By special request: 
Smashmouth: Walking on the Sun

       I promised that, if I could, I would honor requests.  This petition arrived via Monterrey California from someone calling themselves L-squared.  She has asked for the wonderful song Walking on the Sun by the San Jose band Smash Mouth.  After listening to the song again for the first time in several years I simply couldn't resist writing about it.  

Smash Mouth 

       In the 1960's guys like Eric Burden, Ray Manzarek, and Booker T. Jones took the organ out of the church & put it in the middle of the rock and roll stage.  Burden led the Animals to American success during the British invasion with songs like House of the Rising Sun, & We Gotta Get Out of this Place.  Establishing the driving dirty organ sound as a true rock and roll instrument.  The Doors may have been a vehicle for Jim Morrison's eccentric poetry and singing , but it was Ray Manzarek's organ that made the Doors sound connect with the audience.  Songs like Light My Fire, or Moonlight Drive were written on the organ as opposed to adapted to it.  Booker T. made the charts with a great little song called Green Onion, but the organ driven songs coming out of the Stax Studio in Memphis made an entire roster of musicians famous.  As one of the leaders of the Stax house band, Jones helped drive Otis Redding, Wilson Picket, Isaac Hayes, and Sam & Dave among others to stardom the same way the Funk Brothers drove Motown.

Mazarek keeping the Doors focused
despite Jim Morrison's antics

       That R&B organ sound inspired keyboard players everywhere to try and push the boundaries of rock and roll.  Bands like Santana, and J Giels were driven by the organ in equal parts lead and  accompaniment.  Still others. like  Jethro Tull, Yes, & ELP, elevated the organ with keyboard driven arrangements based on classical music creating the new genre progressive rock.  Deep Purple turned up the volume and played a new style of heavy metal on keyboard/organ driven music.  Eventually bands like Boston, Styx, & Journey captured the music world's imagination and the record buying public with keyboard driven hard rock/pop that drew some of it's influence from the recent prog-rock bands as well as from the earlier R&B period.  Interestingly this music was eventually dubbed "corporate rock" and found itself rejected by large portions of the record buying public.  
       Rock and roll never stands still and gradually, with each passing year, the organ's influence as a lead instrument faded.  The 90's grunge and alternative music may have had keyboards sometimes at the center of the arrangement but it was a roots movement driven by guitar and gravel voiced vocalists.  Their lyrics were driven by their own contemporary experiences but the guitar sounds merged the solid guitar crunch of Black Sabbath with the complex melody lines of Deep Purple & Led Zepplin.  Sometimes a keyboard song like Sarah McLachlans' ethereal Possession would emerge from the pack to remind us of the organ's power and it's place at center stage. 
       In 1997 a band called Smash Mouth exploded onto the scene with a hit song called Walking On the Sun.   The multi-platinum selling song reaches into the past to make some observations about pre-packaged, corporate prophet driven contemporary hipness.  The song implores us to look inwards and backwards and reject the false coolness being sold to us on daily.  The quest for legitimacy and realness is one of the driving question that under-lied the grunge & alt musical movements.  In fact, many bands, like Soul Asylum, that reached fame with commercial hit songs were subsequently abandoned by their long time fans as no longer being "real".  This was the inter-generational echo of the rejection of the so called corporate rock from that earlier generation. 
       It's an interesting dichotomy for a band to struggles for years creating songs that register their contempt of false god capitalism while simultaneously reaching for financial success. When their songs finally become accepted by the masses through radio airplay and album sales they're accused of selling out for their new-found commercial success.   Yet without that commercial success they have no stage to tell their anti-establishment stories from.  That paradox has destroyed as many great rock bands as drug use, musical direction, and the constant evolution of "coolness".
       Smash Mouth recognized that weird dichotomy and with an ironic twist they confronted it head on.  Even the name of the band is a football term that reflects the idea of head first confrontation.  Perhaps it is that irony that drove Smash Mouth to perform songs for Hollywood movies later in their career. Selling out without selling out?  Shilling for the false god capitalists without becoming part of their structure?
       In the meantime the band wanted to know what the hell happened to the hippie movement?  Did we abandon idealism for practicalities or did we just become another generation of mindless consumers?  The song packaged this evocative question in a retro style that probably made Rock & Roll Hall of Fame organ player Eric Burden stand up and pump his fist in joy.    

The legendary Booker T. Jones

       It opens with a great doublet run on the bass, accompanied by a ringing cymbal, & some percussion, followed by a vibra-slap hook.  The guitar then falls in with a recognizable grungy aggressive growl and is followed by the organ.  The throwback organ is clearly part of the ensemble driving the song by evocatively shining a light on the sounds of the past.  In the middle of the song,  right before the bridge section, is an organ solo that smartly and quite stunningly captures the best organ sound heard since the song Green Onion helped define the Memphis sound.
       While Smash Mouth did have other hit songs that also were driven by their nostalgia focus none of them ever came close to connecting with the collective psyche of the 18-34 crowd the way Walking on the Sun did.  The questions asked by the song are a philosophical hall of mirrors and the band doesn't offer any answers.  Perhaps that's because there are no real answers to ironic philosophical questions.  But for one shining moment Smash Mouth captured our attention and implored us to think about where we came from and we're we're heading and they did it with one of the greatest songs of the 1990's.  Please take a moment and enjoy Smash Mouth Walking On the Sun


As a reminder, if you want to contact me with comments or requests you can try posting it here or email me at offthechatsblog@gmail.com.  I hope you're enjoying the series.
Thanks,
J