They were made for that type of thing, and we just weren’t.”)īut on that Lollapalooza tour, they contrasted so starkly with all the insular, gnarled underground rock around them that you can almost pinpoint it as the exact moment that kids like me decided to turn their attention to something faster and brighter and more cheerful. (Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich, in that oral history: “The Bosstones were so pumped, and their act was so physical, it was like an aerobics class. It was the dawn of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones Era. Lollapalooza ’95 was an ending in a lot of ways, but it was a beginning, too. The only early Lolla lineup that has really aged poorly is 1993, the Alice In Chains/Primus/Arrested Development year, and even that had Rage Against The Machine and Tool opening the show.) In a fascinating oral history a few years ago, The Washington Post called Lollapalooza ’95 “Alternative Nation’s last stand.” But even with all the past and future underground icons on display, the band that seized the imaginations of me and my friends when we went to that show - the band we couldn’t stop talking about on the long ride home - was the main-stage opening band, the one that wore plaid suits and had a horn section and a guy whose entire job was to dance. (That 1994 lineup also seems improbably cool in retrospect, but that’s ’90s alt-rock culture for you. The whole show was conceived as a rebuke to the previous year - the Smashing Pumpkins/Beastie Boys/Breeders year, the year that Nirvana were slated to headline until Kurt Cobain killed himself - because people thought that things were getting too pop. As headliners, it had old underground gods Sonic Youth, opening their set, the night I saw them, with “Teenage Riot,” only seven years old at that point but already a classic. It had Cypress Hill, performing in front of a gigantic inflatable Buddha with a pot leaf on its belly and, at the climactic moment of their set, wheeling out a 10-foot bowl with a smoke machine inside it. It had Superchunk and Helium and Redman and Built To Spill, all playing over on the side stage. It had Mellow Gold/”Loser”-era Beck, gawky and unsure and not yet ready for stages that size, though he’d get there soon enough. It had Hole, performing under silvery stars and openly feuding with other bands on the bill. It had Pavement, so sloppy and aloof the day I saw them that the West Virginia crowd pelted them with chunks of mud. I heard it was written about a relative of a band member, but i've heard much of the sentiment expressed in this song after all kinds of tragedies.The 1995 edition of Lollapalooza had a lineup that, in retrospect, seems almost inconceivably cool. Everything in it is either literal or a common phrase that you could search for on google and find other people using. The entire song reads exactly as it is written. Often said as a consideration to a recently killed person to show that you feel that the accident wasn't their fault in the slightest and as a respect to the common dangers faced by us all. Shortened version of "There, but for the grace of god, go I" meaning "It could have just as easily happened to me". Once a pagan tradition, now just common language although most people actually do knock on wood when they say it.Īnother common phrase - especially in Australia and especially amongst pilots. If you see something bad and say something like "I'm glad that hasn't happened to me" then a very common superstitious beleif is that you will jinx yourself ( and it will happen to you ) so you "Knock on wood" to touch something natural (earth magic superstition ) and it dispels the jinx. This is a standard PHRASE in english - at least in Australia and I think it came from England. Regardless of the inspiration, this song is as straight as it gets with lyrics means. General CommentI'm absolutely stunned at the misinterpretation of the meaning of this song, but I guess it does possibly make sense to older people. I've never had to but I'd better knock on wood Never had to but I'd better knock on wood Look at the tested and think there but for the grace go I I'd like to think that if I was I would pass I'm not a coward I've just never been tested Have you ever had the odds stacked up so high
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