11.03.06

Oh please no, not a Chili’s commercial

Posted in back catalogue - November 3rd, 2006 at 6:11 pm by Cricket

So, you’re going through life, doing your thing. If you’re me it involves watching Friday Night Lights and seeing commercials you’d probably never see otherwise. There’s that horrible Chili’s commercial, the whole baby back ribs song thing makes me insane, and suddenly you think… Man, I can’t believe that Chili’s is using some faux-Old 97s in their commercial.

Then you realize: oh shit, that is the Old 97s. Well clearly the world is ending, but what to do now? There’s nothing to be done for it but to drown yourself in Old 97s goodness and try to pretend the commercial never happened.

I’m sure it comes as a surprise to no one that I love the Old 97s but don’t really dig Rhett Miller. Faithful readers will recognize this as the same Whiskeytown/Ryan Adams problem I have. And hey, I’m the first to admit that it isn’t so much my dislike of their solo work, but my hate-on for their personalities. Somehow, when it’s a band, I can bury the hate and love on the music. Maybe someday I’ll get over myself and let it all be about the music. [Yeah, right. And I'll stop hating Scientologists.--Mimi] Okay then, onto the music.

Though Rhett Miller’s been off doing what he does, the Old 97s released a “best of” album this past summer, Hit by a Train. As with any “best of” by a band you love, I thought, what? These are the tracks they chose? I could do better! I’m sure dozens of you are out there thinking, man, Cricket’s been falling down on the job, I haven’t heard about her top 5 anything for a while. So here it goes, my top 5 Old 97s songs, in no particular order.

“Can’t Get a Line”–Satellite Rides
This is one of those songs that never fails to make me happy. It can pop up in random play on the old iPod and no matter what I was feeling before suddenly I’m tapping my toes and resisting the urge to get up and twirl around the room. [Why resist? Dance dance dance!--Salome] It’s a song full of longing, but it’s not a sad song. To me it’s the giddy, stomach-sick anxiety of new love–you aren’t yet completely orbiting someone, but you think about them all the time and you feel tiny drops of misery when you can’t talk to them at your leisure, but the whole concept of this person is so suffused in pleasure that you even enjoy that little bit of misery. [You romantics are strange.--Mimi] How I get this from lyrics that barely make sense, it’s hard to say, but the song really is full of that kind of new love joy. Wheee!

“Victoria”–Wreck Your Life
Though this song is by far one of my favorites I’ve always felt that the music didn’t completely do justice to the lyrics. Conceptually I love everything that happens in this song: Victoria starting out on Percodan, Rohypinol, pushing her lover overboard and ending up with the narrator who doesn’t want to let a girl like that go. Man, she sounds like the worst girl and still the best girl, even when she’s talking too low (and anyone who knows me in real life will know why that line strikes me–I’m a low talker). [You're a mumbler.--Mimi] The guitar here is oddly more rock than even the most rock/pop songs of the Old 97s, though more traditional rock n’ roll than a present day sound.

“W-I-F-E”–Wreck Your Life
Lyrically, this is a nearly perfect country song. What says country music more than sitting in bar complaining that you’re too drunk and stupid to quit your wife and the women you have on the side? But the Old 97s do it up right; it’s . It’s the kind of song that makes misery fun, or at least amusing. [Again, I say what? You are so emo.--Mimi] The twang here is in the foreground ratcheting up the good-time roadhouse feeling of the song.

“Won’t Be Home”–Drag It Up
I swear there’s a fine subtlety to this song even if some of the metaphor hits you over the head like a an anvil. The chorus is nearly a 50s rock anthem for an anti-hero, but it’s the first verse that completely wins me over:

You’re a bottle cap away
From pushing me too far
Well the problem’s gettin’ big
And it’s a compact car
So I won’t feel so bad
I did all I could do
Now I’m on wounded knee
And we’re at waterloo
So please get out of my car

Maybe I’m just a sucker for random references to historical battles? Maybe it skews enough to feel like there’s so much deeper meaning hanging around the edges? [Often their songs sound like they might have a much deeper meaning but they probably don’t. *gets her cynicism on*--Mimi] For some reason this song actually always makes me think of Yo La Tengo, which really makes no sense. It’s literally a song about kicking someone to the curb which is a sentiment I can always get behind. Plus it’s a rocking, toe-tapping number, with guitar just whiny and sad enough to match the lyrics.

“Buick City Complex”–Satellite Rides
Wistful and yet sexy as hell. I mean the way Rhett sings “Do you wanna mess around?” is surely enough to make any girl go home with him, ever, at any time. [Have you seen him? He had you at guitar, don't front, my melancholy baby.--Mimi] But, as a whole, the song feels like the tail end of teenage of love, that last romance before high school ends and you all move on to more adult things. Like a lot of Satellite Rides, this feels more like a power-pop song than alt.country, but I don’t think it suffers because of that. It has enough genuine emotion and slight twang of steel to keep it all together.

Near misses that almost made the top 5: “Book of Poems” from Satellite Rides and “Friends Forever” from Drag It Up. Both of these songs have fantastic lyrics but somehow the songs don’t hold together quite the way I need them too. Some other band I love should totally cover these and make them perfection. Yes indeedy.

I’m actually surprised how many of the songs on my list are from Satellite Rides since I’d swear that was least favorite album over all–but it appears that when all the songs are taken individually that all changes.

[I will confess that my favorite Old 97's song is the sappy "Question" from Satellite Rides. This is shameful since it's about a guy proposing to his girl—which is, you know, lame. But in my defense, I am too dim to have realized that was what the song was about until about a year ago. I always imbued it with an air of mystery. What was this question you should say yes to? Being a spy for a shadowy quasi-governmental agency? Being George Clooney's sidekick? Eating the last piece of pie?--Mimi]

If that washed the hideous taste of the Chili’s commercial away and you suddenly realized you gave away your Old 97s albums in a fit of hipness or something, or you never had them, you can buy most of their releases here.

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