Re-Acquiring Old CDs: Smash Mouth's "Astro Lounge"
Coming hot off the heels of my blogs about musical artists at the turn of the century with really weird sideburns, it's time to revisit what was probably Smash Mouth's most successful album.
Smash Mouth's "Astro Lounge"
Although there is most definitely one specific song off of "Astro Lounge" that gets particular play, Smash Mouth most definitely is not what I would consider to be a one-hit wonder by any stretch of the imagination. Though I didn't collect their prior album, I had of course been familiar with "Walkin' on the Sun" off of "Fush Yu Mang", which still gets plenty of radio play to this day. I also recall being familiar with Smash Mouth's version of "Why Can't We Be Friends?" if only because kids at school suddenly knew the chorus now that a band they knew had covered it.
But "Astro Lounge" is definitely the album I can listen to front to back and very rarely skip any song on the disc. It's an album that reminds me of long car trips across the country between Texas and California, disappearing into the headphones of my CD player while sitting otherwise disinterested in anything else in the backseat. Both visually and sonically, it drips with the sights and sounds of retro-futurism. Much like Lit's "A Place in the Sun", the visuals pull from the 1950s and '60s while also looking forward to a very Jetson's-like idea of the future. Some songs have much older-sounding guitar distortion, and often include rock-and-roll electric organ.
I'm actually a big fan of the very first track on the disc, "Who's There", telling the story of a bunch of people just chilling out at night somewhere in southern California, only to look up into the sky to see a UFO descending and making first contact with Earth. The spacy story and sound is just great. I think I always ended up associating who "MarzGurl" was--the fictional cartoon alien girl I would use to represent myself online--with this song. To this day, I think that if that same character that I now occasionally use to do Vtubing stuff had a theme song, it would be "Who's There". When the character design was first made by a friend of mine in about the year 2000, I asked her to make this character out to be a green-skinned alien with antennae and blue hair, but also slightly leaning toward being a hippie, with a peace sign on her shirt, throwing up a peace sign with her hand, and wearing bell bottoms. And that's the image I've associated with myself online for about 25 years now, and I think it matches Smash Mouth's retro futuristic sound perfectly, making "Who's There" the perfect song for her.
I don't know that I had ever seen the music video for "Waste" until going to look it up in preparation for writing this blog. It's one of the few somewhat sentimental-sounding songs on the album, and I've always liked it, but I didn't know anything about the plot of the music video, which looks to depict a woman stood up by the lead singer Steve Harwell, waiting for him at a table at a restaurant, but as it turns out Steve has had the shit kicked out of him by some guys who look like they're in the mob and have thrown him in the restaurant's freezer. It's actually really cinematic, and I wonder why it is I hadn't seen the video sooner. It's certainly one of the songs I think is the most thought-provoking on the disc.
There's nothing that hasn't been said about the one and only Smash Mouth song, "All Star". For as inseparable as it has become from "Shrek", it's actually almost frustrating to think that people forget it was directly tied into the movie "Mystery Men" first. The music video splices the band together with acts of heroism together with scenes from that film. Great movie, by the way. Who doesn't wish they just had their dad's skull inside a bowling ball that they use as a weapon? I feel like people don't even remember how ludicrously popular this song even without the help of "Shrek". It was just already such a banger before that movie hijacked it forever.
"Stoned" is, as you can imagine, an absolute stoner's anthem. Which is amusing to think about, considering the song predated legalized marijuana use in parts of the United States. But I think it just sort of exemplifies this country's relationship with weed, when you consider so many people clearly did not give a damn about how illegal weed was, because nobody but your school's D.A.R.E. officer was telling you weed was dangerous. It's almost easy to forget that recreational weed has only been legal in this country for ten years, only starting with the state of Colorado, and it's still not in effect nationwide to this day.
"Then The Morning Comes" is a fun song, and another great single off the album. The music video is pretty entertaining, too. The lead singer keeps waking up every morning, almost in a "Groundhog Day" scenario, seeing a particular attractive woman everywhere he goes, trying to walk up to her and strike up a conversation, and every day something embarrassing happens to him that causes her to laugh him off, but on the last day he finally wins her over and wakes up the next morning to find she fell asleep in bed next to him, so things turned out pretty okay in the end. I'd say this one is still remembered pretty fondly by people to this day.
I really love the track "Road Man", a reggae-styled track depicting a band that is trying to get to their next show, but their roadie is running late with the van full of the band's equipment, ending with the roadie speeding so fast that he gets himself into a wreck with an oncoming train and getting crushed by the band's sound system. The thought of the accident is horrific, and somehow the upbeat nature of the song makes the story play more like a funny joke.
I come back to the song "Fallen Horses" quite often. Right after Steve Harwell passed away, the first song I went to listen to was actually this one and not "All Star". It's a very introspective-sounding song, and it's one I would be happy if it were associated with me when I'm not on this Earth anymore.
Despite the popularity of "All Star", the lead single of the disc was actually "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" from the previous year's film "Can't Hardly Wait". Great cover of a great song, though combined with its music video, it definitely looks and sounds the most dated out of anything else on the whole album. Which, I know, sounds weird to say about a 25-year-old CD, but truly, even for being that old, this song and its video just feel way, way older. And to be fair, yeah, the song is older. But even Smash Mouth's modern stylings couldn't quite make it feel more modern. But hey, that's not actually to its detriment. There's nothing wrong with the way it sounds or the way the music video looks. Good music is still good music any time.
There are a number of unfortunate things that taint Smash Mouth a bit to me these days. Losing Steve Harwell was sad, though hearing about the kind of person he had turned into with reportedly a continued drug and alcohol abuse problem is quite disheartening. I felt a little better knowing that he didn't actually have writing credits on most of the songs, but then I looked up Greg Camp who wrote most of the songs on "Astro Lounge", only to find that he's now become a member of the band The Defiant, who formed during COVID-19 as other members were thumbing their noses at vaccines and pandemic restrictions, making music that says pretty much all the same sentiments. So, I think I'm always going to have a soft spot in my heart for "Astro Lounge", but, uh, I don't see myself going out of my way to follow up on the remaining members anytime soon, honestly.
The great thing about owning an old copy of a CD, especially an old used copy, is that you definitely didn't give your money to anybody you might struggle to agree with on certain things. "Astro Lounge" and many of the track on it are so deeply associated with so many things happening during its time on the charts, it's hard to decouple the music from many cultural touchstones and movements. This may be a situation where it's not too terribly difficult for me to separate the art from the artists that made it. The musicians were clearly quite talented and extraordinarily popular, but man, in times of global strife and an entire pandemic, they really made it difficult to keep liking them as people. Still, crazy good road music, though. I'm just gonna pocket that one for myself, say thanks for the memories, and then just moonwalk away.
If these blog entries have been in any way interesting to you, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi. I am also trying to finish up collecting the rest of my missing CDs, and you can find most of the rest of what I'm missing at this wish list. Thanks as always. Be seeing you guys next time.
