An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song: Jimmie's Chicken Shack "Trash"

I remember my early encounters with pop-ska-rockers "Jimmie's Chicken Shack" with a fondness that came from two sources.

The first being my excitement that I had another group of counter-culture dudes to look up to with which I could ignore the drivel that dominated Total Request Live. The second, much-earlier bout of happiness came the first time I heard the group announced on the radio and hopes sprung that we had a new restaurant in town that could compete with the dry-heave-inducing Popeye's (Louisiana Fast...all the way to the john).

Those first hopes were sustained through the band's first effort I was aware of, 1999's "Do Right" off the group's second-major release, "Bring Your Own Stereo." It was the perfect blend of angst-y, drunken fantasy mixed with power chords that mixed well with the Blink-182's and Sum 41's of the era.

Then came "Trash," the second single off the album.

It's not that the sophomore effort is worse than "Do Right" in any way, it's simply that, at its core, "Trash" is the exact same song. For a band with "chicken" in its name, Jimmie's Chicken Shack's music is surprisingly more like pancakes - as the great Mitch Hedberg once told us, great at first, but by the end, you're fuckin' sick of 'em.

In "Trash," we're introduced to a dramatic voice that, for all intents and purposes, is likely the same manic-depressive mess of a lead singer who's regaling us in "Do Right." Indeed, lead singer Jimi Haha (I wish I was making that up) has said the entire album is about his ex-girlfriend from New Jersey. In other words, this pony's doing the same trick over and over.

While "Trash" attempts to do a few things its predecessor did not, including a foray into the trilingual ("Auf Wiedersehen, yeah my mon ami"), the basic premise is the same: I'm more than you're making me out to be. And, predictably, the final few lines of the song unravel into a nonsensical rant about "jumping right in," presumably to attacking the "mom" in the song that keeps calling our sweet Jimi trash.

By the end, we've learned that the judgmental matriarch enjoys purchasing drugs from our sweet Jimi and ignores personal hygiene.

Not included in the liner notes: Whether it would be a reasonable expectation for a Baby Boomer to label those pictured above as filthy.

The final line of the song gets in the ultimate dig for a musician clawing his way up the modern rock charts: "Tell your mom, I'm on the radio." Yes, Jimi, yes you were. For about 14 minutes and 59 seconds in an era jam-packed with post-grunge talent, some extremely gifted and others not so much.

Jimmie's Chicken Shack may have cornered the market on angst-ridden young men heaving spite at past lovers. One wonders if this band, which had a unique sound and a hook unlike many of their contemporaries, could have clung to a little more fame had they branched out, song-writing-wise.

But perhaps I'm reading into it a little too much.

An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song: "Summer" by Sum41

So I've been doing a bit of warm weather inventory here at the Shallow End, which invariably leads me to that list of oft-repeated tunes — the ditties you just can't escape — iTunes' collection of my "Most Played" tracks. The top 10 is nothing to write home about and encompasses about everything you'd expect. The 57 seconds of brilliance that is "Stu's Song" from "The Hangover." A melange of '90s One Hit Wonders, and the world's most perfect love song and best with the word "Wanna" in the title (eat it, Spice Girls): Hootie's "Only Wanna Be With You."

But #2 is an entry I simply can't get my head around. It's the eighth track off of the unfortunately titled "All Killer No Filler" by Canadian punk band Sum 41, whose only real claim to fame in 2013 is that their lead singer, Deryck (that's not a typo, apparently they enjoy consonants up North) Whibley's fling with Avril Lavigne. I have to give the boys credit, though. A Rockstar (video game company) sticker is  has a conspicuous cameo in the video for "Motivation," one of the few angst-ridden tunes of my teens I still return to from time to time without wanting to travel back in time and punch a hole through my own skull.

As we all remember from early 2001, Sum 41 hit it big with "Fat Lip," that song you sang in your bathroom mirror because clever lyrics like "The doctor said my mom should have had an abortion" seemed incredibly edgy at the time. Sum 41 became the third most popular punk band with an unexplained number in their name that summer, and made the rounds of TRL and whatever subsequent noise VH1 was throwing on the air. All Killer No Filler went platinum, the Warped Tour was cool again and swimming pools everywhere emptied for impromptu skate competitions.

Why, then, did an unreleased track find its way onto my Most Played list?

Unlike Fat Lip, "Summer" is a bit of a conundrum lyrically. Gone are the references to trashing house parties and unsupervised El Camino binges, replaced with what reads like verbal overflow in which our narrator admits he's "awkwardly speaking with nothing to say."

One could argue the entire period of "punk pop" from 2000 through its fiery death in 2005 could be described this way. These were the years when Blink 182 was still writing about prank phone calls and some band that looked like Incubus felt compelled to tell us they weren't perfect. Yellowcard was signing about sunny California while trying to recreate Groundhog Day and the second incarnation of the Cure was trying to confuse teenagers with overwrought allusions and fancy adjectives.

What did it all mean? In the end, a whole lot of nothing. And that's what "Summer" is. It's a nice upbeat song that perfectly encapsulates the "whoa!" of everything speeding around you, and just as quickly you realize the time is up and it's been wasted. We find ourselves, as fans of this music, admitting vicariously to our former favorites: "The worlds not learning from you." 

Or maybe I'm just looking a little too closely and being a little too harsh. Here's to summer, you fans of that late 90s/early 2000s punk sugar. The rush will end someday, but replay "Summer" and live in it for just a while longer.