Blogging rule #37: When you’re at a loss of what to post, steal someone else’s topic!

Except in this case, I think it’s warranted.

My co-worker maintains a pretty lovely and educational MP3 blog. I’d been behind in my reading it and yesterday came across a post from the previous week regarding one of my favorite records from the 1990s, For Squirrels’ Example. He was surprised that I knew of them and we shared a music moment.



It was strong enough for me to pull the CD and listen to the album about three and a half times through last night. It’s become one of those records that I only hear in broken pieces on my iPod otherwise -- “Under Smithville” here, “Disenchanted” there – instead of a collected whole.

The story of For Squirrels is intriguing and entirely saddening. Example will be ten years old this fall. The major label debut for the Floridian-foursome was released on Sony on October 3, 1995. Three weeks prior to the release, on September 8, the band was returning to Florida from a New York show when a tire blew out on the tour van. It rolled and two of the members were killed, along with the band’s manager; the other two members were pretty badly injured.

Some, including Rolling Stone’s Rob O’Connor, argued that the record wouldn’t have received any buzz at all if it had not been for the accident. Either way, it hardly received any at all.

Example is not a perfect record. It is occasionally uneven and I can remember, even ten years back, hearing it for the first time and being unsure of what was coming from my speakers, but sometimes that’s the best compliment one could pay to an album. It remains a special record to me though, for selfish reasons. I was 15 at the time, really just beginning to develop any specific tastes in music (good or bad) and I can distinctly recall buying it and thinking that I was cool; that this was good music; that something was there.


Doveman
In other music related news, Doveman is sending me a copy of their latest record, Acrobat and I can’t wait to get it. What I’ve heard is sweet and quiet and sad, and just what I want to hear.