Better Things: Last Cigarette

"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.

This is the only band I know that's actually from my hometown. (Two asterisks immediately: they got famous - well, as famous as they got, which is not enough - only after they moved to LA. And there's another, somewhat bigger band that used the name of a place in my hometown but wasn't from there.)

Dramarama was founded in the basement of a record store in Wayne, NJ in 1982, and I'm enough of a romantic to think every band should have an origin story something like that - a specific place and time, a bunch of people who want to play music together, and, eventually, some great songs.

For me, Dramarama had three great songs. That might not sound like much, for a decade of albums and touring and work, but how many bands have even one five-star song? It started with their breakout, Anything, Anything (I'll Give You), a compelling, compulsive story of longing and need. And the third one, on their last major-label record before they broke up (the first time) was the semi-autobiographic, overwhelming Work for Food.

But, today, I want to celebrate the song in the middle. I don't remember if I heard this first - I'm pretty sure I knew Anything, Anything - but this is the song that got me to pay attention and buy the record and become a fan. That's Last Cigarette, from their 1989 record Stuck in Wonderamaland.

It's getting late you got to get the kitten fed
You got to kiss the little woman put the children in the bed
Check the sports and weather and the living and the dead
You don't have to hear the headlines you can hear what Johnny Carson said

It's straightforward, growling rock 'n roll, with energy and purpose and wit and energy to burn - a nearly perfect pop song on a subject that hasn't been ground into dirt by a million songs before it. It's a song about something mundane and ordinary in life - in this case, smoking one last cigarette, which was much more of an everyday thing for people in 1989 than it is today, I hope - and about all of the little rituals and moments like that.

And it kicks ass. I love that a band from Wayne, NJ kicked that much ass. Rock on, Dramarama. You should've been much bigger than you ever were.