Local H - As Good As Dead


Welcome to the mid to late 90s. Long before 21 Pilots or the White Stripes, but not quite as long ago as the Carpenters, there was the remnants of a full band called Local H. After the other two guys quit, Scott and Joe said "screw it, we'll just be a drum/guitar duo." I'm not sure if that's keeping or not keeping it copacetic, and i'm equally not sure if they ever gave each other a high-five, but i think the results speak for themselves. Here's their second album As Good As Dead. 

Oh, yeah, this is actually a great place to start. See, we hated a lot of things about life in the 90s. The consensus was we were just losers with chips on our shoulders who hated "success," but that's about the least amount of effort you can put into analyzing the phenomenon. 

Right off the bat, we didn't necessarily hate high fives and steroids and monster trucks as things, we hated the guys who wanted to high five each other for taking steroids and being super proud of winning an award for their personal tricked-out monster truck. We didn't hate being in love, we hated the overly obnoxious PDA that belied the fact that they were actually toxic people who constantly screamed at each other in private. We hated the wanting to get back together after a breakup. We hated being stuck in a crap town with no future except hoping to win the lottery. I think one lyric sums it up pretty good: "If I was Eddie Vedder, would you like me any better?" No, you actually wouldn't, you'd only like the fact that you knew a famous person. 

So, we did what any restless mopey teenager would do, we cranked up our amps and vented our frustration in song. 

Fun fact, the band's name comes from two R.E.M. songs: Oddfellows Local 151 and Swan Swan H; H originally standing for "hurrah." 

So, As Good As Dead is a fantastic album, not just because the songs are catchy and grungy and head-bangingly enjoyable, but because they give us the real context of the zeitgeist. It's a lot like Frank Zappa standing in his living room with a riot happening outside his window and the fake facade of the TV reporting version of said riot making us want to scream about how stupid everything around us actually is.

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