{"id":2020,"date":"2010-03-03T13:14:55","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T21:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2010-03-03T13:15:40","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T21:15:40","slug":"so-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2010\/03\/03\/so-there\/","title":{"rendered":"SO THERE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love Nathan Rabin.  I&#8217;m just going to quote this whole thing, from his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/volume-2-july-1999,38724\/\" title=\"'At the risk of generalizing, every Everclear song is exactly the same.'\">ongoing retrospective<\/a> on the endless NOW THAT&#8217;S WHAT I CALL MUSIC series of chart-topper compilations:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Like The New Radicals, Semisonic will forever be tarnished with the one-hit-wonder tag. That\u2019s a shame, because it was a fantastic power-pop group, a trio of eggheads with a gift for monster hooks, passionate vocals, and sincerity that never lapsed into sentimentality. Their 1996 album debut Great Divide is a minor power-pop masterpiece, but the trio\u2019s follow-up birthed \u201cClosing Time,\u201d the group\u2019s unlikely contribution to the NOW pantheon.<\/p>\n<p>At a time when much of what passed for alternative music was steeped in rage, angst, and sneering irony, Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson was refreshingly willing to be romantic and sincere. He wrote great love songs like \u201cSecret Smile\u201d and \u201cSinging In My Sleep,\u201d and songs that weren\u2019t what they appeared to be, like \u201cClosing Time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the surface, the song finds the romance in barflies scrambling for a closing-time hookup, but according to So You Wanna Be A Rock &#038; Roll Star, the likeable memoir of Semisonic drummer Jacob Slichter, it was written about the birth of Wilson\u2019s first child. The song\u2019s key line is purloined from the Roman philosopher Seneca, who originally wrote, \u201cEvery new beginning comes from some other beginning\u2019s end.\u201d It\u2019s a line with multiple meanings; there\u2019s the end of life in the womb and the beginning of life outside, but also a father and mother forsaking the pleasures of youth for the responsibilities of parenthood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Dear everyone who has mocked my Semisonic completism:  YEAH, FUCKERS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love Nathan Rabin. I&#8217;m just going to quote this whole thing, from his ongoing retrospective on the endless NOW THAT&#8217;S WHAT I CALL MUSIC series of chart-topper compilations: Like The New Radicals, Semisonic will forever be tarnished with the one-hit-wonder tag. That\u2019s a shame, because it was a fantastic power-pop group, a trio of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,56,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-derision","category-music","category-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2022,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions\/2022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}