Tuesday Request Day: Everclear

       Everclear is one of my all-time favorite bands and I would like to thank Anonymous from Portland for making this request.

       In 1992 a band emerged from Portland Oregon
 called Everclear.  They were fronted by the multi-talented singer and guitar player Art Alexakis.  Alexakis is originally from Southern California but early difficulties in his life led him to live in places scattered all over the country with various family members. He survived a tumultuous childhood and went on to become one of the most important and influential artists of the 90's and beyond.
       If you want to know more about this man then you need look no further than the music he created with Everclear.  With the bands help Alexakis put every event and emotion on display for the entire world and they became successful and respected because of it.  Their first high charting single, called Santa Monica, is about a girlfriend that killed herself which then drove him to attempt suicide at the Santa Monica Pier.  Father Of Mine is the dark and deeply moving story of his childhood chronicling the sins of his father and his vow to never be that man.  Everclear never hesitates to rip off the band-aids and expose the wounds below and sometimes we find them raw and festering.  Alexakis's painful confessions are both repulsive and yet totally relateable to our own lives.
       If you've ever felt alone, hurt, powerless, and angry you will feel a kinship with Everclear's music.  In I Will Buy You A New Life he attempts to save the woman and their love by trying to make her understand that he loves her more than she loves herself while at the same time admitting he helped create the problems in their relationship. This isn't a last ditch attempt to hurt her before he leaves but rather a serious plea for both of them to overcome their self inflicted wounds and become the people and the couple they both know they should be.
       In the emotionally stunning song Father Of Mine he lays bare every bit of hurt and blistering anger a grown man feels after a lifetime of abandonment and neglect by the only male figure that truly matters in a child's life.  The lines "Father of mine, tell me how do you sleep with the children you abandoned and the wife I saw you beat" burn with rage.  Alexakis takes control of those dark and dangerous emotions, he was force to endure, by explicitly saying "Now I am a grown man with a child of my own and I swear I'm not going to let her know all the pain I have known".  Many of the worlds greatest writers have been unable to walk that tightrope with as much grace and dignity as Art Alexakis and Everclear.
      Today I am featuring Everclear's cover of Van Morison's celebrated song Brown Eyed Girl.  The Morrison version of the song oozes nostalgia for first love through a gauzy haze of intoxicating memory.  Everyone who has ever had a true first love understands the defining, yet fleeting power it exerts over us for our entire lives.  Everclear turns the song upside down by showing what it must be like to have that first love be unrequited then live with it for the rest of your life.  Like most of this bands music it is emotionally poignant and accessibly wrapped in a strong rock and roll composition.

Please watch the wonderful video of Everclear's version of Van Morrison's classic

                 Brown Eyed Girl