1994 Stiltskin: Inside

The story goes that Levi jeans, keen to tap into the 1994 Grunge zeitgeist offered the Smashing Pumpkins a large sum of money to licence their 'Today' single for their latest television commercial. When head Pumpkin Billy Corgan refused, Levis hired Brit Peter Lawlor to come up with a tune-a-like that was as close to 'Today' as the laws of plagiarism would allow.* 'Inside' was the result. Or it kind of was - the cartwheeling guitar riff and snatch of vocal worked well enough to soundtrack a (admittedly striking) ninety second commercial, but this full single is pushing five minutes long and it's interest levels decrease exponentially with every ten seconds that pass.

In its defence, like The Rutles with their spoofs of The Beatles, 'Inside' is a fair patchwork approximation of the genre and Ray Wilson's vocal does a passable Mark Lanegan, but whether that's going to make your eyes light up or not is going to depend on your views on grunge as a whole. "Swing low in a dark glass hour, you turn and cower, see it turn to dust. Move on a stone dark night, we take to flight, snowfall turns to rust" - I wasn't there, but I'd hazard a guess that any Seattle bar in the mid-nineties would have had a resident check shirted, long haired combo grinding out a similar nonsensical Black Sabbath on ice fuelled diet of affected angst and self loathing.

And with a song written to order then sung by a hired gun, 'affected' is an appropriate word; 'Inside' and all its "And if you think that I've been losing my way, that's because I'm slightly blinded" is little more than a caricature of a movement that had long since lost its momentum. Three years on from Nirvana's ground zero 'Nevermind', most of the bands that hopped onto the bandwagon for the ride had all chased their tails with such a studious intent they simply grew tired and fell over. And for a debut single, 'Inside' sounds incredibly tired - the empty fury of a sound railing against nothing from a band that play it as if they've been grinding it out all their lives simply because it pays the bills. Which, ironically is exactly what they are now doing, though I suppose that's a slightly more honourable pursuit than it's original purpose to sell jeans.


* Some of the shine gets knocked off Corgan's integrity with the appreciation that his own 'Today' borrows liberally from Status Quo's 1967 recording of 'You're Just What I Was Looking For Today'. Very liberally in fact.