The ultimate:
I always assumed “You Spoke to Me” was about the singer/storyteller talking about going to see their favorite band. Not someone singing about the Popes.
ETA— damn… already mentioned.
And “When Smokey Sings” by ABC is about the feeling the singer has when Smokey Robinson sings and then extends that and name drops a lot of other Motown / R&B acts.
Actually, we’re both wrong. While the Caterers were actually born in Carpentersville, Josh wrote the song about fans’ devotion to Jawbreaker, a band the Popes frequently opened for:
For Jawbreaker this resentment was the flip side of an almost irrational devotion: the kids that clustered around [Jawbreaker frontman Blake] Schwarzenbach after every show treated the singer like some kind of guru.
The experience provided Josh with a lyric of his own–the singer of “You Spoke to Me,” which ended up on Destination Failure, tells his hero, “I drove all the way from Carpentersville to see you here tonight / And it was worth it.”
The Replacements’ “Left of the Dial” is a gorgeous track about Paul Westerberg hearing a great band on a college radio station while on tour, and the song fades out as the road goes on. I’m at work and can’t google which band it was based on, but the song really captures that early-80s college radio circuit magic.
According to this, it was Lynn Blakey, who toured with Let’s Active in 1983.
Agree, it’s a gorgeous song. Thanks for inspiring me to look more deeply into it!
Nickel Creek’s “Green and Grey” is a little of both musician and fan perspectives.
“We paid and we cheered. Now we’re gone and to us that feels right.
But for him every one of those evenings turns into a night.”
Oh, I just remembered this short little gem by Barbara Manning - Mark E. Smith & Brix:
Mark E. Smith reminded me of Germany’s veteran indie band Tocotronic and their song “Ich habe geträumt, ich wäre Pizza essen mit Mark E. Smith” (I dreamed I was out eating pizza with Mark E. Smith), definitely a sort of fan song.
