The Dark Side of the Empire

Speaker 1
And I spent my teenage years compiling mixtapes of power pop dream girl songs in usually unsuccessful attempts to woo my own personal power pop dream girl. And this song FNT is the first time that I personally hear Dan Wilson's voice. And he immediately strikes me as an upper echelon sort of dude in the power pop dream girl space, his brightness, his cheerfulness, his wanton hookiness, his earwormy insidiousness, his midwestern affability, and his semi psychedelic exuberance that now sounds a little less 60s and a little more mid 90s. In the interim between 1991 and 1996, we've gone broadly from grunge to post grunge. Punk broke to such an outrageous mainstream extent that punk broke. The mid to late 90s are going to get a little weirder, a little less growlier, a little more delightfully random as flooky mega hit pop songs go. Sugar Ray's Fly is coming. Third Eye Blind Semi-Charmed Life is coming. The new radicals you get what you give is coming soon after that. Even here in 96, to tide you over in the meantime, you've got a semi sonic song called Delicious with a chorus that literally goes woohoo
Speaker 3
woohoo.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds more profound when they do it. That's super profound. One of the most stressful aspects of doing the last episode of this show is that if I have any more absurdly mundane teenage anecdotes, I got to fire them off now, like right now, even if the anecdote and question does not pertain at all to anything I'm talking about. It is important to me, obviously, that I stay on topic, but I'm out of time. I got zero episodes left, and I got all this wisdom left to impart. I got no time for coherent segues. My buddy Jean goes into a suburban Ohio McDonald's mid-afternoon, place is empty. Only other human being in the joint is the cashier. He's this tall, doofy, lanky, super-daised, acne-ridden, teenage dorkus just wobbling behind the counter in a stupor. I say this with affection. I say this with recognition. This is the 90s, but I always picture Napoleon Dynamite now. My buddy Jean is hanging back. He's checking out the menu or whatever when another customer barges in. This hard-ass, 40-something drill instructor, tough guy, like picture every gym coach you've ever had. This dude stops into the place, rumbles up to the counter, plants himself right in front of the doofy cashier, slaps his hand down on the counter, points at the doofy cashier, and goes,
Speaker 3
quarter pound of a cheese, knucklehead.
Speaker 1
That's the whole story. There's no moral, per se. Do you see my dilemma here? How am I supposed to make that pertain to anything? I mean, I had to tell you at some point, but when? How? What the hell does that have to do with semi-sonic? Also, it's a good thing I didn't screw that up because I definitely cannot yell that. Again, I actually really hurt myself just now, and I'll have a sore throw for several days. It's a blessing the show is over for now because I'm going to need a prolonged period of vocal rest. Semi-sonic have found here in 1996 their moment. They are unabashedly poppy and ever so slightly witty, and they are right on time, and they are joined here in 1996, here in their optimal moment by another power-popish band of even wittier dorks from New Jersey. This song is earnestly addressed to a power-pop dream girl, and it's called Leave the Biker. And it fellas. With crumbs in his beard from the seafood special, that's how the chorus starts. Incredible. Yes, it's the fountains of Wayne. The almighty fountains of Wayne from their 1996 self-titled debut album. And on this record anyway, Radiation Vibe is most likely the first song you remember, but Leave the Biker is the song you need.
Speaker 3
Oh, can't you see my world? This falling apart, baby, please, leave the biker, leave the biker, break his heart.
Speaker 1
Amazing. I am amazed. I can't really explain this and I probably shouldn't try, but bands like Fountains of Wayne, bands and artists revered as true songwriters. The true artisans and geniuses, whether you measure that genius in Grammys or critical acclaim or cult status or whatever, songs written by true songwriters just feel like they're written better. And the chord changes feel profound, even if they're not profound. There's nothing fancy about Leave the Biker cordwise. With that line, oh, can't you see my world is falling apart where it goes, that's just C to C minor, I think, but it just sounds different. It sounds right. It sounds perfect. It sounds purposeful and preordained. With true songwriters, it just hits different. Don't it? Every chord in its right place. I shouldn't have tried to explain it. Can I throw one more sublime and ridiculous and radiantly dorky 1996 pop song at you? Hit it, other fellas.
Speaker 3
All I wanna do is do thank you. Even though I don't know who you are, you will let me change lanes
Speaker 1
while I was driving into
Speaker 3
my car.
Speaker 1
Forget the chords, dude. This one's all vibes. Immaculate vibes. Giggity-ta. Whoever you are. From their 1996 debut album, Sacred Cow. These fellas are from Pomona, California, a half hour east of LA. I mapquested it. My editor has clarified that the drive takes way longer with traffic. My freshman year of college, the big campus concert was bare naked ladies with Giggity-ta opening, and I had a fantastic time. Giggity-ta. Hotline. Like an 800 number that just played whoever you are on a loop. And I like this song so much that I call that phone number from my freshman dorm room several times. This band is a trio featuring a multi-instrumentalist named Greg Kirsten, who is now a present tense, Grammy-dominating true songwriter super producer with a hand and four number one hit, Stronger by Kelly Clarkson, Sheep Thrills by Sia, and Hello and Easy on Me by Adele. Make a note of it, Dan Wilson of Semisonic is primed. Here in 1996 to join this exclusive club of true songwriters. And he's got the falsetto. He's got the charisma. He's got the every chord feels profound gravitas. This song is called Brand New Baby. And it's about being sad because your former baby's got a brand new baby who isn't you. And the chords are ever so slightly fancier. Are they
Speaker 3
not? I guess you're my name. Brand new baby, the song you know. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1
I guess you're not mine is a heartbreaking and very succinct five word summary of the Power Pop Dream Girl mindset. This episode is almost over, which means this iteration of the show is almost over. And I'm having just tremendous anxiety about it. I think I've established that I can just blurt that sort of thing out out of nowhere. Okay. Now it's 1998 and the aforementioned semi-charmed lives and you get where you gives are inexplicably dominating the post grunge, late alternative rock landscape. And it's time for semisonic to truly impact history. The second semisonic album is called Feeling Strangely Fine. Let me play you real quick melodies from the first three songs on this record. Closing time you are, of course,
Speaker 3
familiar
Speaker 1
with. That semisonic bassist John Munson, John came up with that piano part. Good job, John. bass players who can also do another thing such as play piano or dress themselves or order their own meals and restaurants. Multifunctional bass players are quite rare in rock and roll. Did you see recently somebody asked Tim Comerford the basis from raging against the machine why his band broke up and he was like, I don't know anything. Nobody tells me anything. I'm the bass player. Incredible. Just stupendous. Great piano part, John. Great job, John. In my college newspaper, right when this song first got popular, I wrote that closing time sounded like a gorilla playing piano with one finger. That's rude. Why did I write that? Track two on Feeling Strangely Fine is called Singing in My Sleep. But it's about a power pop dream girl who makes you a mix tape for a change. And it
Speaker 3
starts like this.
Speaker 1
Oh, they gave the gorilla an electric keyboard for this one. Stop it, Rob. Stop it. Hey, let me tell you for the billionth time that the greatest feeling in the world is when you love a song but you forgot about it and then you hear it again and it's like hearing it for the first time and being reminded that you always loved it simultaneously. Track three is called Made to
Speaker 3
Last. Oh, the gorilla's
Speaker 1
back to the piano. Stop it. Semisonic have mastered here the art of very simple melodies, not even deceptively simple melodies. There is no deception. These melodies are not trying to trick you. They are simple. They are straightforward. They are modest and they are enduring. To my mind made to last is the song where our buddy Dan Wilson definitively joins the ranks of the true songwriters. I listen to this chorus and every chord change feels like another impeccably crafted step on like an impeccably crafted staircase. Better end this quick. Starting on a metaphor's. The chords are DBE minor in a simple, beautiful classic. I don't know why I'm projecting some sort of arbitrary cosmic genius onto this chorus but I am. The whole point of this enterprise is arbitrarily projecting cosmic genius onto random chords. The high note here helps also.
Speaker 3
I hope it lasts a long, long time. A minor C
Speaker 1
D E minor A. Still simple but the high note is pushing us skyward. We are building something wholly and indestructible here. We are building a cathedral. And even though this is 1998 we're totally post grunge, we are still building to the single most 90s moment in the Semisonic Canon which is this rad burst of heavy bass and guitar distortion to indicate that this rad chorus has peaked.
Speaker 3
I hope it lasts a long, long time.
Speaker 1
That is an extremely delightfully 1994 moment on this 1998 record. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. I have outrun the melodrama for as long as I am able. So in January 2020. The great podcast song exporter, you know, song exporter pop stars come on and deconstruct their songs. It's awesome. Song exporter did an episode on closing time. So Dan Wilson comes on and he explains, affably, that while they were making this whole record feeling strangely fine, his wife was pregnant and the baby, their daughter was born prematurely and their daughter spent almost a year in intensive care in the hospital. And everybody is doing great now. But all of that was a heavy, overwhelming moment that lasted for like a year and closing time as a consequence has this double meaning, right? It's about a bar about closing time at the bar about the clock above the bar approaching that fateful three, but it's not just about the bar, right? Right.
Speaker 3
Closing time. Open all the doors and let you out into the
Speaker 1
world. Closing time is also about the womb, right? I won't say that word again. This is not new information. Dan Wilson talks about this in interviews all the time, but it was new to me at the time and it's important information nonetheless. There are lines in this song that
Speaker 3
just absolutely do not make any sense otherwise.
Speaker 1
So okay, I personally am finally made aware of this double meaning in January of 2020 and in March 2020, COVID is happening and my wife is pregnant and it's awesome, but given the circumstances, it's also weird and terrifying. We start plotting out this show over the summer and this show launches in October and then my daughter is born on Halloween and there are comparatively brief but super harrowing complications and everybody's doing great now. And last night I re-listened to the closing time song exporter episode while my three-year-old daughter was fast asleep and pinning down my left arm and I don't know how you expect me to be cool and detached about any of this. Sing the line, Dan. I go through phases where I'm not sure if I dig the yeah there, but no, yeah, the yeah is absolutely essential. Dan Wilson is now a present tense, Grammy-dominating true songwriter super producer who's worked with Adele, the chicks, Pink, Mitzky, Chris Stapleton, John Batiste, Taylor Swift, etc., etc. Someone like you was his big Adele song that he worked on. It's baffling, I realize, but closing time in real time did not radiate super emo goodbye song energy to me personally, but why would it? I am 20 when this song comes out. I am oblivious to virtually everything. I cannot comprehend double meanings. I can barely comprehend single meanings. As I am now 20 years old, I am numerically no longer a teenager, but as I think you'll agree, spiritually I am permanently a teenager.

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