In which a cassette from 1992 evokes mix of wistful nostalgia and slight disappointment at one's younger self.
Is that normal for everyone, that you slightly kick yourself for years of wasted popular culture consumption when you could have been filling your eyes and ears with a better caliber of pop culture? I don't regret my metalhead days of being glued to "Headbangers Ball" in the Treadway third floor lounge, but I wish I also could have appreciated at the time music like the Clash (too reggaeish for my tastes then) or the Cure's "Disintegration" (too goth emo, though I didn't yet have that vocabulary).
At the opposite end of the spectrum, how much listening did I give to the Goo Goo Dolls, Live, and Soul Asylum's big commercial breakout, 1992's "Grave Dancers Union." True, this thing churned out adult-alternative hit after hit - "Without a Trace," "Runaway Train," "Somebody to Shove." The album sold more than 3 million copies, "Runaway Train" won them a Grammy, and the band even played at Clinton's 1993 inauguration.
At the time, I disliked this album heavily. If it wasn't Dinosaur Jr., Swervedriver or Nirvana's "Nevermind," I was having none of that.
But it's not bad. Opening track "Somebody to Shove" has an aggressive guitar riff and urgency in singer Dave Pirner's vocals that are stroner than the jam-band-lite grooves that mark many of the tracks. "Keep It Up" could've been an '80s guitar pop hit straight from Triumph or Foreigner, down to the "na na na na na na" refrain.
But there are misses too."I want to live with you in the fifth dimension, in a dream I've never had." Really, "Homesick"? Really?
Soul Asylum, like Live and Goo Good Dolls, should be categorized together - the Luckiest Damn Bar Bands in the World as acts that scaled far bigger heights than I'd ever expect if I was listening to them now for the first time.
