Superchunk Song Review Project 3: "Train from Kansas City"

Superchunk is a band that covers a lot of songs and this is one of the first. They do a great job of turning their covers into Superchunk songs, if you know what I mean. It's not like Michael Morales' cover of ``What I Like About You."

It's not really worthwhile to talk about the song writing, since they didn't write the song! But we can talk about the Superchunk sound, which is totally on display. Grubby guitar sounds, feedback, doubled Mac vocals sung off key, the whole package. It sounds exactly like the Shangri-Las version, except, you know, totally loud and chaotic. The thing I always loved about this cover was that Mac sings the lyrics exactly as they were in the original, he doesn't change the gender of the lyrics. (Not like Celine Dion's incredibly lame AC/DC cover.) When I first heard this song, like in 1993, I was like "woah! this band is totally gay!" It turns out I was wrong about that, but the 18 year old me felt challenged by it. I mean, it was 1993! People were way more openly homophobic back then than now. It seemed so subversive and punk rock to me, way more "in your face" somehow, than other popular punk rock/heavy music of the time period (stuff like Nirvana or Bad Religion, both of whom I loved). It seemed like it was made by weirdos, nerds, freaks. But, at the same time, by weirdos who were kind of funny and seemed nice! And at that time I felt like a pretty big freak!

I also love that the playing on this song is SO bad. There are so many flubbed notes, clearly missed guitar parts and stuff. And the feedback swells during the bridge are just killer!!!! Superchunk were just so freaking punk back then!!!