What this song reminds me of:
1) Being 15/16, mostly. This band hit around 1995 or so, they were all over Alternative Nation and 120 Minutes and their single “Here And Now” was on the Melrose Place soundtrack. I don’t think anyone took them very seriously, mostly because of silly ideas about “indie cred,” but also because they only had two or three really good songs (this being one of them, though it was never a single.)
2) When I was a teenager, I was very involved with my (tiny) high school’s literary magazine, and they used to send us to these writing conferences two or three times every school year. By far, these conferences are the best memories from my adolescence. Oh man, I loved these things – it was good for my ego, because I could show off in writing seminars, but the best thing was getting to be around kids from other schools. Meeting new people in general was a huge novelty for me at this point in my life, since my school district was so small and peculiar that I had basically been stuck with the same 50 or so people in my age group from Kindergarten up through senior graduation. I had to assume that since I wasn’t completely happy there, it was probably because I wasn’t around enough people like myself, and these conferences (as well as some classes which I took on the weekends at Pratt in my junior and senior years) gave me the feeling that I was correct. There was a whole world of smart, cool kids just outside of where I lived – in neighboring towns, across the river, in lower Westchester, in Long Island, in New York City. Of course, I was always too shy to actually make friends with anyone at these conferences, but just chatting a bit for an hour or having any exposure at all was enough for me.
3) Now let’s be very honest about this: I’m talking about how great it was to be around new cool people, but what I really mean is that it was great to be around new cool girls. I’m thinking about it right now, and I can’t even remember what the guys were like at these things. I’m sure there were others, because I would certainly remember the discomfort of being the only male at something like this. What I do recall are the girls – I still remember what a lot of these girls looked like, even though I only saw them for an hour or two nearly a decade ago. It’s funny what sticks in your memory, because I’m having trouble getting a solid mental picture of people that I saw every day as a teenager. Anyway, this was my first contact with actual indie girls, and it kinda blew my young mind. These young women set the template for what I thought I wanted from a girlfriend for the next three or four years. I’m a bit embarassed by this, because it certainly was not mature or healthy to fixate on appearances like this, much less to assume that I could understand the personality of someone based solely on their style and tastes. Of course, I’ve never actually dated anyone like the cute indie girls from my memories, not then and not now. (Though I’m open to it!) More than anything, thinking about these girls as a teenager was a comfortable fantasy. It was just a design for a life I wanted at the time – I didn’t have any specific interest in any of these people (in fact, I was probably more terrified of them than anything else), but they gave me an idea of the kind of people I wanted to be with.
4) I bought a copy of the Letters To Cleo tape a few days before going to a conference at Westchester Community College. I’m not clear on the specifics of what happened on that particular day, but I remember bits and pieces (mostly images), and it was obviously a pretty good day for me. On the bus ride home, I must have listened to “Rim Shack” a dozen times over. When I got home, I listened to it some more in my room, while looking out of my window in a general southern direction. This became a weird habit for me. Whenever I’d want to just think about how great things could be, I’d just stare south (which was really just down the street, looking at a bunch of trees) while listening to something which reminded me of either the conferences or NYC – “Rim Shack,” Sonic Youth, “Old To Begin” by Pavement (which I listened to on the subway whenever I was in NYC in 1997 for reasons I still do not understand), the Lynn Samuels radio show on WABC. It was a pretty weird thing to do, but I was a pretty weird kid.
5) This song also reminds me of this one strong visual image of a street someplace in lower Westchester (possibly in Mamaroneck?) that is burned in my memory for no apparent reason, but is closely associated with these memories. If I hear the “Rim Shack” chord progression, I immediately envision a semi-urban street with brownstones, trees, and newspapers on the street to be recycled. I have no idea how this image ever got in my head, or why it seems to have any significance.
6) I remember seeing the band interviewed on 120 Minutes, and the guitarist explained that this song was called “Rim Shack” because it reminded them of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” so they just reversed the title. Well, almost. They transposed the h and the s. But still.
