Working on something novel, so here's a thing to tide you over.
I've covered a fair bit of the 1990s and the alt rock contained there in. One of my favorites one hit wonders deserves a little love, so I thought I'd spend today's allocated space on something distinctly turn-of-the-century. Something that contains some elements that are distinctly indicative of the period. I speak of The Flys.
Rocking some bug-eyed shades, this band was full of late-90s attitude. Their big single, which peaked at #5 on the Billboard charts, was 'Got You Where I Want You', off the album Holiday Man. Their songs were featured on not one, not two but three terrible teen movies from the end of the decade. One, The Crow: Salvation, is hardly worth mentioning despite featuring a young Kirsten Dunst. Teen movie two was the oddball cheerleader heist flick Sugar and Spice, which had a cameo from Conan O'Brien, of all people. The third was the forgettable Disturbing Behavior, featured a young Katie Holmes as a heroine and unsuspecting future wife of Tom Cruise. The big single for the band was on this soundtrack, whose video also featured Ms. Holmes making an appearance, which sadly seems to be the sole claim to fame for the clip. I still dig it, though. The song is still great.
The song itself is a fantastic slice of late 90s alt rock, too. It's built around a solitary, octave riff that plunks back and forth on the low E and A strings, a simple little lick that's memorable and easy to play, which established it as an easy, "Oh yeah I remember that!" kind of a cover for budding bands to pull out of their hats. The verses are long, drawn out calls of teen angsty "What's the point of this?" and "I think you're smart, you sweet thing - tell me your name". Nothing revelatory or incredibly insightful, just fun to sing and easy to learn. The hook is just the band's singer crooning in falsetto and howling the title. I'm being quite reductive here, in all honesty - the song is a pretty solid, catchy piece of alt-rock, even if it's a tad dated. It still works really well, despite the requisite du jour white-boy rock-rap breakdown in the middle section. We can cringe all we want but we still made Limp Bizkit (ugh) famous. So this seems quite tolerable in comparison.
I love this song, in fact. See how I've warmed up to it, even in the short space of writing about how endemic it was of the era? It's simply that catchy and accessible. Not everything needs to be over-wrought and anguished insight, giving way to a secret on the human condition. Hey, the band's Wikipedia page is short enough to be an indication of their cultural footprint; but it's no big crisis, just saying not even a member of the band beefed it up for vanity's sake (which is more common than you would think). Sometimes a guy just wants to rock, and if it requires a song from some bad teen movie soundtracks, so be it. I'll deal with the consequences myself.
I've covered a fair bit of the 1990s and the alt rock contained there in. One of my favorites one hit wonders deserves a little love, so I thought I'd spend today's allocated space on something distinctly turn-of-the-century. Something that contains some elements that are distinctly indicative of the period. I speak of The Flys.
