I'm probably the only person in the world that was introduced to Sarah McLachlan through Taco Bell. Yes, go back and read that again... Taco Bell. You see back when I was in high school the most progressive radio station was WKEE FM and it played pop music. The other option was MTV but this was the time music videos were starting to be pushed a side.
While at the Taco Bell in Ironton they were selling a CD entitled Do Something, I have no clue what it was for now but it was a charity and I think Andrew Shue was involved. It was a pretty good CD and I still have the disc today. My favorite song on Taco Bell CD was Possession. I had never heard anything that sounded like that and I am a sucker for a female singer, still am today. Have a decent rock sound with a female lead and I am in as a fan for life. As I continue on I met a cool chick while working at a Ponderosa Steakhouse and Buffet in Russell, Ky.
Tiffany hung out and we both loved Sarah McLachlan. I even went to Lillith Faire, don't you judge me! I got to see Sarah McLachlan, Jewel and another band I loved called Luscious Jackson. Even beyond Tiffany my college friend Sara (I know, same name but different spelling... follow along) traveled to Toledo to see her perform. McLachlan has had a rep of being a "chick" musician and it sucks for guys like me. I have to deal with guys judging me even though I went to concerts filled with women. Sarah McLachlan is very talented and stop judging guys you enjoy her sound.
How recent do I have a recollection of this song? I was in Chicago a week ago at the Hard Rock Hotel. What do I hear in the lobby, I Wish. I immediately said, "Is that Skee-lo?" Of course all the suits at the Bio Conference waiting for the elevator had no clue what I was talking about.
1994 you had gangsta rap every where but every once in a while something different and a little od. Skee Lo's I Wish fit that to a tee. This is one of the few rap that I know most of the words and will use the lyrics in my Facebook status just to see who know the song.
Once I was in college I let this song fall to the way side but nostalgia would catch up to me and as I worked in Columbus, Oh in the early 2000s I Wish would re-enter my life. Even as I moved to Raleigh I would find others that enjoy the lyric mastery of I Wish like "Ah yes, ain't this fresh, everybody wanna get down with that." Oh Skee-Lo I shall never forget your skills and fresh rhythms ever again.
1992 I was a Sophomore in a very small southern Ohio town and I happened to be named Jeremy. Of course a song with the same name was awesome, well it could have been better. It's about a kid killing himself in front of his classmates. It could have had a happier ending like Jeremy became the awesomest person in the world, but I'll take what I can get. Grunge was in full swing and looked like everything out of Seattle was going to turn to gold.
At first I was not a fan of Pearl Jam, I heard Alive and didn't like it but the next single Even Flow was more pleasing to my ears and that Christmas I got Ten as one of my first CDs (along with Dr Feelgood by Motley Crew and Amy Grant's Heart In Motion... yes that's me in a nutshell). When Jeremy was release I thought it was great as I stated above a side effect of the song started. Everyone had to sing "Jeremy spoke in..." in a bad Eddie Veder impersonation. Still to this day I have not gone a year without someone singing that song to me.
As much as I like the song I get tired of hearing it sung to me. I even took it off my iPod because I know I will hear it from someone sooner or later and I'll want to punch them. So if you know a Jeremy I urge you NOT to sing this some to them, maybe I need to start a support group over this.
I was walking across the Ironton High School stage when I was stopped by friend named Matt. We had a friend attending Ohio University and gave him a CD I had to listen to. He made me put on the dead phones and 40 seconds in my face changes and I hear Zack De La Rockha scream killing in the name of and this wave of sound pummels me. I had never heard anything like this. Sure grunge was around and I was into Nirvana and Green Day but this was pure anger and aggression. Nothing I heard sounded like this, bands like Linkin Park were almost a decade away. This was anti everything and as teenagers my friends and I hate it up like it was pudding. I didn't know who Leonard Peltier was or what the Rage was so upset about, but railed against the man and I was for that. Just like millions of other teenagers I bought this album and more like it.
Of course I grew out of this phase, but every once in a while when I get a little frustrated a good Rage Against The Machine song will angry up the blood and feel like taking on the man.
One of the music styles that I am no where near the main stream is Celtic rock. You may ask what the hell is Celtic rock? Well it's rock n' roll with a fiddle or bagpipes and in the case of Seven Nations it's both! The way it works, or at least the way I think it works, the fiddle acts as the rhythm guitar in the group and the bagpipes equals a keyboard or if you want to go all nerd rock, a keytar.
How in the world did I get into Seven Nations? I have to thank my friend Nancy whom I met working at the Bob Evan's in Ashland Kentucky. She had room mates that had brothers in the Celtic games and the room mate Steph E knew Seven Nations. They bought me a CD when I visited them in Lexington and from that time forward I have enjoyed the bagpipes in a rock band.
My memory flashbacks do not stop there, while working with a reporter in Raleigh, NC (who we shall call Serg). He enjoyed my slightly off main stream musical sense but never could figure out my Cletic rock infatuation. He didn't hate it but I loved playing it just to get a reaction out of him. Most days the iPod just would randomly play Seven Nations every time he was in the truck. Of course if it was near St Patrick's Day it was Seven Nations all the time. Sergpreferred not to work with me on that day.
The Spice Girls are not in my musical wheel house. If you want to keep the baseball references going this is a wild pitch Rick Vaughn style. But I think the Spice Girl permeatedeveryone's lives, even if we didn't want them in it. Once example is a road in Ohio named Spiceland and every time I passed it I had to make a bad joke about the Spice Girls.
This is more than just about bad road puns, it's about Rodgers Hall at Bowling Green State University and my roommate Shorty. He's 6"10' get it, it's because he's tall, I digress. We were sitting in our dorm room watching a request show on MTV. The English host read the request and it was for some group called the Spice Girls. We watch the video and kind of laughed, we thought an obscure some from the 80s. The video quality appeared to be old and we thought we'd never hear the song again. A week later it was freaking everywhere. We finally realized that this was a new group and it was not played as a joke.
It felt like the Spice Girls did take over the world and there was nothing we could to to avoid it. Before we knew it there was a movie and one was in Playboy. It was a whirlwind that destroyed everything in it's path, I even think Shorty bought the album.
There are very few bands that I can say I heard them before everyone else and the one that I started listening to from the beginning was Sixpence None The Richer. To be honest, the above song Kiss Me is one of my least favorite songs by SNtR. Instead of doing a post on this one song I'm going to do it on how Sixpence and I followed a similar path for four years.
My senior year in high school I was at an event called Summer In The Son at a small Christian college in Grayson, Ky. You have to realize something, Christian music at that time was pretty bad. When Amy Grant's El Shaddai is big then you have an issue, but there was a hope and some better music was starting to come out. While at Summer in the Son I saw a magazine that was devoted to music but unlike most Christian print they actually reviewed "secular" music as well. I bought the magazine and saw an ad for a band named Sixpence None The Richer. It mentioned that billboard called them one of the best new bands of 1993.
A month or so later I was the the "big mall" in Huntington, WVa when I was bored and walked into the christian book store. There I see Sixpence None The Richer's Fatherless and the Widow. I was still skeptical and instead of spending the christian book store CD price of $21 (never could figure out why they always charged more for CDs) I bought the $11 cassette. What I heard was a surprising sound, it was actually interesting. Very light, up beat guitar with a ethereal voiced singer. The difference between the rest of the christian music I heard was the actual lyrics. They were darker and sounded like my problems in life. I didn't want to hear all is good in the world, I was a teenager and feeling that typical mid 90s teen angst. I had that cassette for years and I played it so much that it began to warp from usage. Yet, they had that one song that did not fit, on Fatherless and the Widow it was Trust. It was that christian formula that was pounded out since the 70s. Almost every album I bought of theirs had that one song that did not fit.
A few years later they release a more edgy album full of harder guitar riffs and a full band sound, but the voice and the hurt was still withing each song. This album followed my personal path again, I was in college and listening to more college radio rock. I still felt the same way inside and the band continued to keep my spirits up with a true to life message. Then there was a long break in music, Sixpence started fighting with record labels and went quite for a while. I continued playing both CDs till in 1997 they finally released a self titled album.
Sixpence started experimenting with instruments and sound but still the message was still there. The band was growing up and so was I, my time in college was drawing closer to the end. But something on the album was a little off and that something was Kiss Me. It didn't fit anywhere on the album. Looking back I can see they wanted this to be their start into the big time. They promoted Kiss Me for over a year and released multiple music videos for it. Finally She's All That picked Kiss Me up as the lead song and Kiss Me was everywhere. I continued to support the band but this is where our paths started to part.
It appeared Sixpence did not know what to do next. They fought their record label and wanted to re-release the record with a cover song and release that as a new single. The Internet was young and email lists were the best way to keep in touch with other people who had the same interest. The Sixpence fans wanted a song called I can't Catch to be released next. It was my favorite song on the album along with many other fans on these emails. But record label people did not like it released the new album and the song did not do so well.
Sixpence released another covered Don't Dream It's Over and that went nowhere. Multiple people left the band and after another label change released a new album. By this time we had parted paths. I no longer was interested. They tried to go full main stream but they lost their heart. I don't mind bands crossing over boundaries set in sand but when you change what you are to do it that's the issue. Sixpence changed themselves away from what brought them to the table.
With the last year in a half of my life in chaos, I turned back to the old albums and they helped me through this time of economic strife and unemployment. I can always say when Kiss Me comes on the radio t I heard them before anyone else and remember the music that I enjoyed.
Through out my life I can hear a song and it takes me back and brings back memories. This blog is devoted to those songs and bringing back those memories.
