Hey Dad, what do you think about your son now?

Awake on my airplane. Awake on my airplane. My skin is bare, my skin is theirs.

The following was the first four lines from Filter's "Take A Picture", another one of those "classic" 90s rock radio songs that everyone remembers and no one likes now. Right?

Well, I like it because it's one of the finest songs from the 1990s era of rock music. In fact, it's a lot better than a ton of the traditionally great songs, quite simply. Furthermore, Filter is an amazing rock band that gets saddled with the image of post-grunge rock radio. Basically, they're something solid in an era of crap, and when anything solid is purely surrounded by crap and doesn't have the ironic distance of a Radiohead or Yo La Tengo or Spoon, they "become" the crap they're around.

But this band is amazingly sensible and hilarious despite being ridiculously accessible. The aforementioned "Take a Picture" is a sprawling six-minute epic that is basically vocalist Richard Patrick getting drunk on an airplane, stripping down to his boxers, and fighting with someone. Oh, and asking someone to take a picture because he won't remember what happens during his alcohol-infused blackout. Which given the song's reputation of being a sprawling epic about something not that drunken, it kind of shatters the song's illusion of being beautiful. However, it makes the song inherently beautiful by proxy of being realistic. Richard Patrick basically is telling the world that he's flawed and that when he drinks, he really does stupid things. Which, in fairness, isn't a bold statement by any means.

And yet the true humanity sort of seeps out four and a half minutes into the song with Patrick's sing-shout of "Hey Dad, what do you think about your son now?" Patrick reveals a whole another side of himself: the one with daddy issues. It doesn't seem like he hates his dad, but every man deals with the shadow of his father. It doesn't matter whether it's subtle or plainly obvious, every man has had to look up to his old man and may not have always liked the result. And Patrick probably didn't always have the approval of dad, especially when his older brother was the frickin' T-1000.

And the decision to make the song a peaceful ballad out of the situation is inspired. It's exactly the opposite of what is expected. You expect Filter's most kicking and dark song to be about the drunken incident, not their most peaceful effort. Not to mention that despite their accessibility (hipster translation: their success), this is the same band that didn't agree with but sympathized with people who commit suicide on the single "Hey Man Nice Shot". They aren't Yo La Tengo, but they are unorthodox. Hell, they named an album Title of Record, which is actually kind of funny, sort of in the same way that REM naming an album Eponymous was.

I was going to mention "Take a Picture" in the same breath as great 1990s songs like Radiohead's "Airbag", Neutral Milk Hotel's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea", or Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger", and I truly believe this song stands the test of time. Because "Take a Picture" had something that even those great songs might not have had, and that's pure honesty.