My Favorite Albums: New Miserable Experience
This is the first of what will be a series on some of my favorite albums of all time. In these pieces, I’ll try to do the impossible — articulate the greatness I see (or hear, in this case) of art. Music, like any art form, is subjective, and even if a whole lot of people generally agree on something — like the quality of the Beatles, for example — there are no right or wrong answers. Everything is a matter of personal experience. Even if I’m the only person who likes something, it doesn’t mean I’m “wrong” about it.
This is my attempt to convey my appreciation for New Miserable Experience, the first major release from the Gin Blossoms, and to put it into some context with regard to where and when it happened in my life. There’s no particular significance to starting this series with this album other than I’ve recently listened to it and so its brilliance is fresh in my mind.
The Gin Blossoms, an alternative rock band from Tempe, Arizona, had previously only released Dusted, a 1989 album on independent label San Jacinto Records. The album contained the seeds for songs that later exploded into 1992’s New Miserable Experience.
NME is, to me, nearly a flawless album from start to finish, yet I find it a difficult listen on multiple levels despite my love for it. When it came out, I wasn’t in the best of places mentally. I was drinking a lot and struggling with what I recognize now as undiagnosed depression. I had started college in the fall of 1984 but eight years later I was still nowhere near graduating, as I was taking classes only sporadically. A nasty bout of psoriasis and a general dissatisfaction with my personal life and career trajectory were combining to sap my self-esteem.
Oh, I could still have fun and laugh with friends. I was always good at masking inner pain. The more I hurt, the easier it was for me to clown around and have a good time — whatever it took to ignore or bury it all deeper beneath the surface. So, in some respects, I was like Doug Hopkins at the time.
Hopkins was a decent musician and brilliant songwriter who penned most of the Gin Blossoms’ best-known songs, yet he wasn’t around to enjoy the success. An eventually lethal combination of alcoholism and depression led to the band’s new label, A&M, demanding that Hopkins be kicked out of the Gin Blossoms under the threat of pulling the plug on the group’s first major label release. Hopkins was later bullied into surrendering half of his publishing royalties and his mechanical royalties. Shortly after his former band’s new album went gold — almost entirely on the strength of his songs — Hopkins killed himself with a handgun.
So, long story short (too late?): the back story of the writer of the band’s best songs, and the place that I revisit mentally when listening to New Miserable Experience, make even an album this good a difficult listen for me — difficult but also sublime, which is a strange dichotomy.
The album opener is one of the band’s best songs, “Lost Horizons.” Hopkins wrote it and it is stunning. It kicks off with the trademark jangly guitar of many 90s alt-rock bands. It’s peppy and upbeat and oh so fricken dark. The darkness of the lyrics and the upbeat pop-style music creates an incredible cognitive dissonance.
Lyrically, this song is devastating and at that time I could absolutely relate to the refrain:
“Drink enough of anything to make this world look new again
Drunk drunk drunk in the gardens and the graves”
Hopkins had a way of saying the darkest things in the most beautiful way imaginable. Having had so many romantic failures during the years leading up to and during this album’s popularity, combined with my mental state, this song hit my most sensitive nerve.
“She had nothing left to say
So she said she loved me
And I stood there grateful for the lie.”
I could fill pages just going on and on about the lyrics to this song but I’ll just include two more passages:
“The last horizons I can see
Are filled with bars and factories
And in them all we fight to stay awake.”
“The last horizons I could see are now resigned to memories
I never thought I'd still be here today…
Drink enough of anything to make myself look new again
Drunk drunk drunk in the gardens and the graves”
This song still crushes me every single time I hear it, but because of how good the song is, it’s the sweetest pain.
NME pulls out of “Lost Horizons” and dives into one of the album’s two biggest hits — one that most everyone listening to the radio or watching Mtv in that era remembers well. “Hey Jealousy” starts with another upbeat riff and then immediately drops Hopkins’ devastating autobiographical lyrics.
“Tell me do you think it'd be all right
If I could just crash here tonight
You can see I'm in no shape for driving
And anyway I've got no place to go
And you know it might not be that bad
You were the best I'd ever had
If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago
I might not be alone”
Yet for all the darkness in Hopkins’ lyrics, he’d occasionally manage to allow a ray of hope to seep in.
“The past is gone but something might be found to take its place.”
“Hey Jealousy” is just under four minutes of perfect, fast-paced, power pop and is the song that really propelled the band into stardom. In some ways it really shone the light on the Tempe music scene, which was sort of the “new Seattle” at the time, with The Refreshments (who will appear later in this favorite albums series at some point) and other bands coming to prominence during that era.
Guitarist Jesse Valenzuela co-wrote “Mrs. Rita” with band friend Jim Swafford. The song also did well, reaching No. 36 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. It was a staple of alt-rock stations throughout the 1990s. If you listened to CD 101 in Columbus for more than an hour in 1993 or 1994 you’d probably hear “Mrs. Rita” at some point. The protagonist in the song seeks out Mrs. Rita to tell his fortune, so he can find out if his relationship is over or if his girl is “coming ‘round again.” It’s a generally upbeat and hopeful song but there’s still some trademark Gin Blossoms darkness hidden within.
“I've been keeping myself busy with my books and with my tapes
Every day's much better since I've slowed my drinking pace
There's no swimming in the bottle it's just someplace we all drown
I lost myself in sorrow lost my confidence in doubt”
The first song that isn’t musically upbeat and fast in tempo follows. “Until I Fall Away” is a mournful ballad. It sounds like it could have been a Hopkins song but it wasn’t. Singer Robin Wilson and Valenzuela combined on this one, which went to No. 13 on the mainstream chart.
This song guts me every time, but it has such a great haunting chorus. The lilting backing vocals of the chorus are something that the ghosts of angels might sing. It brings me to tears just about every time I hear it. My favorite passage is obviously related to my own personal issues of self-worth from that time period:
“My fear, pretend
That I'll never be in love again
It's real... to me
But not like these fools and not like this scene
I won't... find
Or have it within the time
If it's all rusted and faded in the spot where we fell
Where I thought I'd left behind
It’s loose now but we could try”
The album then kicks back into overdrive with the rocker “Hold Me Down,” another Hopkins song with Wilson getting co-writing credit. Hopkins’ fingerprints are all over it.
“Cause when you're in the company of strangers
Or just the strangers you call friends
You know before you start just how it's going to end
So remember when those doors swing open
And all the drinks are passed around
Anytime the pickins look too easy, hold me down”
Although this is a good song, it’s only good. It doesn’t reach the heights of the songs that come before or most of those that follow. Still, it’s a good listen and not one that ever makes me consider hitting the skip button.
The album takes a weird turn with the zydeco-esque “Cajun Song.” A bit southern, a bit creole, a bit bluesy, “Cajun Song” really spotlights Wilson’s vocals. Despite the different feel, it doesn’t seem out of place on NME. It’s a song of lost love but it’s not a Hopkins tune. Valenzuela wrote this one and it’s a pretty good one. Like “Hold Me Down” before it, it’s not an album highlight but it’s also not a skipper. At less than three minutes, it’s the album’s shortest song and a nice, quick listen.
Valenzuela also penned the seventh track, “Hands are Tied.” While this might be my least favorite track on the album, it’s not without its qualities and, again, I don’t skip this one. I like the guitar work from Hopkins/Valenzuela and it’s probably the hardest rocking track on the album. Bassist Bill Leen does yeoman’s work in providing a bed for the song to lie upon.
“Found Out About You” is one of the album’s cornerstones and it’s the biggest hit. It reached No. 1 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, No. 5 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks, No. 6 in the Mainstream Top 40, and No. 25 in the Billboard Hot 100. It’s another song by Hopkins, who literally lived the lyrics. The tone of the song’s verses are appropriately melancholy, with the band kicking into a rocking refrain in between. Everyone who has ever had a love step out on them can relate and Hopkins perfectly captures his pain, along with the human desire to lash out at the object of one’s affection with another lyrical passage I wish I’d written.
“Is there a line that I could write
That's sad enough to make you cry?
And all the lines you wrote to me were lies.”
This song represents the Gin Blossoms at their best. Everything works: lyrics, melody, vocals, guitar, drums — the whole shebang.
Then the album does a 180. The sadness, loss, and hurt of “Found Out About You” gives way to the more upbeat sounding “Allison Road.” Wilson wrote this one, which is a bit more vague lyrically. It’s got a good guitar sound and it’s catchy as hell. I can’t not sing along to it.
Valenzuela’s “29” is next and it’s a good song but it’s the one I almost always forget about and think, “oh yeah,” when it comes on. I don’t think it’s forgettable necessarily, but it’s probably got the least memorable chorus on the album. That’s not a slight on “29,” but rather a statement of how good the rest of NME is.
The album ends with two more Hopkins songs. Track 11 is one of the album's best, "Pieces of the Night." Anyone who has spent some time at the bottom of a bottle or glass will get the reference, because that's all you can recall the next day. The song opens with yet another lyric that I wish I'd written.
"Is it any wonder that the stars just don't rush by
When you're only doin' 60 through this oh-so-vacant night
But it's lacking something big this time
What the hell did you expect to find
Aphrodite on a barstool by your side?"
The song features great 90s jangly guitars, Wilson's plaintive vocals, and nice harmonies. It probably should be the album closer, because the finale doesn't really fit.
"Cheatin" is the closer and, while it's a fine song in many respects, it feels out of place. Valenzuela takes lead vocals on the album's most country-influenced song. Between the dominant pedal steel guitar and Valenzuela's vocals, it's a country & western song to close a pop/rock album.
Hopkins' song about a night of stepping out in New York City after a few too many drinks is well written but it doesn't fit.
"Well she was tall hair dark as midnight
She had a way just like you do
To make me feel just like a woman should
You can't call it cheatin'
Cause she reminds me of you."
One can only imagine that the person hearing these words would have little desire to listen and little sentiment for the narrator's rationalization, but it's vintage Hopkins — raw, honest, and tinged with guilt and pain. Still, the decision to include such a vastly different song was a strange one. The album didn't need a 12th song and it just makes for a jarring end. It's the lone misstep on the entire album.
I don't listen to this album enough, mostly due to the reasons I listed above. The songs are great and they hold up well even more than a quarter of a century later. Maybe someday I can hear it without being transported emotionally and mentally back to a dark place and time — or without thinking of Hopkins putting a gun to his head shortly after destroying his gold record in a drunken rage while his former bandmates went on to enjoy the fruits of the album's success.
I don't blame a bunch of young kids for doing what they needed to do to get their record made or for lacking a true understanding of what kind of shape Hopkins was truly in. They captured the public's mixed feelings about their success perfectly in the title of their next album, Congratulations, I'm Sorry.
It's a damned shame that a brilliant songwriter like Hopkins couldn't overcome his demons. It certainly makes me wonder what treasures his death deprived the world from enjoying and whether the Gin Blossoms would have had a different career trajectory if he had been able to get the right help. Hopkins also serves as a reminder to me of how my own story might have ended if my own demons had just a little bit stronger hold on me.
So, I can still enjoy New Miserable Experience, but just not too often.