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Social Distortion

Certain Songs #2328: Social Distortion – “I Was Wrong”

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Album: White Light White Heat White Trash
Year: 1996

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After releasing three albums between 1988 and 1992, Social Distortion took four years to come out with 1996’s hideously covered White Light White Heat White Trash, their final album to feature Dennis Darnell on rhythm guitar, and an album where they toned down the cow and focused on the punk.

And, of course, 1996 was a good year for this, as punk rock — California punk rock — was having a bit of a day in the sun in the wake of the massive success of Green Day. If you turned on any kind of rock-leaning radio station in the mid-90s you’d hear songs by the Offspring, Bad Religion, Rancid and others. And so, Mike Ness consciously decided to go back to his early O.C. life days.

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Certain Songs #2327: Social Distortion – “Bad Luck”

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Album: Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell
Year: 1992

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The second album that Social Distortion made for Epic records, Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, came out in 1992, two years after Social Distortion, a pace that doesn’t seem so bad now, but was still considered somewhat slow. However, it had the misfortune to come out just at the time where we were all going through our collective Nirvana freakout, and to me at least, what seemed fresh about Social Distortion in 1990 seemed a bit stale in 1992.

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Certain Songs #2326: Social Distortion – “Ball and Chain”

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Album: Social Distortion
Year: 1990

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While most of the songs on Social Distortion respected or at least nodded to their hardcore roots by zipping along at punk-ish tempo, one of the major exceptions was the loping “Ball and Chain, which found a bluesy midtempo shuffle and basically stuck with it.

This was probably so you would pay more attention to the hard luck lyrics that kinda made it a companion piece to “Story of Life.” Here are some more stories.

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Certain Songs #2325: Social Distortion – “Story of My Life”

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Album: Social Distortion
Year: 1990

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And so, in 1989, on the strength of Prison Bound, Social Distortion signed to Epic Records, who released 1990’s self-titled Social Distortion. Kids, don’t do this. You can name your first album after your band or yourself, but after that, no. Don’t do it. You’re not fooling anybody, OK? Sure, Peter Gabriel kinda sorta got away with it, but by the fourth album,

I mean, even the freaking Beatles tried to do it, and now everybody just refers to The Beatles as “The White Album.” I mean, honestly, a much better title for the album would have been Story of My Life, which is clever enough to leverage that phrase in two different ways and plainspoken enough for me to not even realize that fact until 30 years after I first heard it.

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Certain Songs #2324: Social Distortion – “On My Nerves”

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Album: Prison Bound
Year: 1988

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One of the things to know about Social Distortion: even though they recorded for nearly 30 years, they only produced seven albums during that period, with the three albums produced between 1988-1992 standing as their peak in terms of production.

This started early in their career, as they took an unheard-of five years between their debut Mommy’s Little Monster and the follow-up, Prison Bound. In terms of comparison, Hüsker Dü released six albums — two of them double albums — and an EP during that period, and then broke up, to boot.

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