Rocky Road

Too Much Joy, "Crush Story"

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This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

At the start of the Fall 1991 quarter, for the first time, my three housemates and I got to live in our own apartment. Previously, we either lived at home, or in a dorm. So what was one of the first "household items" we discussed? A stereo, of course.
We made a list of what products we could scrounge or spare. I supplied a Sony D-10 Discman, and Monster Cable IL-400 and speaker cable. Doug had a Denon integrated amp. Todd had used his summer job earnings on some floorstanding Bose "stereo everywhere" loudspeakers. Eric had his dad fabricate a nice finished board, which we used to bridge two end tables. That contraption became our makeshift audio/video rack.
Todd's girlfriend spent a lot of time at our place. She had the then-popular CD, the witty Cereal Killers, by Too Much Joy. But with Todd and the girlfriend paired up, we guys hardly ever played or listened to Cereal Killers, hardly ever spent time as a foursome (get your mind out of the gutter).
Todd & the girlfriend wanted to live together, so they moved out. In came the gregarious playboy Dave. Through Dave, Doug and I spent more time with our adjacent neighbors, all of whom were female.
WIth Todd taking his Bose with him, Doug then went home, and fetched some 20"-tall JBL speakers. Back then, we didn't know any better, and simply left the JBLs on the floor. We should have placed them off the floor, perhaps on cinder blocks [as unemployed college kids, we had no money for speaker stands].
In early 1992, I bought an NAD 5000 CD player, for my home in San Francisco. That meant I got to take my old CD player, a Sony CDP-520ESII, down to the Santa Cruz college apartment. As I brought that thing in the door, Doug's eyes lit up. And, once we got it hooked up, Doug felt that the CDP-520ESII home player operated and sounded better than my D-10 Discman. Doug's enthusiasm for music doubled. And now, with Dave's help, our apartment would host get-togethers.
Doug and Dave encouraged our neighbors to bring over their CDs. One of the girls on the first floor brought her Cereal Killers CD. I was kind of surprised; the album, though full of alt-rock humor, wit, and political bent, was more power-pop.
No one was infatuated with another, but it was still good fun to dance (more like flail up and down) to Too Much Joy's "Crush Story."
During the summer of '92, my friends and I would see the video a couple times, and...never again.
Since then, I occasionally bust out "Crush Story" for audiophiles. And that's another entry, why one wing of audiophiles likes to shout that 1992 was pop music's best (because of the variety, once you look past the grunge and rap, which the media force-fed us).
-Lummy The Loch Monster
Crush Story (Open in New Window)

Edits: 03/04/17

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