Where’s Your Precious First Love NOW?! #1: The Offspring
Do you remember your first record? Of course you do. Music fans remember their first records like a first love, first time on a rollercoaster, or their first time at an R-rated movie. It’s their first real step into the art form. Many have cool first albums -- The Beatles, Nirvana, what have you. I’d bet some are recalled with some embarrassment. If not, there’s probably something that they outgrew eventually. Personally, I think i can get through a rough chronology of my music collection -- rougher in the middle, to be sure, but a traceable timeline. That’s what this new feature is about: those first records that got me into music in the first place.
Now, I’m not trying to encourage wasteful navel-gazing: my goal here is to spill some highlights and low lights from my early collection and re-evaluate the music that’s moved me the most. I assume a chunk of our readership would belong to the same age group, so we can also beat back some of that bullshit baby boomer nostalgia with our own, if you wish. My goal is not to be complete; I’m not John Cusack in High Fidelity. My music is never gonna fully be in chronological order, but I can recollect enough to make something interesting of it.
With that all square, let’s start with my start: seventh grade, when I bought my first portable CD player and two CDs: Americana by The Offspring and Follow the Leader by Korn. Trust me, I’ve got a lot to say about Korn at a later date, so let’s focus now on those SoCal punksters The Offspring. Americana was the first CD I heard in full, at any rate.
Ah, to be young, deeply inexperienced and suburban: probably the only way to appreciate this album. The Offspring’s Americana must be among my first exposure to any concept of punk. My reaction was a “Holy shit, right? Fuck the ‘norm,’ maaaan, whatever that is.” Fuck those poseur white dudes trying to be black. Fuck getting a job! But, man, life is full of bad shit that’ll get ya too. For the uninitiated, I just described the three big singles from Americana: “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy),” “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” and “The Kids are Alright.” These were the songs I heard that convinced me that this album was worth getting, and I’m relieved to say that 2 out of 3 hold up pretty well.
The lone exception is “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy),” which is enough of a novelty song that anyone older than 12 could see its shelf life was only a few days. Its pop culture references are horribly dated; I’m not sure if I would get the Ricki Lake reference if she wasn’t on after my cartoons as a child. The whole idea of a white guy trying to be “gangsta” also instantly got dated once Eminem started hanging out with Dr. Dre and rapping credibly. But that’s a future entry, and I won’t get ahead of myself. The point is: “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)” was funny enough to convince me to get my mom to spend $15 of her money on it.
The other two songs still retain some spirit, if not their freshness. “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” is a flippant rebuttal to responsibility, built on a jaunty reggae rhythm. It’s impressive that the band was able to go left field like that and make a hit out of it -- diversity is generally not The Offspring’s strong point. While now all of their songs seem a little silly to me, this one at least sounds as silly as its premise. “The Kids Aren’t Alright” is the album’s closest approximation to The Offspring doing the straight-ahead rock they did so well on their breakthrough Smash. It’s little story verses were “truth” to me, as a barely-teenager, a sad eulogy for lives fucked up from hard living. Now, I’m more inclined to feel the riffs and the solo, which manage to be heavy and catchy as hell.
Really, in hindsight, it’s probably best to forget the lyrics to most of the album. Maybe what made it great to me back then was its very directness. I didn’t notice it initially, but now, it’s inescapable how dumb these lyrics are. No subtext: lead singer Dexter Holland’s attempt at a cutting look at the shallowness of American culture? “Americana.” Not a bad song -- but the lyrics: “Now give me my cable, fast food, four-by’s, tats right away/I want it right now cause my generation don’t like to wait… Everything’s backwards/ In Americana my way/Well! Fuck! you!” for example, attack the ideas directly, for better or worse. It’s the attempt to define “Americana” as something foreign to “America” that bugs me most, I suppose.
The more relationship-heavy songs are the absolute worse, though, and they come one after the other in the middle of the album. “Feelings” is apparently a parody of somesuch whatever, but it still comes off as macho bullshit anyway. Meanwhile, “She’s Got Issues” was funny way back when, but now, having been in a few relationships, comes off as just misogynist and mean. The first verse especially: “I’m seeing this girl and she just might be out of her mind/Well she’s got baggage and it’s all the emotional kind.” The explanation that her “baggage” is “all the emotional kind” is too much for me, and it’s probably the closest thing to a non-literal lyric here.
It’s when they get lighter and frothier that they come off well most consistently, such as “Why Don’t You Get a Job” or the Green Day-ish “Walla Walla.” The darker, more serious moments, “The Kids Aren’t Alright” aside, feel pithy from the perspective of someone not in his teens anymore. The rest passes harmlessly. For a first album to buy, though, this isn’t so bad -- I’m glad that at least some of it holds up.
Final Verdict (would I do it again?): Keep the highlights, ditch the rest. Thank God for MP3s.
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About the Author
Jere is not from Chicago. Nor is he from Parts Unknown. But he sure loves to hear things. Follow him on Twitter!Email this Author | All posts by Jere
This totally inspired me to illegally download a large file containing the band’s entire discography
(+”bonus tracks”).