I am pretty sure I will forever roam this earth with my left foot firmly placed between my teeth. I think it is some sort of iron or calcium deficiency which causes me to have the inability to say the right thing at a given time. This has nothing to do with music, but I feel the need to share this. So you, my wonderful readers, will understand a little more about me and how my brain works (and why you hate/love (circle one) my column).
I was in Chicago recently with my good friend Frank (name has been changed for the sake of the story). We were in town to see our buddy’s, lets call him Bill, show at the Second City Comedy Club. The plan was that Bill would pick us up after he went to the airport to meet a few of his friends from college and then hit up downtown for the afternoon.
Bill picked us up, we hopped in the car and met Passenger A (Rick) riding shotgun and Passenger B (Al) in the backseat. I sat in the middle of the backseat, which is never comfortable for myself, or the people to either side of me for that matter (I like Little Debbie snacks and I am OK with it).
As we got acquainted, we passed a sign for Wicker Park, and I, being true to form, asked, “Can we drive through Wicker Park to pay respects to Josh Hartnett? So I can see where that no talent piece of poo filmed that horrible movie. That dude couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag.” I was on a roll and while Frank and I were laughing, the rest of the car got quiet, like I had mentioned some sort of taboo. I was a little weirded out. I have never met any self-respecting man who has ever come to the defense of Josh Hartnett.
I just let it slide, but not without some manliness credibility points deducted from the three Hartnett lovers. It turned out that we all had a blast together that night.
The next morning Frank and I woke up at the butt-crack of dawn and headed back to
Eau Claire.
On the ride home, I got an interesting phone call from Bill. Immediately upon the answering of my phone all I heard was him laughing … hysterically. He then went on to tell me that Al, the guy who I was sitting next to in the car, was childhood best friends with Hartnett. It turns out they grew up together in the Minneapolis area and Al was in Chicago for a while visiting Hartnett during the filming of Wicker Park. Seriously, does this happen to normal people?
And so it goes, the story of my life. Although I may bash famous people in my column, actors and musicians alike, I have never done it in front of people I don’t know. I don’t want to end up in a stretcher caused by some rabid Ashley Parker Angel fan (not likely though, he doesn’t have fans especially after his performance on that celebrity cooking show). And now, on to the music.
I have been perturbed by a phrase too often used in the music industry. The concept of “one hit wonders” is something that I think isn’t even feasible. Think about it for a moment. Say that you hear a song on the radio and you really enjoy it. You go out and purchase the album and insert the compact disc into your CD player and take a listen. In order for a band to fall into this infamous category, all but one of the songs on the CD would have to blow. This scenario doesn’t add up.
Sorensen is a senior advertising major and a columnist for The Spectator. “Musicology 211” appears almost every Monday, depending if Sorenson chooses to write his column.
It just goes to show how easily radio stations over play certain acts and how short our attention spans are. If the other songs on the disc don’t jump out at us like the track that originally attracted us to the band, we write them off as a “one hit wonder,” and with this we are doing a complete disservice to ourselves.
Case and point: Harvey Danger. This band emerged in 1997 with the song “Flagpole Sitta” and was a flash-in-the-pan in the public spotlight. An absolute injustice. To be honest folks, “Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone,” is one of the most underrated albums that I have ever come across in years. I bought this album as a young naive junior in high school and never gave it much of a listen other than “Flagpole Sitta.” A few years later I decided to give it another listen, and what I found is a disc that will forever be in my top 10 of all time.
Do yourselves a favor. Head over to your local used CD shop. Look under ‘H’ and you will find that about 15 d-bags didn’t give this album a fair shake. Don’t fret my dear reader, this just means that you will get the disc for five bucks, which is a deal at twice the price.