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Rediscover the Gin Blossoms · by Byron Crawford
When it was first released, way back in 1992, the Gin Blossoms’ New Miserable Experience sported an album cover that’s fairly different than the one commonly associated with it today. As far as album covers are concerned, it was pretty shitty (you can see for yourself on the Wikipedia page for New Miserable Experience), but it does seem like a nice fit for the album, in retrospect. You can at least see where they were going with it.
The cover you see so often these days (and the one that graces the deluxe edition re-release of the album from a few years ago) was released in the summer of 1993 and seems to call to mind, perhaps purposely, the video for “Hey Jealousy,” which was a Buzz Clip (remember those?) at the time. I guess because the song’s lyrics mention driving around in a car, the video features footage of someone, ahem, driving around in a car, and then obviously the album cover features a photo of the car itself, with the group vaguely reflected in the rear view.
You get the idea that the group wasn’t very involved at this stage with crucial decisions regarding their image, decisions that most likely still color people’s perception of the Gin Blossoms to this day. With “Hey Jealousy” blowing up at radio and MTV, and with the wisdom of their record label guiding them, I’m sure they figured they’d all make millions of dollars and, most importantly, have sex with either Winona Ryder or someone from the cast of “Friends,” which was fairly de rigeur for rock stars of that era. Holler at your Adam Duritz. Shit, for all I know, they probably did.
More so than anything else, as far as I’m concerned, New Miserable Experience was the sound of the mid ‘90s. Amazingly, I don’t think the singles from that album, “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You,” and, to a lesser degree, “Until I Fall Away” and “Mrs. Rita,” ever really disappeared from radio playlists altogether. If anything, they seem to have eventually transitioned from modern rock radio to the ghetto that is the “adult alternative” format, which, it would seem, was created to play Gin Blossoms songs the way classick rock radio was created to play “Stairway to Heaven.”
That said, for being one of the most popular albums of its era, New Miserable Experience also seems to be one of the most misunderstood and most unfairly maligned. To hear people speak of it these days, you’d think they were the Rembrandts or some shit. To be sure, I don’t find the album to be a masterpiece on the level of In Utero, or anything like that, but I do think it’s fair and worthwhile to compare the two. In fact, I would switch back and forth between the two of them all the time when I was driving back and forth to Chicken Switch, MO, where I went to college.
Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain is generally thought of as arguably the edgiest rock star of that era, but it’s worth noting that the Gin Blossoms’ Doug Hopkins, who wrote both “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You,” shot a hole in his face in December of 1993, a good four months before Cobain (or was it Courtney?) finally got the balls to go through with it. Indeed, and this is going to sound like hyperbole, but New Miserable Experience (peep that title!) could very well be the edgiest album of its era. It is, after all, the album I was listening to when I created the gulliest website of all time.
Given that they are the Led Zeppelin of a certain, albeit mostly god-awful, radio format, the Gin Blossoms would seem uniquely suited for a successful comeback, not unlike, say, when the Pixies reformed a few years ago. They’re out on tour right now in support of their new album, Major Lodge Victory, which will be their first in ten years, if you can imagine. Who knows how the new album will turn out, but I’d say their catalog is about due for a critical re-evalutation. The Gin Blossoms were one of the best bands of their era, and it’s great to have them back out there rockin’.
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Hip-hop blogging superstar Byron Crawford kicks off our Week of a Thousand Guest Bloggers. Byron blogs at byroncrawford.com and for XXL. We don’t really understand his love of the Gin Blossoms, but we have to respect it. Also check out his review of a Gin Blossoms show on his blog today. – Rafi
Comments for "Rediscover the Gin Blossoms"
Interesting…
— Bernadette Jul 10, 05:33 PM
Greaat…I never understood Basehead’s Play With Toys album cover…neither did i understand why Basehead was considered hip hop…
— Arjun Jul 10, 07:46 PM
Great. Now i can say thank you!,
— Glayven Oct 7, 03:34 PM