Knowing a Place Too Well

Album: Lemonheads, Come on Feel the Lemonheads, 1993

Best Track: "Style"

Lasting Memory: Following on the heels of the massively popular It's a Shame About Ray, this album must have been a disappointment to the Lemonheads and the band's label, Atlantic. Come on Feel the Lemonheads produced only a couple of minor hits, none of which has survived in the playlists of the modern rock stations that, born in the heyday of early '90s grunge, are increasingly becoming classic rock stations whose playlist reach only as far back as 20 years.

One of which was "Into Your Arms." The song is a rather saccharine ditty, whose chorus runs, in part

I know a place
Where I can go
When I'm alone
Into your arms whoa
Into your arms I can go

This is both forgetable and something you will never be able to stop from running around inside your brain. But what I most remember about the song is that someone produced a parody version. The chorus of the parody, which I can't figure out how to Google successfully, ran

I know a place
Where I can go
To buy cheese
Hickory Farms whoa
Hickory Farms I can go

I prefer the parody version because, hey, I like cheese.

I am lukewarm about the entirety of Come on. It lacks the overall catchiness of the band's previous albums while it amps up what should have been offputting about the songs all along, namely the dismal view of the prospects for romance and the full embrace of drug addiction. "Great Big No" and "Big Gay Heart" overplay the first theme, and "Style" overplays the latter. (BTW: The rotten video and sound quality on the 'Style" link are totally appropriate for a song about getting high despite not wanting to get high. This is probably just how lead Lemonhead and heroin enthusiast Evan Dando saw and heard that particular performance.)

It's unsurprising that the band would continue going to the well that fed their success. After all, they knew a place, and it was a scene of autobiography. The problem with going to a well so often is that the good stuff gets deeper and darker before eventually running out all together.

Deep into the Lemonhead world wasn't a place too many listeners, including myself, wanted to be. And, later, who wanted to support a band that couldn't pump out anything new? Few, that's who.

Come on, Wikipedia tells me, went gold. The Lemonhead's next album for Atlantic barely charted, and all subsequent releases have been on independent labels. It's been a shame about Evan since 1993.

Up Next: Let's Active, Cypress, 1984