It's no secret that I like to think of myself as something of a super hero. I'm a defender of the also-rans, the misbegotten misfits, the outcasts, the runaways, and the never-weres. Of course, I choose not to defend the real innocents out there, but rather focus my super powers on bands who were given short shrift. However, I have recently been betrayed by one of those very groups, so it is with a heavy heart that I have to renounce Spin Doctors.

Like anybody who cared enough to notice in the early '90s, I was a fan of their debut album Pocket Full of Kryptonite, which featured songs that, if I'm not mistaken, transcended time and space itself to become part of the zeitgeist (well, at least "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" did, but you also have to give props to "Two Princes" and "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" for trying). Spin Doctors broke in the wake of the grunge explosion, where it was assumed that every band with a) guitars, and b) ugly guys, was going to fall into this new category (the spiritually similar Blues Traveler found like success around this time as well). With the Black Crowes lighting up the charts and Phish starting to cross over, there was definitely a hippie revolution brewing, which was strange considering how much Kurt hated hippies.

But back to the topic at hand: Spin Doctors. So like a lot of bands trying to craft a reasonable sophomore follow-up to their over-exposed (but still pretty phenomenal) debut, the band got the timing wrong on their second disc. I seem to remember feeling like they took way too long to construct 1994's Turn It Upside Down, but various websites suggest that they didn't wait long enough to put it out. Either way, it was a mistake, and people weren't ready to digest new music by the Spin Doctors, especially because the new album drifted a little bit away from pop songs and into more jammy territory, which was where they were most comfortable anyway (this could also be identified as the Blues Traveler Paradox). It also probably didn't help that people were probably still mourning Kurt, as he had been dead barely two months, and weren't in the mood for the good-time vibes of an album whose lead single was called "Cleopatra's Cat."

However, there is a big secret regarding Turn It Upside Down: It's actually pretty good. While it certainly wouldn't end up on any list of all-time greats, it's nowhere near as bad as it was treated when it was released. The grooves are pretty infectious, and while the pop hooks aren't quite as instantly winning as "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong," it still has a handful of great tunes (notably "You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast" and "Big Fat Funky Booty").

Spin Doctors never really recovered from the failure of Turn It Upside Down. Its follow-up, 1996's You've Got To Believe In Something, had a minor hit in "She Used to Be Mine" and featured one of the best songs in the Doctors' catalogue, "If Wishes Were Horses," but the album on the whole was largely ignored and they were dropped by their label. 1999's Here Comes the Bride, recorded for Universal as a "comeback," was met with total apathy. Shortly after that, it was reported that frontman Chris Baron was suffering from total vocal paralysis and could no longer sing. It looked like the Spin Doctors were done for good. Baron managed to get healthy, but the band was basically done and played a series of farewell shows in New York at Irving Plaza and at the legendary (and now defunct) Wetlands.

That brings me to the new bad news: The Spin Doctors are back with a new album called Nice Talking To Me, and the bottom line is it's just not very good at all. But it's not so much the poor quality of the songs that bothers me. Rather, it's the whole comeback as a larger concept. I had made my peace with the Spin Doctors, and I had made a pact to defend them and all of their past albums, and they had gone the way of the buffalo as an underrated band. Now that they've returned to take another stab at success, I can't get behind them. As George Costanza would say, "We had a pact, and they reneged!"

In fact, I'll use this space to say that I don't like reunions of any form. I got a little excited when Billy Corgan announced he was getting the Smashing Pumpkins back together, but I can pretty much guarantee that Billy won't be able to convince D'Arcy Wretzky to return, and thus is won't actually be the Smashing Pumpkins as we knew them. This is fine with me, because it can be looked at as little more than an attempt to cash-in on nostalgia and has nothing to do with making music with a certain group of people. This, somehow, is more acceptable at getting everybody back together and taking another stab at it. Better example: There is nothing sadder right now than the Gang of Four reunion. I don't care how much people dig Entertainment, because these guys had run their course, and part of the draw of the band was that they broke up before they had a chance to really shine. Now, we're going to find out that they aren't very good, either because they're old or they're different or they weren't very good in the first place. I felt the same way when the Pixies got back together -- it was a huge, epic event that everybody had been clamoring for, but I think I prefer them as a splintered group. I like the idea of the Pixies as this unattainable thing that can never be constructed again.

Of course, the Spin Doctors story arc isn't nearly as apocryphal as the Pixies or Gang of Four or Slint or Dinosaur, Jr. or anybody else who has gotten the show back on the road this year, and their new album will most likely go the way of all their other albums not called Pocket Full of Kryptonite. But as far as A-D is concerned, Spin Doctors had a good thing going that has now been wasted on reuniting.

Now, if we could only figure out a way to reanimate Shannon Hoon, we could get cracking on that Blind Melon reunion in '06...