Remember that summer you worked at the Salvation Army on Coon Rapids Boulevard and you went to the drugstore to get a Coke and saw your favorite local band on the cover of Rolling Stone? Wasn't that the worst? How did that happen? More specifically, why did it happen for that album? That album wasn't so good.
Oh, you don't remember? Sorry. Shall we begin again?
A few weeks ago I was in LCG's bathroom playing the 'ponytail or no ponytail for work' game when I hollered across the hall to his post in the computer room.
Me: Of all the bands who have ever let me down, do you know who let me down the most?
LCG: Queensrÿche!
Me: No, it's not Queensrÿche.
LCG: Of course it's Queensrÿche!
Me: Guess again.
LCG: Queensrÿche.
Me: NO! It was Soul Asylum.
LCG: Oh it is not. It's Queensrÿche!
Me: No, see, Queensrÿche let me down gradually. Soul Asylum did it all at once. That concert where they ruined my life was just bonus letdown.
LCG: The show wasn't that bad.
Me: Yes. It was. And I'm still pissed about them getting on the cover of Rolling Stone over Grave Dancer's Union. I hate that record.
LCG: It was Queensrÿche.
Me: SHUT UP!
And then there was some giggling on his part. But he wasn't there for the great Soul Asylum trauma of 1993. He doesn't remember.
Keep in mind, Soul Asylum was my band. Do you hear me? My band. Mine! Mine! Mine! I listened to Hang Time every single morning my freshman year of high school. Well, I got it midway through my freshman year but once I had it, every day. Hang Time was the thing that gave me the ability to get through another day of being in high school.
And the stupid thing was, even though they were a local band, I didn't discover them through the normal channels. Not through any local music programs or from my cool uncle who made me aware of Hüsker Dü and The Replacements. I read about them in a guitar magazine. (My beloved Guitar For The Practicing Musician, if you care.)
The magazine painted an extremely flattering picture of Soul Asylum in general and Hang Time in particular so not long after reading the article I got myself some Hang Time. It is the greatest record in the entire world. Well, it was at the time. But that was before I had met Queen II and Ziggy Stardust. This was early 1989 when I had mostly been listening to Guns N' Roses and Queensrÿche.
I still enjoyed both of those groups, but Soul Asylum was different. Soul Asylum had made Hang Time just for me and I was ever so grateful. While I quite liked GNR, they were too sleazy for me to be able to really relate to their songs. And Queensrÿche, well, you know. Searing beams of light and thunder because the Queen of the Reich is coming in the dead of the night. Great groups, but they were escapism.
But here came Soul Asylum, talking about everyday life in an extremely clever way. And I got the impression that Dave Pirner was always on the verge of defeat. When you are a freshman in high school, you are also always on the verge of some sort of defeat. Dave Pirner was my spokesman! And he was from my metropolitan area. He was probably defeated within twenty miles of my own defeat! Finally, a voice for my generation. And by my generation I mean me.
And as it turned out, I no longer got picked on at school for liking Queensrÿche. Instead I got picked on for liking Queensrÿche and Soul Asylum. Neat. In the meantime I busied myself buying up their earlier albums. Made To Be Broken? Genius! The rest of the pre-Hang Time stuff? Genius! Except I never listened to Say What You Will... that much. I'm going to lump it into the genius category because I can.
Then along came 1990 and the release of And The Horse They Rode In On. Genius! It's not quite as rollicking as Hang Time, but it is fabulous. Fab-u-lous. I listened to it every morning. Unfortunately for me, I never got to see them in concert. While I had cracked my parents into letting me go to the odd arena show here and there, Soul Asylum always played clubs. Sigh. People at my school who happened to see them open for other acts made sure to tell me all about it.
Jump ahead with me to 1992 when I was finally, mercifully out of high school. Sometime in the summer my High School Best Friend who shall be known as BS (for those of you playing the Rocksnobs home game, the friendship that began in first grade didn't make it a year past high school) told me that Soul Asylum would be releasing their new album in the fall. She had read that it was going to be heavily acoustic and was giving me fair warning. I thought it would be great. I was so very, very wrong.
I bought Grave Dancer's Union the day it came out and I didn't like it at all. Somebody To Shove was cool but the rest of the album wasn't working out for me. Too polished, too phony, too sucky. And for reasons beyond my understanding, the album took off. I found the LP three months later and bought it so I could have the complete LP collection. I never listened to that LP. Not once. It eventually got sold and my Soul Asylum album collection ends with And The Horse They Rode In On.
So the album started selling and the next thing you know Pirner has broken up with his girlfriend of nine years (or was it eleven? it was around the decade mark) and was dating Winona Ryder. What? They had videos that were on the MTV. What? The album wasn't that good. It lacked the energy and honesty that had made me love Soul Asylum so very much. I packed it in as a Soul Asylum fan.
And then in the summer of 1993 I had taken a second job at the Salvation Army. I worked overnights and didn't really need a second job, I think I just figured that since I shopped there so much I might as well pick up a couple of shifts. One day I went to the drugstore for a Coke and while in the checkout line I saw the latest Rolling Stone. Soul Asylum was on the cover. The caption read Platinum Punks.
My first thought was, "They aren't punks!" I mean, maybe if they meant the more traditional hoodlum sense of the word it could be true, but I think that good old Rolling Stone meant the punk rock kind of punk. As far as I know, they hadn't been punk since about 1983. Gah! Was that the article where Winona Ryder let the interviewer read her diary? I think it was. Gah! Let's not even discuss the fact that Dave Pirner was an extra in Reality Bites.
Sometime in the mid-nineties, I want to say 1995, they came out with Let Your Dim Light Shine and I only know that because I worked in a record store at the time. It eventually was shortened to Dim Crap Shine in my world. I bought the LP, slit open the plastic, checked the liner notes, saw that Winona Ryder had been thanked, slid the sleeve back into the jacket and never once played the album. I believe I sold it at the same time I sold Grave Dancer's Union. It's all so sad.
Then three years ago I finally got my chance to see Soul Asylum. For a while there they would play a show on Thanksgiving Eve every year and LCG and me went. He was very surprised that I had never seen them. "Even I've seen Soul Asylum!" said he. "Shut up." Midway through the set we went to play pinball. It was killing me. After the show he said, "Boy, they couldn't have picked a worse set list if they had tried." It was mostly stuff from Grave Dancer's Union and albums that came after.
Normally I like it when a band covers their full career (Iron Maiden: please send me Bruce Dickinson's Stranger In A Strange Land costume. I'll pay shipping costs.) but not when half of that career sucks. Forever after that concert has been known as, "The Night Soul Asylum Ruined My Life By Sucking." LCG claims it wasn't that bad. I don't think he was ever a Hang Time fan.
Just the other day I was looking for something to wear to work and I saw my Soul Asylum Clam Dip And Other Delights shirt in the closet. That was given to me by a co-worker who had outgrown it and I had forgotten it was there. Then songs from Clam Dip started going through my head and I got all disgruntled again and was still disgruntled when I got to LCG's house.
Me: Of all the bands who have ever let me down, do you know who let me down the most?
LCG: Queensrÿche!
Me: It's still not Queensrÿche.
He really wants it to be Queensrÿche and it will never be Queensrÿche. They started slipping gradually so it didn't take hold (go ahead, make a Take Hold Of The Flame joke, I can wait) until Promised Land. But Soul Asylum, they went out of favor with a bang, and I never saw it coming.