Remember This Song? #2. The Dandy Warhols - "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth"

The Dandy Warhols

"Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth"

The Dandy Warhols Come Down

Another great 90s band that ultimately will be remembered for little more than a theme song to a CW show (see: Remy Zero, Nerf Herder), The Dandy Warhols first taste of mainstream success was not "We Used to Be Friends" aka Theme From Veronica Mars, but rather a catchy song with a catchy video and a catchy name, "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth."



The first single off of their stellar 1997 album ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down, (the band's second) "Junkie" is instantly recognizable from it's refrain "heroin is so passe," a scathing indictment of...someone. The full line, "I never thought you'd be a junkie because heroin is so passe" was perfectly timed for alternative rock fans who had watched their patron saint commit suicide after well publicized heroin use not 3 years before, in the prime of his career. Countless other rock stars of the time fell prey to the drug and many, including Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon, Alice in Chains' Layne Stayley and Sublime's Bradley Nowell (not to be confused with Sublime With Rome's Rome), gave the drug their lives. However, the most popular theory is that the song skewers the Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe, no doubt made more credible by the bands' long running feud, documented in Ondi Timoner's great documentary, DiG!

All that aside, the band pushed the cheek hard in the video for the song, directed by photographer David LaChapelle. The video featured the band playing on a cheesy, drug-addled hybrid of The Price is Right and a Busby Berkeley movie, complete with dancing girls in syringe costumes and sets designed by Walter Barnett. The clip stood out on MTV (and it's much-greater sister station M2) not only for its silliness and imagery, but for it's use of color and lighting, which contrasted heavily with the dark, brooding videos of the time. I'm looking straight at you, Billy Corgan. Yep, you.

Also standing out at the time were the boobs of keyboardist Zia McCabe. Did this girl even own a bra? Not that we minded at the time...

Back to the song, its power-pop sensibility with it's relentless drum groove and Korg keyboard riff reminded all of its listeners of the most important thing with The Dandy Warhols: they were fucking cool. The lead singer had awesome hair and a hyphenated last name - and they were both the same name! Courtney Taylor-Taylor - how cool is that shit? Yes, in hindsight it seems pretentious and trite, but this was the 90s. You could get away with that kind of crap and even be considered cool for it.

The album itself is some kind of awesome (produced by Tony Lash of Heatmiser) and features some outstanding tracks, sharing the same pop sensibility as "Junkie" ("Every Day Should Be a Holiday") but maintaining their neo-psychedelic sound. This was a band at their peak.

Whatever.