CIV: Thirteen Day Getaway
1998
Atlantic Records
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. Secondhand Superstar 2. Big Girl 3. Itchycoo Park 4. Haven't Been Myself in a While 5. Everyday 6. Shout It 7. Owner's Manual 8. Something Special 9. Using Someone Else 10. It's Not Your Fault 11.Living Life 12. Ordinary 13. Little Men 14.What Happened to the Grunge?
CIV was largely a 90's reunion of the 80's hardcore band "Gorilla Biscuits" with Walter Schreifels from Gorilla Biscuits/Quicksand/Rival Schools/A Billion Other Bands producing and writing the bulk of the songs...They kept a lot of their old-school speed and positivity but infused it with 90's pop-punk melodicism and 80's Adam & the Ants tribal beats...
For some odd reason I no longer own CIV's first album, the beloved and highly successful "Set Your Goals"...
Instead I just have their 1998 follow-up "Thirteen Day Getaway," which is often dismissed as being the vastly inferior follow-up but I've never totally agreed to that assessment...
The popular consensus is that this was CIV's attempt at becoming the next Smashmouth, and soon they also be making big, fat hamburgery videos with porno chicks and shave landing strips on their chins and play in endless rotation on MTV, like Smashburger did...
...While I'll admit this record isn't as good as "Set Your Goals" (likely due to the relative absence of the always dependable Walter Schreifels) it's also not as vomitous as its reputation suggests...To me, it sounds like a punk band indulging in the type of vintage 60's and 70's pop they probably loved in their youth...Dinky organ sounds and arm-swingin' melodies...Sort of like the Banana Splits meets Gorilla Biscuits...I'm highly-susceptible to this type of classic pop, so it sounds fine to me, but I can see how the happy-go-lucky melodies might grate on skinheads looking to go another round in the moshpit...
The sequencing on the album is a little weird too..."Set Your Goals" had a few pop songs scattered amidst the hardcore, but this album really segregates the styles...The first half is all fluffy pop and the second half is largely 80's style hardcore...
(Secondhand Superstar single cover)
The best moments are the immaculate pop-punker "Big Girl" and the closing acoustic track "Little Men," which happens to be the only song with a Schreifels credit attached to it..."Little Men" in particular shows that if they would have stuck around they might have found a way to navigate the Emo trend that was about to engulf all of punk rock, but they never got the chance, unfortunately...This turned out to be the band's last album...
I think a lot of the betrayal the fan's must have felt at the time surely must have faded by now, and to that end, I think it's time to dust off this album and give it another listen...I think there's some good stuff here if you're down for some good, hard pop...
On a personal note, I've always equated this album to the time in my life I spent working in a Car Parts factory in Tawas, Michigan...I used to work the overnight shift and get out at 6 or 7 am...Every morning I'd hop in my car and drive about a mile to the Shell station on the shores of Lake Huron...
...I'd buy a Cherry Choke...
...I'd just take a quiet 20 minutes before hopping into my car and blasting "Thirteen day Getaway" by CIV...Huh, no wonder I have such a fondness for the album...Maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia, and the album really is a piece of shit!!!
Oh well...Turn it up, anyway...
Here's a few other albums I strongly equate with that time period...
Hum: Downward is Heavenward...
The Humpers: Euphoria, Confusion, Anger and Remorse...
Rancid: Life Won't Wait...
Slayer: Diabolus in Musica...
If you rode with me around this time, there's a 100% chance one of these would have been blasting out my car stereo speakers, so let's grab a Cherry Coke, go for a drive and listen to "Little Men" by CIV...Enjoy...
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