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<\/p>\nOh, I suppose after having written a long piece about my ambivalence about single-malt Scotch, you’re thinking “there Berg goes; he’s talking about grain alcohol.\u00a0 That explains a lot”.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it does:<\/p>\n
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Eveclear is a pure grain alcohol.\u00a0 198 proof (that is to say, 99% alcohol) in its standard form (it’s diluted to 175 proof in Minnesota), Everclear is a common request from Minnesotans whenever I go back to visit North Dakota; it’s the main ingredient in homemade schnapps.\u00a0 More importantly, some of my most treasured memories – or fragments of memories, anyway – started out with shot after shot after shot of the delicious, clear beverage.\u00a0 Which also doubles as a lamp fuel if you’re stranded in the woods…<\/p>\n
…oh, OK. I’m yanking your collective chain.\u00a0 No, while you can <\/em>drink the stuff, it’s really stupid to try.<\/p>\n No, I’m actually talking about the band:<\/p>\n Everclear, a Portland-area punk band led by Art Alexakis, had a brief Top-40 heyday in the mid-nineties.\u00a0 They had (by punk band standards) a fairly brief swerve through “underground” success – which I mostly missed, other than reading snippets and hearing things from friends who still had time and energy to keep up with music; my kids were little, I was changing careers around and trying to teach myself a new trade, and music barely qualified as background noise for the most part.<\/p>\n But the band struck it big in 1996, vaulting out of the underground with So Much For The Afterglow<\/em>, with a troika of singles, “Everything To Everyone”, “I Will Buy You A New Life” and “Father Of Mine”.<\/p>\n Now, before I heard any of this, I started reading (on that new “web” thing I’d just discovered) the usual punk kids, doing the same thing they do every <\/em>time a punk band gets mainstream success and income; “Sellout!”.\u00a0 That, I expected.<\/p>\n The part I didn’t expect was the sniveling some of the punk kidz were doing about the music itself; “boring stuff about parents and being a father”.<\/p>\n So I cocked my ear to it.<\/p>\n Turned out Alexakis was about my age (actually eight months older<\/a>), had (unlike most rock and rollers) a kid or two, and that the singles that were starting to leak out on the radio were about…<\/p>\n …grown up <\/em>stuff. \u00a0 Having kids.\u00a0 Trying to be a decent father and feeling really inadequate at it.\u00a0 Trying to keep a relationship from fizzling out.\u00a0 Y’know – stuff that actual grownups do when they have left the club scene and packed their guitars and amps lovingly away in the closet and have to get on with real life. Stuff that was real<\/em> to him and, I add in retrospect, me, at the time.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.delawareonline.com\/blogs\/uploaded_images\/everclear-786888.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
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