— Tom Doyle
I may have been a bit too young at the time and living over 3,000 kilometers away but the late-eighties/early-nineties' Boston scene felt like the sort of thing that you only heard about after the fact. There were all these deeply influential bands with silly names whose actual music never seemed to get played. It was as if we were being forced to seek it out which was no easy task in the era which predated YouTube and Spotify. College radio supposedly adored these bands but why were they never being played, at least when I was (irregularly) tuning in?
'What about the Pixies?' you may be asking. What about them? Yes, they were the closest thing Boston had to a breakthrough act (scratch that: Bell Biv Devoe had been far bigger but I guess they don't count) but it's telling that their popularity only grew following the release of 1991's Trompe le Monde and the start of Frank Black's solo career. By the end of the nineties, the band had arguably as many fans who were Millennials as Generation Xers. Yes, they influenced thousands and people who had good taste in music liked them and all that nonsense but what kind of impact did have on the music scene in 1993?
It was only following the grunge explosion that the public seemed ready for the 'Seattle of the East' (as absolutely no one called it) but this happened to coincide with scene being ripped apart. Pixies were no longer together and the likes of Dinosaur Jr and Buffalo Tom ('you mean they aren't from Buffalo?') never had much commercial potential so it was left to The Breeders, Juliana Hatfield Three and The Lemonheads reap the benefits, modest though they mostly were. Erstwhile Pixie Kim Deal gave The Breeders a number forty hit with "Cannonball" but otherwise it was Evan Dando who made the most of this upsurge of Beantown interest.
Initially released in the summer of 1992, "It's a Shame About Ray" failed to do much in a Britain that didn't seem especially interested in American alternative rock that either didn't come from Seattle or wasn't recorded by R.E.M. It's understandable in a way: with James and Lightning Seeds around, there wasn't much call for indie pop that came from outside of the UK. But The Lemonhead's thrashier but still unnecessary cover of the Simon & Garfunkel classic "Mrs Robinson" took them into the Top 20 which presented them with an opportunity to capitalise with some of leader Evan Dando's own work, which, at its best, was as good as anything bloody Paul Simon ever cleverly put to paper.
A re-release of the title track from their acclaimed 1992 album would have made sense but it was decided that a double A-side of deep cuts "Confetti" and "My Drug Buddy" would follow their breakthrough hit. Neither really worked. While the former was too loud and lacked the hooks of Dando's best work, the latter suggested the singer's fondness for country music but smacked of that favourite album track that the general public know little about. Neither song made much of an impression, coming up just short of the Top 40 which did have the upside of allowing "My Drug Buddy" to remain a relative obscurity for devotees while being unheard by the masses. But their momentum was already beginning to fade.
At long last, "It's a Shame About Ray" was given a second chance at some chart action. Despite being far more appropriate for single release, it could only spend a pair of weeks in the thirties before fading away. It's no sure-fire number one smash or anything but had it been re-released earlier, it could have given them a hit similar in size to "Mrs Robinson" while also helping to drive up sales of their current album (which did return to the lower reaches of the LP charts at the same time). Bad timing, then. (Indeed, the other thing they could have done was to have them sit on it for a while and wait until it was closer to summer when their brand of sunny indie pop would've really prompted the toes to tap)
American alternative had been prone to self-importance especially with people like Kurt Cobain, Michael Stipe and Eddie Vedder in the limelight. (Yes, this overlooks the fact that the troubled Nirvana frontman had a playful and sometimes cutting sense of humour) On the horizon was a new generation of good-for-nothings who smoked lots of dope, wore those ghastly knit hoodies and made light of absolutely everything under the sun in their songs. Dando seemed to be one of the few songwriters of the time who could combine the feeling of the former with the lightness of the latter. Grunge acts like Alice in Chains (also reviewed this fortnight much to the displeasure of Tom Doyle) and Soundgarden were beginning to sound more and more like the metal bands they were meant to have buried a year or two earlier; it was left to the remnants of those from the Boston scene (didn't it have a name like Grunge or Madchester or Shoegaze?) to pick up the pop slack, which Dando did albeit only some of the time.
With Nirvana still on top and a selection of outstanding groups of varying genres and subgenres spread throughout the United States, The Lemonheads ought to have been a part of an American pop-rock renaissance. Yet, 1993 proved to be the end of an era for a number of groups. Jellyfish released their brilliant second album Spilt Milk which nevertheless failed to sell and cause the Bay Area band to fall apart. Uncle Tupelo really started to come into their own with fourth album Anodyne but its release and the group's subsequent tour was blighted by the growing schism between co-leaders Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy. Even Nirvana were almost finished with Cobain's life coming undone throughout the course of the year. For his part, Dando remained a Lemonhead but his bandmates came and went. His talent was always there but his muse was erratic. Fans and critics may have praised what they were doing at the time but they could have amounted to a whole lot more.
Finally, a comment about Dando's status as a supposed indie heart throb. He never struck me at the time as being anything special in the looks department and the females and guys who fancied other guys seemed to agree. (He was seldom a topic of conversation but it says a lot that he wasn't brought up much if ever) Looking back now, however, he does have those prized slacker good looks that clearly did the likes of Gram Parsons and Dennis Wilson well with the womenfolk. In the seventies this wouldn't have stood out as much since it wasn't unusual for rock stars to be dishy but by the nineties this was much more found in the boy band pin ups. Indie heroes weren't just meant to sound like Frank Black but they were apparently expected to look like him too.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Heaven 17: "Penthouse and Pavement"
I'm no fan of The Lemonheads but they're easy winners as my selection for this issue's Single of the Fortnight Best New Single due in large part to the appalling selection of new releases in the running alongside it. Virtually everything else on offer is wretched, except for this barely passable remix of a near hit for former Human League members Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware (as well as some singer they had with them...Glenn something). For a decade that everyone in the nineties liked to take shots at, the eighties sure had plenty of splendid pop. "Penthouse and Pavement" didn't need a Tommy D remix in order for it to age well, it just needed to be re-released at a time when the pop scene was so dire that it sounded great by comparison. Sad to think that synth-pop was drawing to a close just as we needed it more than ever.
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