So for this week’s Thursday Throwback I thought I’d throw up a pretty cool version of the Gin Blossoms’ classic “Hey Jealousy” that I stumbled across in my travels. Performed solo on guitar with no vocal accompaniment, the track presumably represents an early stage in Doug Hopkins’ (RIP) writing process. By the sound of the sloppy changes and generally weak grasp of barre chords, he was likely drunk at the time. But yeah, pray excuse the crappiness. Learning guitar is HARD. I’m finally able to “play” a number of songs I actually like (such as this one) with at least some degree of recognizability—and with enough gain, isn’t that all you really need? Seriously, though, God bless the Evan Dandos of the world for recognizing that any more than three chords (none of them named B-fucking-major) is really just showing off….

Anyhoo, as for your real Thursday Throwback, it actually is a pretty cool version of “Hey Jealousy”—the original cut of the song as heard on the Blossom’s 1989 debut, Dusted. More Tom Petty meets the Replacements here than the grunge-lite of the more famous, New Miserable Experience rerelease, the song’s shimmering guitar lines and extended solo make it awfully clear why the band is remembered as one of the nineties’ preeminent power poppers in spite of their regrettably small catalog.