HEADING FOR THE SUN | BEING HERE | CREATING AN IMAGE | COVERING PEARL JAM
BEING HERE
Just think: Right now people in England are buying an album full of surf-punk songs about San Jose, and not one tune is asking for directions.
This is our chance, San Jose, to live down Dionne Warwick. On Aug. 23, the band cracked Billboard's top 100 for all album sales, including country, rock and rap. Smash Mouth has sold 50,000 copies of the album "Fush Yu Mang." What a rocket ride--in June they were just four frustrated guys playing bars in San Jose.
These nice suburban guys (OK, with a few tattoos and assorted piercings) can make you forget everything about arrogant, hotel-trashing rock musicians. Each time a radio station adds "Walkin' on the Sun" to its play list, Harwell calls and says thanks. Between mid-June, when they got signed, and July 30, when the band left on a national tour with Sugar Ray that lands Sept. 13 at Shoreline, that was 120 long-distance calls.
You know how some people abandon their roots for bigger and brighter places when they get famous? (Anyone seen Teri Hatcher in Sunnyvale lately?) Well, these guys got signed without leaving for glitzy locales like L.A. or San Francisco.
"People ask us where we're from and we say, 'San Jose,'" Camp says. "And they say, 'Oh, you mean San Francisco' and we say, 'No, San Jose.'"