And they did it without looking like sellouts. It all helped them ride a wave they’d helped to generate. After years in the alt- rock trenches - tours, radio festivals, seldom-aired MTV videos, the whole rigmarole - they swapped their trademark ugly plaid suits for snazzier black and grey numbers. The knucklehead self-mythologizing of opener “Noise Brigade” and closer “1-2-8” suggest the Bosstones were fully aware of what they were doing. On Let’s Face It, the group tamps down its punk, hardcore, and metal influences and ups the ratio of springy ska guitar to thundering power chords. While some of the groups that flew the ska banner had genuine scene cred (No Doubt had been holding it down since the mid-’80s), the Bosstones were the most legit ska band to really blow up. This happened around 1996, when No Doubt, Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, and Sublime started gaining MTV airplay. As grungy guitar bands ruled the scene, the Bosstones bided their time until ska was ready for its close-up. They’d been signed by Mercury in the early ‘90s, at the dawn of the alternative era. Let’s Face It was actually the Bosstones third major-label album. Curiously, the only group with more diversity might have been the Dave Matthews Band. Not for nothing, the Bosstones had a mixed-race lineup featuring two black members-something of a rarity on lilywhite ‘90s alternative radio. They’d never really taken on political songwriting, but they were heavily influenced by The Clash and 2 Tone ska heroes the Specials and the Selecter, who made opposing racism their primary mission. On the album’s title track, the “it” that Dicky thinks we ought to be facing is racism, sexism, and bigotry - a connection he makes at the end of the song: “Let’s try to erase it, it’s time that we face it / Let’s face it, the time is upon us.”ĭef Jam Signee AOE Delivers Experimental 'Homecoming' EP: Premiereīy 1997, the Bosstones had already been a band for more than 10 years. To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony concerning Monica Lewinsky, the key to another Let’s Face It song is understanding what the meaning of what “it” is. He’s been lucky, so he’d like to keep the good times rolling. Rather, he’s saying he’s never had to face all of the “pain” and “tragedy” he mentions in the verses. He’s not saying he’s never needed to rap his knuckles on a wooden surface - that superstitious thing you do to avoid jinxing yourself. In the chorus, when he growls, “I’ve never had to knock on wood,” the phrase “knock on wood” should be offset with commas, parentheses, or em dashes. 1 on Alternative Songs), might’ve struck listeners as more meaningful had Bosstones frontman Dicky Barrett managed to communicate punctuation. The album’s big and bouncy smash single, “The Impression That I Get” (No. It's true, it will remind us that we are, after all, not God.The 7 Best Notorious B.I.G. And your father's name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy. Then, having reached the heights, this all-but-divine race perished in a single night, and nothing was preserved above ground.Īlta, about a million years from now the human race will have crawled up to where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and tragedy. Ethically and technologically they were a million years ahead of humankind, for in unlocking the mysteries of nature they had conquered even their baser selves, and when in the course of eons they had abolished sickness and insanity, crime and all injustice, they turned, still in high benevolence, upwards towards space. In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty, noble race of beings who called themselves the Krell. With The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Dicky Barrett, Joe Gittleman. United Planets Cruiser C57D, now more than a year out from Earth Base on a special mission to the planetary system of the great main-sequence star Altair. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones: The Impression That I Get: Directed by Chris Applebaum. And so, at last, mankind began the conquest and colonization of deep space. Almost at once there followed the discovery of hyperdrive through which the speed of light was first obtained and later greatly surpassed. By 2200 A.D., they had reached the other planets of our solar system. In the final decade of the 21st Century, men and women in rocket ships landed on the moon.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |