The band’s perfect short-story song, “Snow Days,” sums up everything that made Trip Shakespeare so special, and so non-commercial. It’s a song that could only come from a band from the Midwest, a tribute to Mrs. Braintree, a long-suffering teacher who gets a “blessing on the ground” that brings her a long-deserved day off. The slowwww track starts with piano plinks that sound like snowflakes; bassist Munson gets the lyrical leadoff as he describes the wintry scene, and the vocals build as the snow does. The song’s solo is not a guitar, but the return of the shimmery piano to the spotlight, leading to one of Matt Wilson’s trademark spoken-word segues, as he chides her, “Mrs. Braintree, you’re a chilly northern woman / Go home from yonder bus stop, because there’s a blessing on the ground.” A touch of falsetto, then the harmonizing vocals build again, celebrating the snow, the teacher, the music itself. Despite its plodding pace, it remains a riveting ode to this detail-specific winter day. It’s a song that wouldn’t fit in anywhere else, except perhaps an off-off-off-Broadway stage musical about public education: It barely fit into the band’s offbeat canon, yet it remains one of Trip Shakespeare’s best-ever creations.

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Trip Shakespeare ultimately came to a familiar ’90s end: A few local releases led to a major-label signing, which led to a few more releases that went nowhere, and the band was dropped, and subsequently broke up. (I maintain 1991’s A&M release Lulu stands as a tremendously strong album, and surely if there was room in the hippified music market for absolute dreck like The Spin Doctors, couldn’t a little label grease have helped to push Lulu’s “Bachelorette” as a single?) Dan Wilson and Munson formed Semisonic and honed their songwriting into pop tunes that were more radio-ready, peaking with the ’90s anthem “Closing Time.” Dan Wilson now cowrites songs with people like Taylor Swift and Adele; Matt Wilson and Munson recently reconnected again to play as The Twilight Hours.

A few months ago, Omnivore Recordings re-released Trip Shakespeare’s first two albums, Applehead Man and Are You Shakespearienced?, in special expanded editions including digipaks and colored vinyl, each with several bonus tracks. Maybe a few decades later, interest in Trip Shakespeare will take off again; with the band’s awesome live reputation, it would no doubt clean up on a mid-sized-venue reunion tour. But when Trip Shakespeare recently reunited for the first time in 20 years to appear at a 2013 holiday show, there was only one song that could define that legendary set.