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@jcrabapple Certainly! Here is a description of the video's audio and visual content:

The video begins with a man with glasses and a graying beard talking to the camera. He says, "This is a story about the end of the beginning. It's a rock and roll story that starts in a pretty un-rock-and-roll place: Harvard University in the early 1980s. There is an English student there named Matt Wilson, who's a musician and he's looking to start a band. He puts out an ad looking for 'wicked percussion hands,' and his ad is answered by a graduate student in biological anthropology named Elaine Harris."

The video then shows a black-and-white photo of Matt and Elaine. The man continues, "Matt ends up dropping out of Harvard, moving back to his hometown of Minneapolis and pursuing this band with Elaine that they call Trip Shakespeare. They add a bass player named John Munson, who had been studying Chinese at the University of Minnesota, and the band starts to get some local recognition. In 1988, the trio releases their debut album called Applehead Man on Gark Records."

The video shows the album cover and the Gark Records logo. The man says, "And this record not only gets them fans in Minneapolis, but helps the band recruit Matt's older brother, Dan."

The video shows a black and white photo of Matt and Dan. The man says, "Matt and Dan had played in bands together when they were younger, but now that Dan saw that Matt's project Trip Shakespeare was serious, he joins on guitar and piano and co-lead vocals. Dan, who is also a student at Harvard—he had studied art—was also a really good songwriter."

The video shows the album cover for "Are You Shakespeared?" The man says, "The group with Dan now releases a second album called Are You Shakespeared in 1989, and not only is their following getting bigger, but they attract the attention of some major labels, and they end up signing with A&M Records in 1990. But their local success in Minneapolis doesn't translate to the national stage. They released two major label albums, Across the Universe and Lulu, but both fail commercially."

The video shows the album covers for "Across the Universe" and "Lulu." The man says, "For their next project, Trip Shakespeare was gonna do a record of covers by artists like Nick Lowe and Big Star, and A&M said that's enough and dropped them from the label. Shortly after, Trip Shakespeare broke up. But just before the end of Trip Shakespeare, Dan Wilson and bass player John Munson had actually started a side project. It was with a drummer named Jake Slichter, who was a college friend of Dan's. He had also gone to Harvard majoring in African-American studies, and the trio called this side project band Pleasure. But now that Trip Shakespeare had broken up, Pleasure becomes their main focus. That's a weird sentence to say. This new band was influenced by R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, and, of course, Minnesota's own The Replacements."

The video shows images of R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, and The Replacements. The man says, "They were able to get a following in Minneapolis right away from old Trip Shakespeare fans, and with all the major label connections that Dan had from the Trip Shakespeare days, they were able to pretty quickly get a record deal. Pleasure signed with Elektra Records and started working on their debut album, which they would call Great Divide. But after the album was finished, Elektra got a new president, the legendary Sylvia Rhone, and with a new president coming in, they got rid of a lot of the bands that the old president had signed that they didn't like, and Pleasure was one of them. Luckily, they were able to get a new deal with MCA Records, who agreed to buy and put out the record Great Divide, although they did tell them they had to change their name. They found that there was already another band called Pleasure who wouldn't give up the rights, so the band had to get a new name. So the band had been signed, dropped, signed again, changed their name, all before ever putting out their first record, and when the record is released, it is a commercial disaster. The first single had failed to get on the radio, and in the first week, the album sold about 1,000 copies. The data showed that basically nobody outside of Minneapolis bought it. They released some more singles, they made music videos, but in the end, Great Divide only sold about 30,000 copies. Some people blamed MCA for the record failing; some people blamed the band, saying that they looked too old because they were in their 30s. But either way, the band got another chance. They spent their time touring, opening for bands like The Verve Pipe and playing radio festivals and writing new songs. And one of those songs for the new record would prove to be the band's turning point. The band had been closing their sets with this song called If I Run, which was one of the failed singles from Great Divide, and they were sick of playing it. So Dan Wilson thought he should write a new song to close their sets with. He was also about to have his first child, so a lot of those feelings went into this song, and when MCA heard it, they thought this song is gonna be a hit. Even though it was written to be the last song they would play live, it was the first song on their second album, which they titled Feeling Strangely Fine, and it was the album's first single."

The video shows a clip of the music video for "Closing Time." The man says, "The song was Closing Time by the band who had been called Pleasure but had been renamed Semisonic, and the song became one of the biggest songs of the year and went to No. 1 on the Modern Rock Charts. It propelled the album to Top 50 in the United States. And after years of struggling, Dan Wilson finally had a hit. It was an infectiously catchy song, although drummer Jake Slichter, who would later write a book about his experiences, said that they did spend a lot of money promoting the song to radio. He said that hundreds of thousands of dollars went to independent radio promoters to help get Closing Time played on basically every radio station in the country. But unfortunately, as a band, Semisonic never had a hit that big again. Their follow-up record in 2001, All About Chemistry, didn't do as well, and the band kind of drifted apart. Dan Wilson started working on a solo career, and in 2007, he released his debut solo album. But like a lot of his work in Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic, his solo records were well-reviewed but didn't sell very well. But what did sell really well is Dan's work as a songwriter with other artists. Dan's first solo album had been produced by Rick Rubin, and around the same time, Rick Rubin was also working with a country group called The Chicks. Back then, they were called the Dixie Chicks, and Rick thought it would be a good idea to have Dan Wilson from Semisonic come in to write some songs with The Chicks. And that partnership was incredibly successful. One of the songs—the song Not Ready to Make Nice—ended up winning a Grammy for Song of the Year, and that album went multi-platinum. After that, Dan became a pretty in-demand songwriter, working with everybody from Pink to Taylor Swift to Adele. He co-wrote three songs on her album 21, including the No. 1 hit single Someone Like You."

The video shows a clip of Adele accepting a Grammy. She says, "I wanna thank Dan Wilson who wrote this song with me and um I don't know where he is uh but my life changed when I wrote this song and I felt it before anyone even heard it."

The man says, "He went from being in a local cult band to a nationally successful band that most would call a one-hit wonder to being a successful songwriter with some of the biggest artists in the world. Like Dan wrote in Closing Time, every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end."

The video ends with a clip of Semisonic performing "Closing Time."

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