R.I.P. Steve Harwell

I'll go ahead and say that Smash Mouth fulfilled the role of a dumb band that churned out a couple of dumb top 40 hits as well as any such dumb band of any era, and there's a certain respectability about that. They were the Blue Swede of the back half of the 90s.

I was never at all tempted to ever even think about considering the microscopic possibility of buying or downloading or streaming or intentionally seeking out in any way, shape or form any recording by Smash Mouth, but I never once felt any disgruntlement if I was in earshot of a top 40 station or grocery store muzak and "Walking on the Sun" popped up.* I just accepted it as a dumb top 40 pop song that had no aspirations of being anything besides a dumb top 40 pop song and went about its business agreeably enough.

*"All Star," on the other hand, could grate due to overexposure, but I won't lay that on the band. It also was just a big dumb top 40 pop song doing its duty as a big dumb top 40 pop song.

When we heard "Walking on the Sun," we all probably assumed that Smash Mouth would be a one-hit wonder. And then they came out with "All Star," which made them a two-hit wonder. And I'm sure the lasting popularity of Shrek gave the band continued exposure, thanks to "All Star" appearing in the movie's opening credits. Rest in peace, Steve, and thanks for the music.

My son like countless other teens has absorbed "All Star" and other Smash Mouth hits via memes and YouTube, but I found myself surprisingly impressed on a re-listen to "Walking on the Sun," which is kind of a shockingly thoughtful reassessment of the legacy of 60s activists and hippies in the decades later. Weirdly it makes a few compelling points about their mixed legacy in politics, activism, and popular culture. And as Kendra Pierre-Louis pointed out the band had massive hit songs focused on global warming.

I had missed the more controversial recent aspects of the band, or at least Harwell. The NPR piece on his passing this morning mentioned their attendance at a Covid flouting festival in Sturgis a few years ago and an apparent Nazi salute onstage more recently. As breno mentions, there's not much of a legacy to be tarnished from where I sit, so I guess I can't say I really like 'em any less because of that.

That was pretty grim stuff, yes.

rhettlawrence Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>The NPR piece on his passing this morning mentioned their attendance at a Covid flouting festival in Sturgis a few years ago

Why would NPR even mention this in a piece about the guy's death? It's not like it was a crime or made him a bad person. I don't find it the slightest bit "controversial" that he played at an outdoor festival in front of people who chose to be there. In fact, I found a WaPo article stating a whopping 100 people contracted covid at the Sturgis festival, while over 200 contracted it at Lollapalooza the same year where vaccinations were required. I wonder if NPR will criticize any of those artists for playing Lollapalooza when they die?

Rant over.

I can't say I was a fan either - especially over the past ten years when they were popping up in the news for terrible reasons - but "Walking on the Sun" was a pretty good pop single and I even burned it on to a compilation of singles from '90s artists that I'd otherwise never listen to.

So, Steve Harwell had his weak points. So did Jimmy Buffett. I'm sure Gary Wright had his share of flaws too (although I didn't learn about any of them when I talked to a musician who had toured with Gary, a few years ago). All three of them will receive tribute on my show tomorrow night.

Something tells me that if you excluded every musician who’d done something stupid and less than noble, you wouldn’t have a show at all.

Likewise if we only included people on this board who were totally wonderful all the time and had never done lousy things they wish they hadn’t!

(*cue bip’s exit music…!)

Well, some artists just push the boundaries ... all but negating their accomplishments with their misdeeds. Phil Spector comes to mind. So does Ike Turner.

Other artists, it may be said, go the opposite route -- negating any worthy, laudable things they might have achieved in their lifetime with their music. I wouldn't care if Steve Perry or Dennis DeYoung had halos, with choirs of angels heralding their approach every time they entered a room. If you tune in for 20FR, and you hear me paying tribute to any member of Styx or Journey, rest assured I'm doing it at gunpoint.

I'm not sure what to make of the article in The Atlantic by some kid who says hearing Smashmouth at the age of 11 was what inspired him to become a rock critic. Strikes me as a dubious entry point for forming a musical aesthetic. But then I'm an old rockist traditionalist, so what do i know?

Unless what inspired the kid was that the music was so lame that he just couldn't resist criticizing it in some sort of public way!

Again, I consider SmashMouth's impact to be so negligible that I'm surprised that they could rouse anyone to anything.