Lyrics and images from the videos of select songs off Hootie and the Blowfish's 1994 debut Cracked Rear View. It just so happened that a faint tune emitting from a neighbor's window was enough to get the words "I'm gonna love you / The best that / The best that I can" out of my mouth before I realized I was mumbling a quasi-hit from a 1990s music act that makes even me ashamed to be a product of the 1990s.
Yes, true believers, I know all the lyrics to "Hold My Hand." I know all the words to "Let Her Cry," "Only Want to Be With You," and most of the warbling of "Time," in all its depth and titillating resonance. And I can think of about half a dozen things I'd rather have committed to memory. So I'm trying to hit the delete button on these guys so that, the next time I hear them on the radio or through a neighbor's window, all I'll think of is, "Man, what is that crap?"
My Excuse for Knowing This in the First Place
In my defense, my taste in music had not fully developed when I first heard the band. Obviously. Nineteen ninety-four was not the best year for music overall, and though my circumstances (on a college campus, with hipster roomates and coworkers) had exposed me to a medley of 70s folk rock (Blonde on Blonde), industrial grunge (KMFDM) and overseas musical froth (The Chieftains), one can only resist the hypnotic blare of the radio for so long (Ace of Base, Gin Blossoms). So Hootie and those other dorks bounced around in my skull enough for me to mistake familiarity with appreciation, and I bought their tape and played it intermittently in at home until my roomates locked me in my bedroom and threatened to set the carpet on fire unless I stopped. To paraphrase the Boy-they-Blowfish, I wasn't no friend of theirs.
Substituted For...
The tape is probably still in my collection somewhere; I'm afraid to look. It's definitely in my skull. And I'd like it out. I already have plans for what to do with the remaining space: Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning." Consider this part:
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,If youth truly is fleeting, and what captivates us when we're young and stupid can do no more than briefly intoxicate us in the wake of a complicated existence, then Stevens' rumination on Christianity vs. paganism, on the temporary vs. the immutable, seems to me a perfect substitution for Hootie. Since I defend myself by saying I liked him only because I didn't know any better, so can I substitute the imagery of birds flying across a clear sky: the birds leave, the image remains, and we can do with it what we wish.
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
