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Runaway Train

John Cougar Lunchbucket Jul 26 2013 01:44 PM

This wasn't my favorite song or aything but interesting history of how a song got a drummer fired, became a huge career-defining smash, a subsequent unattainable peak, a big moment for MTV, and a public-service with good and bad consequences. I'd imagine some of these runaways are now in their late 30s. [url]http://www.spin.com/articles/soul-asylum-runaway-train-oral-history-dave-pirner/

metirish Jul 27 2013 04:10 PM Re: Runaway Train

A great read, 1992 was right in my wheelhouse and that song was huge in Ireland too. I think they had missing euro kids in the video. Really interesting to see how the song still effects Murphy, Pirner and Kaye 20 years later. They seem like good guys.

Mets – Willets Point Jul 27 2013 04:27 PM Re: Runaway Train

That song was the precursor to the Boring Rock genre that came to define the mid-to-late 90s featuring bands such as theGoo Dolls, Sister Hazel, Collective Soul, Counting Crows, Deep Blue Something, Live, Marchbox Twenty, The Verve Pipe, The Gin Blossoms, and most iconically Hootie and the Blowfish. Yawn.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Jul 28 2013 04:53 PM Re: Runaway Train

Uncool as they were-- and they were beach-beer-left-in-the-car-- Gin Blossoms churned out some mighty structurally-sound pop-rock. And that Soul Asylum piece was a great read-- they have a whole mid-'90s oral-history mini-series over at Spin (the Liz Phair piece was also engrossing).

Edgy MD Jul 28 2013 05:20 PM Re: Runaway Train

Gin Blossoms were great. Better than I deserved. Thoughts on "Runaway Train": [list:3p4ifc1m][*:3p4ifc1m]To this day, you'll meet folks who think it's Tom Petty.[/*:m:3p4ifc1m] [*:3p4ifc1m]He's got folks from the first change, when the bass splits off --- going from C to B, I think --- and the guitar stays on the same chord. The conflict there establishes the mood of the song.[/*:m:3p4ifc1m] [*:3p4ifc1m]One guy says that they played the second Clinton inaugural, and another seems to remember playing the White House for the signing of the National Service Corps Act. I remember it different from both of them, and recall them playing at the signing of the Motor Voter Act. Maybe they were all over the Clinton Administration, were there every time he turned around.[/*:m:3p4ifc1m] [*:3p4ifc1m]I don't think the song is boring. I'd love to write something like that.[/*:m:3p4ifc1m][/list:u:3p4ifc1m]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Jul 28 2013 07:05 PM Re: Runaway Train

Honestly, the only problem I have with the song-- then AND now-- are some of the more doggerel-y rhymes ("You were there like a blowtorch burnin'/I was a key that could use a little turnin'). Twangs for me like an amplified string-break. It's like, man, the rest of it is workin'-- dig just a LITTLE deeper, Dave.

Edgy MD Jul 28 2013 08:29 PM Re: Runaway Train

Works for me. I mean, both metaphors work on their own, which is how I measure whether a rhyme is forced. He wasn't a pancake that could use a little turning, or butter that could use some churning. Nor was he a defendant as the court was adjourning.

metsmarathon Jul 29 2013 09:31 AM Re: Runaway Train

that album is the first cd i ever owned.

Benjamin Grimm Jul 29 2013 09:32 AM Re: Runaway Train

I thought this thread would be about the reckless train derailment in Spain last week that killed 80 people.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Jul 29 2013 09:42 AM Re: Runaway Train

I've been thinking about Hootie & the Blowfish. On some level, the fact that they were inter-racial but didn't make a big deal about it was part of what contributed to their perception as phonies, especially with making music in the 90s such a deathly serious business. Yeah, it was the bland music too, but still.

Mets – Willets Point Jul 29 2013 09:51 AM Re: Runaway Train

Edgy MD wrote: [*]I don't think the song is boring. I'd love to write something like that.[/list] White. Middle class. Suburban-raised. Target audience, engaged! [Actually, I'm all those things too. I have no idea why the bland rock of mid-90s did not thrill me the way it did all of my contemporaries. I was very lonely].

Edgy MD Jul 29 2013 10:39 AM Re: Runaway Train

I had nothing against Hootie and his Fishfriends. They had a terrible name and I never bought any of their music, but I thought Darius was a helluva singer, and they were one of the few things on the radio that didn't make me want to do what Cobain did. And while underground credibility was a big deal for all these high-integrity flannel-flying bands getting huge multi-record contracts to sell us their self-made image, Hootie earned theirs by touring non-stop and selling their self-produced music out of their trunks. It was a strange thing in DC in the nineties. Hipsters would have these blowups about them. On one side was the position of the standard hipster who saw a middle-of-the-road band in an environment when the currency of the vanguard was everything, with a frankly laughable name. But then, this other faction would point out that "Let Her Cry" was about loving a miserable, self-destructive, apparently addicted girl, and is there a more indy-trademarked subject than that? And Rucker of course brought a surfeit of soul to an otherwise admittedly watered-down delivery. "OH, so he's James Brown now?" faction one would snort. "No, but maybe he's Otis Redding," faction two might reply. "SNORT!" came the rejoinder. And then I realized that the latter faction was mostly comprised of folks who went to school in the south --- USC, Washington and Lee, Rice, Old Dominion, Emory, Vandy. And for a lot of them, an annual visit from the then-independent Blowfish was the social highlight of their school year, matriculating as they were in a place where few vanguard bands traveled. It was even as if H&tBfs were their own little regional secret, and they would feel some provincial pride when the band would (and eventually did) make big. So, even as they graduated and moved to more cosmopolitan locales (DC? SNORT!) and developed more front line alternative tastes ('HEAD LIKE A HOLE!! HEAD LIKE A HOLE!!'), they maintained loyalty to the band that deigned to visit them back when few others would. Of course, Willets went to William & Mary and derides them, so the dynamic clearly wasn't in play across the board. But, you know, the blandest band on the radio when you're young always gets the shit. You had the Blowfish, but some of us had the News. But back to Soul Asylum, they were never bland, even when they had this acoustic-based hit. They were actually kinda lucky, as grunge opened the door for the Minneapolis scene just after the Replacements and Husker Du had thrown in the towel. Soul Asylum were about nine minutes from breaking up themselves when this new door opened.

Vic Sage Jul 29 2013 10:53 AM Re: Runaway Train

RUNAWAY TRAIN is a very good existential action film from the mid-80s, with over-the-top performances by Jon Voight and Eric Roberts (is that redundant? yes, i think so) as escaped prisoners who escape a hellish prison only to find themselves aboard a speeding train, out of control and with no one at the wheel, as it races through frozen wastelands. Russian director Andrey Konchalovskiy adapted a screenplay by Kurawawa in an atypically thoughtful Hollywood action film.

Mets – Willets Point Jul 29 2013 11:33 AM Re: Runaway Train

The Dave Matthews Band did the circuit of Virginia college towns back then and earned a lot of loyalty. In fact, there was a period where there were no arena concerts at W&M Hall for about three years (due to some alcohol-infused activity that occurred before I started attending college) and the big event was when there was finally a concert again my junior year featuring DMB as the opening act. They out-performed the headliners who were Toad The Wet Sprocket (remember them?). Anyway, DMB had a unique sound and I was not immune, but a few years after I graduated college I found that they too had become rather bland and my loyalty flagged.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Jul 29 2013 11:52 AM Re: Runaway Train

Truth be told, I preferred "Black Gold."

Edgy MD Jul 29 2013 11:55 AM Re: Runaway Train

Sure, but unless you're the SPIN editor deciding which song to profile for an oral history, or voting in a very important poll, it's not an either/or thing. PUT UP A VERY IMPORTANT POLL!

metirish Jul 29 2013 12:16 PM Re: Runaway Train

I remember being shocked upon seeing Hootie wasn't white.

Mets – Willets Point Jul 29 2013 12:55 PM Re: Runaway Train

metirish wrote: I remember being shocked upon seeing Hootie wasn't white. I only learned this a few years ago myself, so you can imagine how surprised I was.

metirish Jul 29 2013 01:03 PM Re: Runaway Train

Mets – Willets Point wrote: metirish wrote: I remember being shocked upon seeing Hootie wasn't white. I only learned this a few years ago myself, so you can imagine how surprised I was. nearly as shocking as the time I realized you weren't black(for a few years I thought Willets was black, specifically AA I guess)

G-Fafif Jul 29 2013 01:17 PM Re: Runaway Train

Good article. Thanks for posting. Loved this cover: [youtube:3qeiefcy]K6AfOQHsX80[/youtube:3qeiefcy]

G-Fafif Jul 29 2013 01:25 PM Re: Runaway Train

Edgy MD wrote: I had nothing against Hootie and his Fishfriends. They had a terrible name I've learned that when a collective entity is named "[something] and [something else]," it is often going to be faultily assumed that one element is specifically the [something] and that the other element is specifically the [something else]. Thus, whenever I am asked, "so which one of you is Faith and which one of you is Fear?" I think of Darius Rucker repeatedly answering through increasingly gritted teeth c. 1995 that, no, he's not Hootie and the rest of the guys aren't the Blowfish -- the name of the band is Hootie and the Blowfish. Except they got platinum records, et al.

Edgy MD Jul 29 2013 01:49 PM Re: Runaway Train

The Hall of Fame of fronters wrongly assumed to be the not-a-band-member-at-all individual in the band's name. [list:a8kbw0sb][*:a8kbw0sb]Darius Rucker is not Hootie.[/*:m:a8kbw0sb] [*:a8kbw0sb]Ian McCulloch is not Echo.[/*:m:a8kbw0sb] [*:a8kbw0sb]Peter Noone is not Herman[/*:m:a8kbw0sb][/list:u:a8kbw0sb]

John Cougar Lunchbucket Jul 29 2013 01:54 PM Re: Runaway Train

Springsteen is not Dr. Zoom, even though that'd be funny if he was.

batmagadanleadoff Jul 29 2013 02:26 PM Re: Runaway Train

Ian Anderson is not Jethro Tull. Eric Clapton is not Derek (and the Dominos) although he probably was.

Edgy MD Jul 29 2013 02:29 PM Re: Runaway Train

Sid Barrett is not Floyd. Joe Walsh is not Jesse James. Neither is Kenny Weiss. Bubba Keith also is not.

Edgy MD Jul 29 2013 02:34 PM Re: Runaway Train

Ian Hunter is not Mott and he isn't even a Hoople. Doug Sahm was, in fact a Douglas, but he was not a knight.

Mets – Willets Point Jul 29 2013 02:52 PM Re: Runaway Train

Domingo Zamudio did like to go by Sam, however, that was a Sham.

bmfc1 Jul 30 2013 07:04 AM Re: Runaway Train

Mets – Willets Point wrote: The Dave Matthews Band did the circuit of Virginia college towns back then and earned a lot of loyalty. In fact, there was a period where there were no arena concerts at W&M Hall for about three years (due to some alcohol-infused activity that occurred before I started attending college) and the big event was when there was finally a concert again my junior year featuring DMB as the opening act. They out-performed the headliners who were Toad The Wet Sprocket (remember them?). Anyway, DMB had a unique sound and I was not immune, but a few years after I graduated college I found that they too had become rather bland and my loyalty flagged. My son informs me that DMB is still big on the W&M campus. I guess they're too big for W&M Hall now so I told my son that he could probably see them in Charlottesville and he said "F*** Charlottesville!" (home of rival U Va).

Mets – Willets Point Jul 30 2013 07:28 AM Re: Runaway Train

bmfc1 wrote: "F*** Charlottesville!" (home of rival U Va). Some things never change.

HahnSolo Jul 30 2013 08:06 AM Re: Runaway Train

Toad the Wet Sprocket just released a new album, their first in 16 years.

G-Fafif Jul 30 2013 12:09 PM Re: Runaway Train

HahnSolo wrote: Toad the Wet Sprocket just released a new album, their first in 16 years. You'd think someone would've tossed them a towel by now.