One You Should Own: Grant Lee Buffalo – Fuzzy
All too often, I’ve found myself completely uninterested in every song in my iTunes library (all 15.75 days worth). It’s not that I no longer like any of the music I’ve collected since the 5th grade, but you can only feed your ears a selective diet for so long. Sure, I have my usual suspects list of favorites, but today I was completely frustrated as I furiously scrolled through my digital library. That was all remedied when I thumbed to the 1993 Grant Lee Buffalo release: Fuzzy.
Grant Lee Buffalo, headed by singer/songwriter Grant Lee Phillips, was a California alt-rock trio that was blessed with critical accolades and had a few modest modern rock radio hits in the mid 90′s. Grant Lee Buffalo never broke into the true mainstream despite a successful stint opening for R.E.M. in 1995 and the band suffered a quiet end in 1999.
My chance encounter with Fuzzy first happened in 1993 while working as a dj for WXPL 91.3 fm Fitchburg State College radio in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. I spun the title track and was immediately stunned. The disc was randomly packed into a giant wooden bin tagged “New Music”. We were asked by station management and the XPL Constitution to play at least 3 tracks from this bin per hour. Playing songs from the new music bin was tedious. It’s not always easy to find brilliant new artists, especially while having to weed through countless ne’er-do-well rock and hip-hop acts from the early 90′s. Discovering and analyzing your personal tastes and savoring your sonic encounters becomes more about partnership of purpose with the artists rather than just playing records. My contempt for the bin and the process it represented ended when Fuzzy sunk its hooks deep inside my spirit.
Fuzzy plays like the soundtrack to a smoky, sepia-toned, grit-filled, dark cornered alehouse of which Grant Lee Buffalo is the house band. Gangsters, voodoo, failure, lost love and sweet affectionate hauntings serve as the lyrical skeleton to this acoustic powered jingle-jangle gem. Stinging hollow-body solos rip in appropriate time to add the right amount of raw color. A sparse ragtime piano stuffs the gaps and breathes life into this alt-rock prize. The near 50 minute narrative of raw beauty and honest pain is well-crafted and doesn’t suffer from any filler tracks.
I have carried and cherished this album for sixteen years now and I highly recommend you give it a listen. Fuzzy will forever be included on the soundtrack of my life. A beautiful reminder of great times in my personal development colored with stunning melodies and contemplative poetry discovered half a lifetime ago.
October 2009
Tags: Writing Samples