And welcome back to 35,000 Watts, the podcast. My name is Michael Millard. I’m here with Scott Mobley and Keith Porterfield. We are three ex college radio DJs and executive staffers talking about college radio music, and today is no exception on the podcast. Before we start, don’t forget 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio.
The feature documentary is now available on Amazon Prime or Google Play, so you can rent or buy it today. Why not? Today, we’re talking one hit wonders, and specifically, we’re talking college radio one hit wonders. We’ve done an episode or two like this already. Actually, I think three.
As a reminder, these aren’t necessarily one hit wonders in the sense of they hit, like, the top 10 on the billboard charts or anything like that. Maybe they did. But really, we’re looking at songs that had their big blow up on college radio and had their moment in the sun. But but like most hot one hit wonders, they didn’t really have a follow-up or didn’t really have anything else after that. So that being said, we’re gonna kick off today’s episode with mister Keith Porterfield.
Alright. Well, for today, I picked a song called Disneyland by the band Dada. Dada was a, trio from California, kind of a, kind of a jangly guitar rock band. The kinda interesting thing about these guys, one of the interesting things about them anyway, is that both the bass player and the guitar player do vocals. They’re both listed as co lead singers.
But they don’t, like, trade off song to song where one of them does one and one of them does the other. They both basically sing on every song, and so they do a lot of trading verses back and forth and vocal harmonizing, that kind of thing. Dada put out five albums between ’90 1992 and 02/2004. Since then, they’ve done some you know, they got back together a few times, done some touring, done some singles and EPs, but really the bulk of their work was during that twelve year period. This song, Disneyland, came off of the first album, which came out in 1992, which was called Puzzle.
And that one was actually a little bit before my time at KTXT. I remember hearing the song on KTXT before I started working there, and then also playing it, you know, after the fact. It was still, you know, in the playlist in rotation by the time I started there. When I was the music director there, we ran another one of Dada’s albums. This one was called American Highway Flower, and we ran a song off it called I’ll All I Am that actually we charted pretty well.
So I really don’t know where Disneyland charted as on KTXT as far as that goes. That was a little bit before my time, but I certainly do remember hearing it there. That was my introduction to it. This song was was relatively big, for these guys. It went to, number five on the modern rock chart, number 27 on the mainstream rock chart.
So it was a it was a pretty good pretty good song for them, not only in the college world, but in the larger radio landscape as well. It’s called Disneyland, obviously. The guys in Dada were not, you know, morons, so they realized that if they put a song out called Disneyland that was spelled like the theme park, that pretty soon the Walt Disney Corporation was going to own the rights of the song and probably all their future output and the name of the band and their homes and their first born children and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. So this song actually is the spelling of the name of the song is D I Z Z Space K N E E Space Land, Disneyland. And it’s their band members have said before that it’s not necessarily a song about the the, you know, the theme park Disneyland.
It’s was supposed to be kind of a, about the fact that at that time in the nineties, even with cable television and all that, you were had this world juxtaposition where you could get, like, scenes of, like, terrible disaster on one channel and then flip immediately to the next channel and get, you know, an athlete who had just won the Super Bowl saying, Hey, I’m going to Disneyland. You know, back in the late eighties and early nineties, that was a big deal. You know, there was, Disney paid a lot of people, you know, after they won the Super Bowl or the World Series or whatever to to come out and, run out and be like, you know, hey, Joe Montana. You just won the Super Bowl. What are you gonna do next?
And he would say, of course, I’m going to Disneyland. So that was kind of what it was built off of was playing off of that kind of thing that was going on in the in the late eighties, early nineties and still going on today. I saw a commercial with Jalen Hertz who, you know, after the Eagles won the Super Bowl back in, February. I saw a commercial with Jalen Hertz where he was did the exact same thing. You know, you just won the Super Bowl.
And he said, I’m going to Disneyland. So that actually is still a deal that’s going on right now, even now. It’s a good song. And when I first got into kinda wanting to do this, this song for this, you know, I was kinda going into it thinking, I’m kinda doing a novelty song here. I mean, it’s got the repetitive deal where what the what the how it’s set up is in the lyric is he talks about some terrible thing that’s happened to him or that he’s done.
And then the next line is, I’m going to Disneyland. So, you know, he’s crashed his car. He flips off the president. He gets cuffed by the cops. He downs a June 5.
And after every little thing he says, he follows it up with, now I’m going to Disneyland. And so, you know, with that kind of repetitive nature of it and talking about a theme park and all that, I’ve really had in my head, I’m talking about a novelty song this week. And then I went back and listened to it again. It had been a while since I’d heard this song. I knew I liked it.
I knew it was a good one. I listened to it again this time, and I really I don’t think I would actually even categorize it as being a a novelty song. I think that’s a pretty straightforward rock song. I mean, the song itself is is good. It’s got kind of a rolling bass part, you know, driving drums to give it a good back end, pretty killer lead guitar line over the top of it.
So the song itself is really good. We talked a few, episodes back the last time, I think, we did one hit wonders about a song by Paleface called Burning Rob. And it kinda had the same sort of thing where it said, you know, this guy was talking about how rock and roll music had made him do all these terrible things. And that one, I would definitely would consider to be a novelty song. But this one, on the other hand, like, the things that he’s talking about doing or having have happened to him are are pretty mundane, really.
I mean, they’re terrible things, but they’re things that happen to people every day in normal life, kind of little minor disasters that before you and that kind of thing. And then each time coming back with, I’m going to Disneyland. And I think the, juxtaposition there is just life can be really terrible one moment and then the next, you know, you’ve got this this thing that’s, hey, look, we’re going to Disneyland. It’s fantastic. Yay.
And, you know, and actually, I think it works pretty well. I don’t think, it is much of a novelty type lyric. I think it’s actually a pretty good lyric out of what could have turned out to be kind of a goofy, novelty type song. And, yeah, I think it’s a good one. I I think it not only fits the ball as a one hit wonder, but is it actually just a totally solid rock song?
I agree with you that, you know, maybe on the surface, this seems like a novelty song, but it’s not. This is just a great little pop song, and it’s, it’s it’s catchy as hell. And I think, lyrically, there is something interesting going on. In fact, I remember, back in the in the day when it was you know, and we we played the ever loving crap out of this on KTXT. I I can tell you that.
People actually debating what these lyrics meant and what what it was about and what’s he talking about and all this kind of stuff. So, yeah, I I think this is a fantastic song, and I’m not really sure why Dada didn’t go much further than this, but I I will tell you this. This is sort of a side note. I was listening to a podcast. I I was trying to for the life of me to remember which one it was, and I can’t remember.
But, they were interviewing Dada, and they were talking about, you know, what’s what’s the song that you guys love playing live that your fans love and, you know, that you that, you know, gives you energy when you’re playing and all this kind of stuff. And I was waiting for the answer. Well, it’s Disneyland. You know, that’s the song that gets everybody comes to see us play, but it wasn’t. They mentioned a song called Dim that’s on the same album as Disneyland that apparently was a mild hit.
I’ve never heard it. And I I don’t think we played it, and I don’t so I don’t know where that came from. But I guess amongst the Dada devoted, Dim is their their big song, but I I don’t know much about it. Anyway, that’s just a a side thing. Yeah.
I’ve never heard that one either. This song was wildly popular at KTXT when it came out. I I remember I don’t think people really thought of it as sort of a goofy novelty song. It had there’s there’s something more there bubbling under the surface that you, you know, you mentioned. So, yeah, this is a good one.
This is a great song. If, I’m really I’d be really surprised to find that anybody out there didn’t hear it. But if you haven’t, this is a good one. You should check it out. So the biggest surprise up until the point that you said that they had another single called dim that’s apparently more popular than this one is that they had five albums.
I would not certainly not have guessed that because I don’t remember them really having you know, any legs after this, after this song and it sticks out to me. It’s it’s it’s, Hey, it’s catchy. So like if you heard it even a few times, it’s one that’ll come into your head pretty quickly. I think the spelling joke doesn’t really work particularly well on the radio. So I don’t know if that translated super well played in on college radio, if people caught that particular part of it.
But, you know, like, since that was, like you said, largely probably due to legal reasons, I guess maybe they kind of got to have their cake and eat it too a little bit when in a day when radio airplay would have been probably their biggest exposure that you wouldn’t have known that they spelled it that way. Yeah. I have to say I I didn’t, I I played it a lot back in the day and, you know, I I could sing that one line in the course. I never really picked up on the lyrics which is kind of true, I guess, of a lot of songs that that we played at KTX T that I never really listened to outside of the station. You know, there’s that subset of songs that are just songs you played at KTX T and maybe you even liked them, but may you didn’t necessarily go buy the CD because, you know, back then you wouldn’t just go home and add it to your apple music library or Spotify.
Like you either had to go buy it or I guess you could make a copy at KTX T, but that was that had its own, like, that was kind of a pain in the butt. So with a lot of those types of songs, I didn’t really listen to the lyrics that closely because I was usually, you know, answering the phone or talking to someone who had come in the booth or you’re, you know, you’re pulling the next song or you’re doing, you know, getting your ad break ready or whatever. So I didn’t really pick up on any of that until today when I actually listened to the song for the first time and and paid attention to it, which I just, I guess, I just didn’t really do. But, yeah, not a novelty song. I wouldn’t say, you know, I I I guess by throwing Disneyland in there, it’s kind of a hook and it’s a catch, and you could I could see how you you could maybe categorize it that way, but it feels like just a real straightforward rock pop song.
I would have guessed that they maybe had another album or two after that, but not five. So sounds like they still have a fan base. Sounds like they’re still out there doing stuff. So good for them. And if for some reason this one escaped you the first time around, go check it out.
Why not? It’s it’s super catchy. Yeah. The band did have have a little bit of legs to them. You know, like I said, those last album came out in 02/2004.
None of the last three albums charted at all in any way close to the way the first two did, but, yeah, they’ve they’ve had a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of legs to them since then. One other kind of thing interesting thing about this song is that it doesn’t have a chorus. It, you know, has the verses, and then you get to the point where the chorus is supposed to be, and then there’s kind of an instrumental breakdown there. But, yeah, you get the the repetitive, you know, Disneyland part of it of the verses over and over again. So it’s got kind of that theme going through it or, you know, a through line to it even without the chorus.
I never thought about that. That little that little guitar riff is the chorus. And Yeah. Exactly. That that’s the chorus.
You know? That is. Yeah. I never thought about that. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s tough to have a hit song without a chorus. That does not happen Yeah. Well often. What you you know, the chorus is usually the hook.
You do need a hook. And I guess the hook in this one is the repeating of I’m going to Disneyland. So Yeah. Exactly. It obviously worked.
This song was massive. Not a novelty song, but I’m gonna say that the next one on our list, I’m gonna say is a novelty song. Yeah. I should make that I’ll let I’ll let you I’ll let you sound off on that, Scott, but I’m gonna go ahead and put my vote in for this being a novelty song, but also, explicit content coming up. So if you’re listening to this at work or something, you might wanna save this for for later.
We yeah. We’re gonna go from, is it a novelty song to, it is a novelty song. This is, so I am doing for my one hit wonder King Missiles detachable penis from 1992. I woke up this morning with a bad hangover, and my penis was missing again. This happens all the time.
It’s detachable. This comes in handy a lot of the time. I can leave it home when I think it’s going to get me in trouble, or I can rent it out when I don’t need it. But You know, we we’re joking about the fact that this is a novelty song, and it 100% is. However, it is also pretty representative of what King Missal does.
They it’s, so if you want to call you you know, if if and this is a novelty song. I’m not gonna not gonna sugarcoat that, but this is what they do. Not all the songs are quite as goofy as this one. So, anyway, a little bit about King Missal. They are formed in 1985.
They are from the East Village Of New York City. This is a big underground avant garde art scene. We have talked about this before. A lot of really wildly creative people doing a lot of very interesting sort of underground art, and their lead singer singer in quotes is John s Hall. So this guy is running around the East Village in 1985.
He is an open mic poet. That’s what he does. He goes from bar to bar, read some poetry. He starts getting sort of a following, and people are saying, hey. You should, you know, like, develop a show.
And he basically has the thought, well, who wants to watch me read poetry for an hour? Like, that’s really boring. You know? So he has the thought, I will get a band to play behind me while I’m reading my poetry, and that is a missle. This part is interesting to me.
So they they finally get a recording contract in ’87. They record an album for Shimmy Disc. It is exactly what they do. It sounds exactly like them. It does not do very well at all.
And so because it doesn’t do well, he decides Hall decides that he’s known for his funny poetry, but the first album was too jokey and too funny, so they’re gonna go a different direction. And so the next couple albums after that are a little heavier. They’re not quite as there’s no funny poetry up. Then in 1992, they record Detachable Penis, which is not only jokey and funny, but it’s the closest thing to a hit these guys ever had. The song itself is, exactly what I’m describing.
It’s a band playing this sort of funky groove. There’s a Hammond organ in it and, you know, this little funky bass line, and it just kinda rocks along or whatever. And this guy reads a poem over it about how he has lost his penis again because it’s detachable. And sometimes he takes it off and forgets it and leaves it places, and he has to go out and look for it. So he goes back to the party where he was at, and he checks around for it there.
And he eventually finds it on the street. A vendor is selling it, and he has to bargain with the guy to buy it back, and then he gets his penis back. That’s the whole story. But what makes this song so funny, I think, and so kind of earwormy is, first of all, the music’s really great. It’s this we’re just this great little funky kind of bar band group, but it’s really it really kinda gets in your ears.
There’s a great little back vocal on it. But it’s this guy’s delivery of this poem. He is so early nineties stoner. Everything’s so, like, nonchalant. He is talking about his penis being not part of his body anymore.
And he’s saying it like, well, I woke up this morning and my penis was missing again, so I had to go find it. And, well, well, there was this guy that had it on the street, and I had to bargain with him to get it back. It’s just it’s just very it’s that delivery of it is what makes it so funny. King Missile never really has another hit. And in reading some of the interviews and stuff with this guy, he is not mad about that.
He is still, like, shocked that this was a hit. Like, I think this guy is very self aware of the fact that what he does is never going to sell records, that he just likes doing it and putting it out there. And if somebody buys it, great. And if they don’t, you know, that’s fine too. This might not be for you.
And that’s really what it boils down to is, you know, if you listen to one’s this song or any song by King Missal, you are hearing the sum total of what they do. Like, the and if it’s not for you, then it’s never going to be for you. And and and I like the fact that John s Hall is comfortable with that. He likes that. He and he said, recently that when they play live, which they still do, this band is still going on.
They change their name every once in a while. Like, now I think they’re called King Missile four or something, but, and it’s kind of a revolving door of musicians, but it’s always been him. He says when he plays live now, they walk out on stage and play detachable penis so that all the people that came here just to hear that can leave, and then everyone else can stick around and watch the rest of the show. I really kind of admire that. Instead of being bitter about, you know, we had our big shot and we never got there, this guy kinda went into it knowing this is not going to be for everybody.
And as long as I can get a few people to like what I do, then then I’m good with that, and and I’ll make a career out of that. I find that very admirable. Even though I’m not going to run out and buy a whole bunch of King Missile records, I do sort of appreciate them on that level. This song was a big part of my early days at k t x t and pretty much all of my days at k t x t. It was constantly requested.
It was always sort of there and hanging around. And it is, for what it’s worth, a really, really great song. But I think when you hear it, you will know why they were one day wonders. It’s there was not going to be any more of this coming down the pike. It reminds me a lot actually of we talked about Bongo’s Mason Bob on a previous episode.
Same exact thing. If you like Thorazine Shuffle and you go digging into Bongo’s Mason Bob, you’re going to find a whole lot of songs that sound like Thorazine Shuffle. And so it’s, you know, it’s gonna get old after a while. But, anyway, this is a fun one. And then if you need a good laugh and you haven’t heard you haven’t heard this one, check it out.
It’s Detachable Penis by King Missal. I was gonna say it’s a song that absolutely falls right into the, to the world of college radio. Like this song is, is college radio, right? Like, and, and, and that lines up exactly what you said about bongo’s bass and Bob and, and some of the other novelty songs, I guess, that we’ve talked about. It’s so inextricably linked again in my head to my time at KTXD, which came a year or two after the song came out, but still was, it got requested.
So my people, and I guess this was that time when, like, where else were you gonna hear it? Right? Like, you wanted to hear the song. You may not have even been able to go and buy it at that point. Like, it it if it wasn’t in stock at, like, university records or whatever.
So people called KTXT all the time and it sure as hell wasn’t on commercial radio. So, like, even, you know, two, three years later, during my time at KTXT, at the end of it, I still remember people. It was one of those that people wanted to hear. It’s funny. It’s unique.
It’s, you know, do you wanna hear a whole album of that? Probably not. I guess some people probably do, but I mean, it’s, you know, it’s kind of a one off. I I always really loved the Martin Scorsese. There was the only other song of theirs that I really remember that well.
And it’s of a similar vein vein. Sorry. They they have a style for sure. And and, it’s not one that maybe has like a, you don’t wanna sit around listening to it all day long, but but yeah, really funny song, really well delivered and is quintessential college radio, you know, through and through. Yeah.
When I used to get, requests for this on the power lunch, you know, we did have Martin Scorsese also, in rotation, I think, if I remember right. But I would often pair this up. You know, the the request show that we did for our lunchtime request show called the power lunch was based on doing double shots. And I would often pair this one up with either Bongo Space or Bob or Paleface or something else like that and do a double shot of novelty songs rather than have to do a double shot of King Missler or whatever, so yeah, even then, and I was even a little bit, you know, after, came along a little bit after you did, Mike, you know, you were still obviously there when I started, but, I was still getting requests for it too. So, yeah, it definitely had legs at KTXT for sure.
Couple of things, you know, you mentioned his delivery and and kind of the the dry delivery of the of the lyric, if you even wanna call it the lyric, the spoken word part of it. But in the background, there’s that killer vocal harmony part where there’s somebody back there just going, detachable penis. So we’re all over again. Just kind of the little background vocal behind it. Yeah.
Just hilarious. This to me, that’s actually what makes the song. Yeah. I I really like that. And I would love to have been in the room at the time that, John Hall.
Was that his name, John Hall? John s Hall. John s Hall. Yeah. I would have loved to have been in the room at the time where he’s sitting there and, you know, with the band and they’re trying to work out the new song.
He goes, you know what? What if we did a song about my penis being able to come off and get it reattached, and it might get off here and there? I mean, what’s the thought process that ends up with a song like Detachable Penis? I think that’s the, that’s the fly on the wall moment that I would like to have been present for. You know, I I didn’t do as much of a dive into these these guys as I as I probably wanted to, and and I and I and I didn’t for the reason that I know what I’m gonna get.
I I I’m very clear on what this is. But I from what I understand, from what I’m reading, that that they’re that lyrically or whatever, the poetry involved in this is is pretty much consistently funny. That’s, like, kinda what he does. Now there’s exceptions when he decided, you know, I should get a little more serious, and that didn’t work either or whatever. But I think overall, these guys are kind of funny.
I just think the spoken word thing, it it’s gonna get old no matter what. You know, I I’ll compare this to there’s another band that got hot about maybe fifteen, twenty years ago called The Hold Steady. They got a lot of hype when they first came out. They do this exact same thing. They just do it in a much more serious way.
They’re musically a little more intricate, and the poetry is much deeper and darker and whatever. But it’s this. It’s a band rocking out why some guy reads poetry over it. And I remember buying their album when it came out. And, you know, track one, I was like, alright.
This is cool. It’s kinda different, kinda unique. And then track two, you’re like, okay. More of this. And then by by track four or five, you’re like, alright.
This is what this is. You know? And then I think that’s where that you’re just I don’t see anybody ever getting, like, a lot of longevity out of career and spoken word. It just it it it’s all starts to sound too similar after a while. But if you can catch lightning in a bottle, which King Missal absolutely did with this song.
I mean, it’s it’s like you said, Keith. It’s not just the the lyrics and and and it’s it’s the music. I I love the little funky bass that’s going underneath it. I love that Hammond organ. And, yeah, that back vocal of that person going, is just fantastic.
It makes me just it’s this wonderful smorgasbord of everything just kind of clicking all at once into this fantastic little song that that maybe to its detriment is so goofy and funny that people probably dismiss it as not being as good as it really is. Definitely a quintessential college radio song. And I would say my choice in a different way is is also kind of a quintessential college radio song. Like, I certainly associate this with with my time in college radio. It came out in ’94.
So we’re we’re gonna talk about letters to Cleo here and now. It’s a song. A lot of people probably know it as the song because that’s probably the most memorable part of the song. If you’ve seen the video, you might also remember it from from the lead singer being just adorably cute, and I think that probably did not hurt hurt this song, you know, taking off and and having some legs. Originally, actually released in in ’93 on a small indie label, the album was, and then rereleased in ’94 on a slightly bigger, you know, indie quote unquote label.
But one of those labels that was like associated with Warner Brothers or whatever. So it definitely, caught somebody’s attention and kinda got a chance to it really got like a second chance, I guess. I think the first time around, it really didn’t catch fire. And the second time that they probably had a little bit like a budget and were able to record the video and and do that kind of stuff. So the the name of the album I I don’t know how I didn’t realize this when when we were playing this back in the day.
Maybe we were just playing it off of a single or something, and I never noticed. The name of the album is Aurora Gory Alice, three words. I’m not even gonna bother spelling it. Look it up if you want. Possibly one of the worst names for an album that I’ve heard, but that was the name of the album.
It did not it had actually a single that came out first before Here Now that that did not do well. And then, Here Now just really took off. I think college radio had a lot to do with it, I think, the first time around. I was trying to think back to k t x t if if we were playing it off of the 1993 release or the ’94 release. Because by the time the ’94 release came out and the and the video came out, it actually was getting, you know, pretty heavy airplay on MTV, which didn’t necessarily mean we wouldn’t play it on KTXT.
But I think college radio gave them, like, the first boost, but then it was it was definitely MTV that helped. And, again, her being just a a really charismatic, adorable lead singer certainly helps kinda get some attention on them. And it’s incredibly catchy, like, super, super catchy. And and that really memorable rapid fire lyric that nobody knew what she was actually saying, but they would all you know, we’d all try to kinda sing along with it. Kinda helped it, I think, stick in people’s brain a little bit.
So that was definitely a hit. It it even, you know, hit the billboard modern rock charts. I don’t think it really hit the billboard 100, but I think most people of our age that were around, like, in the in the mid nineties probably remember this one. After that, not so much, but they’ve had kind of an interesting history with some of their music. So they they have recorded at least two more albums after that, neither of which really spawned like a big single or did particularly well.
But they kinda got known a little bit for for soundtrack music and and being on, like, this like, kind of that band that you go to and you want the sound of the nineties, I guess, a little bit. In fact, here now was on the Melrose Place soundtrack, which also probably gave it, like, quite a boost, among a certain demographic. And I may I may be deaf discounting that a little too much because my exposure to it was college radio and MTV, but I I’m guessing a lot of people’s exposure to it might have been through through Melrose Place. So maybe I shouldn’t discount that as being a big part of that. Later on in the nineties, so all the way up to ’99, they actually recorded some songs for the 10 things I hate about you soundtrack.
That that’s a movie that I think was just a little bit outside of my age range when it came out. I would have been, like, 26 or 27, and it’s kind of more of a teenage type film, but really well thought of and a lot of people love it. You know, I think it’s, a Julia Stiles Heath Ledger movie, and they recorded two songs that did do pretty well, but they were both covers. They covered Cheap Trick, I Want You to Want Me, and they covered Nick Lowe, Cruel to Be Kind. So even though those maybe you could kinda consider to be minor hits since their covers, I’m gonna kinda say that those really weren’t hits either.
So they really just had, like, the one original song that that made that kind of impact. The last thing I’ll say about it is it had kind of a little bit of a second life, not to the degree that, like, Kate Bush and running up that hill had a second life when it was in stranger things. But if you’re familiar with the show parks and recreation in season four, there’s an episode where Adam Scott’s character, Ben Wyatt, is having just a complete meltdown because he’s lost his job and he’s go he’s really going through it. And he’s actually wearing a letters to Cleo shirt as as kind of a signifier of his, like, regression back to his his, college days, I think, because he’s he’s definitely having having a moment. And so that was like a nice little shout out to them.
And then later on in season six, they have a a big fundraising concert for the town, and they have letters to Cleo actually comes and and performs here now for the concert. So the connection there oddly enough. So Adam Scott is is a well known fan of, like, college radio and alternative music and actually has an REM podcast that did really, really well, where they went through and and I think tackled, like, every REM album, and then that morphed into a YouTube podcast. So Adam Scott would be the the person you would think that kind of pushed to have the letters to Clio connection on park parks and rec, but it actually turns out that it’s Amy Poehler who went to school in Boston. So I was kind of familiar with them from their early early days, like in the early nineties.
So that that was kind of their connection in the two thousands that got them a little bit of notice and kind of brought that song back a little bit. For me, it was yeah. It was always one of those, it was very similar to another song that I chose for for one hit wonders, the whale hobo humping slowbo babe where it was just like kind of a one, you know, one shot deal with a band that had this like super cute super charismatic lead singer and a song that was just so catchy you couldn’t avoid it. I would say this one’s a little more on the pop side. Slowbo humping hobo babe is a little more rock funk kinda, you know, a little heavier and a little funkier.
But I kinda conflate the two a lot because they came out around the same time and they had some of the same things going for them. But this one I would argue is a is a better song and is one that, I can certainly see why it got big. I would have thought that they had, like, some other songs in them that might have been as catchy, but I’ve really even going back and kind of poking through their catalog a little bit, there really wasn’t anything that I found that that grabbed me the way this one did. So this this may have been kinda kinda just what they had, you know, in their in their bag of tricks. Yeah.
One that I think a lot of people will remember and one one that I definitely enjoyed from from back in the day. This is a great song. This is is a fantastic song, actually. And, yeah, I really liked it. You know, we were talking about you were mentioning you couldn’t remember whether we ran it the off the ’93 version or the one that came out in the out the later album, the ’94.
I would have to guess that it was probably the ’93 version because by ’94, that was when, you know, I took over as a music director, and I know that I did not, run this album. So I think or this song. So I think it must have already, had hit at KTXT and was probably still playing at the time, but was not something that I added. So I would guess that we we went with the earlier version of it. But, yeah, great great grunge song, the Musically, I would consider it just to be kind of a grunge rocker, but with, like you said, the the super cute singer, you know, the vocals, the kind of the, you know, with your grunge songs, you know, usually got kind of the angsty down vocals, even even from other female fronted bands like Hole or whatever, and that’s just not what this is.
This is very much like kind of a a pop vocal over a heavy grunge song. And man, I, I went back and when I listened to it again for this, I, like, went around a couple of times trying to see if I could figure out what she was saying during that part where she’s essentially, like, scat singing. And even after having listened to it, like, a half dozen times, I do not have the first clue what she’s saying in in any of that. It’s it’s completely I couldn’t understand what she was saying at all there. But, yeah, it’s it’s yeah.
It’s the catchiest part of the song. It’s the one that’s gonna stick in your head, but what she’s saying there, who knows? Could be anything. You know? She could be plotting some terrible crime, and I’d be singing along.
Yeah. This is great. Fantastic. You know? But but, yeah, good choice for it.
This is a a fantastic song. There’s a trope in movies now called the manic pixie dream girl. If you’re not familiar with it, basically, what it is is it’s the the girl character that comes in and the she’s wild and free and crazy and and the stuffy businessman has to deal with her. You know? Think, Kate Hudson and Almost Famous.
You know? That so but this has become Natalie Portman in Garden State. Right. Exactly. Shout out to Nathan Rabin from AV Club, by the way, for for coining that term.
Yeah. I was gonna say that I knew I I knew that name, but they so this is a trope now in movies they’ve they use they call them manic pixie dream girl. Well, in the early nineties in, the world of music, all the manic pixie dream girls got recording contracts. And, you know, it kinda started with Lisa Loeb, I think. You had this band, six punts and I’m the richer.
The the cranberries to some degree kinda fall into that category as well. And so I I knew this song when you when you put that this was a song you were doing, the tune immediately popped in my head, But I couldn’t really remember it that well. I mean, and and I couldn’t I certainly if you’d have said who’s sang here and now, you could have given me 10 guesses. I might have come up with letters to Cleo. But I knew it was one of those.
It was one of those bands with the cute chick in the front. You know? I did I knew it was one of those. But I so I had to go back and kinda listen to this one again. This really is a fantastic song.
As far as the reasons why this is a one hit wonder and not more than that, I think it’s what I just described. It’s there was so much of this in the early part of the nineties that they all kinda became interchangeable, I think. And this band had to move over for the next band with a manic pixie dream girl to come along, and there just wasn’t room for all of this. You know? You you kinda had to stand out a little more.
And and as great of a song as this is, it just doesn’t it it still sounds too much like some of that other stuff to to really stand out. And I think that’s why a lot of these bands, in fact, pretty much all the ones I just mentioned except the cranberries, kind of faded into obscurity after this. A lot of them were one hit wonders, and I think that’s that’s probably the reason. And then just as a side note, 10 Things I Hate About You is a better movie than it might lead you to believe it is. It kind of appears on the surface to be this goofy teen comedy, whatever.
It’s actually just a a shade better than that. As teen comedies go, it’s it’s one of the better ones. I believe that soundtrack is all covers. I think that’s kinda what they did. They I think so.
Yeah. The movie sort of has this we’re making an eighties teen comedy in the in the nineties, and so they had a bunch of nineties bands cover eighties songs. I I think that’s what it was. I’d I’d have to look that up. So the fact that they had two covers on there is I think that was all I think it was all covers.
But, yeah, this is this is a good tune and one that I hadn’t probably heard in in a long time, so I, was glad to go back and revisit it. I I had to just just because I’m sure everybody’s wondering, the lyrics that she is singing, and I if I haven’t already paid a clip, I will play a clip now. The lyrics that she’s saying during that little little bit are the comfort of a knowledge of a rise above the sky, but could never parallel the challenge of an acquisition in the and then here and now, here and now. That actually doesn’t clear it up either. And now I I I actually know what the lyrics are now.
It’s still completely inscrutable. So this reminds me of when we were talking about REM, and and we were like, yeah. Now you can see all of REM’s lyrics. So, well, I mean, you know, on Apple Music, whatever. Yeah.
That just made it worse, but thanks. That doesn’t help. Yeah. That doesn’t it really just brings up more questions, honestly. But I would definitely give her props for being able to get all that out that fast.
That’s incredible. Yeah. I wanted to try to do it in in it with her cadence and her pace, and I was just like, I can’t I don’t think I can. I I think she might be the only person on earth that can pull off that that phrasing. I how that came about, how those lyrics came about.
Honestly, I I oddly enough, I listened to the song a couple times for this, but I didn’t really read through the lyrics with it. So this is another song that I I guess I’ve never really kinda thought about, and this would have been a good time to do it now that I think about it. But just scan just just scanning through it right now, I’m not sure that it really has a deeper meaning. I think it it might be in the the REM category of just kind of inscrutable phrases that sound kinda good together. Have it.
Three more fantastic college radio one hit wonders. I feel like these are three that everybody’s probably heard, but if you haven’t, Dada at Disneyland, definitely want to check out and remember the alternate spelling on Disneyland if you happen to be looking it up. If you haven’t listened to detachable penis, you’re you’re missing out on a a college radio classic. Of the three, all of them are are certainly in that category, but that one might be and I say that because it came up a lot when we were making the film even of a band that maybe we should talk to because they’re just so tied. Like, so some bands are just more tied to college radio than others, and and King Missile just falls in that category, quite frankly.
Legends to Cleo, I’d say might be the the catchiest of the three, but to that, Disneyland is awfully catchy too. So, anyway, if somehow that one escaped you, I I think you’ll love it if if you like, you know, kind of poppy, grungy stuff. So go check it out. Let us know what you think. We’re always looking for other one hit wonders to talk about and just your your thoughts on your favorite college radio one hit wonder, and you’re always welcome to share those with us on our social media or on our website.
Don’t forget about 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio, a feature documentary about college radio available right now at this very minute on Amazon Prime Video and on Google Play. If you want to rent or buy it, you know, we’d appreciate it. So why not check it out? It’s it’s just I mean, it’s like seventy minutes long. It’s not even it’s it’s just it’s just like a little portion of your day.
You can surely you can do that. And if you do happen to watch it, rate and review it as well because that that really helps us out. Thanks once again to Scott and Keith for joining me, and we will see all of you next time on 35,000 Watts, the podcast.