine all the rom-coms this could have featured in, or the dates it played a part of in 1998 and 1999.

Tom Drummond was experimenting, a lot, with his bass guitars, and the sounds were peppy and eclectic throughout.

Kevin Griffin, in addition to fronting this band for three-plus decades now, has a prolific second career as a songwriter for other acts. I like to think this was the song where he figured out he’d do that.

There’s a line in there, after the bridge, that I told a girl when she broke up with me the next year. It was a direct ripoff, sure, but it also applied. She caught the reference, but not its meaning.

If you had time for a further 2,000-3,000 words on this, I could make a convincing argument that if the producer got really selective, they could re-release the greatest concept EP of all time from just a few of the tracks on this record.

They re-released this record a few years ago in 5.1 stereo. YouTube’s compressions aren’t an improvement on the original mix by any means. But I wonder …

Griffin said:

It’s our most sonically adventurous album. At that time there was some great music happening — not just alternative rock, but an explosion of electronic music like Chemical Brothers, DJ Shadow and the experimental Björk albums, like Post, and Radiohead’s OK Computer. So we made this grand sweeping album with a lot of electronic flourishes and a big orchestral string section. We really went for it and the original recordings had a great sonic character, but got a very compressed, late ’90s mix. So a lot of the textures and nuances were lost in the original stereo release. Richard LaBonté [of Music Valet, the 5.1 remix specialty label that spearheaded the project] was the catalyst for the remix. When he approached us, we were thrilled. The album was initially unappreciated. It probably got us dropped from Elektra Records, because we’d made two very commercial albums before that, and then went down the rabbit hole creatively. But it’s our fans’ favorite album.

Should I start buying things in Dolby 5.1 now? Would I notice the difference?

Anyway, the last time I saw BTE was in 2018. They were celebrating the 25th anniversary of their major label debut that year, on the road with Barenaked Ladies who were, themselves, celebrating a 30th anniversary that same year. These are the acts I like now, I guess. It was inevitable as it was obvious, I suppose. Better Than Ezra is apparently close to releasing a new album — possibly this year. And they’re doing limited dates this summer, though none of those shows are close by where I’ll be. If they were, though, I would be there.

The next album in the Re-Listening project is “Appetite for Destruction.” I bought it as part of a bulk deal. I never had it in another format, and picking this up was really just feeling a need to acknowledge something that was important to rock ‘n’ roll from 1987-1989. The singles, except “Nightrain” all hold up. The rest is just kinda … there, but that’s likely just because I have no strong association with the CD. Plus, after 30 million units sold, it’s challenging to write anything new here. And, these days, it is impossible to listen to this and not picture Slash in a Capital One commercial. The first single is about heroin addiction, and now there’s banking spots. We’re mere days away from reverse mortgage promos and Muzak at this point. I guess i just don’t have … an appetite for it.

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26
Apr 23

These stories, let me tell you …

I dropped my car off at the mechanic this evening, but let me back up. A weekend or two ago, on a day when it was actually, you know, warm in April like Mother Nature was paying attention to the calendar, the A/C in my car was not … what’s the word I want here … conditioning the air. Oh, it’d blow and blow, but it could not cool and cool.

So, freon, I figured. Then the weather turned wimpy again and I promptly forgot about the problem. But this week I remembered! Not because it was warm, I just remembered. So I googled. The place I get my oil changed does air recharging. I drove there Tuesday morning, to inquire about their services. The guy told me, in some detail, that they don’t do that anymore. Which is odd because it is right there, on the website.

I drove to our local mechanic. They’re about two miles away, but the trip takes forever because of the bad drivers and the guy who had clearly never towed a boat before. And also the geese and their goslings that were waddling about. You put a roundabout near a pond and they just think they run the place. And the guy with the boat trailer doesn’t know how to make a gentle curve to his left.

Finally I made it to the mechanic. Having diagnosed the problem myself, professional that I am, I simply asked the guy when we could get the car into their rotation. Let’s make this convenient for everyone, I said. He was more than happy to make that happen, but only after he mentally rebuilt an air conditioning system aloud there at the desk.

We’re gonna drain it. And then fill it. And then we’ll inject it with dye. And then see if there are leaks. It went on like this for some time.

Great. Here’s the thing: when I can I drop it off? I just want to get it in and out as quickly as possible, so as to not inconvenience my wife.

So we resolved to drop it off Wednesday night. And now I have no car until tomorrow, probably.

And I told you that because it was either the car story, or the apple story. My lovely bride is thoughtful enough to pick up apples for me at the grocery store. Last year I decided the Cosmic Crisp was the best offering in the produce section, and now they are always in the fruit crisper.

She gets them every week. Five a week. I have one for each day at the office. Peanut butter sandwich and an apple, that’s me.

Except, this week — and believe me, this is the short version of the story — I didn’t pack a lunch yesterday, so I did not eat an apple. (Sometimes a guy just wants Chipotle.) That means I had an extra apple.

And today I ate two apples.

Neither of these stories are good, I am aware.

Hey! Look! A new banner! Now I just have to go back in time and update a lot of graphics.

Anyway, after we dropped off the car, I went on a bike ride on Zwift. It was just warm enough to go outside, but I’m still on this self-imposed Zwift mission.

Today it was Muir and the Mountain, a 24 mile ride in Watopia. There are … gulp … dinosaurs.

I wonder how programmed or how free formed these things are. I’m sure there are better industry terms. Maybe I should ask one of the game designers at work. All of these background creatures are moving, but does everyone see the same pterodactyl in the same curve? Does that big plant eater always sit right there, or can it choose another tree?

At one point, there’s a tyrannosaurus rex, or something of that sort, striding alongside the road. But what if he veered to the right, leaned over and took a snap at me?

This route has the Epic KOM, no longer the biggest mountain in the game, but plenty stiff. It’s 5.9 miles of climbing, where you gain 1,364 feet. When you get to the top, there’s an ibex. On some routes that feature the Epic KOM, you are immediately gifted an extra climb. They call it a “bonus climb,” but this is a horrible name. I’d been going slowly enough, but after a half hour pointed upward, now I have to go uphill for another three-quarters of a mile? And the gradient pitches up to average 14 percent?

That’s pretty steep, and it’s a horrible little climb.

Strava tells me I’ve gone up the bonus climb four times. I was slow today everywhere, this was my third slowest time.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker 101 routes down, 28 to go.

Back to the Re-Listening project, where we can now catch up … until we are behind again. If you’ve forgotten: I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order that I acquired them. These aren’t reviews, but a glance back and a happy glimpse of memory. This is an excuse to fill the page with words and drop in some YouTube embeds. It’s about whimsy, as most music should be.

It is guilty pleasure time. Even at the time it seemed like a guilty pleasure. And it does now, too. But I still like it. Today we’re discussing Train’s debut album. (They’d released it independently in 1996, but that doesn’t count here.) We’re in 1998 here, I bought this in the late spring, probably. I saw them at a small venue that summer. They were still something of a California act at the time, so most of the people at that particular show didn’t know them yet, but that changed soon enough. They produced this record for pennies, but it went platinum on the strength of the three singles that you’re currently trying to banish from your head.

This is was always one of my favorite songs on the disc.

I saw them in concert several other times. And I caught a recorded show on TV early during the stay-at-home part of Covid. They never grew out of the live party band vibe. Never needed to. They were always fun in the nineties and in the oughts. I wonder if they’ll ever change that up as they, and their devoted fans, age.

Speaking of devoted fans. I don’t remember who all the people were, but I was in a car with a college buddy and we were driving two girls he knew from here to there and Widespread Panic came on the radio and she scoffed at that. Widespread — she pronounced with the air of haughtiness that can only be mustered by someone who clearly knows what they’re talking about — had sold out. They were not, she said, like Train.

I thought my buddy, a proper musical snob, was going to crash the car. I was driving the car.

For a debut album, this always struck me as well produced, and rich with deep cuts.

And here’s their end-of-the-night ballad.

One of the best things about listening to the old CDs are the hidden tracks. Do I remember which discs have them? (Usually.) Do I remember how many? (Mostly.) Do I remember what the songs will be? (Almost always.) What will I do to fill the time before they begin playing? I usually fast forward. And I wonder what brought about this little element of music. I wonder how long they pondered over the circumstances and the timing. And I wonder if anyone, back then, actually overlooked the hidden tracks. Surely someone did.

Egg on their face, no?

There are two hidden tracks on this CD. I don’t know why this didn’t get put right up front.

A few years after this CD came out I ran into these guys in a pancake shop one morning. They were playing a set of weekend gigs in town and they were … almost running on their own power that morning. For some reason I have forever associated how they looked that day with how they might have recorded this second hidden track.

Train has become one of those bands with a rotating set of players. Pat Monahan, the lead singer, remains the only constant. But, the band has 11 studio albums (I do not have them all — should I?) and three Grammy awards. And they’re touring right now, they have 50 more dates in the United States this year.

Next in the Re-Listening project, we’ll go from a California pop-rock band to a Georgia singer-songwriter.

It all makes sense if you were listening to the radio in 1998

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20
Apr 23

Spring begins here tomorrow

I visited Chick-fil-A drive-through for lunch yesterday. The local Chick-fil-A now has multiple touch points along the drive-through path. It eats up half of their small parking lot, but they are incentivizing drive-through customers if you’re using their app. We use the app for our regular Saturday lunch run.

It’s hopping at noon on Saturdays, of course, so you roll down the window and talk to three people along the way. First there’s the person getting the order. Then there’s the first merge point, three lanes to two, and the a second person who is controlling the order of traffic. Someone else confirms the order, usually after the second merge point which pulls the two lanes into one line, just before you reach the window. Three or four crew members in that little space, and then two people outside of the window that actually hand you your food. On Saturdays, we briefly interact with four people to get our sandwiches; who knows how many people are in the back doing the actual food work.

The point of having all of those people isn’t to speed up the process, but to control the flow. Your wait isn’t at the window, but in the line, with the slow illusion of progress via motion. The other virtue of the setup is that they can put people outside, or pull them in, based on customer rush.

Take yesterday, which is the point of mentioning this anyway. The early lunch crowd on a Wednesday isn’t particularly busy, so I only talked with two people between entering the parking lot, and making the window.

At the window, a guy was leaning out, waiting for me. Big smile on his face. Gregarious, ready to have a chat. (It stands out here.) My food wasn’t ready he said, so he leaned into the little easy chitchat. He loved this, and he leaned in by leaning out of the window. He asked me how my day was and complimented my pocket square.

He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Instead of having to ask me two or four easy throwaway questions, I started asking questions of him. You could tell this doesn’t happen to him a lot in that job. We talked about the weather and naps and his other job. He works for DoorDash, and I wanted to know if he got to meet a lot of people that way. I asked him if they took care of him there, and how far he drove. And then my food was ready, in my car and I was on my way.

I’d like to think that he somehow took the exchange forward, and was even more enthusiastic with the next several guests.

I once again find myself behind in the Re-Listening project. Somehow a few days go by, and a few more CDs get played and now you have to power through whatever I write about it all here. The point of the exercise being to listen to all of my old CDs, in the order that I acquired them. The secondary point being to write about them here. They aren’t reviews, or the dreaded re-reviews, just an excuse to go down memory lane, and to post a few videos for you.

Which brings us to the only reason most people bought this particular album in the mid 90s.

New Zealand’s OMC released this, their only record, in 1996. I got it as a freebie in 1998. It made it to number 40 on the Billboard 200. On the strength of this song, and three other singles you probably don’t recall, it was certified gold.

How do things catch on half a world away, I wonder. It’d be easier today, sure, but getting airplay from around the globe … it had to be MTV. Whatever it was, the critics liked it.

There is a certain infectiousness to the songs. This was the second single.

This is the third single, and the track that sticks with me whenever I listen to this CD, which is admittedly rare. This is also the first track you hear if you play the whole album and, I like to think, this is why critics struggled to label the record. In 1996, this was a unique collection of sounds.

I bet you never thought of New Zealand hip hop, Urban Pasifika is is called, as influencing the global sound — and that’s OK, I hadn’t put that together before now, either — but here we are, hearing the strains of OMC in other people’s work, and OMC itself enjoying a resurgence on TikTok of all places.

OMC only produced the one record, mostly because of record label disputes. Pauly Fuemana was diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder and died in 2010, just 40 years old.

Which brings us to New American Shame. This was released in March of 1999. Didn’t like it then, and I never, ever listened to it. I am so unfamiliar with it that when the first song began in my CD player — it’s always a question of what comes next in the Re-Listening project — I wasn’t sure what AC/DC ripoff I had picked up somewhere. Kiss without the appeal. Buckcherry without the adhesive backing removed. (There’s nothing to stick to here, is what I’m saying.) It’s a power slop dirty rock ‘n’ roll sound that doesn’t appeal to me, with rote mixing and mastering on the production side. This is the first track, which was remixed when the band signed a major label deal, and released as a single. It hit 35 on the Mainstream Rock Chart and, unless this was your genre, I’d be surprised if you’ve ever heard it.

The rest of the record sounds a lot like that. It has its place, I guess. It’s all the sort of thing you’d heard from the annoying pontoon boat just upstream that ruins your day.

I don’t want to play any more of it here, for fear of that very thing.