If you look at the front of this, you'll see proof that I once paid $10 for an import CD single. Can you imagine that? Man, you can't even get two bucks for a regular CD these days, I'll bet. There's a reason for this stupidity: Matthew Sweet's "Sick of Myself" was one of my favorite songs back then, but I didn't like any of his other songs, so rather than buy the whole album which I'm sure sucked anyway, I paid ten bucks for a CD that had just the song that I liked. Nowadays you'd just steal the song from the internet or buy it for 99 cents on iTunes, but this was back when the internet only existed inside of those AOL "30 free hours!" discs that they gave away on the front counter at Burger King -- i.e., options were limited. If you look on the back of this CD, you'll see a whiney little warning message, "Renting this CD deprives this artist of income." It would only be a short time later before the record labels would find out how good they actually had it.
The reason why the sleeve is so beat up is because, up until 6 or 7 years ago, I had a little white Ford which was the only car I've ever owned that had a CD player. I used to keep the CDs in the little storage compartment down at the bottom of the driver's side door, so every time I'd open the door in the rain (or if there was snow on the ground), the CDs would get all wet and muddy and stuff. So, like, don't complain, or think that all my records look this bad. I'm including the radio edit version, too, even though it chops off the messed-up ending which is one of the reasons why I like this song in the first place. This song actually has a little bit of cred going for it, since Richard Lloyd (Television) and Ric Menck (Velvet Crush) played on it, and Brendan O'Brien, who I'm not familiar with -- probably that guy who mixes Night Ranger records.
"Sick of Myself"
"Sick of Myself (edit)"
3 comments:
Matthew Sweet is about to explode. No, I mean physically. He is a large man in 2012. I can't even believe it's the same guy!
Anyway I was at school in Lincoln, NE in the early 90s and since Sweet was from there it was kind of a hometown hero thing for "us." But I think I woulda liked him anyway, at least sometimes.
Also, he dd Dragon Lady on that Germs tribute. And Bruce would always be like "Jere, stop listening to these crappy covers and just listen to an actual Germs record!" But I defend my choice! I still love the Melvins' chug-a-lug version of Lexicon Devil.
I can't believe that you just made me Google "Matthew Sweet" just to see how fat he is.
I've always thought Girlfriend and Altered Beast were great, and even liked 100% Fun, but less so. He was smart enough to have Lloyd, Robert Quine and Ivan Julian play on each of those albums, which I always thought gave his songs some edge - he has a tendency toward sap, but on these records I thought he was challenged by those guitar players to toughen it up some. He has since reverted almost entirely to sap as far as I can tell.
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