look-alikes

Musician Evan Dando and actor Viggo Mortensen apparently shop at the same clothing stores once frequented by Pablo Picasso. Viggo also seemed to be co-opting Evan's early-'90s look on the cover of The New York Times Style Magazine last fall. Or was it Mike Nesmith's late-'60s look?

Here we see Tahiti 80 bassist Pedro Resende paying tribute to the late Peter Falk, but I must've missed the episode of Columbo in which Falk sported a hot pink biker cap.

Best Supporting Actor nominee Jonah Hill (Moneyball) used to look like Seinfeld and Jurassic Park supporting actor Wayne Knight ...

... but then he slimmed down. (So did Knight.) Now he looks more like Josh Lucas—who looks like Matthew McConaughey, Lucas's costar in The Lincoln Lawyer, if you ask me. My girlfriend doesn't see the resemblance between those two hunk-tors, though, so she probably won't see the resemblance between Hill and Lucas, which is admittedly more of a stretch, but I stand by my eyesight.

Finally, before Ben Folds was a famous rock star, and before Ed Helms was a star on screens both big (The Hangover) and small (The Office), they were rocking the same haircut.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Evan Dando and the Lemonheads, Part Two

Below is the second part of the Lemonheads/Evan Dando album guide I cowrote with Ken Sumka back in July for Jefitoblog. Part one can be found here.

Come On Feel the Lemonheads (1993)

Robert: Once It's a Shame About Ray and its after-the-fact single "Mrs. Robinson" took off in the fall of '92, the media noticed what a nice face Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando had, and promptly began to overexpose him as a heartthrob for teenage girls. Dando seemed happy to oblige, appearing in People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" issue in '93, smooching actress Adrienne Shelly on the cover of Spin, chatting it up with Regis and Kathie Lee on daytime TV, and dropping in for a cameo at the end of Ben Stiller's Reality Bites. Dando also had a tendency to say much more than he needed to in interviews, especially when it came to his recreational drug use. ("He's never been one to edit anything that went through his brain," former Lemonheads bassist Jesse Peretz told Melody Maker.)

But you know what? If Dando looked more like Paul Westerberg or Bob Mould, two of his early songwriting influences, I bet he wouldn't have received so many slings and arrows from critics and alternative-music fans, because at his best his lyrics are on par with those of Westerberg in his mid-'80s prime. It's not Dando's fault he's photogenic. But the damage was already done: by the spring of '94 a zine called Die Evan Dando, Die had been published, and once Kurt Cobain did die that April, the world at large had had enough of Boston's resident alterna-hunk and his band's "bubblegrunge" music (an unfair and inaccurate label).

But I digress. The Lemonheads' sixth LP cribs its title from Slade's 1973 hit "Cum On Feel the Noize," and was rushed onto shelves 16 months after Ray's release to capitalize on the Lemonheads' newfound popularity and Dando's teen-dream appeal. The original cover art was even replaced in order to show off his exquisitely square jaw. Come On Feel was recorded in the middle of two straight years of touring: songs like "Paid to Smile" and "You Can Take It With You" ("Found myself a breathing place / Got room to stand up straight / And if I wanna lay around I can") make it clear that the group's nonstop schedule had started to wear on Dando. And his nonstop drug intake, which was wearing on everyone around him, is alluded to in the songs "Style" ("Don't wanna get stoned / But I don't wanna not get stoned") and "Rick James Style," featuring guest vocals by the Super Freak himself.

Early versions of "Into Your Arms," "Dawn Can't Decide," and "Being Around" had already shown up as Ray B-sides, and there's a 15-minute waste of space at the end of the album called "The Jello Fund." Despite all that, Come On Feel is a worthy follow-up to Ray, with more of Dando's three-minutes-or-less pop wonders filled with big hooks, memorable melodies, warm vocals, and witty lyrics. Unfortunately, Atlantic and new fans were looking for a repeat of Ray, and Come On Feel didn't have the same impact. As for older fans, it felt like the Lemonheads had strayed a little too far from their roots. (They officially added "The" to the front of their name in '93. The nerve!)

One particular standout is "Big Gay Heart," which can be read as a pro-tolerance anthem or just a plea for romantic acceptance in general: "Why can't you look after yourself and not down on me / Do you have to try to piss me off just 'cause I'm easy to please?" The song contains pedal-steel accompaniment by "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers, but bassist Nic Dalton, who didn't hear the completed album until it was already in stores, stated that he thought Kleinow's contribution hurt the song.

Ken: With a little judicious editing, this album could've been a satisfying sequel to Ray; instead it comes off bloated in spots. This happens sometimes when a band that's used to working within the time constraints of two sides of vinyl tries to "stretch out" on CD. "Rest Assured" and "Into Your Arms" are two gems, however, and "Being Around" has a goofy charm.

Car Button Cloth (1996)

Robert: After three years of continued drug abuse, a stint in rehab, a role as Liv Tyler's boyfriend in the film Heavy, time spent hanging out on the road with Oasis, and appearances on albums like Mike Watt's Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, Kirsty MacColl's Galore, and the Empire Records soundtrack, Dando—and the Lemonheads—returned with Car Button Cloth. Dando was the only member left from the previous lineup, making this album, in some ways, his version of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers or the Replacements' All Shook Down: a chance to give it one more try under his band's name before going solo. Joining him in the studio were Bill Gibson on bass and Patrick Murphy (a.k.a. Murph of Dinosaur Jr.) on drums, with John Strohm rejoining the band on rhythm guitar for the tour.

Car Button Cloth, like any of the band's other non-Ray offerings up to that point, is a patchwork affair. (Dando himself has labeled most of the Lemonheads' albums as "schizophrenic.") It's still a great listen, partly thanks to well-chosen covers like Come On Feel writing partner Tom Morgan's "The Outdoor Type" and "Tenderfoot" (cowritten by Adam Young), but all those puzzle pieces behind the couch don't quite fit together. The album kicks off with two brilliant singles, "It's All True" and "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You," that might've piqued the curiosity of those aforementioned teenage girls if they were still listening (in their dorm rooms at this point), but the somewhat sinister "Break Me," "Hospital," and "Losing Your Mind" ("What a comfort to find out you're losing your mind / And you re-realize that it's not the first time")—and an electrified rendition of the murder ballad "Knoxville Girl"—demonstrate that Dando's no longer interested in being a Tiger Beat pinup.

The Lemonheads pleasantly kill some time with "6ix," a shout-out to Gwyneth Paltrow and Real People's Skip Stephenson, and "C'mon Daddy," inspired by Todd Rundgren in more ways than one. But as Dando says midway through the album, "Something's Missing" ("I ain't quiet deep inside / I ain't even on my side"), and it's not just "Purple Parallelogram," a track he wrote with Noel Gallagher that was removed from Car Button Cloth at the last second at Gallagher's insistence. Dando says he didn't mind since he regarded the track as a throwaway at best.

Car Button Cloth is still my favorite Lemonheads album. Right around the time that my Great Big Todd Rundgren Obsession of 1996 was beginning to fade, my college roommate received the new Lemonheads CD for Christmas, and I listened out of curiosity after reading an odd interview with Dando in Rolling Stone. My Great Big Obsession of 1997 had begun: after just a couple of listens I was a fan of Dando's voice and words, and I regretted my snap judgment of him as nothing but a pretty boy a few years earlier. I started winding my way backward through the Lemonheads' discography, and waited for news of their next album. It turned out I was in for a long, long wait.

Ken: I had been on board since almost day one with the Lemonheads, so Car Button Cloth was a slight disappointment for me, yet there are still some nice moments on it. "It's All True," "If I Could Talk," and "The Outdoor Type" are the representatives from this album that I still have on my iPod.

Live at the Brattle Theatre/Griffith Sunset EP (2001)

Robert: Car Button Cloth's cover includes the sentence "All of these things sank." The album followed suit—it sold nowhere near the amount that the gold-certified Ray and Come On Feel did just a few years earlier. After the Car Button Cloth tour ended in the summer of '97, Dando took a long break from writing and recording, although he did continue touring on his own, and he didn't disappear from recording studios altogether: he popped up on the 2001 Blake Babies reunion album and recorded a single with Ben Lee, Cheap Trick's Tom Petersson, and actor-musician Jason Schwartzman under the no-frills name of Dando Lee Petersson Schwartzman.

On October 18, 2000, Dando played a show at the Brattle Theatre in Boston that was recorded for a live album. The resulting LP came out in Australia a year later and was packaged with a bonus EP of country covers coproduced by Giant Sand's Howe Gelb, among others. Live at the Brattle Theatre presents a strong acoustic run through the Lemonheads' catalog, with "Half the Time" and a Hammond-free "My Drug Buddy" being two of the highlights. After five years away it was comforting to hear Dando's golden throat still in good shape, even if he wasn't hitting all of the high notes anymore. The Griffith Sunset EP gives fans heartsick interpretations of John Prine's "Sam Stone" and the Louvin Brothers' "My Baby's Gone."

Baby I'm Bored (2003)

Robert: Finally, six and a half years after Car Button Cloth, Dando returned with new songs, but this time as a solo act, and swearing that the Lemonheads were dead as a recording entity. Note the similar covers, however, of Baby I'm Bored (that's Dando's wife, Elizabeth Moses, staring into the camera lens) and Hate Your Friends. An acknowledgement of a new beginning or a sign of things to come?

Recorded in various studios between '99 and '02, Baby I'm Bored saw Dando teaming up with Car Button Cloth producer Bryce Goggin on seven tracks and multihyphenate Jon Brion on songs like "Stop My Head," "Shots Is Fired," and "It Looks Like You," all cowritten by Brion to boot. Ben Lee, who wrote the tongue-in-cheek Dando tribute "I Wish I Was Him" when he was barely out of puberty, penned two tracks on Baby I'm Bored specifically for his friend to sing, and cowrote, with Dando and Tom Morgan, the cleverly titled "The Same Thing You Thought Hard About Is the Same Part I Can Live Without."

The theme of regret shows up again and again in the lyrics ("Some of the ground you gained / Lost instead" … "Whatever part of you that's been calling the shots is fired" ... "I can't believe how far I slid / I guess I had to see" ... "All my life / I thought I needed all the things I didn't need at all"), so it's tempting to infer that Dando's carefree drug use in the '80s and '90s had finally caught up with him, as evidenced by "Why Do You Do This to Yourself?" But in an era in which celebrities set aside a three-day weekend for a visit to rehab and then bravely tell E! News that they've conquered their demons, Dando has never made any sort of mea culpa for the various substances he's abused over the years—heroin, crack, LSD, etc. (He has admitted that he became an alcoholic.) In the end it's his business, not ours, and as the late comedian Bill Hicks once said, "I had a great time doing drugs. Sorry. Never murdered anyone, never robbed anyone, never raped anyone, never beat anyone. Never lost a job, a car, a house, a wife, or kids. Laughed my ass off, and went about my day."

Baby I'm Bored was by no means a chart topper, but it did earn good reviews, and Dando sounded focused in concert (Juliana Hatfield joined him on bass for one leg of the tour). Fans crossed their fingers that he wouldn't take another six and a half years to deliver a new studio album.

Ken: Gee, Dando sure made it easy for snarky reviewers to pan this record: "You're bored? So are we, Evan." This album was a "grower" for me. After initial listenings I shelved it and didn't go back to it for months; then I revisited it and found some of its hidden charms, not the least of which is Jon Brion's production. Brion could make even Rob Thomas interesting if he tried (hmm, there's a thought), and certainly helps out here with sparse but well-chosen instrumentation. The highlights are tracks like "Waking Up," with cowriting credit and backing vocals by Royston Langdon (of Spacehog and impregnating-Liv-Tyler fame), and the excellent "It Looks Like You."

The Lemonheads (2006)

Robert: Much was made of Dando collaborating with former Descendents members Bill Stevenson (drums) and Karl Alvarez (bass) for last year's "reunion album" (but let the record and its liner notes show that Josh Lattanzi plays bass on 4 of the 11 songs). Dando said he decided to revive his former band's name after hearing about a festival in Brazil in 2004 that featured South American bands playing their favorite Lemonheads songs. He also said he got tired of pushing T-shirts with his own name on them.

Dando delves into familiar topics—regrets, narcotics—on the Lemonheads' eighth album, but there's also a new focus on mortality and getting older (Dando turned 40 back in March), as well as politics: "Let's Just Laugh" is about enduring the remainder of Bush II's presidency. The Lemonheads is arguably the group's most consistent album since It's a Shame About Ray, so I was disappointed when I learned that some of the best songs on it weren't written by Dando. Stevenson contributes "Become the Enemy" and "Steve's Boy" ("Steve's boy won't let you die / Alone in the desert with fear in your eyes / You can't break me / You can't make me go away"), and Tom Morgan's "No Backbone" is dusted off from a 1997 Smudge collection along with "Baby's Home." But Dando's "Black Gown," "Pittsburgh," and "Poughkeepsie" show that he still knows how to compose short, sharp blasts of exceptional pop-rock.

I actually didn't like The Lemonheads when I first heard an advance copy last summer, and that surprised me—Dando's melodies and vocals almost always provide instant gratification. His voice sounded tired and even a little bored on the first few spins, but then I noticed how unified the album's overall sound is, and the hooks began to sink in. (However, it's still a step down from the triumphant Baby I'm Bored.) For those who bought It's a Shame About Ray and Come On Feel the Lemonheads in the early '90s but never strayed elsewhere in the band's catalog, this self-titled effort won't make them start exploring anew, but for long-term fans it's been nice hearing Dando make noise under the Lemonheads' moniker once again. Whichever delivery system he chooses for putting out new music in the future, I'll be listening.

Ken: I too was very excited about the possibility of a Lemonheads reunion—if in name only—especially the prospect of Dando playing with former members of the Descendents (and power-poppers All). My initial impression of the record was lukewarm as well, but repeat listens certainly improved my opinion; the country-tinged murder ballad "Baby's Home" is pretty harrowing. The subsequent tour, costarring Vess Ruhtenberg and Devon Ashley, the latest Lemonheads rhythm section, further solidified those thoughts.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Evan Dando and the Lemonheads, Part One

Below is the first part of the Lemonheads/Evan Dando album guide I cowrote with Ken Sumka back in July for Jefitoblog.

Evan Dando and Ben Deily, upper-middle-class teenagers from the Boston suburbs, formed the Lemonheads with classmate Jesse Peretz in 1986 during their senior year of high school. In the beginning Dando and Deily would switch off on drums for each other's songs, with Peretz on bass. They started out emulating the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and Dinosaur Jr. and gradually added Gram Parsons and Hank Williams to their list of influences under the leadership of Dando, who took the reins in '89 and became the band's one constant member as other players drifted in and out.

You may only know the Lemonheads as camera-friendly dudes who had a hit covering "Mrs. Robinson" during the final months of George Bush Sr.'s presidency. Lucky for you—and them—there's much more to the story.

Hate Your Friends (1987)

Ken: While there are certainly plenty of debuts that knock the ball out of the park, most hint at what is yet to come. Hate Your Friends falls into the latter category: it displays a keen knack for concise punk-pop songs by both Dando and Deily, but it falls short of perfection. Deily wrote the arguably "punkier" stuff, including the gem "Second Chance," which hides a sweet, lovelorn/kiss-off lyric under a fuzzy guitar part and catchy chorus. Another great Deily cut, "Uhhh," treads similar ground—a crunchy riff over "relationship gone south" material. Dando's "Don't Tell Yourself" tries desperately to crawl out from a plodding drumbeat and almost succeeds, and "Nothing True" certainly winks at the Replacements but maintains Dando's own sensibilities. Also, the time-honored Lemonheads tradition of cheeky covers is born with a 90-second version of "Amazing Grace." Hate Your Friends contains some filler, but a good three-quarters of this debut hits the mark.

Robert: Taang!'s 1992 reissue added 7 tracks to the original album's 13, including songs from the band's 1986 EP, Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners, and outtakes that eventually appeared on their third album, Lick. But even with 20 songs, the album's over in about 35 minutes. (There's also Create Your Friends, a compilation that offers the Lemonheads' first two albums on one disc and whose title niftily predicts the MySpace era.) Dando's gift for incisive, memorable lyrics pops up for the first time on the title track ("You've got problems you can't solve / It's enough to make you start to hate your friends"), and Deily's nasally vocals are a good match for the band's snotty punk-lite songs.

Creator (1988)

Ken: Creator saw the welcome addition of John Strohm (Blake Babies, Antenna) on drums after Doug Trachten, who was behind the kit for half of Hate Your Friends, was let go. Deily contributes eight songs here (compared to three by Dando), including the spooky "Burial Ground" and tempo-shifting "Sunday." Dando's much-improved songwriting chops are on full display in "Die Right Now," with a twin-guitar intro that plunges headlong into a searing riff and solo that would make J Mascis proud. "Clang Bang Clang" introduces Dando's fascination with Charles Manson—the song "borrows" its title and a few lyrics from Charlie—and "Helter Skelter's" #1 fan pops up again via a cover of his song "Your Home Is Where You're Happy." Like the Replacements had done a few years earlier, Kiss gets covered, though the Lemonheads opt for 1977's "Plaster Caster."

Robert: Creator is the group's most disposable album, but Dando's rich baritone commands attention on the Manson cover; he's always been a gifted interpreter of other performers' songs, even those of serial killers. Deily works hard here, but his songwriting doesn't gain any traction. Following the album's release in the summer of '88, the Lemonheads disbanded after a performance in which Dando replaced his guitar solo in each song—even if one wasn't required—with the riff from Guns n' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine."

Lick (1989)

Ken: The core of Dando/Deily/ Peretz was still intact after what turned out to be only a temporary break-up, but John Strohm left once Creator was done to focus on Blake Babies, which featured Dando on bass during the Lemonheads' hiatus. With Strohm gone, Dando moved to drums, and Bullet LaVolta's Corey Loog Brennan was added on guitar. These days he's Dr. Brennan, Ph.D., Strohm's a lawyer in Alabama, Deily's in PR and advertising, and Peretz is a film director whose credits include The Chateau (2002) and The Ex (2007).

Lick gets under way with Dando's jangly "Mallo Cup," which at just two minutes and 11 seconds manages to distill everything great about the band: wistful lyrics ("Here I am outside your house at 3 AM / Trying to think you out of bed"), melodic verses, and a buzz-saw chorus. Deily contributes a few more of his great jilted-kid songs with "Anyway" and the terrific "Ever," which makes excellent use of his raspy voice. Things take an odd turn with the mostly-sung-in-Italian "Cazzo di Ferro," about Raymond Burr, of all people. The attention getter here—at least on college radio in '89—is a fairly straight reading of Suzanne Vega's earnest child-abuse hit "Luka" (recorded during the sessions for Creator). Nashville chestnut "Strange" (Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson) also gets a revved-up treatment. With favorable reviews and brisk sales, the tide was shifting, and major labels started beckoning.

Robert: When a summer tour of Europe was offered to them, the Lemonheads re-formed just a few months after breaking up. Taang! wanted them to record a new album before the tour, but Dando had writer's block and Deily was becoming more and more estranged from his bandmates, so Lick was filled out with the Hate Your Friends leftovers "Sad Girl" and "Ever," plus new versions of early songs like "Glad I Don't Know." (The 1992 reissue rescued "Mad," a Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners orphan, and "Strange" from the "Luka" seven-inch.) Despite its cut-and-paste nature, Lick somehow manages to hang together and rawk out in unexpected ways. During their tour, the band—minus Deily, who bowed out as soon as Lick was finished—made a stop in the Netherlands and played a few songs on VPRO, where Brennan posed as Dando for an interview with an unsuspecting Dutch DJ.

Favorite Spanish Dishes EP (1990)

Ken: Ah, the covers/odds-'n'-sods stopgap EP. What fun. Dando and co. kick it off with a sprightly cover of the Mike Nesmith-penned Stone Poneys/Linda Ronstadt cut "Different Drum," followed by a so-so Dando original ("Paint") and the acoustic "Ride With Me" (with a Manson sound clip thrown in for good measure). Homage/scorn is heaped upon fellow Bostonians NKOTB with a funny but accurate cover of the massive hit "Step by Step," and the record closes with the Misfits' "Skulls." There's nothing essential here, but it's still fun.

Robert: Originally released in Europe before Lovey, the Lemonheads' first album for Atlantic Records, the three-song EP was expanded to five tracks for American release in '91. Dando, a music geek from an early age, gives a brief tour of his record collection here, but his own "Paint" is also a winner, and many fans prefer the acoustic version of "Ride With Me" to Lovey's electric one.

Lovey (1990)

Ken: Signed to Atlantic by former A&R scout (and current Thrill Jockey Records owner) Bettina Richards, the band benefited greatly from a major-label budget. After a revolving cast of drummers that included Trachten, Strohm, Dando, Deily, and even a guy who performed under the name of Johnny Bravo, David Ryan was recruited for Lovey and was a quantum leap forward in the percussion department. Peretz stayed put on bass, and Brennan cowrote two songs and made contributions on guitar. With no-nonsense production from Paul Q. Kolderie, Ryan's solid drumming, and much-improved sound quality, Lovey finally presents the Lemonheads how they should sound.

The opener, "Ballarat," obliquely references Manson again (the Manson Family set up camp in Ballarat, California, for a while) but also asserts that this is a different band, one that rocks with a renewed vigor. "Half the Time" revisits the jangle of "Mallo Cup," and "Ride With Me" is the group's best ballad yet. "Li'l Seed" is a NORML rallying cry with some great guitar work from Brennan. "Stove" is the kind of song that became second nature to Dando, a simple story about an everyday happening—the replacement of a stove—but it's infused with small details that bring the song to life. "Left for Dead" is a slightly cleaner retread of "Clang Bang Clang" from Creator, and Dando shows his affection for Gram Parsons with a cover of "Brass Buttons." "(The) Door" hints at some of the metal that Dando and especially Brennan were listening to as youngsters, with some uncharacteristically heavy, but quite adroit, riffing. Only the closing "track," an answering-machine message from Polly Noonan, the "Gummi Bear girl" on the bus at the end of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, could be considered filler. Lovey is a solid major-label debut and an essential Lemonheads record.

Robert: After Peretz and Ryan laid down their parts on songs like "Half the Time" and "Stove" (which are my favorites on Lovey), Dando went back into the studio while they were studying for final exams and rerecorded the bass and drums. This, combined with other frustrations, led them to quit the Lemonheads before Lovey was released. Their tour replacements, Byron Hoagland and Ben Daughtry, can be seen in the video for "Half the Time," but they never recorded as Lemonheads. In a 1991 interview with Melody Maker's Everett True, Dando joked that he didn't jell with the new rhythm section because Hoagland "had a beard, which was unacceptable."

In early '91, before an international tour and a stop in Australia that inspired Dando's most prolific period of writing, Peretz and Ryan rejoined the band. Peretz left for good at the end of the tour to concentrate on film school, but he returned the following year to direct videos for the Lemonheads' next album, It's a Shame About Ray.

Lovey sold 11,000 copies, less than half of what the independently released Lick was able to move. It was time for the Lemonheads to justify their existence on Atlantic's roster.

It's a Shame About Ray (1992)

Robert: The group's mainstream breakthrough built momentum quietly during the summer of '92. Clocking in at under half an hour, Ray wastes no time delivering its 12 tracks of perfect pop. On the surface Dando and the band (Ryan on drums again, Juliana Hatfield on bass and fairy-dust backing vocals) provide warm sunshine throughout: giddy love songs like "Alison's Starting to Happen" ("She's the puzzle piece behind the couch / That made the sky complete") are a welcome addition to any summer mix tape. But the subject matter often veers into darker areas: "Confetti" was inspired by Dando's parents' divorce ("He'd rather be alone than pretend"), the title track hints at suicide, and "Rudderless" makes you wonder if Dando's having second thoughts about some of his unhealthy habits ("Waiting for something to break … / Tired of getting high / Guess I don't wanna die").

There isn't a weak track on Ray, and for the first time the Lemonheads had created an album that's more than the sum of its parts, due in no small measure to the Robb Bros., who coproduced it with Dando, and new Australian friend Tom Morgan, who cowrote "Bit Part" and the title track and helped spark Dando's renewed sense of songcraft. Critics and college-radio listeners knew they'd come across something special, but it took a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson," recorded to help promote a 25th-anniversary edition of The Graduate on home video, to introduce the Lemonheads—with new bassist Nic Dalton, the songwriter behind Ray's "Kitchen" and leader of the Australian band Godstar—to the general public. After Atlantic released "Mrs. Robinson" as a single (against the band's wishes) and it became a minor hit that fall, the label rereleased Ray with the new song tacked onto the end of the album. Atlantic also changed the title of "My Drug Buddy" to simply "Buddy." Here's hoping Rhino's upcoming 15th-anniversary reissue of Ray will toss "Mrs. Robinson" onto the bonus disc and restore "My Drug Buddy's" full title.

Ken: During this era Dando became friendly with fellow heartthrob (and accomplished actor) Johnny Depp, who appeared in the video for "It's a Shame About Ray" and managed to work the album's title into the film Benny & Joon (1993) with the line "It's a shame about raisins." Released a few months prior to Ray was Juliana Hatfield's Hey Babe, which included contributions from Dando. The summer of '92 found me painting houses with a friend; I had Ray and Hey Babe on opposite sides of a cassette that didn't leave the tape deck for weeks. Ray is the Lemonheads' most tuneful, cohesive, and—not surprisingly—best album.

After six years and five albums, the Lemonheads were finally becoming stars. Unfortunately, that had more to do with "the alternative movement" in rock in the early '90s and Dando's male-model good looks than his heartfelt songwriting or terrific vocals. Next week: the inevitable backlash, Dando's six-year vacation, his return as a solo performer, and the rebirth of the Lemonheads (or, at the very least, the Lemonheads' name).