Thinking Green Thoughts With The Smithereens

It’s not so much that the Smithereens reinvented the wheel back in ’86 with their debut album Especially For You, but rather that they slapped four new solid-state inner-tubes on a vehicle already turbocharged with the spirit of British Invasion rock and late-60s psyche-pop. Amidst the chiming chords, driving rhythms and trembling leads, the album had a bittersweet, almost melancholy cloud draped over its stories of star-crossed lovers and romantic betrayal. Curiously out-of-time for 1986, Especially For You nevertheless stood out among the erstwhile crop of made-for-college-radio-rockers, scoring minor modern rock chart hits with the hauntingly beautiful dirges “Behind The Wall Of Sleep” and “Blood And Roses.”

The band literally wrote its sophomore album Green Thoughts while trudging across the country night after night on their endless 1986/87 tour. As follow-ups go, it’s sheer gold, differing only slightly from its predecessor; as drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs once wrote (or something like it, at least): “if you’re going to make a sequel, you have to make the same damn movie all over again.” Which, in many ways, is exactly what these New Jersey boys did with Green Thoughts, the album’s only glaring differences falling squarely on the shoulders of the producer. Whereas Don Dixon, the knob-twister on Especially For You, favored an eerie atmospheric mix that was long on theatrics and short on punch for that album, he imbued Green Thoughts with a tuff-as-nails, streetwise sound that virtually guaranteed a third-round K.O.

Green Thoughts opens with the screaming crop-duster “Only A Memory,” the song kicking off with a monster intro before galloping into a riff-driven lament about love long lost that is satisfyingly dominated by the mighty Dennis Diken’s ass-punting bass drumbeat behind frontman Pat DiNizio’s sadfaced-clown vocals. The song jangles when it’s the proper time to jangle, and it blasts when it’s time to blast, and DiNizio keeps a stiff upper lip amidst the pain while guest star (and Mrs. Don Dixon) Marti Jones adds her enchanting background vocals deep in the mix. “House We Used To Live In” is another master-blaster with pop aspirations and delusions of grandeur, Jim Babjak’s guitar cutting through the clouds like a ray of crystalline sunshine while DiNizio’s bittersweet-though-upbeat vocals sound punchier-and-prouder than ever.

There’s not a fumble to be found among any of Green Thought’s eleven fine tracks, songs like the swaggering, muscular “The World We Know” or the Byrdsian title track hitting your ears like the leaded-glove of a dodgy MLM snake-oil sales-pitch. The band recruited early-60s Detroit rock warhorse Del Shannon to add his considerable pipes to the former while the latter tune can boast of the best impersonation of a songwriter named McGuinn east of the muddy Mississippi.

The beautiful Kleenex-shredder “Especially For You” is a swanky ballad worthy of any of the best ‘60s-era purveyors of pop (and, strangely enough, does not appear on the album of that same name), the song benefiting greatly by the timely shading of Los Lobos saxman Steve Berlin’s lonely hornplay. DiNizio’s “Elaine” is a spry little slab o’ wonderment, another ‘60s throwback of solid construction and elegant execution with Duane Eddy-style guitarwork and staggering charm, which would sound great on radio even today…that is, if the medium still possessed a brain and a heartbeat.

As the ‘80s wore on, the Smithereens would crack the Billboard Top Forty chart with tracks like 11’s memorable “A Girl Like You” or Blow Up’s “Too Much Passion.” Those tunes were the wheat among the chaff, however, and the band would never again make great albums like they did with their first two efforts. The Smithereens always struggled with being a band that was a step or two out of pace with its peers, but we all just chalked it up to a “different drummer” and all that. When Blow Up was released within a week of Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991, though, the sudden change in the rules all but sounded the death knell for the band’s whip-smart power-pop style...‘tis a shame, too, ‘cause both Especially For You and Green Thoughts reverberate like nothing before (or since). (American Beat Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Green Thoughts from Amazon.com)