Sometimes, timing is everything.
As I drove back to the office from an ABC-Metro Chicago officers’ meeting this week, a song came on the radio that I have not heard in over 25 years. Hearing it now, I heard something quite different in it than in the 1990’s when the Canadian band Crash Test Dummies was experiencing mainstream success. Curious person that I am, this drove me back to re-listen to their 1991 debut album, “The Ghosts that Haunt Me.”
The early 1990’s were a curious era in terms of popular music, particularly as it related to youth culture. The big metal and hair bands and the polished pop artists of the 1980s were increasingly rejected by youth who longed for something more earthy and real. More and more they turned to groups inspired and evolved from the punk scene or 70’s rockers, whose new songs were often crass expressions of independence from the mainstream (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soul Asylum, Pavement). Almost as a kind of counterpoint, another sort of band emerged simultaneously with a more easy or varied sound (Cranberries, Joan Osborne, Blues Traveler). Crash Test Dummies fit in this second category.
As I listened to their debut album, I was struck by how familiar so many tracks sounded — not because I remembered them, but because they sound like recent bands. The second track, titled “Comin’ Back Soon,” sounds like it could be a demo for a Mumford & Sons or Avett Brothers album (formed in 2007 and 2000, respectively). In both sound and lyric, “Thick-Necked Man” (track seven) could have been sung by the Dropkick Murphys or Flogging Molly (formed in 1996 and 1993, respectively). On this and other albums, there are songs that sound like country, blues, pop, and rock. They categorically did not fit into a category.
There’s irony in revisiting their story and discography all these years later. The typical story that is told is that — against the backdrop of more “serious,” “aggressive,” or “artsy” music, bands like Crash Test Dummies were considered “yuppie music” popular with “suburban college students” that let them feel like they were a part of something without really being serious about anything (as presumably was the case when they supported grunge bands and the like). While Crash Test Dummies had some commercial success, they were never really taken seriously.
And it seems to me that is because their timing was off.
As I already mentioned, much of the music they made — that did not rank as “hit tracks” back then” — is of a type that is much more popular recently. Then there is the subject matter of their songs.
- Their biggest hit from that 1991 album, “Superman’s Song,” is a criticism of capitalism. The previously-mentioned track titled “Thick-Necked Man” names the ways people in power prey on others and don’t seem to get what they deserve.
- In the fifth track, “Here on Earth (I’ll Have My Cake),” the lyrics criticize Christians who avoid living in this world for life in the next. American Christianity was a common theme in their lyrics; their most popular hit, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” (released in 1993), linked subtly (?) a certain kind of religious extremism to inflicting deep trauma on children.
- The eighth track, “Androgynous,” is a cover of a song released by The Replacements in 1984; it “describes in positive terms a romantic relationship between two gender non-conforming individuals and expresses hope that in the future such people and their personal relationships will be more accepted” (Wikipedia). Crash Test Dummies not only included the song on their 1991 album, but produced a music video depicting a fair attended by many non-binary individuals.
Listening back all these years later, I suspect the often-told story of why the band did not do better is less than truthful. The politics and policies of Ronald Regan and the Moral Majority were building their dangerous inroads in American and global society. The AIDS epidemic continued to rage. Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), the treatment developed by Dr. Anthony Fauci that transformed AIDS from a fatal diagnosis to a manageable chronic condition, would not be introduced until 1996. The United States had just declared victory in the first Gulf War, liberating the Kuwaiti oil fields that the Iraqi military set on fire as they retreated. It was somehow safer for a band like Pearl Jam to sing about a student who died by suicide at school (“Jeremy,” #5 on the charts in 1991) than to question Christianity, capitalism, or gender-normativity.
I wonder what the band would have been like had they emerged today?
Now I recognize that you may not be familiar with any of these musical groups. If you’re still reading at all, I’m grateful. But timing is going to be something we are investigating on Sunday, so for me to go down this rabbit hole this week seems relevant.
Sometimes, timing is everything. A great thing at the wrong time might not succeed; a poor thing at the right time might succeed anyway. But regardless, our time is now.
And maybe — as we will begin to explore together on Sunday — there are “coincidences of timing” that are themselves signs to us as a church that God is leading us towards doing something that may itself seem “chronologically curious.” And by that, I mean something like how I am finding the songs of Crash Test Dummies this week: a little bit of the future embedded in the past.
Remember, we’re all in this together,
Pastor Michael