And welcome to 35,000 Watts, the podcast. My name is Michael Millard. I’m the story of college radio, a feature documentary available now for download at 35,000 watts.com about college radio. And I’m joined today by my co host, Lisa Girard. Hello.
And our resident music guru, Keith Porterfield. Hello, everybody. Today, we’re gonna drop some one hit wonders. So, what is a one hit wonder? You know, one hit wonders were really popular in the eighties.
There’s no no shortage of 1 Hit Wonders on any college radio format or regular contemporary radio format. They’re kind of a fascination, like, how could they get so popular and then just disappear? So, we’re gonna pick out some favorites of ours and, explore what happened. And there’s no criteria really that we use to to exactly nail this down, particularly because it’s college radio. You know, what what is a hit on college radio versus, like, a top 40 hit?
You know, it’s a little bit easier to define. So I’m sure there’ll be plenty of discussion probably in our social media channels about that, our choices as we go, but let’s kick it off. I think Keith is gonna give us his first one hit college radio wonder. Yeah. Well, I think, you guys mentioned in the first episode of the podcast that both of you worked at KTXT, and so did I.
I was the music director there for a while around the same time you guys were there. There. So my choices are filtered through what we were doing at the time in the early to mid nineties at KTXT. And I’m gonna start off with a song called Sorry Again by the band Velocity Girl. This is a band that was formed in the DC area, years ago.
They were in the mid or late eighties, I should say. Formed from members of several different groups, and just kinda is just as the usual case in a lot of those kind of music scenes. Like, a lot of bands bubble up. The guys that can really play kinda come out of them, and the ones that don’t are kinda shifted off to the side. And the survivors all get together and conglomerate into bands.
Velocity Girl was a lot like that. They had 3 records overall. The second one was called Simpatico, and that’s the one that, this song, sorry again, came off of. And actually, recently, these guys got back together and remixed their 3rd album, or I should say their first album, and is available on Sub Pop Records. So this one I picked not just because I think it’s a great song and it it charted well for us, at KTXT.
Also for me personally, this one, really takes me back to a certain place in time. That being the summer of 1994. And that was the 1st summer that I started as the music director at KTXT team. And, I especially remember coming back after the break, after the spring semester before we started the summer session. You know, I had a bunch of songs that I dumped into the rotation to kinda kick this off when we went back into the to playing, you know, to run during the summer.
And I remember driving around town or being over at friends’ houses and that kind of thing and hearing the first set of songs that I had put into rotation on the air, on the radio, you know, and and in the same space where the big rock and roll station was and then where the country station was and just how cool that time really seemed to me then as I was first hearing those songs. And this song in particular, sorry again, really takes me back to that time. For whatever reason, among all of those songs, this is the one that most kinda transports me back to that time. And so, yeah, this one is very much a favorite of mine. I think we kind of you know, we we peaked at each other’s lists a little bit before the episode started.
I think it might be my favorite song of the, like, 9 or 10 that we were discussing for this episode. I love that song. I don’t know much else about velocity girl, so it’s a very velocity girl is locked to that time in 1994 when we were playing it. I never really listened to it much again after that. I was listening to it again earlier today and just, it’s a good good song.
It’s like good energy. Like, it’s it’s just a really good time. So, yeah, possibly my favorite pick of the whole episode. I love that song because it’s kind of like an attempt at girl grunge. We’ve got to remember that in 1994, the grunge movement was really popping, taken off, but it was like a really heavy male dominated space.
And the velocity girl comes along, and it’s got this softened pop sense to it. It reintroduced harmonies that we, you know, weren’t hearing in music at that time. It’s poppy. It’s catchy. It seems like a song that would have done really well in the commercial radio space, but, again, it didn’t.
And that’s fine. And that’s what’s so great about college radio is it gave it those places to explore and be played and find some airtime. And the second thing, you know, I think it’s interesting how we all have different musical tastes that we kinda migrate to. I know Michael is a huge REM fan. I’m more the heavy, grunge, industrial type.
And, you know, Keith, I remember you being a huge Pixies fan and all three of those genres are are different, you know, But yet this song seemed to appease all of us. Yeah. This one, it’s got the the predominantly female vocal, but with the the male, countervocal in there doing some vocal harmonies, which is is nice. A little bit of a heavier guitar feel, but really kind of in the power pop, genre. Yeah.
Just a fun, you know, 3, 3 and a half minutes, of music there. Do you remember when you added that at k sixty? Is that one that you kinda knew coming in like you saw it and you were like, oh, cool, velocity girl. Or was it one of those where it was just like it was in the stack and you were working your way through the stack and it it popped out, like, when you heard it? That one was very much one that just I just listened to, liked, and decided we were gonna play it.
Yeah. I knew nothing about velocity girl before then. Really didn’t know anything about them after then until I did a little looking before we did this. So yeah. No.
That was very much one that was just put it on, listen to it. Hey, this is pretty good. Maybe we should be playing this. And that’s how it made its way into the rotation. I love it.
That’s great. The the essence of college radio. Michael, you have a very fun, interesting pick, I believe. So why don’t you tell us what your pick was? I, I, well, I’m curious of which, well, you, because you saw 3 potential picks.
So I’m curious which one you think this is gonna be, but I, I do think I’m gonna actually talk about, a band called deeply something. That’s the one. This one requires a little prefacing. I think we, we did all work at KTXT and so there’s a temptation to kind of like talk about KTXT’s influence maybe a little too much. But we learned it when we made the film was that we were all doing something that we thought was really unique and it turns out hundreds of other stations were doing that.
Right? So, like, it’s easy to think, oh my god. We were breaking bands and we were, you know, we were, like, in uncharted territory. And it turns out, you know, all of these other college kids around us were doing the same thing. And so which which I think is a better story ultimately.
But, sometimes you can get a little on your head about how big your influence was at KTX T that said, I do think we were very, very, very responsible for what happened with deep blue something breakfast to Tiffany. To me, it’s the perfect example of a band that we played probably because they were, you know, quote unquote local. They were a Dallas band, but for us being limited ourselves just to Lubbock bands, we weren’t gonna be playing a lot of local music. Right? So, like, we played regional bands from Austin and Dallas and Deep Blue Something was one of those.
So this song on their original album was hidden on track, like 9 or 10. You know, it wasn’t a song that they that I felt like they were even really pushing as a single. I don’t I don’t think they released as a single. Certainly. My memory serves that this song got played and ended up being kind of big on on the power lunch, which was KTX T’s request show.
So that’s a really great way for a radio station to get feedback about what’s working. Because again, this is pre Internet, so people weren’t emailing us, you know, or telling us what they liked or how we were doing. The really one of the only ways was to get phone calls and kinda try to track what people were wanting. And my memory is that breakfast at Tiffany’s was consistently and thoroughly requested on the power launch. So labels would call the music directors and find out what’s working and what’s not and try to get feedback.
Is this working? Are you guys playing it? I mean, obviously they’re gonna, they’re all gonna try to talk you into playing stuff, but I think this is a situation where that feedback got back to the label. Like, hey, the song that you buried on track 10 is actually the hit on this album and is doing really well, you know, on our request show. They end up getting picked up by a bigger label.
They end up releasing a new album, but rerecording breakfast at Tiffany’s, they do push that song as a single and it catches fire. And at least you maybe can tell me more what, where it ended up hitting, but it was a, I think an unqualified massive, massive hit is what it is. You can still talk to people about Breakfast at Tiffany’s and they remember that song. Well, it’s hit the, grocery store circuit now. You know, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at the grocery store.
I live in Denver, Colorado, and I’ll hear that song or I’ll be in the mall with my kids, and that song will come on, and I’ll be like, let me tell you the story of this song. But if you see the band, they look nothing like what you would normally think of a college rock band or even a regular rock band, or a pop band. I mean, they are clean-cut, clean shaven, polo wearing. Like, guys, they really fit that frat boy culture. The Greek system at tech when we were there was, like, the first or second largest Greek system in the United States.
Everybody was Greek. So if you could get in with those Greek kids, you were golden. And Deep Blue Something really hit the mix there. I know from personal experience, at the time, I was involved with the team that was the concert promoters that would bring these bands, you know, to Lubbock and it’s part of the reason why I landed at KTXD. We booked a show for them, and it was, like, Frat Central.
And we were just, like, who are these people? Because we never had frat people come to the shows that we were booking. So it was just really, like, a great hit. It really crossed all sorts of borders, and I totally think that their time and their shows there in Lubbock were huge. I really do believe that we kinda put them on the map to be tooting our own horn.
Yeah. As far as, like, really how big they hit it, I’m not kidding. They hit number 5 on the Billboard 100 from August of 95 to April of 96. So they hit the top ten. That’s amazing.
For a little band from Dallas, Texas that, you know, was launched on college radio, they’re probably one of our biggest college radio one hit wonder successes. So how can you make it to the top 5 and then just go nowhere? You know? What happens? I don’t think a theory about that, but I’m I actually have a theory about that, but I’m curious what Keith remembers about when that song was big on on KTXT.
I do think it’s interesting that, a song like that and there are others. One that comes quickly to my mind is Hootie and the Blowfish. We were playing Hootie and the Blowfish way before they got big, you know, before they had hits and all that kind of stuff. And I think that happened a little more often than maybe we give it credit for. But this was definitely a an example of a song that bubbled up out of college radio and then just took off like a rocket, you know, once it got rerecorded and rereleased.
Definitely, I have the memories of playing that pretty much every power launch. You were right. We got requests for that song just relentlessly. It was huge. And, and I, and I think it’s a good example of that.
What we saw in, in our little bubble turned out to be true nationwide. Like that’s your song doesn’t hit number 5 without being, you know, super mass appeal. And it was really obvious right off the bat. Here’s why I think there are one hit wonder. We got that album and there was another song on there called Kandinsky Prince, which I think would have been a perfect follow-up for breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I think we were also getting good response on it at KTXT, and the record label chose a different song to push and it didn’t work. And deep blue something now, you know, is touring still on playing breakfast at Tiffany’s probably 3 times per concert because, like, that’s they didn’t, in my opinion, they didn’t learn the lesson that they should have learned, which was what are the stations telling us people wanna hear instead of we’re gonna you know, we we know better. We’re the label. We know, you know, that this is the song that we need to push. And I think maybe the skyrocketing fame of that one hit maybe went to their heads, and they thought they could just live off that forever.
And that’s kinda what happened because they didn’t go anywhere else after that. But I kinda didn’t I don’t know. Right. They probably are doing alright for themselves, I’m guessing. Yeah.
And they probably still are. Some of the data research that I’ve done in the past for other projects, especially around music, I have determined that if you can break into the Billboard 100 even with one song, you’re gonna be pretty set on royalties. Yeah. You can break into the top 10? I mean, that’s, like, Eagles level, you know, Tom Petty level, like, big artist.
You know? So I think they’re probably doing pretty good. Lisa, you are up to bat. 1 hit wonder, college radio style. My choice actually came to me from a fan of our project, Matt Musselman.
He was also our 1st Kickstarter supporter. Matt and I have known each other for about 40 years, and, he is a music guru. And anytime you wanna talk music, he’s one of the guys I go to. Very wide taste in music. And, of course, I asked him, you know, what do you think would be a great pick for this?
And so this is his pick. This one was a really fascinating story for me, to be honest. It’s, a band called Corner Shop, and their song was called Brimful of Asha. The lead singer’s name was Jenda Singh. He’s Punjabi, born and raised in England, but has very strong Punjabi roots and identified with that, and that’s where this music is coming from.
The song is a love story, a, a love song to Bollywood. India has a huge history of musical theater, and it’s called Bollywood. And they would have these lovely escapist, beautiful, melodramatic. I mean, just beautiful cinematography and music and acting and and it was an escapist piece. Like, you know, there was a lot of stuff going on in India at the time and people would go to the theater to escape all the harshness of their day to day life.
So in this, they would have these beautiful actors, you know, singing these bits and pieces, but, really, they weren’t really singing. They were lip synching, and they hired a whole professional production team to recut the audio for these movies, and people knew this. It was not a secret. And people got to know these background singers, and one of them was named Asha, which is how you would pronounce it in, you know, that native culture. But with the lead singer being British, it came out Asher, but it’s really Asha or Asha, however you wanna say it.
This song is really catchy, poppy, fun. It’s got a great it’s got some soul to it. It’s got some drums to it. It’s been remixed by, like, Fat Boy Slim. I mean, people love this song.
And when you hear it, you’re like, oh, yes. I love that song. And it just takes you back. You know, it’s one of those, like, mile markers like Keith had mentioned with velocity girl. Did really great in the UK.
It actually hit number 1 on their charts. It didn’t chart at all in the United States. It was a college radio hit, which is interesting again. Like, why did it not have the common thread? Why would it not cross over to, you know, the general listening population, whereas in the UK, it hit number 1?
Brimful of Asha. So brimful means overflowing, and the song is about how much people loved and enjoyed their experience with these Bollywood films. And there’s even names mentioned in the lyrics that are referencing the popular actors and the popular singers of the time. And the 45 reference, you’ll hear it in the song, is about 45 records. I mean, it’s literally a love song about songs and about, you know, musical theater.
So it’s just a really great song. Spin Magazine, which was an American publication, actually listed this album that it came from as the number one album of 1997. Hot on the heels of Hole and Moby and Beck. So the fact that they only had a one hit and it didn’t really even hit that big in the United States is pretty amazing. But again, it’s a lot like velocity girl.
It’s just one of those tracks that when you hear it, it takes you back and it makes you want more. It really makes you wanna, like, listen to the rest of the album and and explore this kind of, you know, happy, poppy, funky soul kind of music. I’m really surprised to find out that it didn’t chart, here in the states. It seems like there for a while, that song was pretty ubiquitous. I mean, it seems like I heard it all over the place.
And so, obviously, college radio had was doing something right because it was, you know, it was getting some exposure out there. But, yeah, really, really surprised to find out that it didn’t actually chart. I would have, would not have guessed that. It did number 1 in the UK, and it didn’t hit the United States at all. But Deep Blue Something did number 5 in the United States and was on the chart for 36 weeks almost an entire year.
If you look at their YouTube video views, Deep Blue Something has 66,000,000 views of just their, like, official video of that song, whereas, Brimful of Asha has a whopping 18,000,000. So, I mean, even in today’s, like, metric standard and when we’re watching views and engagement and clicks, likes, and subscribes, it’s still amazing that a song that has so much potential and did in 1 album of the year and all that just has kind of faded away. This song is one of the first songs that I kind of discovered on college radio after I left college radio because that was right after my time at KTXT, But I distinctly remember hearing it for the first time on KTXT because I still lived in Lubbock at the time. And then I played it quite a bit when I was DJing in clubs. The I think it was actually a Norman Cook remix who is that voice.
Mhmm. But I think some he would use his real name on some of the remix. So I think it was a Norman Cook remix, who, by the way, was the bassist for a band called the House Martins back in the eighties, a fantastic little British band. I don’t think many people got it. Go listen to House Martins happy hour after this episode.
You’ll love it. Norman Cook played the bass, but, yeah, he his remix was fantastic as was a lot of his remixes. That’d be 90 7 96, 97, 98, 99, man, Fatboy Slim owned that era and Totally. Remixing. Like, his remixes were top notch.
So we played probably every week, you know, every week, almost midnight. The club was open. Apparently, Norman Cook of Fat Boy Slim contacted them and asked if he could remix the song. And so that was, like, a really big feather in their cap to have someone like that actually pick up. A natural fit, yeah, for a dance remix.
Like, you wouldn’t Yeah. You wouldn’t hear it initially and just go, oh, that needs to be Yeah. Big beat. Let’s speed that up to about 140 and see where it goes. Yeah.
So that’s why I’m made that up. That’s why I’m doing a podcast, and he’s still a superstar DJ because he’s right. Yeah. He could hear how to take a song and, what I liked about his remix of that particular song, in fact, but a lot of his remixes was that he didn’t deconstruct him completely and use like one little clip of it over a house beat and call it a remix. Like the song is still largely intact.
It’s just. And you guys. They’re fat boy, slim eyes for the club, but like, it still had all of its elements, which I always loved about. A lot of his remixes were like that. Yeah.
3 excellent college radio one hit wonders. We’ve got more in the tank to go, but, we’ve run out of time for this episode. So I think you can plan on this coming back around and and being a a recurring feature on 35,000 watts, the podcast, because we had a lot of fun doing it. Big thank you to Keith Porterfield, our resident music guru for joining us today. Don’t forget 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio. The movie is finished. It’s ready to go. It’s ready for download. All you gotta do is go to 35,000 watts.com and download the film. I think if you’re a lover of music, if you’re a lover of college radio, if you’re a lover of indie film, you will enjoy it.
Also on the website, you can go to our feedback form. We’d love to hear your story. If you have a one hit wonder that you would like to share or us to take a deeper dive into, please, find us online at 35000 watts.com, and we’d love to get your feedback on that as well. We’re also out there on all the socials. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and now TikTok.
So you can also find screenings in your area on our website. And if you wanna set up a screening in your favorite local venue, you can do that there too. As we said at KTXT, keep it locked to the left, and we’ll see you on the next episode of 35,000 Watts, the podcast.