Tragic and terrible news from over the weekend, as renowned director, producer and actor Rob Reiner has passed away. He and his wife Michele were found dead in their Los Angeles home. The further details of this case are grim so I’ll just leave them alone other than to say that it was an apparent homicide. Rob was 78 years old, Michele was 68.
Reiner was born to legendary comic actor Carl Reiner and actress/singer Estelle Reiner. Rob got his start in acting during the 1960’s, landing bit parts in many well-known series of the time. He would land what many consider his signature role as Michael “Meathead” Stivic on the beloved sitcom All In The Family, playing foil to Carroll O’Connor’s famous Archie Bunker.
Reiner began his long-running directing career in 1984 with the film that lands his obituary on these pages with the cult classic This Is Spinal Tap. Reiner would go on a run of massive success that kicked off with 1986’s Stand By Me and ran through to 1992’s A Few Good Men, and he would continue to find success through the remainder of his career. He would also be found in several acting roles, including Throw Momma From The Train and The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Reiner’s career spanned a long time and incorporated several elements of movie and TV making, but of course I’m going to use a few more words to expound on the subject I’ve already covered in great detail – the film that both created the “mockumentary” genre and also hit a bullseye in portraying the hard rock and heavy metal scene of the early 1980’s. Spinal Tap was the concoction of Reiner as well as the principal actors – Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest. Invented originally for comedy tv skits, Reiner would secure financing from his old pal Norman Lear (creator of All In The Family) and film in an ad-lib style to let the film essentially write itself. Reiner directed the effort and also portrayed Martin “Marty” Di Bergi, the documentary maker chronicling the hi-jinx of Spinal Tap.
This Is Spinal Tap did not light the world on fire when it was released, but as the years wore on it became a cult classic. Nostalgia only brought the film more fondness and the band became an institution beyond the scope of the initial film. It took 41 years but we did get a sequel in the form of Spinal Tap II – The End Continues, which hit theaters earlier this year and appears to be Reiner’s final film project. He did have one more thing in the can and it does involve Spinal Tap – the band filmed a farewell concert that is set to release sometime in 2026.
It was a senseless, tragic act that took away Rob and Michele. But there is a lot of Rob Reiner to fondly remember. He has any number of classic films to his credit, and his role as “Meathead” was an all-time performance. For me I’ll obviously most remember Spinal Tap, though many of his other films are classic works of art. Rest easy Rob and Michele, and thanks for all the memories.
It is Thanksgiving here in the United States and today I’d like to give thanks for having a few days off of my damn job and also for this new Megadeth song to dig into.
I Don’t Care was thrust upon the world a few weeks back on November 14th. Thanks to the aforementioned job, I am just now getting to making a post about it. The song hails from the self-titled album due to arrive on January 23rd, 2026. This is slated to be the final Megadeth record.
This song is the upcoming album’s second single and this one caused quite a stir when it hit. The song is a snarling, punk-based track that recalls the early influences of thrash while still very much being a 2025 Megadeth song. It is an interesting combination of styles, with the punk-rooted ethos combining with the clinical precision that typically defines Megadeth. The production strays clearly on the side of Megadeth’s typical sound, which might detract a bit from the punk edge but I do think it works well enough for a Megapunk song 40 years into the band’s career. And, regardless of the song’s tone and style, we do get a fair few guitar solos even in this fairly brief jaunt that just touches 3 minutes.
The lyrics here are extremely simple, it’s basically just a chorus of “I don’t care” about various things as well as a short, quietly almost-rapped verse that says quite a few bad things about someone. While the target of Dave Mustaine’s diatribe is unknown, many speculate that it might be a prominent ex-member of Megadeth. I don’t know and I’ll leave it at that until or unless more information becomes known later.
This song caused a fair bit of chatter when it was released. Some enjoyed it and others found things to dislike, whether it was the Megadeth style clashing with the more raw punk theme or the lyrics that aren’t the most mature that Mustaine has ever offered up. I personally enjoyed the song, I don’t have a problem with the slight stylistic departure from typical Megadeth. While the band’s stock in trade has usually been clockwork precision and massive amounts of guitar solos, I think it’s fair for Dave and company to branch out a bit, especially this far in and on the swansong album.
I also very much don’t care if the lyrics aren’t profound existential statements. While I enjoy plenty of metal that does have a more intellectual sheen to it and Megadeth has been a band to offer that up at times, I am also quite fine with heavy riffs and caveman bullshit coming out of someone’s mouth. A song called I Don’t Care doesn’t need to usher in a philosophical thesis, it’s allowed to be dumb. This to me isn’t so bad that it needs to be sneered upon, it’s simply fitting a theme and some songs can be fun and dumb.
I am on board the I Don’t Care train, and I’m looking forward to this album’s arrival in the dead of winter early next year. And even if I wasn’t, I am quite sure that Dave doesn’t care.
Last week David Coverdale made the announcement that many of us knew was coming – he has retired from music. He posted a short video with the announcement as well as a remixed version of the song Fare Thee Well, from Whitesnake’s 2011 album Forevermore.
David did not offer up a long-winded list of reasons for stepping away, nor did he need to. He has been visited with several health issues over the years which prevented Whitesnake from offering a proper farewell tour. The band’s final show wound up being a performance at France’s Hellfest in 2022, a show that featured a guest shot from former guitarist Steve Vai on the final song.
The writing was on the wall for this retirement for several years now, but does cap the end of a five decade career in rock. Coverdale played in UK bands for a few years before landing with Deep Purple for three albums in the mid-70’s. He would then embark on a solo venture after Purple disbanded. His solo efforts would morph into the band Whitesnake, which became Coverdale’s main vehicle for the remainder of his career. He also had a well-received collaboration with Jimmy Page in the early ’90’s.
I personally came into Whitesnake in their rising heyday in the mid-80’s. Slide It In had stuff in rotation in my area, which had a prominent rock station. Then in 1987 the self-titled album blew up and Whitesnake was off to the races. I would then backtrack to the earlier blues-based Whitesnake and the Deep Purple albums. I never got to see them live but I’ve been along for the ride with the albums over the years and I have really enjoyed the 2000’s Whitesnake output.
We do often joke about musician retirements because of, well, the mountain of evidence that retirements aren’t often worth the paper they’re printed on. But in David’s case this one is likely rock solid. He is sadly not up to the rigors of performing his music at 74 years old and with a host of health issues he has faced over the years. It is unfortunate that Whitesnake didn’t get to go out with a final tour or even a planned final show, but Coverdale still gets to bow out and enjoy his years. He has remained active with Whitesnake’s back catalog reissues so I’m sure more is coming from that and hopefully the Covedale-Page album gets its much-needed revisit at some point.
The curtain call has arrived for David Coverdale, but there is a half-century’s worth of great rock music to look back on and celebrate. And with any luck, David will be in a position to look back along with us and share more insights on his illustrious career.
Ace Frehley died yesterday at 74 years old. He was famous most obviously for his two stints in Kiss, being a part of their legendary ascent in the 1970’s as well as the mega-hyped reunion tour of the late 1990’s. Ace also had a prolific solo career in his times away from Kiss.
Ace was a guitar hero to generations of fans as well as many rock and metal musicians. He was a primary influence on a lot of the music I listen to, even some of the heaviest metal guitarists celebrate Ace as the reason they wanted to pick up guitars.
I don’t have much more to say for now. Oddly and sadly enough, this post is pre-empting another tribute post to a recently-deceased musician. But it’s impossible not to note the passing of a rock legend. Rest in peace, Spaceman, and enjoy your travels in the great beyond.
Today is a special occasion as we have been granted a new Megadeth song. This isn’t just any song, this is the lead single from what is billed as Megadeth’s final album. We now have this new song to get into as well as more specific info about the album to go over, and we also have a few, uh, curious points that have come up the past week or so to also swing with.
This is obviously, BY FAR the biggest thing going on in music today so let’s get into all of this.
First up we have the new song called Tipping Point. The song has been on streaming services since midnight in various regions, but the music video dropped just a few minutes before I wrote this. This one opens up ferociously and plows on for the first few minutes before the requisite Megadeth guitar solos and then a breakdown section before a more mid-paced finale. While any reactions of mine are very quick at this point, I will say I do very much enjoy this song. It does sound in keeping with the better parts of Megadeth since their 2004 renaissance.
In addition to the new single, we also now have more information about the upcoming album. The album will release on January 23, 2026 and is simply titled Megadeth. The image we got of Vic Rattlehead in flames from the prior retirement announcement is the album’s cover. There was no new press information released when pre-orders went live, the press is mostly reusing the statement Dave Mustaine made in August when announcing the band’s final album and farewell tour.
Now, as I said there are a few things to discuss beyond the song and album info. Tipping Point has actually been in circulation for over a week now. The song was leaked and very briefly uploaded to official streaming platforms. It seemed to hit Spotify in a few international territories but I don’t recall it making the US list. I caught a snippet of the leak but I did not pursue the full song leak, I figured like many that the leak was a mishap and I just waited for the official drop today. Music leaks are a very early 2000’s thing that really hold no true bearing in the modern streaming marketplace.
In addition to the song leak, we actually were also “treated” to an early info drop of the album name and cover. The music retailer Rough Trade had posted pre-order info for the new album a few days ago and their listing did accurately portray the cover and title. Rough Trade did pull the listing and re-list just a bit ago along with the wider retail offerings. Also, having nothing really to do with this post, Rough Trade’s website is so slow that I was waiting for the nostalgic dial-up Internet noise while things were loading. Anyway…
It does seem as if there’s some ill coordination in Camp Megadeth. Music does leak, sure, but like I said earlier, music leaks aren’t a massive deal like they used to be in the download and piracy era. But it does look either like a “planted” leak or some unintentional screw up. I’d personally bet on the latter. The album pre-order going live on one site early is probably a mess up on the part of the retailer and isn’t a massive issue but again, we’ve now had two screw-ups regarding this hotly anticipated final album and it has caused a bit of a buzz in die-hard Megadeth circles. It all probably doesn’t mean much of anything in the end but it’s a semi-interesting side note of this press push into this farewell cycle.
And that pretty well does it for the new Megadeth news. It will be interesting to see how the farewell tour plays out, but the early focus will be on the final record and if it fits well within the Megadeth pantheon. Early returns are promising and we have something to look forward to just a hair into 2026.
A bit of a quick one today to pay futher tribute to Tomas Lindberg. Today’s song is a cut from At The Gates’ debut album The Red In The Sky Is Ours, released in 1992.
Windows is the album’s fifth song. Nothing was released as a single, this was the band’s very early days and everyone was running on shoestring budgets. Band members have retroactively lamented the album’s production due to those financial constraints and having a producer that was not familiar with heavy metal. While I do agree that production here does leave something to be desired, it’s an album I can still get through and enjoy. Many of the underground metal albums of the early 90’s did not have the best in sonic technology.
The music of Windows was composed by guitarist Anders Björler. The lyrics were penned by vocalist Tomas Lindberg and are, at their simplest, about someone going insane. There is possibly more to it, as the song might be a eulogy for Per Yngve Ohlin, aka Dead, the singer of black metal band Mayhem until his suicide in 1991. Dead’s suicide brought a ton of attention to Mayhem and many were on hand for the wild and infamous ride that the second wave of black metal would go on during the early 1990’s.
I do not know if Lindberg was singing about Dead here, the lyrics do indicate it could be so, but I can’t readily find any actual sources corroborating this. It has been a widespread rumor for years and perhaps there’s some long lost interview with Lindberg that confirms this theory. But for the purposes of this brief post I’ll have to leave it as a loose thread.
Windows is a very heavy, crushing track that fits its disturbing subject matter. The song became an early favorite of fans and endured as one of the band’s signature tracks, even after the career and genre-defining Slaughter Of The Soul was released in 1995. Windows does have placements on a few live sets both audio and video, and is also a live bonus track on the band’s 1994 album Terminal Spirit Disease.
While we wait rather sadly for the final At The Gates album to feature Tomas Lindberg, it is nice to go back to the beginning and hear At The Gates crushing it right out of the, uh, gate. From very humble beginnings, At The Gates shaped the blueprint for metal that would come for decades afterward.
This past weekend we received the gift of the new Spinal Tap movie – Spinal Tap II – The End Continues. Along with that we got the inevitable “soundtrack” or music album to accompany the film. I’ve already given my thoughts on the movie here, so today let’s go over the record.
Spinal Tap – The End Continues
Released September 11, 2025 via Interscope Records
This album is straightforward and doesn’t have a ton of background info to go over. The album was recorded by the band’s three principal actors – Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer. Guest and McKean are also the album’s producers along with CJ Vanston, who also plays keyboards for the group in the movie. Joining in on drums is Valerie Franco, the actress/drummer who portrays the band’s new drummer Didi Crockett in the movie. There are also a wide array of guests on this album, Phil X and Greg Bissonette are a few noteworthy ones beyond the mega-star headliners.
We’re about ready to dig into the album, but there is one oddity as it relates to streaming services. If you look this up on Spotify, you’ll get 12 tracks – 9 new songs and 3 re-recorded Spinal Tap classics with very distinguished guest musicians. This should also be true of other streaming services, well, except for one.
If you have Amazon Music, or if you purchase a physical copy of the album as I have, you will find one additional track – the band’s classic Big Bottom, with guest musicians Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood. This does not appear on any other streaming service because Brooks has an exclusive deal with Amazon and is otherwise dead set against streaming music services. Since I do have it on record I will cover the widely-celebrated collab in this roundup.
Nigel’s Poem
This is a small bit from Nigel with sparse atmospheric keyboards behind it. As a song it is quite short, as a poem a minute might as well be an eternity as far as I’m concerned. This vaguely calls back to his spoken word intro to Stonehenge, but not really. I’m not sure what this is doing here. Grade: D+
Let’s Just Rock Again
This first proper song is a decent enough cut of old-school epic rock with the annoying sort of keyboard sound from Eurpoe’s The Final Countdown. The verses on this one have all three band members trading off vocals, it’s very slow and doesn’t always work. The chorus builds up in ok fashion. It’s not a horrible song but it isn’t all that great. Grade: C
(Listen To The) Flower People, featuring Elton John
We get are first guest shot here, with the legendary Elton John making his first of two appearances. Here the band tackles their first proper hit from the 1960’s as Spinal Tap, this jam is also in the film. It was a hilarious song back in the first film and it’s only made better with Elton John contributing to it. It will become quickly apparent that the entire value of this record is in these marquee guest appearances. Grade: A
Brighton Rock
A pretty nice classic rock track here. The lyrics are absolutely pointless but I guess the song needed something. Not a bad song overall though. Grade: C+
The Devil’s Just Not Getting Old
The music here is quite good. What I believe are Harry Shearer’s vocals are not. I could live with his super gruff vocal style, but this lyrical output is totally ham-fisted and not amusing. I honestly don’t know what the fuck this is. Grade: D-
Cups And Cakes, featuring Paul McCartney
Here is another early Tap classic, actually pre-Tap as the band were the Thamesmen at the time. This silly sweet track has the one and only Paul McCartney on it, Macca also jams this out with the band in the movie. It’s short and sweet and, while not the greatest song ever recorded, you can’t really fail with Macca joining in on your jam. Grade: B+
I Kissed A Girl
So I’m not gonna bother with even a surface level analysis here – this song sucks. End of. Grade: F
Angels
This doesn’t fit the movie or Spinal Tap’s style at all but it’s also a pretty decent song that sounds good and has something of a point so have a Cfor your trouble.
Big Bottom, featuring Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood
In the film, a short clip of Garth and Trisha covering Big Bottom comes up. It’s pivotal to the story and is also absolutely hilarious, one of the best moments in the film. In keeping with the theme of the album, we get a full version with the couple as welcome guests.
Garth and Trisha completely handle the vocals here, they trade off lines and Trisha’s subtle twists to reflect the gender ramifications of her singing certain parts are hilarious. The pair are also the focus of the song as the music does seem to sit in the background a bit more than in the original version. But what is widely hailed as the best Spinal Tap song is handled very well here to accommodate two A-list guests and everything comes off in great fashion. Again, you must either have a physical copy of the album or Amazon Music to have access to this song. Grade: A
Judge And Jury
This one comes in with an R&B style jam, or at least it’s in that vein. It’s pretty awful but it does sound clear and better executed than some of the other stuff on the album. It is further evidence that the group had no real creative direction when putting this record together and were just throwing shit at the wall. The biggest problem with throwing shit at the wall is that it’s shit. Grade: D+
Rockin’ In The Urn
Holy shit, we actually get to a new song that has a bit part in the movie and has some semblance of a point to it. This is handled by Derek Smalls/Harry Shearer as it was a proposed solo tune of his. Harry’s vocals are the weak point of the song, the music itself is honestly quite good. This is about the only glimpse of the old classic Spinal Tap that could crank out surprisingly good songs. The verses here are too slow for my tastes but the song is pretty decent overall. Grade: C+
Blood To Let
This album is a slog to get through but it’s oddly picking up steam in its final moments. This is an upbeat rocker with some keyboard and horn accents and is honestly a pretty good track. It’s probably the most well-formed of any of the new original songs and doesn’t really suffer at any point in the song. On most any other rock album this would be a passable secondary track, but on this bomb of an album it’s a highlight. Grade: B
Stonehenge, featuring Elton John
We close things out with Elton joining in on the band’s epic power metal-ish song. The track was pivotal to the first film and is integral to the new film’s climax as well. This new version does have some differences to the original but is generally faithful in execution. This always was one of the better Spinal Tap songs and it’s only enhanced with the presence of the great Elton John. Grade: A
The End Continues is a soundtrack album, though beyond the guest shots and the one original song that gets a bit of play, I’m not sure what film this album is soundtracking. It’s very odd that another Derek Smalls original that gets featured in the beginning of the film wasn’t recorded for this. This album has a few highlights with the mega-star guests and then has maybe one song that’s possibly worthy of any future listens. The rest of the album is very throwaway and holds no replay value of any sort. Even the few songs that do come together as decent tracks really don’t offer a reason to be revisited.
Spinal Tap was able to compose a shockingly good soundtrack for their first film, and then in 1992 they gave up an original album Break Like The Wind that had the excellent single The Majesty Of Rock on it. The band reconvened in 2009 for a collection of re-recordings Back From The Dead that didn’t offer up a ton of new stuff but was very good sounding. But here in 2025, with what is likely the final Spinal Tap musical release, the band hacked up a hairball. The record did chart very modestly in the UK and Scotland, but beyond that and the excellent guest appearances on well-known Tap songs, this album is dire and honestly better left forgotten.
Album Grade: D
It is a shame that we didn’t get something more with this album. The movie was worth the time and it’s been nice to see Spinal Tap get one more push in the limelight. But this time they brought an album that sadly doesn’t pass muster. I can certainly forgive this and move past it, there is plenty enough in the Spinal Tap lexicon for me to enjoy. But it would have been nice to have a little more something to what is most likely the group’s musical swansong.
Today’s news is a tragic update to revelations we were privy to last month, when At The Gates announced they were preparing a new album and that singer Tomas Lindberg had a rare form of cancer. Sadly, that cancer has claimed Tomas’ life. Tomas was 52 years old.
Lindberg was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in October 1972. He would get started in music in the late 1980’s and joined up with the band Grotesque. A bit later Grotesque disbanded and Lindberg teamed up with several others to form At The Gates. From 1992 through 1995, At The Gates released four albums and became one of the beacons of melodic death metal, a movement largely centered on the Gothenburg area. Their fourth album Slaughter Of The Soul is hailed as one of the best albums of the 1990’s and was a massively influential album on heavy metal from the 2000’s, especially death metal and metalcore.
At The Gates unexpectedly broke up in 1996. After this, Lindberg spent the next decade-plus fronting a wide range of bands. He would join up with Disfear, The Crown, Nightrage, LockUp and many others. He also formed his own band The Great Deceiver, showcasing a unique blend of death metal and other styles. And he provided guest vocals to a dizzying array of bands all over the metal spectrum.
In 2008, At The Gates reunited for a series of tours. The band did not expand much upon the touring for several years, but then in 2014 they became a fully active band again and offered up At War With Reality, their first album in 19 years. At The Gates toured regularly and released two more albums in 2018 and 2021.
The information provided in Lindberg and At The Gates’ statement last month outlines the final few years of Lindberg’s life. In 2023 he was diagnosed with a rare form of throat and mouth cancer, which required major surgery. In early 2025 some remnants of the cancer were found, requiring very sensitive treatment that left Lindberg isolated. While we don’t have any further details regarding that, Lindberg died on or around September 16th.
Lindberg’s death has hit the metal community hard. At The Gates are revered as one of the of pioneering forces of the heavy metal that came about in the 2000’s and basically saved the genre from the extinction that almost occurred during the late 1990’s. Lindberg was well-respected among metal fans and artists, as evidenced by his miles-long list of guest contributions and the wave of tributes that have flowed in since the news of his death.
For me, At The Gates has long been one of my favorite bands. I was entirely taken with the concept of melodic death metal and have been on board for over 30 years since I first heard them. Slaughter Of The Soul is one of my favorite albums of all-time and the entire discography is one I go back to with frequency. It took me forever to see At The Gates live, which finally happened in 2018. Seeing them live essentially crossed off the final name on my “concert bucket list.”
Tomas Lindberg’s death will be felt as we go forward, especially given the news that At The Gates do have one final album with his vocals nearly ready for release. Condolences to Tomas’ family, friends, bandmates and fans worldwide.
This past weekend was the theatrical release of Spinal Tap II – The End Continues. This film is the sequel to the 1984 cult classic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. It’s not common to get a sequel film 41 years after the original, but a long-standing battle over rights issues and a simple desire to find the “right” story for a new film held things up for a long time.
This new film involves the four main characters – band members David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls, as well as documentary maker Marty Di Bergi. There are also a number of new people involved, a handful of cameos from characters in the first movie, and several new guests.
The movie is quite short by today’s standards, going for 1 hour, 22 minutes. I was fine with it, there was more than enough to fill the screen and I didn’t see a reason to have a super long movie.
The plot is very simple and, to be honest, barely even there. Spinal Tap are contractually obligated to have one more show after 15 years of not playing together. The rest of the film is the lead-up to the show and then it caps off with the show itself. It’s extremely simple and doesn’t carry any excess baggage or dense weight to process.
This does make for easy watching but does also have a downside – there isn’t a ton of real tension or anything in the film. The first movie had a huge sense of wondering just how far the band was going to fall, as well as a true antagonist with Jeanine fouling up the band. Spinal Tap II doesn’t have much adversity going on – sure, David and Nigel have issues with each other and there’s an antagonist with a slimy concert promoter, but the film moves from “they’re reuniting” to the reunion in pretty short order. No one needed a crazy movie with twists and turns, but this is super, super light on plot.
We do get several guest appearances. A handful are small cameos that let us know how characters from the first film are doing, and a few others are new guests. Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood appear in one of the film’s most hilarious scenes and Paul McCartney makes a decently-sized appearance as himself. Elton John spends a bit more time on the screen and is pivotal to the film’s conclusion. There are a handful of other brief guest shots that come during an important story scene and I won’t spoil it, but they do make the joke that everyone thought they were going to make based on the pre-announced guest list.
One thing the movie gets right and probably the central thing they needed to get right is the humor. There are a few outright moments of gut-busting laughter, but most of the jokes are the same kind of faux-British, deadpan delivery that made the first movie so charming. Nigel especially is as full of nonsense as he was in the first movie.
Another thing done very well is honoring Spinal Tap lore. This movie fits very easily in alongside its 41 year old sibling film. The band’s long-running issues with drummers play a huge role, and the actual reunion show and aftermath are very much tied to incidents from the first movie. There isn’t a ton of new original music on offer in contrast to the first film, but Derek Smalls does air out a few bits of solo material. And while David St. Hubbins does seem a bit different as he’s gotten older, Nigel and Derek are almost straight-line continuations from the original flick. It’s very cool to catch up, albeit briefly, with old characters like Bobbi Flekman, Jeanine and Artie Fufkin. And the film honors the departed Ian Faith with a brief flashback before introducing his daughter. While the plot may be light, the story connection to the first film is rock solid.
I don’t feel much need to keep going with dry analysis so I’ll go ahead and wrap it up here. Spinal Tap II – The End Continues is a fitting sequel to the classic film of decades gone by. While it doesn’t offer up a lot in the way of story, it does great service to its lineage and offers up an entertaining array of laughs. It was nice to see the band back together for one more ride and the movie was more than worth the time.
Grade: B+
So now we have what seems to be a fitting conclusion to the Spinal Tap saga. I presume this is the final film, anyway. And in usual movie tie-in fashion, the band did offer up an album to accompany the film. I have since covered the album in this post.
So I took another unscheduled break, once again due purely to laziness as opposed to any tangible event. It seems like when I get days off from holidays or whatever that I wind up writing less. Oh well, I need to get back to it as I have a huge week upcoming so I’ll do a quick go-over of this song that popped back in my head recently after a long layoff.
Sponge came around in the mid 1990’s, they got their break not terribly long after forming in 1992 in Michigan. The band did form out of the remains of a few other acts so the group was fairly seasoned and ready to go, which might help explain their fairly quick rise.
The band released their debut album Rotting Pinata in 1994, and that’s where today’s song comes from. Plowed was the second single released from the album and was the song that put the band into public visibility. The album went gold in 1995 after Sponge grabbed attention with Plowed and the follow-up single Molly (Sixteen Candles). Plowed was the band’s biggest hit, landing at 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, scoring at 9 on the Album Rock Chart and 5 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Plowed is a force of a song, with a classic hard rock backbone but also perfectly slotting into the burgeoning alternative rock scene of the time. It goes hard enough that a person could about headbang to it but it’s also smooth and perfectly fitting with the rock scene at the time. I know I hadn’t heard it in a long time when I pressed play on it awhile back and the song installed itself into my head, just as it did way back in ’94.
Lyrically this one is about just going on with your life, no matter what is going on around you. Things are messed up, probably now more than ever, and all you can do is just plow through and face reality. While a fair bit of alternative rock could be obtuse or even just plain full of shit lyrically, Sponge were fairly straightforward with their song concepts. And the title is apparently literal – singer Vinnie Dombroski came up with the words while shoveling snow in his driveway.
This is one of those songs that really takes a person right back to the moment in time when it was released. This is quintessential 1990’s right here, I definitely get a jolt of nostalgia when I hear it. Maybe part of it is just how long it’s been but I do think this song is a true signpost of the mid-90’s.
Plowed has appeared in a number of movies, TV shows and video games over the years. Perhaps its most fitting placement is in the 1995 flick Empire Records. The song is one of many that are in the film but not on the album’s soundtrack. While Empire Records didn’t light the world on fire when it came out, it is looked back on now as another totem of the 1990’s and I certainly regard it as a landmark of that time.
While Sponge had their “moment in the sun” during the mid 1990’s, the band has kept on through to this day, with singer Vinnie Dombroski being the long original member still around. I did discover that their most recent album is a very curious one and it’s something I’ll give a look at here in a few weeks. But for today it’s all about remembering the long-past times of 1994 and ’95 and the buzz of memories this excellent track provides. If there was a playlist or compilation record of songs that define that time period, Sponge would absolutely place on it and Plowed is a fair choice for that slot.
For reasons unclear, there isn’t an official version of the music video on YouTube. I have an unofficial copy posted above, I’ll also include the official audio only version below in case the first video does a disappearing act.
Next week will be a busy one here, as this weekend sees the release of Spinal Tap II – The End Continues. I will have my thoughts on both the movie and the soundtrack as I get back into the swing of updating once again.
The Crooked Wanderer 