Moving right through the week.
Just a short bit today, very full life and schedule. Lots of obligations. I've got many debts to keep and miles to go before I sleep. In contrast to yesterday's in-depth look at Purple by Stone Temple Pilots, today's post will be a simplified look at a song from the same era.
Before the days of DVRs and YouTube, it was darn near impossible to find something illusive on TV. If, like me, you only had MTV to serve as an introductory source of music you had to pay rapt attention, lest you miss the little info box on the small of the screen at the beginning and end of the clip. Good luck if it was a more obscure song, too - while there were still videos on MTV at the time, they were becoming fewer and farther between. A sick day from school was a guaranteed marathon of MTV at that stage in my life - it was the only way to see some of the videos I wanted to see so badly. That's how I saw the debut of the Mentos-themed clip for 'Big Me' by The Foo Fighters, or the premiere of Green Day's dual release 'Brainstew/Jaded' when I was an obsessed young teenager.
This unfortunate catch-as-you-can modus operandi made me into a rapt viewer. Of course, I was too stupid to write anything down, instead relying on my own intellect to recall anything worthwhile. It may have been a vain, foolhardy technique, but hey - I was 13 and it might be responsible for whatever powers of pop-culture recollection I possess today. Anyway, point is - one sunny spring afternoon I saw a video for a band called Stabbing Westward. The lead singer sounded a bit more like Ozzy than I would really prefer, but the song, at the time, was incredibly heavy and rocking. The video for the song was interesting as well, a bit of performance footage interspersed with the band watching a movie for what may have been an earlier version of the clip itself. Unfortunately the name of the song was a bit generic, to the point that I pretty much forgot it as soon as the text disappeared at the end of the clip. All I had was the band name. I filed it away in the back of my head as awesome but likely to never be heard again.
Just a short bit today, very full life and schedule. Lots of obligations. I've got many debts to keep and miles to go before I sleep. In contrast to yesterday's in-depth look at Purple by Stone Temple Pilots, today's post will be a simplified look at a song from the same era.
Before the days of DVRs and YouTube, it was darn near impossible to find something illusive on TV. If, like me, you only had MTV to serve as an introductory source of music you had to pay rapt attention, lest you miss the little info box on the small of the screen at the beginning and end of the clip. Good luck if it was a more obscure song, too - while there were still videos on MTV at the time, they were becoming fewer and farther between. A sick day from school was a guaranteed marathon of MTV at that stage in my life - it was the only way to see some of the videos I wanted to see so badly. That's how I saw the debut of the Mentos-themed clip for 'Big Me' by The Foo Fighters, or the premiere of Green Day's dual release 'Brainstew/Jaded' when I was an obsessed young teenager.
This unfortunate catch-as-you-can modus operandi made me into a rapt viewer. Of course, I was too stupid to write anything down, instead relying on my own intellect to recall anything worthwhile. It may have been a vain, foolhardy technique, but hey - I was 13 and it might be responsible for whatever powers of pop-culture recollection I possess today. Anyway, point is - one sunny spring afternoon I saw a video for a band called Stabbing Westward. The lead singer sounded a bit more like Ozzy than I would really prefer, but the song, at the time, was incredibly heavy and rocking. The video for the song was interesting as well, a bit of performance footage interspersed with the band watching a movie for what may have been an earlier version of the clip itself. Unfortunately the name of the song was a bit generic, to the point that I pretty much forgot it as soon as the text disappeared at the end of the clip. All I had was the band name. I filed it away in the back of my head as awesome but likely to never be heard again.
Time passed, I found other music I was more excited about. Then, one day months after seeing the video once, I was in my dinky little music store I frequented when I saw a name that tugged at the back of my mind. It was Stabbing Westward's album, Wither, Blister, Burn + Peel.
"It was good..." I thought of the single.
So I plunked down fourteen (14!) hard earned dollars for the album.
The album, as a whole, was wildly uneven. That single, though - good stuff. Not $14 good, really, but pretty good when I was younger. Actually it's pretty good now. I figure by the law of averages , the price of that cd is offset by all of the free or "free" music I've obtained in the course of my life. Sometimes you have to pay in, amiright? Anyway, remembering that single and picking up the album was a good choice. I didn't really know it at the time but this was basically my first foray into the world of industrial music, even at it's most mediocre. I wouldn't get into NIN until years later.
'Shame' proved to be a decent track I kept coming back to. It's fairly de-rigeur and of-the-times with it's distorted guitars and wailing vocals, but as longs you're not looking for high art it's a fun rock track. There's a tone here that's quite appealing, something created by the verses and chorus playing off of each other, that makes an air of sleek movement and chases via hard rock of the 90s. Check it out.
