“Somebody To Love” Vs. “Somebody To Shove”

I Tweeted this yesterday.

Oh, so Soul Asylum swapped Jefferson Airplane's L for an Sh as an angsty, 90s modification. I get it now.—
Elliott Sharp (@elliottsharp) January 18, 2012

In case that’s too vague, I’ll explain.

First recorded by folk outfit The Great Society, “Somebody To Love” is a song made popular by Jefferson Airplane on 1967′s Surrealistic Pillow. If you’ve ever listened to the radio, you’ve heard it.

In 1992, an alternative rock back from Minnesota released a song called “Somebody To Shove” on their hit album, Grave Dancers Reunion. If you’re as old as I am, you owned this CD.

Both songs are cynical, and dark, but different. “Somebody To Love” articulates a miserable social/political scene/world and posits that loving somebody is a solution to it. Finding somebody to love is how you overcome such horror.

In “Somebody To Shove,” there’s really no escape from the (mostly inarticulate) horror. Alienation, despair, nihilism, etc. A phone call that would prove the narrator’s existence/worth never comes, and so the solution is both to shove somebody and to be shoved by somebody. Enter what is now known as “The Mosh Pit.”

I’m sure someone has already written at length about this profound connection I came upon yesterday.

However, if it was 1992, and I was writing a review of Grave Dancers Reunion, I’d be sure to articulate the death of ’60s love-hippie-optimism found in “Somebody To Love” and contrast it with the hate-grunge-pessimism exemplified by the alt-rock generation via “Somebody To Shove.” I’d write about Reagan, Bush, etc. I’d write, “Those fucking assholes ruined the country!” I’d write about how terrible everything in the world was between 1967 and 1992, and how the hope of the hippies inevitably led to the hate running through the veins of their disgruntled children.

But I’d also note this: In “Somebody To Shove,” the narrator requests, not just to shove, but to be shoved. In this, perhaps, there is something to celebrate. It’s a call for war, yes. But not just a call to shove somebody who cannot, in turn, defend themselves by shoving back. It’s a call for a just war, and not just a victim. “Seeking a worthy opponent is what heroes do,” I’d write.

But, it would be 1992, and I wouldn’t know what I know now. I wouldn’t know that the war was really just a mosh pit. I wouldn’t know that, just like the hippies, the alt-rockers failed.