30 years ago today (April 26), my favorite band released one of my favorite albums. In 1994 my 14th birthday had just passed, I was getting even more into music, and A Date with the Smithereens was MINDBLOWING then. And to me, it still is. This is a RIPPER of a fucking album. From the opening of War for My Mind to lighter tracks to maybe one of my favorite songs of all TIME, Sleep the Night Away.
A Date is also an interesting look back at peak Big Record Label as the rise of big 90s bands like Nirvana (who LOVED the Smithereens, they'd play their tape in their tour van) and kinda 80s rock like the Smithereens (despite being British Invasion flavored) taking a bit of a backseat to heavier, newer rock bands. I loved both.
And 30 years later, I STILL play this one REGULARLY. They recently put out a box set with four 45s and a bunch of extra songs - I don't have the box, but I heard the extra songs, and they are AWESOME.
RIP Pat DiNizio, and long live the Smithereens (who still perform and tour with other singers, something I'm sure Pat would have loved).
Still blown away 30 years later at how damn cool this song is, hearing this when I was 14 when it came out in 1994 was mindblowing. The wild creeping walking bassline, the odd riffs and changes, the guitar and bass flair- just a crazy, fantastic song. What a piece of music.
There's a lot of reasons why the Smithereens are my favorite band, and songs like this are big ones.
I'm a big Surfers fan from way back, was talking to @wendigo about em & remembered wifey recently bought me this book that came out a couple years back, 'What Does Regret Mean?' The book's great, it details a lot of their early shows, and has some cool art.
On the right is a reprint of an early zine they made that came with the book. That's the back, because the cover is GROSS (as are its contents). It consists of crude black & white collage art on some colored pages from a mix of sources, including nasty medical things. 😂
Another one for #MusicWomenWednesday because I won't remember it for next week. This song is SO good and I know I saw this video either in 1994 or pretty soon after, and teenage me had a massive crush on Louise Wener hahaha
30 years ago today (Feb 25, 1994), nine inch nails released the first single from The Downward Spiral, 'March of the Pigs'. I had this record pretty soon after it came out and I played it nonstop. World changing. Step right up.
I've been a huge Foo Fighters fan since early on (I was a big Nirvana fan in the 90s too). I was psyched to get to see Foo in 1996 (edit: originally said 1995) at UMBC (a college!) right after the first album, and then again a couple years later, when they were at a big arena show.
Yesterday I went through and made a fully chronological playlist of ALL my favorite Foo songs-- 49 of them on this list. Even covers and b-sides in here - might be something you haven't heard yet! Dave is a great songwriter. No ballads or anything too light, ALL (mostly) heavier ones here.
I have a funny story, it's pretty long, but just - wild things happen in life sometimes.
I was 19 and my friends and I were in a band in Maryland in 1999 (as I had been since around 1993. I played bass and was one of the band's 3 singers, along with the other guitarists). The drummer was driving his truck to take us all to see Fuel (just looked up the date/venue, thanks, internet - it was May 21, 1999, and we were going to Recher Theatre in Towson, Maryland).
We dug Fuel but weren't familiar with the other bands opening. So we see Fuel, and Finger Eleven opened for them also (who we liked as well, maybe more later? I'm not sure if we did by then?) and also this other band that I didn't know.
So after this first band plays, I see them sitting over at their merch table. Their show had been really good! So I walk up and I'm looking at their stuff. And one of the guys in the band points at the CD on the table (his own album) and just calmly goes, "you should buy it. It's good". And I laughed, and was like, okay. But only if all you guys sign it. And they're like, HELL yeah! They all signed it. I still have it.
That band was then called Virgos Merlot (originally called The Devine, and eventually just Virgos). I later heard them a little on the radio ("Gain" mostly). The lead singer and main songwriter for The Devine, Virgos Merlot AND Virgos was a dude named Brett Hestla. The album was good. DAMN good (for the late 90s).
But keep in mind that Brett Hestla can fucking SING. And he can fucking WRITE GREAT SONGS. And keep in mind, they are BETTER live-- Virgos Merlot could PLAY these songs. The recording is great, and pretty solid, but really doesn't even fully capture how cool they were live. (If you wanna hear the full Signs of a Vacant Soul album, the link is at the end of this post - even just the first song.. the dynamics - check the end of the song, it's a sonic ASSAULT. And the album has a couple decent ballads, too.)
(Also, another YouTube link below- Virgos Merlot did a demo for Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry" and it RIPS. Just a demo. But it's worth a listen.)
Flash forward a few years. I'm in another band in the mid-2000s, another STATE, as I now lived in Florida. (The band I was in at that point sounded kinda more like Fuel -- the one in 1999 didn't, we sounded more like Weezer).
Anyway, my band in the early/mid-2000s often played this club in Fort Lauderdale and Virgos (what they're called then) comes to town. And my band opens for them! Wild. (Couldn't find the date of the show and I don't even remember the name of the venue then to look it up- just a club. My old bands have all been scrubbed from the internet by time, and so have this venue's dates, apparently.)
Back then, Virgos had recently done another album called The Path of Least Resistance (that was REALLY damn good- the FIRST link below is just to "Ammunition", probably my favorite song on the album -- it has a real STP feel).
Path only has that one link on YouTube, the songs aren't even split off haha. Ah, the 2000s. And check that soaring vocal hook RIGHT off the bat in "Collapse", the album's first song, if you listen - the album is GREAT.
Brett was around doing other stuff for a while (I think he was friends with one of the guys in Creed- they were from Florida too). I think even Path gets a little Christian-y (I'm not sure) - but it sounds STELLAR. Just love the guy's voice and songwriting. If you want a SOLID rock band, man, this stuff is ridiculous.
Brett might still put stuff out, I should look it up. Or he might just produce more now. What a singer and songwriter though. Like, WAY better than Creed. Frustrating that bands like this got overlooked and stuff like Creed got so big.
Anyway, if you've read this whole thing, kudos, and hope you dig these tracks.
I lived in New Hampshire for many years and we'd go to Boston for shows a lot- at T.T. the Bears (closed now 😢) and the Midway Cafe.
I saw The Gravel Pit at T.T.'s back in the early 2000s (a band made up of a singer/songwriter GENIUS, Jed Parish, and members of The Figgs).
Not sure how much (if any) The Gravel Pit got around outside of Massachusetts, but their album Silver Gorilla from 1999 is a modern rock MASTERPIECE. Jed's VOICE, LYRICS, and the arrangements-- give it a listen: