I Truly Have Seen Darker Days

Album: The Connells, Darker Days, 1987 (TVT Records reissue of the band's self-published 1985 debut album)

Acquired: I can't remember for sure, but I'm guessing I picked this up at The Record Exchange or Books, Strings 'n' Things in Blacksburg during my sophomore year of college. The Connells were as big as they were ever going to get in 1990 and 1991, and everybody at Virginia Tech loved the boys from Raleigh.

Best Track: "Darker Days (Version)"

Lasting Memory: I met The Connells in the spring of 1991 after a show they did at the Roanoke Civic Center. How that happened is a boring story that is only worth telling because it gives me a chance to brag on myself and the time I spent doing stand-up comedy.

The shortest version of the story is that my buddy and then-roommate Dave was taking an English class taught by the woman who was the manager/den mother for a local band named Yams from Outerspace. The English professor happened to think I was one of the funniest people in the world, and she convinced Dave to convince me to give some guest lectures in her classes about the theory of comedy. (Did I mention this professor, who while she was an incredibly nice person and obviously had great taste in stand-up, drank bull-killing amounts of whiskey and wine?)

In a chain of other events, one of which may have a promise of extra credit for Dave, Dave and I would up manning the Yams merch table at the Roanoke Civic Center when they opened for The Connells. We also got front row center seats for the second half of The Connells' set and passes to go backstage and drink band beers.

A neighbor of our, Andrea, was obsessed with The Connells. I got all the members of the band to sign a show flyer for her, and she was ecstatic. Andrea was so pretty. And her boyfriend was such a putz. Sigh.

I've always wondered why more people weren't obsessed with The Connells. Their sound is THE sound of late eighties alternative rock, combining all the best elements of R.E.M., The Smiths, and Hüsker Dü while leaving out the trappings of self-importance, bathos, and fuzztone for fuzztone's sake.

The Connells are all jangle, alto, and clever wordplay all the time. You can just enjoy the tunes without having to relate. The bands' songs do seem to be trying to be about something, but they really aren't. Check out these first few verses of Darker Days' "Hats Off," for instance:

You love to change your mind
Hate to see you lost in your ignorance, or is it just indifference?
What goes on behind?
What goes on within you, without you, there's nothing to you

Why are you so blind?
Why are you so hopelessly helpless, hopelessly helpless?
You can't have it back.
No you can't have the world as it once was with cowboys and Santa Claus

With all your charm, all your cleverness
It's not enough, we'd be better off with something else
It's not enough, and all my thoughts, all my bitterness
Still not enough with all your charm and all . . .

Sound? Check. Fury? Check. Signifying? Nothing. And that's okay. Because, as I clumsily argued twice in my Clash posts, rock music should be about rocking most of the time. A good ninety-three-point-seven percent of the time, the heavy themes should be left to the folkies.

When rock music does have to be about something, happiness is always a good choice. It's the choice The Connells made in the title track to Darker Days, where the message is in the chorus and middle verse:

Oh, I have seen, darker days.
Oh, I have seen, darker days.

Saw you in the half-dream, safe from view.
Lost you in the waking, but I knew.
Words are words and I would, try to find.
Better ways to let you leave those days behind

Listen to "Darker Days"

Up Next: The Connells, Boylan Heights, 1987

Yep, it's another theme week here on the Magical Musical Journey ... . Settle in and enjoy the ride.