#space hog

Tuesday morning selfie to kickoff my busiest day of the week! We got this. 👊🏽

MARK YOUR CALENDARS, FANS!

I had to join in on @movie-robotnik-positivity and @welcome-to-green-hills meme template train.

Catherine Wheel: Happy Days (1995)

I was a fresh-faced, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed (and unpaid) intern at Polygram Group Distribution when the Catherine Wheel released their third studio album, Happy Days, 25 years ago.

Therefore, as an understandably biased employee, thrilled to get my free CD and a concert ticket -- woohoo! -- I’ve never had a very good grasp on the band’s true popularity and relevance in the grand scheme of ‘90s alternative rock, but I do know that this LP was something of a Rubicon (*) in their career.

Up until then, albums one and two, 1992’s Ferment and ‘93’s Chrome, had seen this quartet from the English seaside town of Great Yarmouth associated with incontestably hip genres like shoe-gaze, dream-pop and even, tenuously, Brit-pop -- whatever the fuck that means, anymore.

But, with the ironically-named Happy Days, C.W. decidedly crossed over to the critically uncool, American definition of commercial alt-rock -- chiefly because they started layering guitar parts upon guitar parts with the zeal of a heavy metal band (**), leading some to hail them as England’s answer to the Smashing Pumpkins.

Mind you, back then, this was generally meant as a compliment!

Anyway, for a lifelong metal-head like me, who already liked what he’d heard on Chrome, increasingly dense, yet still nuanced, minor-key six-string symphonies like “God Inside My Head,” “Receive,” “Hole” and “Kill My Soul” quickly became firm favorites.

But I was equally impressed by Happy Days’ more traditionally “indie” offerings, including token modern rockers like “Waydown” and “Empty Head,” and dreamy, fanciful fare (a C.W. specialty) like “Heal,” “Love Tips Up” and “Judy Staring at the Sun” (featuring Throwing Muses’ Tanya Donelly).

Oh, and all of us authority-challenging rebels in the P.G.D. office naturally thought the eight-minute “Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck” (no, I had no recollection of a music video) was just the coolest thing ever!

And still, though I believe it may be the Catherine Wheel’s career best-seller, Happy Days simply got lost in the overwhelming glut of alt-rock albums being indiscriminately dumped into the mid ‘90s marketplace, and not even its Hipgnosis-designed cover art could do much to distinguish it.

As we would have said at the time: bummer ...

* For those of you in need of a historical refresher (like me), Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 B.C. was the so-called “point of no return” that precipitated the Roman Civil War.

** Singer/guitarist Rob Dickinson’s family ties to Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson simply cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Lobo 1/6 scale diorama by Iron Studios

Sculpted by Ivan Reis

“Guys....I'm not sure we are fully ready for the Sonic Cinematic Universe. The trailer is....insanely good!”

—Geoff Keighley, 2021

Alrighty, gamers! Choose your character!