I worked in commercial radio for about two-and-a-half years. In that span, I had to play a lot of music I didn’t like. And I mean a lot. This was in the mid-nineteen-nineties, after Nirvana hit it big and Pearl jam hit it bigger, leading labels to clamor for any band that played thudding hard rock, especially if it sounded a little like it was being fed through damaged amps. The glut of “new rock alternative” stations that sprung upon around this time, including the one I worked at, played these bands like dutiful soldiers, even though many of them were derivative and downright awful. There were stretches when my assigned playlist looked like a personal punishment.

So I was always glad when a song I actually liked made it into the mix. Thankfully, Hole was at the peak of both their popularity and their creative worthiness when I was there, an era that may be hard to remember now that the ongoing Courtney Love train wreck has reached levels that make the crash in Super 8 looks about as devastating as tumbling Jenga blocks in comparison. The band’s major label debut was released roughly seven months before I arrived at the station and mere days after the death of Kurt Cobain gave the title, Live Through This, unexpected resonance. Five different songs from that album made the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, a welcome counter-balance to the equal number of charting tracks from Bush’s atrocious Sixteen Stone at around the same time. Whenever something from Hole was scheduled, it was a pleasant relief.

This even extended to fairly unlikely material, such as a cover song from the soundtrack to a wholly unnecessary sequel. While I’m admittedly a sucker for covers, I’m fairly immune when I have little to no familiarity with the original, which was the case with Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman” (and when I finally did hear it, I was surprised by its drabness). I came to the Hole version of the song almost as if it was brand new material, and I loved every bit of it. The song, like everything Hole produced up to that point, could have been reasonable filed into the grunge niche, but Hole’s efforts had a fullness and a dynamic richness that many of the other performers lacked. If it was already turning into The Courtney Show, it still felt and sounded like a band, with the gratifying give and take that implies.

The song was just a moderate hit, but I recall it sticking in our station’s playlists for quite a while, getting the same recurrent status as the most popular tracks from Live Through This. So even as the music I had to play got more and more dire before I decided to call it quits in commercial radio, there was always the hope that I’d turn over to a new sheet on the playlist and see this little gift typed out somewhere on the page.

Hole, “Gold Dust Woman”

(Disclaimer: It looks to me like the soundtrack in question is out of print and not even available digitally, although I hardly exhausted all options in my research on my front. It’s entirely possible this song landed on some other disc that’s still available for purchase, but I’m only prepared to dig so much for these things. I’ve posted it here while under the belief that it can’t be bought in way that provides due compensation to the artist, the songwriter and the proprietor of your favorite local, independently-owned record store. There are other ways, of course, to send money their way, including a brand new album from the songwriter. Despite my conviction that posting the song here is a reasonable implementation of fair use, if any of the many people who might have a claim on this song contacts me to demand its removal, I will gladly and promptly comply.)