Welcome to the website of author Edward Trimnell!
Like many Gen Xers, I first experienced James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Then in the role of Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian (1982).
But without a doubt, I am most grateful to him for his performance as Terence Mann in Field of Dreams (1989). Still one of my favorite movies, even after 35 years.
“People will come Ray. They will most certainly come…”
James Earl Jone, 93, R.I.P.
Steve Harwell, the lead singer of the 1990s band Smash Mouth, passed away earlier this week.
I will confess that I was a lukewarm fan, not because I disliked Harwell or his music, but because of my age. By the time Smash Mouth broke out, I was already in my late twenties. I had largely moved on from that phase of life in which one feels compelled to keep up with the latest in youth music.
Nevertheless, the news of Harwell’s passing has led me to explore some of Smash Mouth’s material retroactively. I recall hearing “Walkin’ On The Sun” in the late 1990s, but I never paid much attention to it. I just watched the video on YouTube, and I keep rewatching it. It’s downright addictive.
Smash Mouth’s music typifies the youth music of the 1990s. Whereas 1970s music was (often unnecessarily) heavy, and 1980s music was bombastic and preening, 1990s pop music was usually just fun.
That’s a fairly accurate description of “Walkin’ on the Sun”. There’s no discernible sociopolitical message here, not even any adolescent angst. Just tongue-in-cheek exuberance.
That was what the 1990s were all about. In those years before 9/11, the war in Iraq, and pointless culture wars at home, American culture was mostly optimistic and mostly enjoyable. I miss the 1990s, back when “woke” simply meant “alert and awake”.
Steve Harwell was arguably a perfect lead singer for that era. If you watch him in the aforementioned video, he isn’t going out of his way to be moody, sexy, or confrontational. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, like a Robert Plant or a Mick Jagger. Harwell is just having fun. And he makes you want to have fun, too.
Although Smash Mouth is remembered most fondly by Millennials (who were in their youthful salad days in the late 1990s), Steve Harwell, born in 1967, was a GenXer.
Nothing particularly odd about that. It is the preceding generation that typically creates the bulk of youth cultural artifacts for the current generation. In the 1980s, Gen Xers watched the teen movies of Baby Boomer John Hughes, and listened to rock musicians who were almost exclusively Baby Boomers.
Harwell’s life was much too short. And while there is doubtless a lesson in his passing about the pitfalls of alcohol, we’ve seen and heard similar stories before. Back to my era: Gen Xers recall the 1980 deaths of AC/DC singer Bon Scott and Led Zepellin drummer John Bonham. Both of these musicians’ lives were cut short that year because of alcohaol.
I’m sorry Steve Harwell is gone, but I’m glad I discovered his music, albeit belatedly.
Steve Harwell, 56, RIP.
-ET
When I was a kid in the mid-1970s, my dad used to sing this song from the radio. The refrain went:
“Sundown, you’d better take care
If I find you’ve been creepin’ round my back stair.”
This was Gordon Lightfoot’s hit song, “Sundown”, of course. In the year the song climbed the charts, 1974, I was but six years old. I therefore didn’t grasp its meaning. But the song still brings back memories of that time.
And now that I’m old enough to understand “Sundown”, I find it an unusual take on the familiar romantic love triangle: that of the cuckolded male.
Fast-forward to 1986. My high school English teacher, wanting to demonstrate how stories could be told in poems and song lyrics, played “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” for us on one of the AV department’s record players. Yet another of Gordon Lightfoot’s songs.
I immediately connected with this song, even though I was unaware of the historical reference behind it. My teacher told our class about the November 1975 shipwreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior. That gave the song even more weight. It was a work of imagination and art…but also something real.
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was released in 1976, to commemorate the shipwreck of the previous year. It remains one of my favorite songs from a musical era that I was too young to appreciate as it was taking place.
Last November marked the 47th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. This got me thinking about the song, and about Gordon Lightfoot. According to Google, Lightfoot was still touring in his eighties.
But all tours, and all lives, must come to an end. Gordon Lightfoot passed away on May 1, of natural causes.
While Lightfoot and his music were a little before my time, I always appreciated his work. There are few songs quite as haunting and memorable as “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. And whenever I hear “Sundown”, I always hear my dad singing along with the radio in the mid-1970s.
A brilliant musician, and an artistic life well-lived. Gordon Lightfoot, 84, RIP.
-ET
Former politician and talk show host Jerry Springer has died.
Most people know Springer for his gonzo talk show work on national television. Decades before that, he was a well-known figure in Cincinnati politics and local broadcasting.
Springer spoke at my Cincinnati-area high school in 1985. At this time, the biggest skeleton in Springer’s closet was a 1974 scandal in which Springer, then a Cincinnati City Council member, paid a sex worker with a personal check. Springer resigned from city council in a certain degree of disgrace.
Several of my male classmates couldn’t resist calling out, “Where’s the check”? while Springer was speaking at our school in 1985. Springer, a good sport, laughed off their taunts and moved on.
Jerry Springer was never one to be impeded by other people’s opinions of him. I recognized that in 1985.
After the Jerry Springer talk show debuted in 1991, I tuned in a few times. In all honesty, the show was never for me. But I didn’t watch much network television of any kind during the early 1990s. I was too busy, and my life too disjointed.
I’ll always remember the local, Cincinnati version of Jerry Springer, anyway. The speaker at my high school who wasn’t about to be deterred by an embarrassing incident from his past, or others’ ungracious insistence on calling attention to it.
Perhaps there is a lesson for all of us here. One can go far, despite being hampered by very human flaws and a less than perfect track record. The trick is to shrug off the crowd’s disdain, and keep moving forward.
Jerry Springer, 79, R.I.P.