bush revisited.
January 6th, 2019 @ 2:16 pm
so when i was 16, it was the year of ball chain necklaces, kool-aid stained hair, airwalks, cool sk8r and pacific sunwear surfer shirts, jncos, etc. i had been in love with gavin rossdale for like, 3 years. bush was all the rage at that point. i wasn’t as musically versed as i am now, so of course, they were the greatest band EVARRRRRRRR…
my first concert ever was bush when i was in 10th grade, and i felt soooooooo cool pogoing at an alt rock show (lulz). that concert at madison square garden was actually the thing that brought me and my first love together. the first time i ever spoke to him, he was wearing a razorblade suitcase shirt and it was the topic of conversation that i used to get to him. for that, i will forever be thankful to bush, but i digress…
this afternoon, i stumbled upon a recent article talking about how fans hated the lyrics of sixteen stone and basically gavin was going on about his lyrics as artistic, magical and fluid and blah blah blah… my eyes rolled so hard.
over the years, people have always accused him of riding the coattails of gwen, and it always used to upset me to read that. she’s just in a different, incomparable category. she was in a pop band, she had a pop solo career apart from NxD, she was running two fashion lines, etc. – she was all over the place. in interviews, she used to say he didn’t love no doubt or her music. she made him sound very dismissive and she also mentioned that only he listens to dark/deep stuff, which is clearly the opposite of no doubt. those comments made it seem like he was unsupportive or jealous or something.
between her saying that and reading his interviews, he sounds like he’s got this weird ego where he thinks bush was this underrated, genius band or something. it’s kind of awkward. no offense to his talent, but bush had their moments, and then they did not. lots of did nots.
bush faded out over the years and didn’t stand the test of time (i’m not mentioning post-razorblade bush, bc i totally fell off the bandwagon – just the early stuff). in fact, i revisited razorblade suitcase today, and i sat here scratching my head as to how i ever liked it. sixteen stone is still good, despite the bad lyrics (i have always questioned wtf he’s ever talking about in songs, no matter how much i loved them), but the real gems are the b-sides.
i rarely listen to sixteen stone in its entirety. i REALLY have to be in a mood to listen to that type of music. that happens to me with lots of bands, but that is definitely an album i only pick up once a decade, but i do listen to individual tracks on a more frequent basis. “machinehead ” is an awesome song, still is in my mind. i could probably listen to “everything zen” and “little things” on a more frequent basis as well. honestly, i’ve always hit skip on “glycerine”, and i could live without it.
okay okay, i’m getting sidetracked… THE B-SIDES.
so if you’re a kevin smith fan, you probably know the aggressively grungey song snippet “bubbles” from the movie mallrats, even if you didn’t realize it was bush. i don’t remember what year i finally saw mallrats, but it was way before the internet was chock full of info as it is now, so i couldn’t find more info about it. i always knew that i heard gavin’s voice in that tiny song snippet, though. there was no b-sides or a single (that i can remember) released for it, and i don’t know why, but i didn’t think to buy the mallrats OST. it kind of just remained a mystery for a long time.
this afternoon is when i youtubed that mallrats bad boy (listen to it here), and while it’s VERY 90s, holy crap, that’s actually a good bush song. like, i would listen to it today on a regular basis. i went to see what it was on, and it says it was on a reissue of razorblade suitcase, along with 3 other songs – AND THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GOOD. i am sitting here in awe and confused as to why that they never released these on studio albums or as singles.
maybe they were *tOo CoMmeRciAL* for gavin or something? what a waste of singles that could have been doled out.