Hoon is credited as one of the directors, along with Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould and Colleen Hennessey, who had an enormous job sifting through much of this often banal footage. On October 21, 1995, Hoon films himself in a New Orleans hotel, talking on the phone and trying to arrange a flight home. Later that day, he died of an apparent overdose on the tour bus. He was 28 years old.
"All I Can Say" is clearly made for fans of Blind Melon, the band who hit paydirt with their 1992 song "No Rain" (although it was really the music video that pushed the song over the edge: more on that in a second). The instantly recognizable "No Rain" still gets radio play today, with Hoon's high-pitched raspy voice singing:
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watchin' the puddles gather rain
For a brief shining season, Blind Melon was huge. A reporter is seen intoning: "Blind Melon is destined to be one of the new Nirvanas": this sounds like praise, especially in 1992, but once you take it apart, all kinds of cracks open up. Just one of the "new Nirvanas"? Time has shown there can't be a "new Nirvana" because Nirvana was singular, unique, as was Kurt Cobain. Blind Melon didn't have that driving force or singular purpose, and Hoon didn't have the power of personality Cobain did, but "No Rain" was such a monster hit that Blind Melon played stadiums, they played 1994 Woodstock, they went on tour with Neil Young, appeared on bills alongside Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, the giants of the era. But "All I Can Say" shows the shaky foundation on which all this success was built. They were given a record deal based on just five songs. Their catalog was super thin. What exactly did they have to say? And who were they, what was their identity as a band? These are crucial questions. By the time it came to their second album, these questions were even more urgent, but nobody seemed to have a good answer.
Now about that video for "No Rain." Directed by Samuel Bayer, it was a high-concept video, starting with a little girl in a bee costume (Heather DeLoach) tap dancing for a crowd. The crowd laughs at her. She runs through the city streets, trying to impress random people with her tap dancing skills. Nobody's into it. Then she looks through the slats of a gate and sees—wonder of wonders—a group of adults, also in bee costumes, dancing around in a field. She's found her people! She's found her tribe. She joins the dance.
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