Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 14:45

I was a sophomore at Ohio University when I first heard the Stone Roses. This was at the end of a bleak period in pop music ... the sort of time that is more the rule than the exception, I've come to see. After five years (1985-1989) of power ballads, hair-metal posturing, bland dance cuts, slick and soulless excuses for r&b;, and other such drags, I saw the video for World Party's "Ship of Fools." "Hmmm ..." I thought. "What was that?" 

Later on, the Church hit with "Under the Milky Way" and the Sundays gained some prominence. "Something's definitely beginning to happen here ..." thought I "... something adventurous, something with spirit and aesthetics." While at home during a break from OU in late '89, I tuned into late night programming. 

That is where I first saw the video for "Fool's Gold." 

That is where I first saw the great Stone Roses. 

Having for some time been a fan of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Jefferson Airplane, I had long been attracted to bands that experimented and did innovative things with the recording medium. Now before me I saw THIS BAND, using dreamy film sequences to illustrate a similarly dreamy cut, but a cut with a fresh take on, of all things, danceable music (and pulling it off!). 

Here ... with its stunning visual appeal, with its weaving mix of guitars and sound effects, with its rather beat and somewhat menacing lead singer, with its unbelievable cool drummer (head down, arms rolling, eyes closed, head bobbing and weaving to the beat like some entranced shamanistic character), with its own taut version of psychedelic rock, was a band that seemed to have come to announce that, at long last, the uptight, piddling, unimaginative, parsimonious, and puritanical 1980's were over ... finished ... gone. 

Suddenly, there seemed to open up a sort of imaginative and creative Springtime where words and art and music and, hell, FUN, were flooding back to reclaim the human spirit for a deeper and more sublime view of beauty. Needless to say, I bought the CD. The abstract box it came in told me, as I thought already, that there was probably something promising inside. In a late night first listen, with a good pair of headphones and the booklet opened to the center band photo, I was completely taken with this band and its music. Blown completely away. I mean, they could even invest the terrific and subdued "Shoot You Down" with a bit of swagger. 

I now had the missionary zeal. I sold one person on the group's debut, but he never loved them the way I did. And it was frustrating. I couldn't understand why everybody wasn't as enthusiastic as I was. In '90, during a party, I even had some dingbat come into the house I was sharing with three friends at the time, turn off the disc, and say "Let's play some music" (proceeding to turn on some lame-o radio station). Let's play some music! God, grant me strength! Ah, well ... I knew with their Abstract Expressionist style, personal cool, and musical prowess that they were pop royalty by rights. Just wait ... And wait. And by 1994, of course, the decade was destined to suck. 

The early flowering of creativity and energy in music had been hijacked by a boring orgy of self-consciously wierd novelty bands and the (don't be fooled) oh-so-corporate landfill known as alternative rock. But the Roses were different because they were CREATIVE; they were relevant because they were GOOD; and even if they sometimes made it a point to tell us that they wanted our applause, at least they didn't liken it to crucifixion and beg us not to make them a success as they cashed their cheques. 

And Second Coming is no disappointment, friends, but brilliant. Put on the headphones, close your eyes, and listen to the converging web of electric and acoustic guitars. Hear Ian force his great, but obviously non-singer's voice, to sing ... and to make it great. Hear Mani's solid bass drive. See in your mind's eye all of the little Renis spread out over the stereo field, each one playing his separate persussion part, head bobbing and weaving in his floppy hat. 

Yeah, the Stone Roses were aptly named ... hard and soft, alternately brilliant and frustratingly silent. But I loved that band, and all of us are bettter for having had them.