1992 Archives – How Good It Is

123–Candy Everybody Wants

So this week has been a brief return to work for me, as my school has been preparing for what education is going to look like when classes resume in September. And it’s been playing havoc with me. It’s a stressful time to be a teacher, you bet.

On top of that, I got my second shingles vaccination early this week, and I didn’t have the best of reactions to it, losing a couple of days to some of the side effects. It sucked hard, but it beats having shingles, given what I saw my mother and my father-in-law go through. I’ll take two days of chills over a month of painful rash.

ANYway, today’s episode comes to you as the result of a request by Paul Kondo over at Podcast Gumbo. Paul has done nice stuff for the show a few times, and he had me on as his guest a few weeks ago, so when he said he wanted to hear me talk about a 10,000 Maniacs song, how could I refuse?

I didn’t really have an excellent reason for choosing this song other than I like it, despite its rather dark message. But that became part of the story, of course. Natalie Merchant-era songs from 10,000 Maniacs had that habit of disguising rather incisive lyrics with jaunty melodies so it took the average listener a little bit of time to realize what they were really listening to.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:15 — 11.0MB)

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Click here for a transcript of this episode.

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Episode 105–Under the Covers, Part 6

True story: I hire models from Fiverr to do these pictures. All three of them, coincidentally, are from the same (non-US) nation. I don’t do that on purpose but I’m starting to think I have a “type”.

Thanks for your patience as the show migrates from one server to another. As I noted on the social media, I’m working hard to make it as invisible as possible if you listen via Google or Apple or Spotify, etc. And the website here is going to look kind of weird for awhile with a lot of double posts for previous episodes, until I pick my way through and fix them, one by one. Fun, Fun, Fun!

This week, we’re taking yet another look at a few songs which you may not have known were covers, and nearly all of them were suggested by a listener named Kim, who didn’t feel that a shout-out was necessary, but obviously I don’t feel the same way. Kim had a list of songs that could work, and I said “Sure” to most of them, with a single exception, and that’s mostly because the story is a little convoluted and I may have to turn it into an episode of its own down the road a ways.

Anyway: a new hosting partner means a new player here on the webpage for you, and I do have a little bit of customizing control over it (something I didn’t previously have at all), so I’m happy to hear your suggestions. And, of course, please let me know if you hit any weird technical snags.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:30 — 14.1MB)

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Finally, as promised: here’s the original French song I discussed during the show. Check out those lyrics; it’s rather poignant.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Episode 101–In Bloom

You should be forewarned that this episode takes a brief detour into subject matter that’s a little bit on the touchy side. Specifically, there’s a mention of a musician’s gender identity and how it’s affected their relationship with their fans and the media. I hope that’s not a problem for ye.

Anyway, you’re getting two episodes this week, to make up for the lapse I did two weeks ago. So either this is the bonus episode because it’s Monday, or yesterday was the bonus episode and this one is a day late. How you choose to view that, I care not. Anyway, are we good now?

But the members of Nirvana had a tough time dealing with their quick rise to fame in 1990 and 91. They discovered that a lot of their new fans would be bopping about and singing along with their songs without having a lot of idea what the songs meant.

There’s an old Steve Martin routine where he’s playing the banjo onstage, and he comments that “The banjo is such a happy instrument–you can’t play a sad song on the banjo – it always comes out so cheerful.” He even makes an attempt at it: “Oh death, and grief, and sorrow, and murderrrrr…” and that’s pretty much what Nirvana was going through, but in the other direction. Their songs had the benefit of being very catchy, even if the subject matter was kind of dark and alienated, so people were latching on to the hooks (‘scuse the pun, there) in the songs and not really thinking about the lyrics, or the emotions evoked. This provided a weird disconnect for them, and Cobain finally took that emotion and put it into song form. Which didn’t really help, of course, because now they’re singing along to a song that’s basically mocking them.

As the fourth single from Nevermind, “In Bloom” was Top Five in the US on the Album and Mainstream Rock charts, and Top 30 pretty much everywhere else. When the Singles box set came out in 1995, it re-surfaced on a few European charts for a bit. But at that point Cobain had already died by suicide, and Nirvana was no more.