120 Reasons To Live: The Connells

Nothing did more to further the cause of Alternative Nation-building than 120 Minutes, MTV’s Sunday-night video showcase of non-mainstream acts. For nearly two decades, the program spanned musical eras from ’80s college rock to ’00s indie, with grunge, Britpop, punk, industrial, electronica and more in between. MAGNET raids the vaults to resurrect our 120 favorite and unjustly forgotten videos from the show’s classic era.

#45: The Connells “’74-’75”

The Connells belonged to that Southern axis of ’80s college rock (the dB’s, Guadalcanal Diary, Miracle Legion and, of course, R.E.M.) toward which we inadequately deploy the word “jangle” when so many other adjectives fail us. One disadvantage to remembering these acts as happy-go-lucky, Rickenbacker-strumming pop songwriters is that so many of them were so damn good at writing heart-crushing ballads. The Raleigh, N.C., band led by brothers Mike and David Connell may have outdone all their contemporaries with 1993’s “’74-’75,” a relatively late-career (the group debuted in 1985) offering that was a huge hit in Europe; the Connells found themselves opening for Def Leppard after the song took off. The reasons why “’74-’75” failed to catch on in the U.S. is regrettable but expected: Alt-rock was more in the mood for breakthrough hits by Smashing Pumpkins, the Breeders, Beck and Green Day. It had to be a pretty eventful year in music for the Connells’ finest to get swept under the rug.