Smash Mouth - Walkin' On The Sun

If you want to know where the Generation X anthems went, why we weren't political enough and didn't do movements, the reality was they all got commercialized and co-opted and we were trying to make money to just not be fucking tragic. And a lot of us took shit tons of drugs and booze along the way. Not for creativity. But to be a little less real. To not feel the reality of what we were about right now. Some of our mamas felt the shelter of mama's little helper, We blasted Yagers and downed fifths like they were pints. We rolled tight jays in borrowed station wagons. 

But the future loomed:

It ain't no joke when a mama's handkerchief is soaked

With her tears because her baby's life has been revoked

The bond is broke up, so choke up and focus on the close up

Mr. Wizard can't perform no god-like hocus-pocus

So don't sit back, kick back and watch the world get bushwhacked

News at ten, your neighborhood is under attack

Put away the crack before the crack puts you away

You need to be there when your baby's old enough to relate

Bitch, DARE had nothing on that. We all needed to see what was coming--the storm despite the apathy. 

Don't delay, act now. (I always repurpose "Walkin' on the Sun" to do with climate change in my head. It makes sense that way, you know. RIP, Steve Harwell. We probably didn't have a whole lot of political overlap but shared a generation.) 

We also lost Gary Wright (I had "Dream Weaver" on a K-Tel compilation to play on my little turntable as a wee kid).  

Fly me high through the starry skies

Maybe to an astral plane

Cross the highways of fantasy

Help me to forget today's pain

And Jimmy Buffet and I don't know. (Yes "Come Monday" speaks more to me, by goodness. It's a fin romantic ballad). There's an uncool era of drinking shit well drinks and listening to popular music that spoke to not fucking around that personifies just wanting to, yearning to, love and live. Because otherwise, we were in the shit. 

I don't know how these guys hang together in my mind, other than all recently passing, except they also do. A couple songs loved and lived deeper and more meaningful to my generation and our consciousness. Part of an ethos of wearing our skin and drinking it in over again.