Word: blowfish
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...warm, bright day in Columbia, South Carolina, the rock band Hootie & the Blowfish find themselves struggling to do something they used to do with ease: keep a very low profile. The occasion is the city's annual St.Patrick's Day celebration. It's considered a big event--although, truth be told, just about anything that carries with it the promise of free music and cheap beer is considered a big event in this frat-heavy college town. The members of Hootie, hometown heroes who made it big, have decided to join the festivities unannounced. The other acts are mostly smaller...
Late in the afternoon, the four members of Hootie & the Blowfish--singer Darius Rucker, guitarist Mark Bryan, bassist Dean Felber and Sonefeld--leave the small bar where they have been hiding/waiting/drinking and head to a tent behind the stage where they are scheduled to perform. The crowd begins murmuring in delight and shock as word spreads that the band is backstage. A chant builds: Hoot-ie! Hoot-ie! But just then--and, if you're a student of outdoor rock festivals, you knew this would happen--it begins to rain. Hard. Noah's ark hard. But at this point, there...
...scant two years ago, surprising people was a snap for the unknown, unheralded, alarmingly goofy-named Hootie & the Blowfish. When the band released Cracked Rear View, in 1994, it came across as something fresh and different, in large part because it didn't try to come across as anything fresh or different. Modern rock needed some new life, figuratively and literally--Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder's misunderstood-misanthrope act got tired about five seconds after Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain's suicidally depressive lyrics turned out to be all too genuine. Hootie was embraced as an alternative...
...Chicago Bulls have become America's Team, Hootie & the Blowfish are now America's Band--down-home, upbeat and immensely popular, a group of rock stars who don't look or act like rock stars. Typically dressed in baseball caps and baggy jeans, they look as if they're about to do some farm work or finish the back nine. While Rucker, 29, and Felber, 28, are still single, Bryan, 28, and Sonefeld, 31, are both engaged, settling down. All four still live in Columbia, within walking distance of one another, in homes that are sizable but modest (Sonefeld...
...that Cracked Rear View has sold more copies in the U.S. than any single album by Pearl Jam, U2, the Rolling Stones and even the Beatles, the Hootie backlash has begun. A page surfaced on the Internet recently calling for readers to join PAHB--Peoples Against Hootie & the Blowfish. This week the New York Times dismissed Rucker as rock's "reigning crybaby," a reference to his emotive lyrics. Some of the criticism cuts deeper. A writer for the Village Voice compared the band to a minstrel show, and Saturday Night Live did a sketch where Rucker leads beer-swilling white...