A Bittersweet Freshmen

I was working out tonight, lifting some weights, and I had my pandora music app on the 90’s alternative station.  Usually I go for the 80’s rock or maybe the summer hits from the 80’s but sometimes when I’m lifting weights I feel like playing the 90’s grunge music. Just seems to fit with the whole lifting weights thing.

Anyhow, the song “Bittersweet Symphony” came on. Great song, great tune, not much in the vocal department but it works.  The problem with that song is I never can remember who sings it, because around that same time a song came out called “The Freshmen.”  One of them was sung by “The Verve” and the other one was sung by “The Verve Pipe” but I’ll be damned if I can remember who did what.  I’ll admit I can’t name another song by either group so my reference for both groups is the one hit song that each group put out.  I’ll also admit I’m not the most knowledgeable person about music and the artists and bands and who did what, but I’m guessing I’m not the only one with this problem.  My wife is one of these people who is very knowledgeable about music and in fact can recall just about any song lyrics and sing just about any song upon hearing the tune.  It’s really quite remarkable, I often joke with her that it’s too bad there isn’t some way to “cash in” on this talent.  When the movie Beauty and the Beast was coming out last year and all the commercials were on TV, she would launch into the entire soundtrack each time a commercial for the movie would come on until finally myself or my son would tell her to please stop before we heard another round of “Be our Guest.” What I’m trying to say is she knows music.  But when I asked her who sang “Bittersweet Symphony” she said she couldn’t remember, that it was either “The Verve” or “The Verve Pipe.”  So I say again I don’t think this is just a “me” problem.

So I had this idea, what the two groups should do is tour together and play each others songs.  And I’m guessing unless your really a hard core fan most people might not notice that there doing each others songs.  People would probably look at each other for a moment and perhaps even remark that they didn’t know they played this song, they thought the other group played it, but they probably would think they just had the one group confused with the other and just go with it.

Imagine being a band and playing for years in small bars and clubs in your hometown and struggling to make a name for yourselves and then finally you hit it big, like really big with a pop hit that everybody knows but around the same time another similarly named group hits it big with their first hit.  What would the feelings be, anger, jealousy perhaps resentment or after awhile acceptance and maybe even humor.  I think if either group came to view it as humorous, that it must have took a while to achieve.

Thought for the day….You didn’t come this far to only come this far