It’s Ash Wednesday, which affords me the opportunity to talk about the Screaming Trees.
(What, did you think I was going to talk about the hopelessly outdated tradition of Catholics parading around with dirty faces all day, showing off their scrawled crucifix to heathens still hung over from Mardi Gras?)
Screaming Trees came out of the grunge movement in the early ’90s (appearing on the star-making soundtrack to the mediocre film Singles) and, as much as any band –including Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam– could have and probably should have made it to the top of the pack. Still mostly known for the incredible song featured on the soundtrack, “Nearly Lost You”, the official accepted –and acceptable– explanation is that the band simply waited too long to make another album, and squandered unrecoverable time. By the time they returned with Dust, in ’96, too many people apparently considered them old news. This is a double shame, because the band deserved better, and for my money, this was their most consistent effort.
Album opener “Halo of Ashes” is on the short list for most effective first songs of the decade, and it’s painful to recall that this did not get the attention it warranted.
The band had almost every element in place: unique and convincing sound, charismatic (and dangerous) front man with bourbon on the rocks vocals. Best of all, they had an album with at least four top-quality songs and no real duds. So…what happened?
Well, take a look at that picture.
This was the 1990s, the era when the weave-wearing Andre Agassi’s juvenile declaration “image is everything” still held considerable sway, much to our collective chagrin. This is not necessarily to imply that bands had to be lean, mean and camera-ready to succeed, but it was a time when semi-retarded music videos were still the currency that made or broke bands, much to our collective chagrin.
Today, I maintain that Screaming Trees would have a respectable following based on a social media presence and a now-fashionable appreciation for old-fashioned substance. In 1996? You have a band with the obligatory long-haired, whip-thin badass behind the mic and…a skate punk and two offensive linesmen. Because this should not (and in terms of everything that is important, does not) matter, it ended up mattering. No one can prove this, but there is a reason Lenny Kravitz is a millionaire and few people have ever heard of Mark Lanegan.
In the end, as is often the case, history has the final say. Lots of hacks who made lots of money in the ’90s are already long forgotten, and smart money says new fans will be discovering Dust for decades to come.
