I understand why they fired me, but did they have to get so fucking cold and ruthless about it?
—Doug Hopkins (Rolling Stone, 1993)
DISCLAIMER: The Gin Blossoms were the bar band in Phoenix during my post college years. So many weekends were spent drinkin’, smokin’ and dancin’ up a sweat with The Gin Blossoms. Point is, I may be biased.
But hear me out.
Let’s talk about defeat snatchin’ before critical upgradin’. But let’s stop using “n'”s first. Sorry.
ALL the songs, and the best, that got The Gin Blossoms to the national stage were written by Doug Hopkins. Doug started the band and played lead. Lost Horizons and especially Hey Jealousy and Found Out About You were the tunes that got these guys a major label deal, radio and MTV play. These were the popular bar hits as well.
Lost Horizons
Here’s a deeper Hopkins tune from the album. Hold Me Down
Problem was that Doug was an alcoholic. If memory serves correct, I think they were banned from at least one Phoenix club when he chucked a beer bottle at an audience member’s head. The story is that he was “difficult” (read “wasted”) during the recording sessions for New Misearable Experience and A&M gave them an ultimatum: Fire Doug or get dropped. So they kicked him out of the band. The founder, lead guitar player and hit song writer, kicked out of the band.
This is a perfect trifecta of defeat-snatching. Doug snatched it, The Gin Blossoms snatched it and A&M snatched it.
A week or so after being handed a gold record for Hey Jealousy, well after his dismissal from his own band, he snuck out of detox, bought a gun and shot himself.
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The Gin Blossoms tried miserably to continue on without Doug’s talent and at one point were even partnered with Marshall Crenshaw to write songs. Last I heard they were playing Indian Casinos.
As far as critical upgrade…I’ve always loved New Miserable Experience and I know that my personal experience can’t be extracted from that appreciation but I stumbled upon a context for The Gin Blossoms that puts them in line for an upgrade.
I got a hold of the 1980 Stiff release of Where All the Nice Girls Are by Any Trouble a few months back. These guys were pretty cool but suffered from comparison to Elvis Costello as the lead singer Clive Gregson not only sounded kinda like him but also wore big black glasses.
But in hearing tunes like these:
Playing Bogart
Turning Up The Heat
I realized that The Gin Blossoms, with a little cleaner production, wouldn’t have been out of place on the Any Trouble, Nick Lowe, Graham Parker end of the Stiff label.
I’m not saying that they deserve an upgrade to the level of Nick Lowe but as they seem to get relegated to the 90s MTV has-bin, I think they deserve a bit more respect.
What say you?
27 Responses to “The Ultimate Snatching Defeat Band Deserves Critical Upgrade:
The Gin Blossoms
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I say fuck ’em. Fuck ’em forever and always. I hope they rot in hell.
How come?
Because their response to Doug Hopkins’ death was to go to his mother and ask for any songs he’d written after they kicked him out of the band.
I repeat: Fuck ’em.
I liked the album well enough when it came out but if you take away Doug Hopkins’ songs, you don’t have much. I really liked Hold Me Down and couple of other songs but I think that they were a classic example of a band that’s “of a time”. The stuff sounds dated now and not in a particularly good way. They must have been great in a bar, pre-fame.
If 2kMan’s story is accurate, that is really reprehensible.
I remember this band’s hit song, although I can’t recall exactly how it went. However, I’m pretty sure it sounded a lot like the two tracks you’ve provided for Critical Upgrade. To me, this doesn’t speak well for the band. I usually don’t like when a band has no strong rhythmic and sonic push and diversity. This stuff’s not bad by any means – the tunes are easy on the ears, the playing is fine, maybe even the lyrics are great (I didn’t pay great attention to them, though) – but rhythmically and sonically they seem to have one trick up their sleeve. For me, that’s long been a problem with too many bands that in any way work the “Americana” vein: decent American pop-rock bands from that period seemed to have about as much variety as American carmakers and the models they release that seem the same to my eyes other than the logos on the hood and trunk. I compare this stuff to The Jayhawks, for instance, and it pales. That band had singers with distinctive voices and unmistakable guitar sounds. This Gin Blossoms album isn’t much different than one of the post-Stamey dB’s albums, which isn’t the worst thing in the world when fishing for decent tunes on commercial radio, but without having seen the band live, in their heyday, I have trouble getting a lot more out of these tunes. Good write-up regardless!
They were a great a bar band and that doesn’t come across on their recordings. I concur with cdm that the Hopkins tunes are head and shoulders above and those are the ones I’m seeking recognition for.
And I agree with great48 that the surviving members are major dick heads and for me the band ceased to exist the instant Doug left the band.
As far as popular airplay at the time goes, Doug’s was good stuff.
That’s all I was asking for. They don’t deserve much more than that but what they did following post-Hopkins just continues to tarnish the memory of his talent.
I suppose I was really looking for a critical upgrade for Doug Hopkins.
Oh, and, don’t condescend to me man.
The people are speaking! See the poll.
I always like the Gin Blossoms. What I remember from back when they hit it big was that they seemed to get slagged off a lot, and not because of the Hopkins thing. I think maybe it was because they hit right when alternative was peaking, and they seemed not to fit in with all that. In fact, I don’t think of them as so much of-their-time as they are a throwback to the jangle pop of the 80s. Jangle was all the rage in the wake of REM, and then suddenly it was a term of derision.
Actually, the only Gin Blossoms song I ever really liked was the one Crenshaw co-wrote, “Till I Hear it From You,” which is from the soundtrack to one of the worst movies ever made, Empire Records.
I was in high school when the band first hit big nationally, and they were pretty inescapable on MTV and radio. My tastes had not fully evolved at that point. But, frankly, much of that period is an emotional blur to me now. I remember hearing Gin Blossom songs a lot, but I don’t remember if it registered with me whether most of the songs were good or bad. Suffice to say, while their songs were more memorable (and less lame) than stuff by, say, Sponge or Deadeye Dick, they did not seem essential, the very model of radio-friendly flotsam.
I gave them the “upgrade” the moment I saw them live at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Oepning Concert 9/2/1995 (we drove from Atlanta to Cleveland in an Escort Station Wagon just for the show and drove right back home)
They did two songs: The Beatles’ “Wait” and The Byrds’ “Feel A Whole Lot Better” and were fantastic (sadly neither made the 3 disc CD of this event – somewhere I have the HBO original airing on VHS – all 6+ hours… I think they were even dropped from the “condensed” version that was shown later on HBO)
I think I had the NME CD from my RCA CD club but had not even played it (and it had been out for a good year or so). In Atlanta 99x Radio were early supporters of the Gin Blossoms, so Mrs. Rita was the “real” 1st single (they re-released the record with “Hey Jealousy” as the “new” first single maybe 6 months later. And “Found Out About You” was in regular rotation (was it actually a hit?)
Anyway, the 1st record is a very strong power-pop / alternative CD, the second one suffers – 2 or 3 songs left over from the bar days, a few writers-for-hire and some rewrites of their past hits.
My wife went to see them about a year ago at a big Atlanta club (The Tabernacle, where Elvis Costello, The Black Crowes, Morissey had played around that time) and said it was 1/2 full, even with Atlanta hero Sean Mullins opening
I remember that. Well I remember listening to an audio-taped copy my friend brought to a car ride. I did think that was nice. “Wait” is one my favorite Beatles deep cuts, and that Byrds song is A+ stuff; and the band didn’t embarrass themselves. I assume they took upon themselves to rep for the titans of jangly guitars.
Okay, I just listened to the first 7 or 8 songs from NME at lunch. While future generations are not going to be hunting this album down, it was a good album for it’s time and the band should be proud of it. The first two songs, Hold Me Down and Found Out About You are all solid. Four solid songs is not bad for an album, and the rest of it isn’t offensive either, just kind of bland.
The Counting Crows first album came out around the same time and I think that one has about the same ratio of “good songs” to “decent, not-thrilling-but-not really-offensive songs” but for some reason, they’ve persevered (more or less).
Bottom line: Though it might be tempting sometimes, don’t fire the Talent.
These cuts are okay, but the Gin Blossoms weren’t exactly John Cougar Mellencamp.
If you know what I mean.
Obviously the circumstances of Hopkins’ firing sound unpleasant. But the information here suggests that he wasn’t just an alcoholic. Alcoholics don’t automatically shoot themselves in the head. His problems must have been severe, and it can’t have been easy to deal with him.
As to never firing the talent, Miles Davis fired John Coltrane for not making sessions and gigs. It was one of the best things that ever happened to Coltrane, since it was part of what led him to clean up his act.
Sometimes you’ve got to fire the talent.
But I’m making no claims about this particular situation, which I have no details about.
An important distinction: Coltrane was A talent, not THE talent in Miles Davis’ band (the jazz equivalent of the Blues Breakers).
With all due respect to John Coltrane, he’s no Doug Hopkins…
When New Miserable Experience was a huge hit, I was 18 and firmly entrenched in hardcore/punk. However, unlike 90% or more of the radio flotsam I would constantly hear at the dining hall where I worked during the 1st semester of my freshman year of college, I always enjoyed hearing “Hey Jealousy” and in particular “Found Out About You”, still one of my favorite singles of the ’90s. Why?
Well I couldn’t stand Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, STP, Tool, et al. because I just thought it was rehashed ’70s hard rock (though I did like Nirvana and still do), but I think BigSteve’s comment that they were a throwback to jangle-pop hit the nail on the head. It’s a style I loved from the moment I first heard R.E.M.’s Eponymous when I was 15 and I could hear sonic similarities between The Gin Blossoms and say, The Smithereens or something in that vein.
So anyway, years later I found a cheapo coy of NME on CD and the rest of it is pretty good and constantly listenable. It’s not a great album, but it was well worth the $4.99 or so that I paid for it. I definitely think they deserve the critical upgrade and I voted for them (though Croce is a nice choice, too).
Jungleland2: To answer your question, Whitburn says the GBs had a total of six Top 40 hits, of which “Found Out About You” was the second, peaking at #25 in January ’94.
Weirdly, it turns out that their biggest hit was “Follow You Down,” peaking at #9 in 1996. I wouldn’t have suspected that was the big one.
I also had no idea that “Allison Road,” which I still hear in supermarkets and convenience stores across the country, was a GBs song.
Hey cdm:
I see your point, but imagine how tough that would have made things for the rest of the band. “We’re nothing–nothing, I tell you–without the drunken suicidal lunatic.”
Ask Ray, Robby and John.
As opposed to the well balanced, happy go lucky choirboys who make up most bands?
You do have to wonder which A&R exec’s wife he felt up to warrant that treatment.
Actually, cdm, you raise a postworthy query here: most lasting musical contributions by drunken suicidal lunatics.
Still, I have to hope that the rock world isn’t divided into choirboys and boys who blow their own heads off. Makes me long for the good old days, when a middle of the road musician could take 6, 8 years out for a drug binge and come roaring back. Sort of roaring, anyway.
Intriguing… Battle Royale or Last Man Standing? Or just a nice civil discussion?
The issue might need some in-depth discussion, cdm.
And I notice that my phrase “lasting musical contribution” could mean either making significant music or the longest track record of continuing to make music while being a drunken suicidal lunatic.
The drunken suicidal lunatic is also a questionable term. Does it include only eventual suicides? I don’t think so. I think it needs to include drunks/addicts whose drinking seems to imply suicidal impulses. Hank Williams for instance: definitely suicidal. Townes Van Zandt, I’d say, was not, or at least not so much that he couldn’t make nearly 30 years of music. Keith Moon: probably not, I’d say. See the difference? So, while offing yourself is always the best proof, there are still some gray areas.
I thought what we were talking about is the effect of the behavior of the drunken suicidal lunatic (herinafter “DSL”) on his or her band mates, and not necessarily how that behavior affects the DSL himself. So you don’t even really need to consider suicidal behavior or impulses per se, just generally unstable behavior which would make it really challenging for the rest of the non-songwriting and/or non-talented band members to put up with.
Or have I gotten that wrong?
Well, I guess I was trying to shift the discussion to the issue of the effect of the DSL on the music itself, because otherwise we’re just talking backstory. What’s the most good music that any DSL has ever made? What’s the longest lasting run of decent music ever made by a DSL? And I suppose we could draw a hard line and say you can’t be a DSL unless you really do intentionally commit suicide. That would rule Ian Curtis in and Darby Crash and Sid Vicious out though, and is that entirely fair? Hendrix/Moon/Bon Scott/John Bonham just seem more excess deaths than DSL deaths. At a certain point it gets fuzzy, obviously, because there’s no way to literally determine the degree of suicidal impulse in many overdose deaths.
Does it have to end in death at all, either intentional or otherwise? What about Iggy? Or does a heartbeat in and of itself indicate a certain lack of commitment despite all appearances to the contrary?
Fortunately for the Replacements, Bob Stinson, their DSL, was not the songwriter. There certainly are those who claim that Bob gave the Replacements their edge, and when he was booted out of the band they lost that, but I believe they would have evolved pretty much along the same lines either way.
One can be “suicidal” without having committed suicide, right? In fact, can one have already committed suicide and have that term applied? Isn’t it too late by that point?
Personally, I’m ashamed of you guys, going from this heartfelt appreciation of the decency of The Gin Blossoms with their original leader to this side topic! What kind of establishment do you think we run around here?
Marvin Gaye did not commit suicide, but I believe I remember reading that he had his share of suicidal spells. He had the drug-taking and lunatic parts down pat.
Mod, regarding your first point, we’re talking about history here–looking back and assessing the significance and longevity of the musical creations of rock’s most important DSL’s.
Although I hadn’t originally thought of it, it does seem possible that a genuine DSL might actually survive for quite a few years. I wonder what names other than Marvin Gaye might fit that bill.
But again, a drug or drinking problem in and of itself isn’t sufficient. How about I draw the line here: there must be credible evidence, whether from confession or behavior that makes a suicide wish blatant, of a desire to die on the part of the musician in question. For instance, the Darby Crash line “I want out now,” however subject to interpretation it is, can be combined with his death as pretty strong evidence that he did indeed want out now. Ditto the Sid Vicious line that he wished he was already buried.
As for sidetracking this tribute to the Gin Blossoms, even their fans seem to say that they have maybe 4 or 5 good songs that to my mind don’t quite cut it when compared to mid-period Mellencamp. A new post on the DSL phenomenon, prompted by this Gin Blossoms post, will continue their memory long after the 8 or 9 comments that stayed on subject, and in so doing exhausted that subject, would have done.