Next April this album will turn twenty! It’s not tough to
remember how huge it was. For most of 1994, all of 1995 and a big chunk of
1996, Live one of the most overplayed bands on the planet. It was during that
period that “Lightning Crashes” went from beautiful to annoying… for me anyway.
I still can’t listen to that song.
When Throwing Copper came out, I was a college graduate,
five years out of high school and still friends with a small pocket of my ’89
alum. It was funny to watch them “discover” this band from York, Pa. “I bet you
never heard of Live,” they’d say to me because they knew that’s all I did was
listen to music and honestly thought I hadn't heard of them. The same assholes
that blasted me for throwing Mental Jewelry on at parties a few years before
were now trying to one up with me with a band they didn't have time for when
the radio wasn't playing them. Idiots. If I had a nickel for every time somebody didn't listen to me when I recommended something great to them. I still wouldn't have as many if I had one for every time I ignored somebody else's recommendation. I'm a dick, other people are stupid!
I was definitely happy for Live. It was nice to see a blue
collar band making it big… really big.
Going into this listen, I was looking forward to hearing
“Shit Towne” for the first time in a while and I was hoping for a forgotten gem
or two. I definitely found one in “Top.” I don’t think this song was a single
for radio, but I definitely remember hearing it a lot back in the day. “Horse”
is a lot of fun with its Country twang too!
The album's low point is actually kind of hysterical. "Waitress" is like the PSA for "tipping your waitress." She's poor and probably has kids and a boyfriend with a drug habit, so give her a couple bucks, won't ya? Ed Kowalczyk - Patron Saint of Waiting Tables! PRAY FOR US!
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It was interesting listening to
Fuel right after Live. I never thought too much about how similar Fuel’s sound
was to Live's, but listen to them back to back.
Fuel wasn't from Harrisburg, Pa, just
a thirty minute drive from York, but they moved their after forming in
Tennessee. Maybe it was that proximity to Live’s early stomping grounds that
caused the similarities. Or, just the typical copycat music industry M.O. “We’re
looking for a band that sounds like Live. Can you sound like Live?”
Regardless, I like this record. I
most have hit play on “Shimmer” a thousand times while working in radio and
I’ll never get sick of it. “Sunburn” is just another great Rock song.
I was shocked at how much I
remembered after the four singles on Sunburn. Second half of this album is
pretty solid. “Song For You,” “Mary Pretends,” and “New Thing” all could have
been big singles for Fuel.
I doubt I’ll listen to anything
else from Fuel this year, so I’ll tell you this anecdote from my days of
working at a Modern Rock radio station in Philadelphia.
In the fall of 2000 “Hemorrhage (In
My Hands)” was released as a single from Fuel’s second album, Something Like
Human. I was on the air one Saturday afternoon right after we added the
song to our playlist.
Quick Sidebar – Every Tuesday radio
stations add new songs that record labels are releasing for radio play. Ten
years ago, a radio station playing new music would add three or four songs a
week. Sometimes they’d add one or none. It depended on the week. They still do,
but probably a lot less on average. The radio station will play that song in a
new rotation for a while, meaning it’ll get more spins a week than a song
that’s been around for a while. In a couple of weeks, they’ll know if they've got a “hit” or a “stiff” on their hands. A hit could get upwards of 40 spins a
week while it’s living out its infancy. If it’s a really big hit, it’ll stick
around for however long the audience likes it and could settle into a nice
rotation of five or six spins a week until the end of time. "Stiffs" get dropped… never to be heard from again.
And just to recap from a previous
post. EVERY song you hear on the radio, 99.99% of the time, was programmed the
day before. The DJ comes in and plays all the songs in order as they appear on
the music log for the day, which is broken into hours. You could call any
request line for any radio station in the country at noon and ask the jock,
“what is the station playing at 10:50PM tonight?” Most likely it’ll be the first song after a commercial break and they’ll know exactly what they’re playing.
Because I was working double duty
for a magazine and a radio station in 2000, I knew “Hemorrhage (In My Hand)”
very well before that first time I played it on the radio that Saturday.
Radio
will always front sell a new song they've just added, meaning the DJ will say
this is “Blah Blah Blah” by Blah right before they play it. So, everybody isn't sitting in their car saying, “Who is this?”
I saw Fuel on the log and
introduced the song on the radio. “New music from Fuel! This is “Hemorrhage” on
Blah 100.” I didn't think anything of it and then the hotline rang. The station’s music director was
listening, heard me introduce the song, and called in to correct me.
(The hotline is basically the Bat
Phone. It’s a number only people that work at the station have and use to get a
hold of the DJ on the air right away.)
Usually on Monday or Tuesday a
radio station will have a music meeting with the program director, assistant
program director, music director and maybe a few DJs or other knowledgeable
people at the station. Apparently at
this week’s meeting the station’s brain trust had decided to rename Fuel’s new
single.
“We feel that the word “hemorrhage” is too ugly and conjures up too
many bad images of bleeding, so we've decided to call it “In My Hands”
instead. And they don’t even really say the word in the song, so it makes
sense,” explained the music director to me and from his tone sounded like he
was still trying to convince himself. Never mind that two other stations in
town are also playing the song and calling it what it’s called. The music
director pointed out that it was printed on the log as “In My Hands” and
therefore that is what I should have said.
As I hung up the phone I remembered
thinking “Yeah that’s what I’ll do, you pansies,” and then went out of
my way to say “Hemorrhage” as much as possible. I even started thinking of
clever ways to say “bloody tampon” whenever I could work it in, usually during
weather updates.
I did weekends on that station in
Philadelphia, at the time the fifth largest market in the country, for almost three years and made $12 an hour. I was passed over for two full time positions and
when I left to pursue other options in New York City, I was treated like an
asshole. PFFFFFFFT!
HEMORRHAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had read about Palma Violets in a
music blog at some point in 2012 and listened to “Best Of Friends” quite a bit as I waited for their debut, 180.
"Best Of Friends" is Garage Rock at it's finest. It sounds like a lost classic from The Animals. The Brits loved the song so much it was voted NME's Song Of The Year! It's got a sloppy sing-a-long vibe that's just infectious.
I really dig the old school sound
coming from a bunch of younger musicians in the UK right now. Jake Bugg, The
Strypes and Palma Violets. I remember liking Minnesota's Howler too from listening to them
earlier this year.
Unfortunately, 180 isn't so great.
I love the sound of the band, but the songs just aren't there. I was hoping for a ruckus romp of Rock decadence but it’s a
mid-tempo trudge through shallow water. Wah-wah.
I will spend some more time with it, because the single is so good!
However, I did find some joy in
“Johnny Bagga’ Donuts” and the weirdly long “14.”
Tomorrow I will listen to Poster Children Daisy Chain Reaction, Samiam You Are Freaking Me Out, and Suede Bloodsports.
Here is the April Playlist!
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