Isn’t the Light OK?

"Out on the town today,
I saw an autographed Angry Salad CD in the bargain rack.
A little voice inside my head said
'Don't look back. You can never look back.'"
        - With apologies to Don Henley

Some of the most prized poses­sions in my CD col­lec­tion are my signed copies of all three Angry Salad CDs. Now, you can pick up their major label debut at Ama­zon for a penny plus shipping.

Every few years you hear about a band who embod­ies the spirit of com­mu­nity, with tremen­dous grass­roots fol­low­ings, and an unbe­liev­able com­mit­ment to their fans. Hip­pies had the Grate­ful Dead, then Phish, Wide­spread Panic or any num­ber of other for­mer HORDE fes­ti­val main­stays. Chris­t­ian music has groups like Caedmon’s Call and Water­deep.

We had Angry Salad.

This band, while it didn’t change the world, served as the sound­track of my buddy John and I and our wives’ (then girl­friends’) lives for a few years in the mid-to-late 90’s. Pre­cious and few bands could inspire the four of us to see them live back to back mul­ti­ple nights in a row. Pre­cious and few bands would allow the likes of us to help them break down their equip­ment and give us a ride to our car in their tour van. Pre­cious and few bands claimed to have been named by an ine­bri­ated Fred­die Mercury.

They weren’t an inno­v­a­tive, Earth-shakingly cre­ative band. They played sim­ple, nice-guy pop-rock in the vein of other late-90’s “where are they now” bands like the Gin Blos­soms, Hootie and the Blow­fish, and Toad the Wet Sprocket. For a bunch of kids in their early-to-mid 20’s who were inun­dated with this stuff, though, it was manna, and it wasn’t being fed to us from MTV or top 40 radio.

Look­ing through their tour his­tory, I real­ized that I’ve seen this band live more times than any other. From 1996 to 2000 I saw them on aver­age 3 times a year. No, it’s not much com­pared to some Dead­heads or Phish fans who fol­lowed their respec­tive obses­sions around the coun­try, but it’s enough for a shel­tered sub­ur­ban New Eng­land boy and his friends.

I hope you’ll indulge me over the next few days, as I’ll be wal­low­ing in shame­less nos­tal­gia (“You can never look back,” huh? Take that, Hen­ley!). Hope it doesn’t bore the rest of you…

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