On the subject of time, what part of day is this, even? I ask because it basically looked like this, a proper Bloomington winter day, all day. Just the faintest variations of this.
In the morning there was a fog advisory, which gave way to a gloomy bank of fog in the midday. In the afternoon the fog was relieved by a grim rain, which, in turn, yielded to a foggy devil-may-care mood. In the early evening it was an attitude of You’re still looking for a change?
And that was the day. It didn’t last forever, but it held a different sort of stasis. If you were romantic about it, you could say it had a certain mysteriousness. I wouldn’t say that. We’re entering mid-January, when a boy’s thoughts turn to mid-February, when he knows, in his heart, this should be ending and spring beginning. But, then, this is a proper Bloomington winter day. There’s 95 more days of this.
Back to the Re-Listening project, where we’re just moving through all of my old CDs in the car, because why not. Some of these come with memories and stories. These aren’t reviews, but whimsy, as most music should be.
I think this was another cassette-to-CD replacement, given where this lands in my CD books, when it was released and all of that. I have a vague memory of the cassette version, anyway. Anyway, Bush’s debut was 1994, this is about 1996 for me, and I didn’t come to it late.
But what I found on this listen is that post-grunge arrived at just the right time for me to find it interesting. Sometimes music is entirely about timing, is what the Re-Listening project teaches us. And this is a good example of that. This record saw three singles go into the charts, and it went platinum six times, but this week I’ve just been “Meh.” It feels a bit more hollow this time around.
Still like Alien, though. That’s a neat little sound.
We saw them one February when I was in college. I think I might still have the tour shirt. No Doubt, Goo Goo Dolls and Bush. No Doubt had just begun to enjoy that mainstream moment of introducing most of us to ska music and selling a lot of records. Goo Goo Dolls, having not yet discovered the secret to making money doing pop ballads, were still experimenting with their punk-grunge crossover and were pretty bad, actually. Then Gavin and Bush came out and played a lot of distortion and did rock ‘n’ roll things. It isn’t on that record, but they closed the show with their cover of “The One I Love.”
And, uhhhh, that’s not what that song is about.
More Bush later, maybe future records will appeal to me differently.
Which brings us to a single I don’t remember having ever owned. And I’m trying to make sense of this. It was August. I was alone at school, waiting on my roommate to come back. I’d probably just finished classes. (Made dean’s list that term as I recall.) I wasn’t dating anyone at the moment, which would be an easy way to explain this, but, I can’t explain it.
The video is well-lit, isn’t it? Bryan Adams took this 1980s pastiche to 24 on the Hot 100 and Mainstream Top 40. It peaked at sixth on the AC chart. Other than it is a two-song single, I don’t know why I would have picked this up. I guess we’ll have to invent a story.
Let’s invent a bad story. It was a late night at Wal-Mart and I was buying snacks and this was an impulse by to justify buying anything. And, also, they didn’t have the thing I actually wanted, but this song was OK, so why not. And maybe someone will like it — because when you’re that age that can sometimes matter.
That story probably has some truth to it.
This story is certain. I bought this single because the lyrics made a heavy reference to Birmingham, and that’s what one does some time. Also, the director of the video went the extra mile to make it seem real.
Did you see the Auburn bumper sticker? Did you catch Fob James on the front page of The Birmingham News? That’s Amanda Marshall’s most successful Canadian single. While it went to number three on the RPM chart there, it peaked at 43 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. (Canadians like us! And songs about moving on, second chances, and leaving guys like Virgil, who are just real gems, we’re all sure.)
I looked for that paper. There doesn’t seem to be an image capture of the front page. (Imagine the three paragraph aside I wrote about digitized newspaper archives and the search I undertook.)
I did find the two above-the-fold stories. The one on the left is headlined “Insurers’ legal luck may rise dramatically under lawsuit reform.”
Insurance companies that have been losers in the state’s courtrooms could reverse their misfortunes if lawmakers approve business-backed proposals aimed at overhauling Alabama’s civil justice system, legal scholars said.
The proposals, advanced by the Business Council of Alabama and passed last week by the state House of Representatives, would establish laws at least as harsh as the sweeping changes adopted in Illinois and Texas last year, legal experts in those states said.
While most debate in Alabama has focused on limiting punitive damage awards, the businessbacked proposals contain subtle wordings that would give companies _ especially insurers – a strong shield in the courtroom.
“These insurance ‘reforms’ are little more than a subsidy for the industry,” said Michael Rustad, a professor at Boston’s Suffolk University who has studied court verdicts from Alabama since 1985.
Jerry Underwood wrote that story. He stayed with The Birmingham news until 2012 or so. Then the business editor, he went into public relations, and is now writing in the blurry lines in between, best I can tell.
The lead story in that newspaper was about the governor. Fob James was wrapping up the first year of his second term.
With the nation’s capital in the clutches of political hard-liners, Alabama’s Gov. Fob James is, by contrast, generating less emotional heat.
The Republican governor, who on Tuesday completes the first year of his second term in the state’s highest office, is accessible – he’ll talk to almost anyone on his weekly call-in radio show.
And he’s seemingly mellowed since he last occupied the governor’s chair from 1979 to 1983. In December, for instance, he agreed with a caller to his show and overturned a ban on visits to members of prison chain gangs on Christmas.
Yep. Chain gangs. And that the prisoners that were one part chained work crews and, no kidding, one part tourist attraction, could now receive visitors on Christmas day was a sign of the governor going “mellow,” wrote Robin DeMonia, who is now doing strategic communication.
James also resisted federal funds for grade schools and gutted a lot of higher education. But he mellowed, see, because he dropped a costly and long running lawsuit.
Alabama has ended its fight against a college-desegregation lawsuit after spending 15 years and $25-million on it.
Gov. Fob James, Jr., last month withdrew his appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that required Alabama to enhance its two historically black public universities with new academic programs and bigger endowments.
The Governor, who called the ruling “out of sync with reality,” questioned whether Alabama A&M and Alabama State Universities were worth the extra money. But after critics blasted him for prolonging the suit, the Governor dropped the appeal.
The 1990s were a heck of a time in Alabama, basically.
I’m not sure what party James is in these days. He started out, as most people of his time and place, as a Democrat. He became a Republican and then a “born-again Democrat” when he ran for, and won, the governor’s office in 1978. Ever the opportunist, in 1994, he became a Republican once more and won the governor’s office again. These days he’s retired in Florida. A few years ago he sued one of his sons for fraud. But we’ve gotten way, waaay, off track here.
A guy named Jeth Weinrich directed that video, and I would like to compliment his choice, decades ago, of authenticity. The woman drives that car north, crosses into Tennessee and then, apparently, abandons the car in Seattle. I put this in a map, that’s one of the two ways you’d go on that 38-hour drive. But most of all, the Auburn bumper sticker was a nice touch. Good eye by the Canadians.
As for the rest of the record, there are other songs like “Let It Rain” and “Last Exit to Eden” which are overstrung power ballads. There are a couple, like “Fall From Grace” which always seemed destined for a rom-com.
And there’s this song that was surprisingly good, and still holds up well.
“Sitting On Top of the World” just missed its calling as a montage in that rom-com. I imagine something comical about painting or gardening and … maybe water skiing.
And when the too-cute couple finally get to smooching, this would be the song underneath.
I can only assume that this didn’t happen because no directors or music supervisors bought this record. And we are all the less for it.
Have you noticed the boots she’s wearing in that photoshoot yet? The 1990s were a heck of a time everywhere.
Amanda Marshall released two more studio albums after that, in 1999 and 2001. Each of them had hits in her native Canada. And then, somehow, she released three greatest hits records. There were some legal difficulties with her label, which might explain both the lack of output and mess of greatest hits. She’s been fairly private and quiet since.
But one final note. That newspaper that got us all distracted? It was published on Jan. 14, 1996. Twenty-seven years ago, Saturday. We almost nailed the timing.
