Silverchair. Silverchair remind me of being around 16 and listening to Nirvana. And perhaps a little confused about what I felt about Daniel Johns. I loved the raw grunge sound of the first album. There were parts of it that didn't quite sit easy with me -- or rather one thing, the lyrics. I didn't mind the content, or the subject matter, it was just the rhyming schemes were fucking terrible. It seemed like they would write a good song, and then as an afterthought write lyrics like the cat in the hat. I was almost surprised "Green Eggs and Ham" wasn't featured in any songs.Later on, I learned to dislike other things about Silverchair. The main one being their apparent copying of the sound/style of other bands -- I read at the time of 'Frogstomp' that the band sounded like "a raw Pearl Jam" but I wasn't listening to Pearl Jam at the time, and so the comparison totally escaped me. When I listened to Pearl Jam albums that weren't 'Vitalogy', it began to make sense, and disliked the faux- Eddie Vedder vocals, and 'Frogstomp' was forever ruined for me. Sometimes I wish I had kept my copy, it's sometimes nice to listen to something you never play. After the album Freak Show -- a lot more commercial, and less Pearl Jam but apparently a lot like other bands -- I stopped listening to them altogether.
Freak is -- I think -- the first song on their second album, at least it is the first single from the album. I remember the cd coming with picture postcards of the band that I stuck up in my locker, oblivious to what people thought. The other boys were putting up pictures of playboy models, I was sticking up pictures of boys -- because I liked their music. Alongside pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar, or Melissa George, or whoever. I wanted so much to have my eyebrow pierced like Daniel Johns, I longed for it and how it would look. In the end I settled for having the cartilage in my ear pierced instead, and didn't get my eyebrow pierced until I was 21. I wish now I had given everyone the finger and pierced my eyebrow, got in trouble at school and with my parents but it would have blown over. I guess we all look back and wish we had behaved a little less well when we were younger. Anyway, back on track I love the sound of this song. The intro is fantastically catchy, the simple guitar riff gets stuck in your head, then the drums kick in for a couple of bars and with almost no warning the song proper starts with the words "No more maybes -- baby's got rabies"; I did say the lyrics were shit. But parts of the song do stand out: "If only I could be as cool as yo/ Body and soul, I'm a freak", that could just have summarised my entire teenage angst. I felt like a freak -- the music I liked, the way I acted, I was an outcast. I remember writing something, somewhere with the words "they drive me out with burning torches, because they know I'm not like them". I felt like a monster from an old black and white movie, living alone on a dark hillside. And maybe it's this kind of feeling that they're alluding to in the song -- but it's also possible the lyrics mean nothing at all.
Just the same, it's a fantastic song -- rocking, and catchy and maybe not as grunge as the first album, but it was no longer in style by then. I never bought the second album -- and never even listened to an album past that. But I can play this song now and remember being 16 and 17, playing pool instead of going to class and feeling like I was a freak. Sometimes that feeling lingers, but I think of 16 year old boys out there now probably feeling the same thing.
They were known as "nirvana in pajamas" over here - which is a reference to a popular song for toddlers: Bananas in Pajamas. Well, they *were* young - about 13 or 14 as I remember, a year or two younger than me at the time.
ReplyDeleteI remember when they first came out - they were called the innocent criminals but changed their name to silver chair because of legal reasons. I remember thinking that the innocent criminals sounded way cooler. I hated them when they first came out - I *was* listening to pearl jam at the time and I was a HUGE nirvana and soundgarden fan. Here comes this band where the lead singer looks like kurt and sounds like eddie. It was too much for me. Of course, like some kind of karmic joke, I was given Frogstomp for my birthday that year and sort of smiled and said 'yeah thanks' and buried in it my cd collection. It took me a good few months to listen to it properly. It's a young, inexperienced album and nothing so special - and yet somehow there was always a glimmer or something good in there hidden underneath the cliche. Tomorrow is *still* a great song. They managed to transcend their earlier "grunge" efforts and find their own feet.
No one called them Nirvana in Pajamas after Neon Ballroom came out.