Have you ever looked at all the different genres on iTunes? It's ridiculous. I mean, way back when they were doling out titles the first few genre names were good: Rock and Roll (a euphemism for sex) was cool, Jazz had a nice onomatopoeic vibe and the Blues suited the material perfectly. Even Folk was a decent moniker for that genre. So you can imagine my surprise when circa 1993-94 I read an article about Emo, the 'new' genre spearheaded by bands like Promise Ring, Jimmy Eat World and Sunny Day Real Estate. The description of Emo made it sound just like a retread of the Cure, Depeche Mode and a handful of other 1980s bands who wrote emotional music with very little levity. While I wasn't buying the genre name, I certainly liked what I heard from the bands within the genre.
The clincher for me was seeing the album artwork for Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary album: Fisher-Price 'Little People' engaged in a number of real-life scenarios, complicated by their lack of limbs. I was actually expecting music that would be somewhat humorous, given the album art but they turned out to be kids in serious need of some hugs. This was heady stuff but it was played with such precision and conviction that you forgave the overly seriousness nature of it. One listen to a track like "7" and I was hooked, overly serious or not, these guys had chops. Coincidence or not, I gravitated to the SDRE songs with numbers for names as "47" became another favorite. With no band photos, cryptic song titles and this being the pre-Internet era, it was difficult to find out much about the band. They killed it live though as a Mid 90s Metro show proved. And where the first album was a bit confusing with the contrast of the album art and the music itself, the second album, alternately known as LP2 or The Pink Album was quite simple, a pink cover and nine taut songs. And whaddya know, I was drawn to another 'numbered' song: "8" which had been previously released on the Batman Forever Soundtrack.
The band broke up not long after LP2 came out and 3/4 of the core band (minus lead singer Jeremy Enigk, who was born again) joined Dave Grohl's first post-Nirvana band, Foo Fighters. It wasn't until Sup Pop re-released the first two albums in 2009 that the entire core quartet reunited and toured. And with those re-releases came remastering and considerable annotation, finally.
Have a great weekend, enjoy the music.
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