The Alternative Number Ones: The Presidents Of The United States Of America’s “Lump”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

People were moshing. That's what I remember. They were moshing hard. This was not a surprise. It was 1996. Everyone moshed to everything. At the big radio-station festivals, people would sometimes mosh to the music that got piped in between bands. But when the Presidents Of The United States Of America played the HFStival, my local alt-rock station's annual stadium show, motherfuckers were going crazy, or at least they were going crazy in the way that people would go crazy at a show like that. It wasn't like the general-admission pit at RFK Stadium suddenly turned into a Hatebreed show. It was just people running around and pushing each other, but they were pushing each other harder than I thought necessary. I didn't think the Presidents Of The United States made mosh music, and I resolved to act accordingly.

Again: This is a vague 29-year-old memory. It could be all wrong. It probably is all wrong. There is no cell phone video of this moment, and I am dead certain that not one other person could or would tell the same story. But this is my memory: I walked into the middle of the open pit in front of me, and I started dancing like a fucking dork. I was duck-walking and chicken-strutting and doing my version of the wavy inflatable arm-guy outside the car dealership. I probably looked so stupid, but this, to me, seemed like the proper physical response to the music coming from the stage. And then a bunch of people from the crowd closed in around me, and they all started dancing like fucking dorks, too. I felt like Patrick Dempsey in that one Can't Buy Me Love scene where all the kids at the prom immediately start doing the same dance he was already doing.