Dizzy Up The Girl Sounded The Dying Breath Of Goo Goo Dolls’ Replacements Influence
Right now, my turntable would give any audiophile a heart attack. Not only is it one of those vinyl-to-MP3 setups, but without a proper sound system, my remaining option was to rig it through old Logitech desktop computer speakers. I know, I know—but it gets worse. The turntable itself spins too quickly, pitching songs up nearly a half-step and completing a three-minute song in about 2:50. It’s not as bad as listening to podcasts at 1.25x speed, something some particularly freakish people do willingly, but it’s not ideal listening, either.
I’m not proud of any of this, and I don’t bring it up for ironic purposes. The sole benefit of my laziness and reluctance to read how to fix it is, simply, that it helps me hear things I otherwise wouldn’t. A spin of Goo Goo Dolls’ 1998 album Dizzy Up the Girl, for example—yes, the one with “Iris”—reveals something important, something I’d never considered before, on the song “Broadway.” Throughout, singer Johnny Rzeznik fills his scenes of factory drunks praying for penance along Buffalo’s east side with the sounds of Midwestern ache, hot guitar licks that weep as they throw a punch at you in the neon bar light. At one point, he reveals that “Friday night’s gone too far” for those poor bastards. I’ve heard it maybe 200 times in my life. I could sing along even when I, too, am quite loaded. It’s part of my DNA by now.
But on my turntable, the malfunction speeds up his “Friday night” annunciation, rendering it close to that of Tommy Stinson’s on his band Bash & Pop’s excellent, equally frustrated “Friday Night (Is Killing Me).” Stinson, of course, originated in The Replacements, the band that essentially invented the Midwestern ache Rzeznik spent his early career mining for inspiration. He even corresponded with band leader Paul Westerberg in the early ’90s for lyrical help. That song became “We Are the Normal,” a decidedly saccharine, un-Replacements-esque slice of lite pop-rock. It holds up, but Rzeznik did much better, especially on “Broadway,” capturing the deadened waltz of the Queen City’s Polonia laborers, the young and old shoulder-to-shoulder at the holy tavern, awaiting alcoholic ablution. With images this potent, Rzeznik needed an ace in the hole, a sound that could lend as much credence to these scenes as possible. He found one in power pop icon Tommy Keene.
A Replacements contemporary, Keene sounds fed up but poetic as hell on Songs From the Film, especially via the leadoff track “Places That Are Gone.” Sequence it before an earlier Goo cut like “Fallin’ Down” and right after, say, “Seen Your Video,” and you’ve got a hell of a rustbelt playlist going. And this makes sense, because even as the Goos hailed from Buffalo, much has been made about that town being an honorary Midwest stronghold. (Tons and tons of meat-based delicacies, hopeless but ardently supported sports franchises, you get the idea.) Keene’s presence is felt on those aforementioned guitar lines, zapping “Broadway” from a languid chord collection to a rattled hive. His fretwork makes me, a dude born in Buffalo eight years before this song came out, feel home.
I didn’t grow up there much (we moved to Rochester in ‘97), and the parts I know exist along the Irish-dappled Abbott and Seneca in South Buffalo, not the hardline Polish Broadway-Fillmore. But it feels right. I take refuge in it and recognize some roots anyway. Maybe it’s an energy. Maybe it’s me remembering that my father, who’s since retired back there with my mom, coached the Goos’ original drummer (George Tutuska) in youth hockey one summer sometime between 1975 and 1980. Or that his father, the grandpa I never met, worked in a Buffalo factory for decades. Or that now, when I go “home,” it’s Buffalo.
That’s why this song matters to me, and it seems to matter to the band still as well. At the 2018 Winter Classic NHL game between the Buffalo Sabres and the New York Rangers, the Goos were tapped for a performance between periods, so they played a few songs as me, my dad, and 42,000 people froze our asses off in the Citi Field stands as temperatures stagnated in the single digits. One of those songs was “Broadway,” a little show of support to their hometown team. During the Sabres’ playoff run in 2007, they contributed “Better Days” as a theme song—but here’s where the divide is most prevalent.
“Better Days” is an unabashed pop song. “Broadway” sounds like Bruce Springsteen fronting The Replacements singing prayers about Western New York instead of New Jersey. And though they may seem like opposite ends of the Goos’ musical spectrum, the midpoint is “Iris.” That explains everything. How after Dizzy, they pivoted to what most people knew them for. How “Better Days” and “Let Love In” and the rest of their 21st-century output has been an attempt to recapture that adult-contemporary glory. I’m not blaming them, obviously; this is how it works in the music industry. But because of it, “Broadway” sounds like the final belches of Westerberg, Keene, and Stinson—dotting the bar alongside Rzeznik, bassist Robby Takac, and then-drummer Mike Malinin—after they all down a Labatt Blue or a Schlitz, or whatever’s on special really, and walk out of the tavern for good.
And you know, there wouldn’t be an “Iris” if Rzeznik hadn’t first written “Name.” Now that’s a Replacements song. “Did you lose yourself out there?” he asks at one of the song’s most emotional moments. “Did you get to be a star?” Johnny Rzeznik sure as hell did. He’s got an entire catalog of twinging pop-rock to prove it.
