And welcome back to 35,000 watts, the podcast. My name is Michael Millard, and I’m the director of a film called 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio. It’s a film about college radio. It’s available for download now at 35000watts.com. And the podcast that you are tuned into at this very moment is also about college radio.
And today, we are talking about, one of the favorite topics of the podcast so far. We’ve had a lot of great responses from from the audience about these one hit wonder episodes, so we’re gonna do a volume three. Again, these are a little different from a lot of discussions about one hit wonders because these are not necessarily songs that hit, like, the number one spot on the Billboard one hundred charts that may be songs that still were pretty underground to the mainstream. But these were songs that took the college radio world by storm at least for a short time. We’ve got a couple great choices lined up for you.
We’re kicking it off with my cohosts, Keith Porterfield, and first up, Scott Mobley. So today I’ve chosen a song by the band, Teenage Fan Club, and the song is called The Concept. This came out in 1992. This was a big song at KTXT for a short period of time, and, they never really had another song take off on that level. And I’m saying that because, in doing a little research and stuff like that, it turns out that in their home country of Scotland, this band is wildly popular.
And, they have 14 studio albums. They are still touring around. So one hit wonder is kind of a strange moniker to put on it. But for the sake of this, you know, this was a song that was very popular at KTXT, and it was a band that I believe that was the only song of theirs we ever played. If we played another one, it disappeared pretty fast.
So this is from an album called Bandwagonesque that came out, like I said, in ’92. It was a huge deal when it came out. It was very hyped up. A lot of critics really got behind it, but it never really took off in The US. I’m assuming based on my research, it did in Europe, but I don’t know that for sure.
But here, it was this was their one song. And the reason I chose it is because I remember this very vividly, and I’m gonna paraphrase some of this because I don’t remember the exact wording. But when I had my very first air check at KTXT with James Faust, who appears in your movie, we sat in his office and we were waiting to do that air check and all that kind of stuff, and we’re sitting there talking. And this song came on on the little radio that he had in his office. And And he started singing along with it, and I heard other people in the office singing along with it, and I was like, you know, everybody’s excited about this song.
And it has a lyric in it that says, she don’t do drugs, but she does the pill. And James sang that lyric out loud when he came up on the song and then looked at me and said something to the effect of, now that’s how you write some lyrics right there. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s basically, you know, sort of shouted out to the lyrics of this song. And that was the moment I think, at least it is in my head at KTXT, when I said, I believe I have found my people. I have been in college for two years.
I have friends, I have acquaintances. I do things I go out of. I’ve never really found my gang. And at that moment, I believe I had found my gang. So the song itself, it’s a great little power pop song.
These guys were obviously influenced by some of the sixties, big production bands like the Beach Boys or the Birds. They definitely have a big star kinda quality to them. The song is very long. It’s kinda epic. It ebbs and flows.
In doing my research, I read that Kurt Cobain said that this was the best band in the world. But if you do enough research, you’ll find out that Kurt Cobain has said everyone was the best band in the world. So I’m not sure how true that is, you know? If you if you look hard enough, you’ll find Kurt Cobain saying the Bee Gees were the best band in the world. But apparently, he was a fan of this album.
If you never heard it, it’s a great little power pop song and and, definitely worth a listen. And I will say this as well, although it never really took off here and we never really got much more into it at KTXT, the album it is on, Bandwagon esque, is a fantastic album as well. If you like that sort of early nineties power pop, maybe a touch of shoegaze, there’s definitely a little My Bloody Valentine on here too. This this song is right up your alley. So if you’ve never heard it, give it a listen.
That’s the concept by teenage fan club. I remember when Bandwagonesque came out and it being a big deal. I don’t I had to listen to this song. I had to look it up and go go to YouTube and listen to it again to remember it. I did remember it once I heard it.
I remember it more from, a hundred twenty minutes on MTV than I remember, at KTXT, But that was actually about a year or so before I came in at KTXT. So, I think that’s probably not real surprising that but I do remember, the album being a big deal and that it got a pretty heavy airplay on one hundred and twenty minutes on MTV. Yeah, great song. And like I said, I don’t know a whole lot else about the band, so I can’t really compare it to anything else that they’ve done. But it did hit big at least partially on the the the MTV hundred twenty minutes scene and then also, you know, obviously played it at KTXT.
So a good track, a good song, but, yeah, a little bit before my time there at the station actually. I think that’s definitely true because this was the this song was, like, I would say the biggest song when I started at KTXT, and I was about a year ahead of you guys. So that would make that would make sense. To me, it always felt like teenage fan club was one of those bands that I was supposed to like and that, like, I was told I should like, and I would see them pop up in all the places that made me think that I would like them, and yet I just never really latched on to them. I didn’t remember the song.
You know, the band comes up here and there in various conversations still. Like, while I was making the the film, they they popped up as as a a college radio band or, you know, just in the general conversation, but it just never and I and I wonder if that’s kind of how it was for a lot of people in at least in The United States where, like, you heard about them. You heard about them, like, specifically, but you never really seem to hear the music that much. Like, it just wasn’t played that much on on college radio, John, the the one song, and it it wasn’t plastered on MTV all the time. I I wonder if I had the same experience of a lot of people where I I felt like I should know them and I should like them, but I just never really did.
There’s a there’s a thing, and and you could probably think of if we sat here long enough, we’d think of a hundred bands. But it there’s a thing where the the industry sort of decides this is a band that we’re all gonna like. Like, you are gonna push these guys on you big time, and it’s gonna work or it’s not. And Teenage Fan Club was one of those bands. They were at least in under you know, at least according to the music industry at that time, this is the band you’re all gonna love.
There were ads in every magazine. They were all over the place. And with this album particularly was really shoved down our throats. And it didn’t work. I’m not sure why because it is a really good album and a good band.
And obviously in their, you know, in their own country, they’re doing very well. And and the interesting thing about that is this album has a sound that was very popular at that time, and and and it’s very good at it. But, yeah, it just didn’t work, you know? And I don’t know why. I don’t know, like, why audiences, particularly American ones, didn’t latch on to to this.
But it but it is it’s good stuff, and I you know, there’s no explanation for that. It just happens. It’s funny that we’re talking about them as a band that nobody really got heavily into or anything, at the time, but this is actually the second time they’ve come up on this podcast. We also mentioned them back on the soundtrack episode when they did the collaboration with De La Soul, for the Judgment Night soundtrack, which is a fantastic song. So I’ve only actually, to my knowledge, heard two songs by these guys, both of which are really good.
And, yeah, you’re right. Somehow, I’m not into them. I never really checked them out a whole lot. I’m not sure exactly how that happened. Yeah.
And and we should have been. They were they they’re the type of music we like. They were in the world we were in at the time, like, with radio and the magazines we were listening to and the MTV stuff we were watching, all that stuff. It it was all there, and we just we just didn’t get into it. And who knows why?
Yeah. I don’t That would be an interesting episode because like you said, I think there’s there’s several bands that we could each, if we really if we thought about it, we could start naming that we’re in that that same boat where they were either pushed to us as someone that we should like or we found out about them. And and by all accounts, we’re like, oh, this is this is a band, One that pops immediately to mind that’s kind of maybe in the same boat because of their UK band was Manic Street Preachers. It’s one of those bands that just you hear a lot about. And I’ve heard one or two songs, and they both are pretty darn good.
But, like, have have I ever bought an album or listened to an entire album or, you know, was I really into them? No. You know, for whatever reason. And, of course, they are much, much bigger in The UK. And and so maybe that’s part of it is some of it is just cultural and certain bands, you know, just don’t quite translate.
But it is interesting, like you said, when you you listen to a band and you’ve liked virtually everything you’ve heard from them, but yet you’re still not motivated to go and dig deeper. What what why is that? What is that, you know, what is that line that they didn’t cross that kinda drew you in deep to to draw you in and make you wanna go deeper? I don’t know. Some bands do.
Some bands don’t. I I guess it’s unfortunately, for two h fan club, a lot of Americans just didn’t quite dig any deeper than that. Yeah. Bands that I wish people had dug deeper on. One of my favorite bands and, a band that appears in the film I think is is up next.
Yeah. It is right. Yeah. I’m gonna do today a song called Stamp by Hagfish and, I should note that we actually did play more than one Hagfish song at KTXT so it’s a little bit of a cheat to call them a one hit wonder as well. But Stamp was huge for us.
It was by far the biggest one of their songs that we had, up at KTXT. A great, great pop punk song. And it’s funny. It’s another one. The last one hit wonder or not the last one.
The first one hit wonder show we did. I spoke about Velocity Girl. That was a song that got added in between semesters after the end of the summers or the end of the spring semester and before the summer. Hackfish, this song stamp was the same way. This was a year later.
It was in 1995. And by this time, I was no longer the music director. I had moved into the big office as the student station manager. And when I say big office, I’m speaking metaphorically because that was by no means a big office. But I had hired a new, staff, including a new music director.
So shout out to Stacy T. If she’s out there. And we were getting ready to go back on the air for the summer and I got into the station a day or two before everybody else did. And even though I moved into being the station manager rather than music director, I still wanted to be really involved on the music side of things just because that was where I was coming from, where my background was. So I got in early and tracked out a few songs that I was gonna have Stacy listen to when she got there and one of those was Stamp by Hagfish because I knew the the band name, so I wanted to hear it.
That song, within about five seconds, I was like, yeah. We’re playing this. Absolutely. Right up until the point it got to the, the chorus. And if anybody knows this song, knows what the song is about, you know why I suddenly had pause.
And so I had to stop and wait and think, wait a minute. I I need to listen to the rest of this and make sure I actually heard that right. And sure enough, this is a song about oral sex. Which is fine. If you wanna write a song about oral sex, that’s great.
But our, faculty advisor at the at the time, a gentleman named doctor Kinghorn, was not going to be happy about us playing a song about oral sex. This is the guy that made us call the butthole surfers the b hole surfers on the air. So you can imagine, you know, a guy that doesn’t want us using the word butthole on the air is not gonna be happy with the subject matter of this song. And so I go back and forth. I’m like, we have to play this song.
It is one of the best pop punk songs I’ve ever heard in my life. And then we cannot play this song. Doctor k will have my head on a platter if he hears this on the radio. And so, you know, like I said, I go back and forth. A couple days later, you know, everybody else starts coming into the studio.
Stacy gets there. I played it for her. I don’t recall her having any qualms whatsoever about playing it. She was just like, Yeah, we have to play this song. And so we did.
We added it into rotation and not only did we add it into rotation, we put it directly into our top 35, which is the highest level of rotation, you know, that we possibly could give a song. And then on top of that, after even the first few days of it playing, it was popular. People were calling and requesting pretty much any request show that we had. So we are playing this song a lot. And so for those first few weeks, of the summer session, every time my office phone rang, I started sweating.
I was like, uh-oh. It’s gonna be Doctor. K. He’s finally heard the song. Someone’s clued him into it.
Here it is. It’s happening. And of course, nine times out of 10, it wasn’t him. But worse, of course, was when it was him. And I’d pick up the phone and he’d be on the other line and I’d immediately think, well, it was fun getting to be the station manager for a few weeks, but it’s over now.
I’m going to have to go find something else to do with my time now. And then, you know, he would say something to the effect of, hey, we need to get together so we can see how we’re going to defend our budget request to the budget committee. And I’d, you know, I’d say, well, thank God. Yeah. Oh, sure.
Let’s do that budget. That sounds great. Fantastic. I’m sure he thought I’d lost my mind, because I was happy to hear it anytime he had anything to say that wasn’t about stamps. After that, he never called us.
It didn’t happen. You know, you get into other things that are going on at the station classes, all that kind of stuff. After a couple of weeks, I just kinda forgot about it and wasn’t worrying about it anymore. But, yeah, for those first two weeks, or so, that song was both a source of great pleasure for me every time it came on the station and the primary driver of my anxiety because I was a % certain that somehow Doctor. K was gonna find out that we were playing this song and bring the hammer down on me because there was no way on God’s green earth he was gonna be cool with us playing a song about oral sex on, you know, our on the college radio station.
It just was not going to happen. This is this is a great example of the early nineties pop punk stuff. I sort of remember that too because we always tried to to push those limits on what we could play and what we couldn’t play. And, you know, there’s, there’s a few songs we got away with. This was one of them.
So congratulations. But, yeah, I just, you know, I don’t have much more to add other than that this is a fantastic pop punk song. And if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s right up your alley. And I will also say that the album that it’s, from, which I believe is called Hagfish Rocks Your Lame Ass or something like that, is pretty pretty much good cover to cover. So that I would recommend that as well.
Yeah. I love, absolutely love Hagfish, as as musicians, as people. They’re, they were one of the first people that I tried to contact when I knew I was gonna do the film, particularly because initially it was gonna be a little more KTXT and Texas focused, and so I was looking for bands that we interviewed back in the day. The Toadies were one of them, and Hackfish was one of the other ones that I reached out to immediately because they were the coolest, nicest guys. They were down to earth.
They were fun. They enjoyed being at the station. They felt it felt like they actually wanted to be there, and and now having interviewed them about it, they they did wanna be there. They actually enjoyed, you know, talking to people that were actual fans as opposed to people that were the FMX style rock radio jocks that, you know, would give them fifteen or twenty seconds and didn’t really maybe had never even heard their their music before. They were and are still some of the nicest guys.
And I think and I’m not just saying this because of this episode or or because, again, that I I actually like these guys, and and George and Tony may even be listening to this episode at this very moment. I think if you ask me, was there a local or regional band that you think should have gotten more Airplay or should have gotten more recognition than they did? I think I would choose Hackfish of of the maybe 10 or 12 kind of regional bands we were playing during those days, you know, ninety two, ninety three, ninety four, ninety five. Because I feel like the distance between Hackfish and Blink one eighty two is zero. Zero difference.
I’m holding up my fingers, but this is a podcast, so you can’t see it. They’re touching. You’re absolutely right. There there is no difference. There’s no difference between and and I say that as someone who I dig Blink one eighty two.
Like, I they’re great. Like, I they’re not Even lyrically, it’s very similar to Blink one eighty. Yeah. They’re It’s the same sort of that same sort of adolescent tongue in cheek, you know, sexual innuendo that Blink one eighty two got famous for. So it’s right there.
That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. They’re just as melodic, just as catchy, just as rocking as Blink one eighty two, and and also just as adolescent and hilarious as well. Yeah. It is a little surprising that they didn’t get bigger than they did, especially on this album.
This was off their second album, and it was called Hagfish Rocks Your Lame Ass. This album was actually produced by members of the Descendants and all, couple of other kind of punk bands from back in the day. These guys actually toured with Bad Brains, Everclear, Offspring, the Reverend Horton Heat. So they had some some nice spots on relatively big tours. I mean, you know, those guys weren’t, you know, selling out arenas or anything.
But for our kind of music that we were playing for KTXT back in the day, I mean, those were big bands and you know, Hatfish got to open for those guys. So, yeah, and especially, you know, that album, Rocks Your Lame Ass really is a great record. So, yeah, it’s a little mysterious as to why they didn’t get any bigger than they did. You know, they had some exposure. They had some some some push behind them and were playing with some good bands.
And, yeah, it’s a shame that they didn’t take off any bigger than they did. I It’s a perfect case study for the members of the descendants are all had produced this. That’s really interesting to hear because as as history has gone on and people talk now about the resurgence of punk in the early nineties and stuff, and the pop punk, particularly the pop punk stuff, Descendants are getting all the credit for sort of creating that sound. So that’s that’s really interesting that they were a producer on this because they are they are the bottom of that family tree for sure. So The name of that album is Rocks Your Rocks Your Lame Ass.
I had one of the t shirts back in the day, and that’s what it said on the front in big bold print was Hackfish rocks your lame ass. And then on the the back of it was the kind of the the actual, like, hagfish with his dukes up when they’re wearing the crown. That was their, their logo at the time. And so anyway, there was one day I’m in the grocery store just doing my grocery shopping wearing that shirt. And I hear this dude laughing and I look over and there’s this guy coming toward me and he’s probably about my height.
I’m not a tall dude, but this guy was was just built. Like, obviously, he spent a lot of time in the gym and was also, kid you not, chewing on a, an unlit cigar as he’s walking toward me and just laughing his ass off. And he’s coming over and he goes, like, I gotta have that shirt, man. You gotta give it to me. And I was like, well, you know, I’m wearing it.
I can’t give I’m glad you like it, but I, you know, I can’t give it. Dude offers me $20 to take that shirt off my back and hand it to him right there in the grocery store. And, of course, you know, this is $95.96, $20, you know, I could put some gas in the car, go see a movie, go grab a hamburger. I mean, still a little bit of money back then, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give up my Hagfish shirt.
Plus, I didn’t wanna finish my grocery shopping, you know, walking around the grocery store without a shirt on. So, so I didn’t give it to him. But, yeah, the guy offered to pay me $20 for the Hagfish shirt right off my back right there in the grocery store. Also, if you get ahold of that album, the best song on it, in my opinion, is Flat. I still think Flat should have been the follow-up single, if if not the lead off single.
If you don’t know what it’s actually about, it doesn’t have anywhere near the adolescent connotations of stamp if you actually know what it’s about. It, in fact, does, but you don’t have to worry about that because it’s a little more better hidden than than on stamp. It is just as adolescent, but but the meaning is hidden on that one. So to me, that’s the standout on the album, but there’s three or four other great candidates for singles on that album. And like we were talking about, I it’s a great case study to to look at and say, why why this band and not that band?
Because this band Hackfish had a decent record label. They had, you know, good production. They had some opportunities out on the road like you were talking about. They were opening for for solid bands. They had the one song that kind of broke out a little bit and, and it just, I don’t even know how to express it.
Like it, they just didn’t take that next step that, that puts you on that next tier. And there’s hundreds of bands like that that are absolutely great, fantastic, beloved in their hometown. Why? Why not? You know, why weren’t they the next Blink one hundred and eighty two?
I don’t know that you could answer it, but they would be an excellent study in that, like, to go through and and kinda see how that, album progressed in terms of of the promotion and and how their touring progressed and and where it kinda dropped off because it felt like they should have just kept going up. I and maybe, you know, maybe writing a song about oral sex wasn’t the best idea idea commercially. I don’t know. That may have had something to do with it, but, it’s a shame because, yeah, they they deserved it. The interesting thing to me is that, you know, this album and Blink one eighty two’s first album came out about the same time.
And this album is much better than Blink one eighty two’s debut album. But I will say this, Blink one eighty two’s debut album has Damn It on it, which is one of the best pop punk songs ever recorded. So maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s, you know, it’s not the solid album. It’s the one great song, you know?
And Hagfish has those too. But maybe they just weren’t pushed right or something. I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer to that is. It’s interesting.
Yeah. I if we’re talking about great pop punk songs, you know, if we’re gonna line them up in in the ring against each other, I’ll take this song and stamp in in my corner any day of the week. I still to this day, it is probably my all time favorite pop punk song. So we’ve talked a lot about KTXT, and we’re gonna talk about it a little bit more because I I chose my songs this time based on songs that I very, very, very specifically tie to my time at KTXT in the sense that I never heard them anywhere else ever. Never saw this on either of these on MTV.
Never, I I don’t remember hearing them anywhere else. And I originally just chose these two songs because of that, because they were the two that I thought were the most specific. I never heard any other songs from either of these artists. And it turns out that these two songs also have a connection that I didn’t even realize and that they’re produced by the same person. Kramer is his pseudonym, and he’s a guy where his Wikipedia page is like a rabbit hole of independent alternative rock music.
I mean, if there’s so many bands that, he’s worked with tangentially. I mean, he played bass for the butthole surfers at one point. He worked with King Missal at one point, Galaxy five hundred. I mean, it just goes on and on. Like, he’s one of those guys that just kinda has his fingers in a lot of pies.
But the two songs I’m gonna talk about that he produced are a song by Bongo’s Bass and Bob called Thorazine Shuffle and a song by an artist named Pale Face called Burnin’ Rob. Thorazine Shuffle, I think, is a very specifically novelty song. It’s it’s as novelty song as novelty songs get. It features, two relatively unknown musicians, and then Pind Gillette of Penn and Teller fame is the bass player on there. It’s a it’s a comedy track for the most part.
I mean, it’s it’s meant to be funny. I don’t think it was meant to to be any kind of huge musical statement, but it’s it’s hilarious. It has a wicked breakdown of, like, twelve to fifteen seconds of dead air right in the middle of it that always would give you a heart attack if you were listening to the station and tuned in or, like, you kinda that I don’t know. All of us were in a executive position at some point at KTXT, so I think we all had those moments of, like, checking in on the station, make sure it’s you know, make sure everything’s running well, and everything is good. And you hear, like, five, six, seven seconds of dead air, and you’re kinda counting in your head, like, how long does this go on before I panic?
This song would induce that every time because it was just long enough that it would cause you to, like, go into panic mode for a second. But just just a funny kinda jazzy tune about, about some people in a in an asylum on Thorazine, basically. And she lived in constant pain. Because when she tried to speak, nothing came out right. Wanna go to the show?
Could really do the shuffle, so they did it every night. It has a kind of a funny cult following. Interestingly enough, as with everything, it’s on YouTube now. And so it’s at a time when we were at KTXT, it would have been really hard to track this down. It would have been hard to find it to buy it.
Like, you wouldn’t have known where to get it from. Now, of course, you can just go on YouTube. And in the comments, one of the top comments and actually several of the comments on there are from people that heard it on KTXT. So I it it kind of became a KTXT anthem for for people that live in Lubbock. And one of the other search results that popped up was the, subreddit for Lubbock on on reddit.com.
So, like, it really was associated with KTXT. I think in the minds of a lot of listeners, we we played it a lot. It was just one of those kind of special songs that that we played because you couldn’t hear anywhere else. And it it and it had a a weird just vibe. It had a weird attitude that that that we liked at the station.
Same thing with Burnin’ Rob by Pale Face. It made me wanna burn and rob, burn and rob, rock and roll. Made me wanna burn and rob, burn and rob, burn and rob, kill everybody and quit my stupid job. I would say a little bit less of a novelty song, but still kind of a novelty track. It’s just, you know, a singer songwriter and his guitar.
It’s a tongue in cheek, angry song about how rock and roll is gonna make you a terrible, terrible person and literally burn, rob, murder, you know, at a time when making fun of rock and roll for being like that that kind of influence was still a thing. I don’t think that that these days anybody worries too much about the effect that rock and roll is having on the kids compared to all the other terrible influences they have in their life. But at the time, it was kind of a still legitimate you know, you still had, like, the PMRC worried about explicit lyrics, and you still had this fear that rock and roll was was, you know, a tool of the devil. And Burden Rob kinda plays that up to a to great effect. It was less so, I think, than Bongo’s bass and bob.
It was a song where we felt like well, maybe this was just me, but I I wanted to know, like, who is this pale face? Who is this artist? And there were these kind of rumors, like, oh, he’s actually Beck and, oh, he’s this. And turns out he was roommates with Beck in New York back in the day. Turns out he met Daniel Johnston early in his career, and and Daniel Johnston helped him kind of learn how to write songs, and they performed together at, like, open mics.
And and that was kinda how he got discovered by Polydor, actually recorded his first album for for Polygram Records, which so it wasn’t, like, really even a an underground, like, cassette tape kind of thing. He was actually on a major label, but I feel like the copy we had at KTX, maybe it was on a cart or maybe it was a single, but, like, I had no concept of who Pale Face was, where he came from, what his other song sounded like. I don’t remember us playing any other tracks by him. So there was just kind of this mystery to it, and and and it was true of Bongo’s Bass and Bob too to to some degree. I don’t think at that time any of us really knew that Pinchulet was on it or who Pinchulet maybe was at the time, but Pill Face for me was was more so that way where it was just like, I didn’t know who this guy was and where he was coming from, and so it just gave the song even more of an air of mystery to it.
And and I think that was kind of my my the pull for me was the idea that we were playing these songs that were just coming out of nowhere and and weren’t available anywhere else. And so they they both kinda stuck in my head as just quintessential KTXT songs, and I never heard any other tracks by them. So they to me, they fell in that one hit wonder category as well. I think with Paleface, this song must have been recorded more than one time as well. And so maybe we did have it on a single or on a card or something.
I, it had been a long time since I’d heard it. So I went to YouTube also and listened to it. And the version that I heard on YouTube, I mean, it’s not vastly different than the one we were playing, but it was a little bit different. I could tell because there’s the one set of lyrics where he’s talking about, you know, how rock and roll has made him lose his mind and he shoves his sister in the trunk of his dad’s car and drives it off a cliff and which, you know, those of you at home listening, please don’t do these sorts of things. They’re terrible whether you listen to rock and roll music or not.
But on the I remember the version that we had at KTXD after he sings that line. He laughs a little bit there. He goes, which I always thought was like just kind of really made that part of the song. And it wasn’t actually in the part, or in the song when I listened to it on YouTube. So when it got to that part, I was a little disappointed not to hear him laughing about his his terrible deeds that were brought on by rock and roll.
But, yeah, that is aside from today when I heard it on YouTube, KTXT is the only place I had ever heard that song before. So, yeah, definitely I associate it with the with KTXT for sure. I would say that about both these songs honestly. And that it’s it’s interesting that, that Daniel Johnson was involved with this guy because that’s kinda what it feels like. And not just the song, but the story too.
Like, you know, Daniel Johnson was this this reclusive guy who recorded songs on cassette tapes in his basement or something, you know, and now we know a lot about him. There’s been a movie and there’s been sort of a celebration of him. But at the time, he was this weird outsider artist that nobody really knew who he was or what he was about. I think Pale Face kinda has the same vibe, you know, maybe certainly not as, maybe not as prolific as as Daniel Johnson, but, definitely that same sort of thing. And, you know, the the Thorazine shuffle thing, that song was already popular KTXT when I got there.
And I I’m not sure when that when was it recorded? Was it recorded in the early eighties maybe? It’s been around a while. It looks like it came out in 1988. Nineteen ’80 ‘8.
So okay. So just a few years before I got there. But it was already, like, in the rotation then. And it was one of those songs that especially if you worked very late at night, maybe when the bars are getting out, for example, it was heavily, heavily requested at that time and and was the entire time I was there. You know?
And the the Penn Gillette connection is an interesting one because I didn’t really know this about him until very recently, but he was very much involved in sort of the avant garde art scene, especially in New York and also in California. But, you know, he was famously very good friends with Lou Reed and he dated Debbie Harry. And so he was really submerged in sort of that New York avant garde rock scene. And I think that’s how he ends up on a lot of these things. He also famously was the onstage narrator for the residents for years.
One of the interesting things about him is that he knows who the residents are and he won’t tell anybody. Like, so I I think that the connection there is is pretty is pretty neat that this guy who we now know is this, you know, famous comedy magician or whatever was actually pretty heavily involved in all this stuff back in the day and and and a big part of of Kramer and, you know, a lot of the avant garde, art scene of New York. It’s a goofy, silly song, but it’s a lot of fun, and it’s it’s really interesting to listen to now sort of knowing what it is and how it came around and things like that. It’s, it’s still still a fun track to listen to. Yeah.
The thread that connects these songs is definitely that that’s there was a scene in New York that people kinda came filtered in and out of. But both of these artists, the the two guys, Rob, Running Elk is the guitarist, and Dan j Seal is the other musician on or the bongos of bongos bass and bob, and then pale face. They all kind of actually ran in the same circles. That’s why they both knew Kramer. That’s why, there’s a there’s a a similarity just in the vibe, and Pangillette, you know, is in Bongo’s Basin Bob.
He goes on to to work with Blondie and Pale Face on a project later on. Like, there’s this weird kind of cross pollination that was going on there, which is why I think is a it was kinda interesting to talk about these songs together even though I initially chose them for completely different reason, to talk about together. There there really is a a solid connection, and it’s it is, Daniel Johnston being thrown in that mix, it blew my mind because he obviously is not a a New York type guy. I mean, he’s generally thought of as an Austin Musician, but he was apparently in that scene at at some point. And the lo fi, you know, recording and just kind of that feeling of, you know what?
I’m just gonna write a song and record it. I’m not gonna think so much about it. You know what I mean? Like, that spirit is definitely in the pale face song for sure. It’s definitely in all in every song Daniel Johnson ever wrote of of just not caring so much about where it’s gonna get played or what it’s you know, just I have a song.
I’m gonna go sit down and record it on this four track or whatever and and put it out into the world, and whatever happens happens. I love that. I I think that’s one of the lifebloods of college radio is people that kind of had that attitude. And, yeah, Paleface for sure. And he he, by the way, is still an active musician.
He has cranked out music ever since those days that we were at in KTXT. We just haven’t heard about it. He signed again with, like, Sire Records at some point in his career. He’s been on so he’s been on two major relatively large labels, but just for whatever reason, you know, his music never really surfaced beyond for me, at least, beyond Bernard Rob. I don’t know about you guys, but my impression is none of us heard much from him beyond that.
And we come back to why this guy and not that guy. You know? It’s it’s a running theme in in this, this episode. Yeah. In his case, why him and not Beck, I think, would be maybe because I think they were making very similar music at the time.
Literally, you know, they lived together, at one point. They they have a Definitely has that sort of DIY, you know, feel to it. Yeah. Burnin’ Rob is not would not have been out of place on Beck’s debut album even. I think even his his major label debut album, I don’t think.
Have either of you ever heard any other Bongo’s Bass and Bob songs? I know I didn’t. That was the only one of theirs I’d ever heard. I ask because when I listened to it again getting ready for this, I realized that that song basically is just bongo’s and bass. There’s a little bit of guitar right at the very end of it.
I was just wondering if all of their songs if that was why they were called that, if it was just bongo drums and bass in all of their songs? Yes. That’s so they that was their sound. They had a bongo bass and the the lyricist. I never heard I don’t think I’ve heard a lot of it, but I remember back then being sort of curious by that album and listening to a few tracks.
We had the whole LP at at KTXD, which I I have a feeling if you could get your hands on that, it’s worth a buck or 2. I mean, that’s got to be extremely rare. But I I remember putting it on in queue and listening to a few more tracks, and that’s what it was. It was a sort of walking bass line, guy banging on bongos, and then the other guy rambling about some goofy stuff. You know?
It was, very much along the lines of, you know, you talked about this producer Kramer, you know, and and and bands like King Missile and stuff like that. They were using a lot of spoken word and and things like that. It’s very much that. But it’s it’s very minimalist. It’s all sort of novelty and yeah.
It’s I don’t know that there was ever gonna be another song that came out of it because they all kinda sound like Thorazine Shuffle. But, yeah, there was definitely more to it, and and that’s what it was. I like that you know what you’re getting going in. Like Yeah. There’s no doubt.
You’re gonna get bongos. You’re gonna get bass. You’re gonna get some bongos. There’s gonna be some bongos. Alright.
That’s it. College radio one hit wonders. Let us know in the comments. I I know you have some favorites. We had a couple, of great suggestions on our last episode when we released it, of one hit wonders, a couple that I wasn’t familiar with that I’m I’m looking forward to digging into.
So, when you hear this episode and you’ve got some ideas, go to our social media or go to our website 35000watts.com and comment and let us know your favorite college radio one hit wonder. I wanna thank my hosts, Keith Porterfield and Scott Mobley for joining me on the podcast today. Thank you. There’s a film out. It’s called 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio.
You can go and download it right now at 35000watts.com. It is, the story of college radio, and we talked to some we talked to Hackfish. We talked to those guys. So if you wanna see what some of what they have to say about college radio, they are in the film. So go check it out.
Say hello to us on social media, and don’t forget to tune in for our next episode of 35,000 Watts, the podcast.