When last we hung out with David Lowery, he was busy fronting Camper Van Beethoven, the ultimate 80s college-rock cult band, whose biggest official hit (though a very minor one) was a cover of Status Quo’s psych rock classic “Pictures Of Matchstick Men,” and whose biggest unofficial hit was a song about taking skinheads to a bowling alley.

They made great music, but the band wasn’t exactly built for Top 40 radio.

After Camper Van Beethoven broke up in 1990 due to the usual musical conflagrations and consternations, Lowery grabbed his childhood chum Johnny Hickman and formed a more straightforward rock band called Cracker. They still had smart, elliptical, and often humorous lyrics, but those now sat over loud, electric guitar riffs which happened to sound perfectly in keeping with the current grunge-ification of the music scene.

During a soundcheck before a show in Oregon, Hickman played a catchy riff and the band quickly latched onto it, eventually turning the brief improvisation into a full-fledged song titled “Low.” The repeated lyrics in the chorus indicated that when the narrator spent time with the subject of the song (addressed by the sobriquet, “girl”), it felt not only “like being low,” but also — hey, hey, hey — “like being stoned.”

That simile sounds pretty mild considering other lyrics of the time in all genres, but the record company (Virgin Records) insisted Lowery write an open letter to radio stations denying any drug reference and claiming that the actual lyric was, in fact, “being stone,” as in being emotionless, or being a rock, or something else which was patently untrue.

The label didn’t expect anyone to believe it — they simply wanted plausible deniability.

Anyone with ears would have denied their deniability, but what couldn’t be denied was how catchy “Low” sounded blasting out of stereo speakers in the fall of 1993. It appears nobody had any problem with the lyrics or with sending “Low” into the Top 5 of the Modern Rock and Album Rock charts. It remains a staple of classic rock radio stations and you can blast it out of your stereo speakers, too.

So be a stone… with Cracker.