By the time the rock band Everclear made it big in the mid-to-later 1990s, I was too old and too busy working to support a family to pay much attention to music anymore. But it slowly seeped into my awareness that Everclear was the rarest of groups on MTV, one that told you what life in your 30s is really like: in a word, expensive.
Lyrics for I Will Buy You a New Life. (There are lots of country songs like this, but rew rock songs.)
And here's Everclear leader Art Alexakis's song about the anti-Ernie Sailer:
BTW, the lead singer... he's from -- wait for it --Portland.
ReplyDeleteI still enjoy listening to Everclear sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI thought Art Alexakis was particularly skilled at narrating the California dream gone bad for the '90s generation of sub-middle class whites. The previous generations had all gone AWOL, and the only reality left was money, drugs, and sex.
Everclear: The Affordable Family Formation band
ReplyDeleteWhile Steve & his family were putting Ernie to rest, I noticed two huge iSteve themes in the news, involving affordable family formation & subprime loans.
It's pretty clear to me that the author of the first piece, Mike Shedlock, is in the greater iSteve-o-sphere:
"Actual" New Home Sales First 6 Months of 2012 vs. Prior Years; Reflections on the Housing Recovery
Mike Shedlock
July 26, 2012
finance.townhall.com
PNG GRAPHICS
...Reader Tim Wallace provides a look at actual new home sales, six-month running totals, not seasonally adjusted, not annualized, vs. prior years...
Debt overhang is immense, and student debt is particularly problematic. Lack of jobs coupled with high student debt is capping family formation. Kids out of college are deep in debt and holding off getting married, starting families, and therefore buying houses...
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GM Ramps Up Risky Subprime Auto Loans To Drive Sales
By DAVID HOGBERG
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 07/27/2012 06:07 PM ET
news.investors.com
...Near the end of 2010, GM acquired a new captive lending arm, subprime specialist AmeriCredit. Renamed GM Financial, it has played a significant role in GM's growth .
The automaker is relying increasingly on subprime loans, 10-Q financial reports shows.
Potential borrowers of car loans are rated on FICO scores that range from 300 to 850. Anything under 660 is generally deemed subprime.
GM Financial auto loans to customers with FICO scores below 660 rose from 87% of total loans in Q4 2010 to 93% in Q1 2012...
The guitar riff to "Santa Monica" may be the easiest riff in the entire history of rock & roll. I can play it and I don't even know how to play guitar.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that..it is hard to keep up with what is decent in the newer music. The chords in the first song give it a slight Beatles? Traveling Wilburys? sound.
ReplyDeleteWe may yet find that some early 2000s band had the housing bubble nailed, too.
AllanF--I think he's from southern California, but moved to Portland.
ReplyDeleteI concur with David F. I always thought the Everclear song "Santa Monica" had a Steve Sailerish "the California (and American) dream is dead" vibe to it.
ReplyDeleteIn the new super-long profile of Springsteen in the New Yorker, the Boss goes into his own father issues and quotes someone (I forget, John Hammond maybe) as saying that all rock and roll boiled down a scream of "Daddy!"
ReplyDeleteNot a huge hit, but for reality rock how about "I'm an Adult Now" by Pursuit of Happiness?
ReplyDeleteI'm An Adult Now lyrics
Well, I don't hate my parents
I don't get drunk just to spite them
I've got my own reasons to drink now
Think I'll call my dad up and invite him
I can sleep in till noon anytime I want
Though there's not many days that I do
Gotta get up and take on that world
When you're an adult it's no cliche it's the truth
(Chorus)
'Cause I'm an adult now
I'm an adult now
I've got the problems of an adult
On my head and on my shoulders
I'm an adult now
I can't even look at young girls anymore
People will think I'm some kind of pervert
Adult sex is either boring or dirty
Young people they can get away with murder
I don't write songs about girls anymore
I have to write songs about women
No more boy meets girl boy loses girl
More like man tries to figure out what the hell went wrong
I can't take any more illicit drugs
I can't afford any artificial joy
I'd sure look like a fool dead in a ditch somewhere
With a mind full of chemicals
Like some cheese-eating high school boy
Sometimes my head hurts and sometimes my stomach hurts
And I guess it won't be long
Till I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of people whose necks and backs are aching
Whose sight and hearing's failing
Who just can't seem to get it up
Speaking of hearing, I can't take too much loud music
I mean I like to play it, but I sure don't like the racket
Noise, but I can't hear anything
Just guitars screaming, screaming, screaming
Some guy screaming in a leather jacket
Wooah!
(Chorus)
Isn't the lead singer a convert to Islam?
ReplyDeleteOff Topic but here's a video of the "running of the bulls" in whitopia Seattle:
ReplyDeletehttp://video.seattletimes.com/1735633681001/bulls-eye-view-of-queen-anne-running-of-the-bulls/
Yeah, they really are the anti-Beach Boys. Listen to the harmonies at the beginning of 'So Much For the Afterglow' (great song to drive fast to... if you live somewhere you can drive fast).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v6c7vJW_2Q
"Father of Mine" is a great song, but from what I understand, Alexakis abandoned a kid of his own years ago.
ReplyDeleteAwful song.
ReplyDeleteOther father songs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDX41GcA1PA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH46SmVv8SU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jek6iP6AuAQ
But this guy probably never knew his dad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDxgSvJINlU
Favorite movie dad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoqx1-d9Rg0
"I always thought the Everclear song "Santa Monica" had a Steve Sailerish "the California (and American) dream is dead" vibe to it."
ReplyDeleteAin't there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?
While I wasn't a huge Everclear fan and rarely care about a song's lyrics, I liked hearing them on the radio and realized they were insightful compared to the Alt rockers of the 1990's. "Santa Monica" was a song I felt is so catchy that I doubt people paid much attention to the lyrics. I caught the California-dream-gone-wrong vibe not only from them, but also many years earlier from Black Flag's "White Minority".That could have also been one of the under currents fueling the anger of the suburban faction of Southern California's early hardcore scene.
ReplyDeleteOr, to go all the way back to the title song of X's 1980 album "Los Angeles."
ReplyDelete"Isn't the lead singer a convert to Islam?"
ReplyDeleteNo, he's a liberal Christian. You are thinking of the white rapper Everlast.
Tom Waits and 16 horsepower songs are the steve saileriest. They perfectly articulate the American dream gone wrong.
ReplyDelete"That's the Way love goes" by Merle Haggard helped me when I lost my wife. It might help you remember how your dad helped you and help you cry.
ReplyDeleteRobert Hume
The music to much of this song is like a driving, guitar-heavy "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay". Not very inspired. I like the depiction of the "scared white boy in a black neighborhood" though.
ReplyDeleteThis song was huge to me at the time. My mother was dying and I was in love with a girl and both ended badly! The lowest point of my life!! Interesting that you would pick this 'un,steve.
ReplyDelete"Aint there one song that can make me...cry?" Yes listen to Phil Ochs' song "When I'm Gone" as done by Kim and Reggie Harris. If that doesnt bring a tear to your eyes than I guess I'm not the man you thought I was...or you're not...or...
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteYou have everything it takes to produce a great and much needed book/movie/online video story of the things that have gone so wrongly in recent decades, their simple causes and the contrasting story of the many things right about your late father, his wife and the world they shared with you.
cipher
"The music to much of this song is like a driving, guitar-heavy "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay"."
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, Tyler James's version of Dock of the Bay on The Voice UK was pretty good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoUsfZvdP3E
As I mentioned before, The Voice UK is some good television and is available online (apparently the BBC doesn't drop DMCA letters on Youtube).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUU2iVxSZVo
"I think he's from southern California, but moved to Portland"
ReplyDeleteWhere more southern Californian whites have ended up than practically anywhere else.
California-Oregon relations are pretty funny. Oregon had a governor who actually asked people from California to not settle in Oregon (though he welcomed them as visitors).
ReplyDeleteNow Californians are moving to Oregon to get away from NAMs. The question is, will they reinforce (west) Oregon's leftist, pro-NAM policies, or will they dilute them? Probably the former. Art used to go on the radio and do the familiar complaining about Republicans shtick.
It's hilarious that white rock musicians are aware their people are targeted for elimination by leftist authority figures, but since they can't accept that leftists can even be (hated) authority figures, they figure it must be okay.