Peace, Love, Empathy: The Nineties: Part One

Dear,

I was never a fan of Nirvana. I mean, Smells Like Teen Spirit was a brilliant track, but I didn't go smashing down shopfronts on hearing news of his death.

Imperial Teen, an inconsequential pop band of the mid-nineties, recorded a song that was either in honour, or in memory of the lead singer of Nirvana.

I was in a band. It must have been a coincidence that this band formed as I had just discovered pop music.

Peace. Love. Empathy.

It goes against my ideals and my understanding of pop music to try and understand the lyrics. Forget what Rob tells you. You are miserable because you suck.

I was of the Mike Patton school of lyric.

I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm, not because of the meaning.

Mike Patton

The voice is just another instrument. There would be no need for explanations. Words are chosen for rhythm. That's it.

I tried, though, to understand the song. I was unaware of its link to Nirvana when we started playing that song. The song seemed to go against the norm (or, well, my understanding) of pop song structure at times. The verse seemed to be the chorus, because it repeated the title in the lyric, and because the actual 'chorus' was much louder than the 'verse' - it was all fuzz guitars and screaming. (You do expect the chorus to be louder, don't you?) The song had harmonies, it had four vocal parts singing different things on top of each other. The opening was this wonderfully jangly guitar bit. It was the best introduction to guitar pop a teenager of the nineties could ask for.

We, the band, had fun with the lyrics:

You take it like a man, boy
You kiss me like a man, boy
You say you're sick of Mountain Dew
Peace and love and empathy

Some of these words aren't true. We'd played around with them. We enjoyed the sound of the other words. There was also mention of stomach pumping, and crowns, and a band - the lyrics were fun.

Do you understand what you are reading?

You must note how I am trying to set up a situation - obviously, I will grow as a person and have a change in opinion. I encourage you to look for appropriate references to all sorts of stuff (this time, I've looked to a British author for ideas). Clues to the meaning of all this will hopefully come in the next installment.

Where am I going, though?

Sincerely.