(Ed. note: Ralph's is a California chain of grocery stores, in case you aren't a connoisseur of such places)
-that made me think of the band Hum.
(Ed. note: Hum is a Champaign, IL space-rock band that released 3 amazing albums before disbanding.)
Not because it sounded like them at all - just the opposite. This song, whatever it was, was so cookie-cutter and cliche, it felt like it might have been made by a computer. It probably was. Just a bunch of characteristics of popular songs fed into the Hit-O-Matic, slap an algorithm on it, and bam - instant hit. Maybe not hit, but at least something that sounds like it should be a hit because it sounds like all other hits have sounded. That's popular music now.
In 1995, simply-named Hum released their 2nd album, You'd Prefer an Astronaut, which spawned their only thing even resembling a hit, the similarly simply-titled "Stars." But to call the song a hit is being more than generous - it got some radio support and a decent amount of exposure on 120 Minutes and maybe even Alternative Nation if they were out of Chili Peppers videos. No matter, "Stars" did okay, peaking at #11 on the Billboard Modern Rock/Alternative chart. To compare, the #11 slot is currently occupied by Mumford and Sons, one of the biggest groups on the planet right now and pretty much the closest thing the 2010s have to a Dave Matthews Band. So how did a very heavy, riff-based song with a monotone vocal get all the way to #11 in 1995, when the biggest neo-folk band in the biggest neo-folk time misses the Top 10?
Who wouldn't prefer an astronaut?
It all comes down to exposure. While bands today rely on blogs or licensing to commercials and TV shows for widespread exposure, terrestrial radio and MTV were the main sources for new music in 1995. And there were a hell of a lot more rock stations than there are now. Over the last 10 years, almost all modern rock stations have either altered their formats to include more commercial rock or have changed formats completely due to declining ratings, the most influential among them. WHFS in Washington, DC and WXRK in New York are only 2 of the many casualties the format suffered as alternative rock lost commercial viability. Even Orlando, the medium-sized city that I grew up in, had two modern rock stations in the mid-90s, only one of which is still a rock station today. And with most of these stations eschewing older and mainstream acts in 1995, program directors found themselves with more time for alternative than ever, which meant it was more likely that a song like "Stars" to have at least some success.
But more of what made "Stars" successful was the confluence of its mysterious lyrics, simple melody and insanely heavy guitar, even for the time. The song begins with four bars (two on the single version) of strummed clean electric guitar and singer Matt Talbot quietly singing the song's refrain before the pretty much HUGEST dropped-D chord you've ever heard hits just once, blowing out your speakers and fading out completely before another set of clean, strummed chords give way to the barreling two guitar attack that made Hum one of the most interesting groups of the 90s.
Besides the subject matter of their songs, Hum relied on all kinds of tricks that few other bands of the era employed. Melding space-rock, shoegaze and metal elements, "Stars" was one of their few songs with a distinguishable chorus as oftentimes walls of distorted, shimmering guitars gave way to Talbot's hypnotic, droning yet tender voice that focused more on structure than repetition. While this may sound unappealing to radio programmers of today, the 90s were one of the only times in rock history that this type of music could have been successful. Save perhaps for the early 70s, as Hum isn't terribly far from Led Zeppelin's more obtuse material like "Dazed and Confused". But without Robert Plant's histrionic vocals, would the average listener have been able to stomach something like "Dazed" or "Kashmir"?
What's more remarkable about Hum is that despite "Stars" and You'd Prefer An Astronaut being their biggest single and album, respectively, neither are their best or most polished work. That distinction belongs to their next album, 1998's Downward is Heavenward. Continuing with the prevalent theme of space that carried through so much of Astronaut (see? that's a space thing), Downward tells the story of a group of astronauts stuck in space, desperate to return home to Earth. Heady stuff, even for 1998. I'm not sure this album could even get made now, let alone be released on a major label and given video support, which Downward was, though history has been kind, as Pitchfork put it at #81 in their Top 100 Albums of the 90s and the album has 4.5 out of 5 stars on All Music.
Sadly, the band broke up shortly after that, but have gotten together a few times to play reunion shows in Chicago or whatever city they feel like playing. And each time, the venues are packed with fans who appreciated the band for what it was, and not those who stay for the hit and then leave.
More to come on Hum in this blog, as Downward was a hugely important album for me, but for now here's "Stars" in all it's glory, live on NATIONAL NETWORK TELEVISION! And the guys are wearing shorts - something that would never fly in these image-centric internetting times we live in.
Whatever.
