Well, it had to be this song, from Clerks, right? My 37th post. In a row?

I guess I have a complicated story with Kevin Smith. I first knew of Clerks due to an article on Rolling Stone, where one of the arguments was the silliness of movie ratings. Pulp Fiction had sodomy and it got an R. Clerks only has a lot of foul language and it got an NC-17 until an appeal for an R.

I snagged a pirate, ropey copy of Clerks around ’95. The copy was foul, it had that black bar screeners used to have and the translation in the subtitles was almost amusing. Still, I liked the movie and Soul Asylum were still darlings of the alternative scene, so Can’t even tell was a shoo-in for my collection.

A nearby Blockbuster started diversifying its offering near 2000, and one fine evening, I rented both The Shining and Clerks. I didn’t like The Shining and it would take a long while to find out that the cut I rented was missing about 20 minutes or so. Clerks I loved, and the DVD had the alternative ending I’ve read about on IMDB years prior. I miss catching deleted stuff on physical media.

In 2001 and with a semi-decent pay, I got all four Kevin Smith movies. Mallrats was my fave, and I think it still is, with Dogma just clawing on the back. The View Askewneverse should’ve ended after Jay & Silent Bob strike back, but Smith kept going back to the well and the results were diminishing to the point that Clerks III made me loathe all his catalog in retrospect. The guy was just doing what he complained about, so many years ago. Weed didn’t do him any favours on that regard, although it supposedly saved him from dying from a widowmaker.

The worst part of Clerks III was that the soundtrack wasn’t good at all. The mixtape nature of previous soundtracks made it organic, relatable to the sensibilities of its mostly Gen-X audience.

But enough vitriol about the guy. He chose a path and he lost a lot of fans on the way. No point hanging on that since we can talk about the brilliance of Soul Asylum’s Can’t even tell. “I may never get what I want, but I’m happy just to die trying” is such a perfect line that I would ask any surviving friends to place it on my tombstone. Pirner’s vocals always had that “FUCK I’M IN PAIN BUT I FEEL BETTER SINGING ABOUT IT!” feeling that makes the saddest of lyrics quite enjoyable. See Black Gold, Misery, and Somebody to shove for further information.

When I had to leave Sheffield in 2013, and make no mistake, I was told to leave the country, Can’t even tell was the first song I heard once I arrived back to Mexico. The National and Foo Fighters were playing at a stadium near the airport, I was ready to curl up and cry for a month or so, until a trip to SXSW brightened my mood.

I like Soul Asylum. Even so many years after, as veterans of the scene, and with their most recent album out in 2024, they still can rock out like the best. See their KEXP session for further proof.

-Sam J. Valdés López