Welcome back to 35,000 Watts, the podcast. My name is Michael Millard. I’m the director of 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio, a documentary film about college radio, available now at 35,000 watts.com. With me today is my co host, Lisa Gerard. Hello.
And our resident music guru, Keith Borderfield. Hello. Good to be back. Lisa, what’s on tap? We’re gonna do 1 hit wonders round 2.
What do you got today, guys? This is the song that actually jumped in my mind immediately the first time we ever talked about the concept of 1 hit wonders in college radio. I think both of you guys said the same thing. It just which is funny because it’s not a song that I think maybe anybody listens to anymore. It’s not really in anybody’s playlist at this point, but I am gonna talk about briefly whale.
Hobo humpin slowbo babe. Yes. That is a real song. For those of you that are just jumping in on this and thinking, wow, I did not, don’t recognize that. That is, a track that came out in, originally recorded in 93, but I don’t think it was released until a year or 2 later.
It’s a Scandinavian band named Whale. They for sure did not have any other hits. I guess it’s a stretching it a little bit to call this one a hit. I think it got to roughly, like, 24 on the billboard alternative charts. Did not hit the Billboard 100 at all, so not like a hit hit in in the mainstream sense of the word.
Kind of, I guess, what I would consider a novelty song, maybe one of the first novelty songs of the alternative era. I don’t know. I guess there I guess there were others if you really think about it. But to me, thinking back on I you know, and this, of course, came out while while I was in college radio and and at KTXT, so that’s one reason why it sticks in my head as well. But it kind of represents that moment when when a novelty song could could break big on college radio in alternative and when bands that were just kinda completely out of the mainstream were able to break through with, like, something that something like this that didn’t really fit a genre, that didn’t really have any I don’t even know how to describe it.
Like, there’s just not really anything like it out there. It it’s like its own unique thing. It, it does I I feel like it represents a moment in time really well when, alternative rock was starting to embrace kind of the some of this more outsider type rock. When it came out, it was really like one of those progenitors of the rap rock scene, like you were saying, which led, you know, to Korn and Limp Bizkit, the more contemporary rap rock genre artists of that day. It was just one of those bands that and they had the freedom to do what they wanted with a video, and I’m sure they were hoping to hit it big.
And I don’t know why it didn’t get bigger than it did because Red Hot Chili Peppers were doing that, and they hit it big with Give It Away. But, like, the the scene in the video and there’s like this you know, they’re licking each other and she’s got those funky braces and the the colorization of it and the over filtering. Like, the the lyrics are over filtered. Not the lyrics, but the vocal tracks are over filtered. It’s very heavy, grungy.
I mean, it had all the elements. So, again, here we are, one hit wonder, why did it not go farther? Why didn’t they have any other album releases? And it’s kind of become this funny redheaded stepchild, pun intended, if you’ve seen the video, of the 1 hit wonder alt genre. Like, when you bring it up, people are like, oh god.
Are you really gonna talk about whale? You mentioned that, you were surprised or that it didn’t actually, hit real big anywhere else. It certainly was a hit for us at KTXT in Lubbock. We played that song all the time, and did really well with it. Got requests, everything.
I don’t think it’s surprising that that song is popular. I think it’s got a couple of things going for it, that were kind of big at the time, which one of his the, kind of the loud soft dynamic, a la, say the Pixies or Nirvana where the, verses are a little quieter and then it really jumps into the rocking part on the on the chorus, with the the chanting of Hobo Hoomp and Slowbo Babe. And then I think that’s the other thing that really works in its favor is that kind of easy to sing along with high energy kind of chanted chorus where, you know, I personally can remember being in the studio with other people and all of us jumping around yelling, you hobo humping slowbo babe, as the song is playing. You know? It’s just infectious, catchy.
I like the like I said, the quiet loud dynamic. Yeah. I think this is a song that’s actually got a lot going for it. And, I am kinda surprised maybe that it didn’t hit a little bit bigger than it did, but, boy, it certainly hit for KTXT. We played the heck out of that song.
Yeah. It’s definitely burned in my brain. I had, like, probably a similar experience of of people coming in and just everybody rocking out to it. It’s, yeah, it’s one of those, like, kinda ineffable songs that just it’s like it came out of nowhere. You know, the band disappears as quickly as they hit the scene.
And yet there’s most people our age, I think, that were even kind of tangentially into alternative music. Remember the song, remember the video, can probably chant the chorus, if not the actual verses. I hadn’t heard it in probably at least 20 years until this morning when I listened to it again. I you know, do I love the song? I don’t know that I would go that far, but, it’s catchy.
It was infectious at the time. It definitely at at the time, it captured more than I think that I’m remembering now as, like, you know, a 50 year old looking back on it. It’s kinda like, wow. Why was I so into this song? But I do remember we were into it.
We liked it. We, you know, were jumping around to it. So they must’ve had something going for it. Yeah. It’s kinda all I got on that one, so I’m gonna pass it to Lisa to find out what’s next on our one hit wonder list.
Well, my next choice is the song Counting Stars by the band I think as we go through the podcast and, you know, our listeners will start to learn that each of us have a very different and dynamic take on what kind of music we tend to migrate towards. I’m definitely the the heavier rock driven, grungy, industrial vein, and this song just hits it for me. I’ve always loved this song. This also has become a song for me where if I’m in a group of people and I bring it up and I can judge their response to this song, I know who I’m with. You know?
I know whether they’re in the tribe or not. You know, I think when I was doing my research on this song, the most fascinating fact about it, besides the fact, again, it was a great song and they only had one hit, I think it was on their 3rd album before they kinda really got discovered, but it was a very big influencer for the deaf tones. You can hear that. Like, if if you’re familiar with deaf tones and you like that kind of genre of the really heavy grunge, I don’t even know if I’d call them grunge, but, you know, deaf tones, they have their own sound. You could hear the influence for sure.
Again, I didn’t have to YouTube this song at all to remember it. It’s in my playlist. It’s one of my favorites. It always has been. And like you, Keith, I remember moments being in the studio listening to that, and it was probably a DJ’s choice for me several times.
There’s, like, this really chuggy, deep shoegaze moment about 3 and a half minutes into the song, and it’s almost transy. I just I just love this song. They were produced by Steve Albini, you know, the famous producer who just recently passed away. They were one of his first bands. They had an album out called Filet Show, as in Filet of Fish, and then the word show, but, you know, there’s some fun pun there.
It hit number 11 on the hot modern rock tracks, so that was a pretty big hit for them on the modern rock charts. It didn’t hit the Billboard Hot 100, of course. I think it is a a great song, and I think it’s a good example of around that time, a lot of bands, were trying to kind of or you got a lot of records out that were, kinda aping the Seattle sound if you wanna call it that, the harder, kind of, grungy rock sound that was big at the time and there were tons of those albums came out. You know, anybody that was trying to get an album out wanted to sound that way because that was what was big at the time. And, unfortunately, for a lot of those artists, a lot of those albums were not good at all.
This one on the other hand is an example of one that actually really was a totally solid record. I believe this one comes off the album You’d Prefer an Astronaut, which is actually, yeah, a really solid album. It’s got another song on it called The Pod, which I actually like even better than Stars, but both of those are just fantastic songs. Both of them we played at KTXT. But, yeah, it’s it’s funny that there were some that, kinda managed to rise up out of the the big group of bands that were all trying to sound heavy guitar, sound at that time.
These guys are a good example of someone that caught you know, jumped onto the bandwagon, but did it really well. I’m curious your thoughts on this. So you mentioned obviously the grunge through line and and their part in that, but Lisa kind of, also mentioned that there’s a little bit of shoegaze in there. I know you’re a fan of of Ride and some of the shoegaze bands. Do you see a line, like, from the shoegaze bands to these guys?
Do you think of them more as grunge? Do you think maybe the reason they had a little something going on is because they incorporated a little of both of those genres? Or how do you see it fitting in in terms of genre? I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest with you, but I I do think they probably fit a little more into with the the rock than the shoegaze. But I can understand, you know, why you would think there is some shoegaze in there.
It definitely has kind of that droning quality to it, and then, you know, the kind of layered guitars, that kind of produce that wall of sound that, you know, slower dronier sound that you associate with the shoegaze movement. So, yeah, I can definitely see that. I don’t know if influence is maybe not be the right word, but, some elements of that in what they did versus what, some of the other kinda maybe knock off grunge bands. I hate to name anybody, but 7 Mary 3, basically, you know, the kind of thing that they were doing, versus what, say, was doing where it wasn’t just let’s ape the sound of the time, and and did have a little bit of a different element to it. And I think, you know, shoegaze is probably a good way to describe that.
Some other terms I found associated with the band were post hardcore and space rock. And I could definitely see the space rock piece of it too. And they had a lot of, like, space themes in their song titles and album titles. And maybe they were trying to either grab onto that or define it for a nineties sound, but, yeah, that’s definitely in there too. Alright, Keith.
What do you got today? I’m gonna go with, If I Only Had a Brain by MC 900 Foot Jesus. If I only had a brain Somewhere on a higher Now, 900 Foot Jesus, was a Dallas artist, real name Mark Griffin. He was a classically trained musician, a trumpet player, and actually before, he got into doing his, work as 900 Foot Jesus, he worked as a session musician, playing trumpet for various jazz artists. He did put out 3 albums, as MC 900 Foot Jesus.
This song is off the last one, which was called 1 Step Ahead of the Spider. It’s a song that I really, really love myself, and it’s a song we played a lot at KTXT. I know we ran it up our top 35. I know it got into the top 5. I’m not a 100% sure it made it to number 1, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I was to find out that it did make it to number 1, because we did give it a a nice nice long run.
It’s a a rap song, versus, most of the guitar based based stuff that we’ve been talking about so far. And I think it’s a a good way to discuss a little bit kind of the just wide open landscape of music and the college radio scene, you know. The 2 songs that we’ve talked about before today and the ones we did in the last episode were all pretty heavily guitar based, whereas this is is completely different. There’s a little, little kinda wah wah guitar in there, during the chorus on this song, but largely, it’s just the synth bass line and his flow that carried the entire song. You know, at the time at KTXT, we, branded ourselves as being alternative.
That was, you know, our Lubbock’s only alternative was our catchphrase. And I think now if you think about the word alternative, there is a certain brand of rock that kinda comes to mind. But back then, you know, it was still the early days of that kinda grungy guitar based sound, and we certainly did play a lot of that kinda music. I would say that our sound at KTXT was kinda built on the foundation of that kind of guitar rock sound. But on that foundation, we built a scaffold of really unique eclectic music, and I think this is a good example of that.
A rap song in the middle of a bunch of guitar songs. And it wasn’t just rap though. You know, back in those days, you were likely to hear an alt country song like Sun Volt, sitting right next to 4 on the floor, club banger dance type song right next to a power pop song. As long as it was good, you know, we were willing to play it. And I think rather than alternative being a type of music that we played at the time, we kind of took it as more of a I don’t even know what the word I wanna use there, an ethos maybe, whereas we were willing to play just about anything that was kind of outside the normal of the genre of that that particular band.
So, you know, if you had a rap song that wasn’t really getting much play on rap radio, yeah, there was a good chance we might play that. Same thing with a, you know, a country song or whatever. I think we had a really nice mix going on. And I remember back in the day looking at the old college music journal, magazine and looking at the the lists playlist from other radio stations. And that was kind of the theme of college radio at the time is that, there was really no set of rules how you did your music programming.
There were a lot of stations that did sound a lot like us or looked a lot like us, and I was always happy to see those because I felt I kinda validated what we were doing. But there were also stations that were just completely out there in left field that were doing something that not even remotely close to what we were doing. And, you know, in those days if it was working for you and if it was working for your listeners, more power to you, man. Go for it. As far as the music goes, it was just a wide open landscape and you could do whatever you wanted to.
If it was working for you, that was great. Have at it. And that’s certainly what we did at KTXT, you know. I didn’t really have any, rules as to what made it in, what didn’t make it in. If it was a good song, it was gonna get played.
And this one is different than a lot of the other songs we’ve talked about, but, man, it’s a great song. And so, yeah, we played it quite a bit. Yeah. I like the the way you kinda talk about alternative because it’s true. Like, alternative has come to represent a genre, I think, and and it it tends towards, like, rock, grunge.
And there’s a particular sound that you think of now in retrospect. But I do think that we approached it as we were we were an alternative to the other stations in town. So it wasn’t that we were playing a type of music called alternative. We were playing all the stuff the other stations wouldn’t play, and that could fall in a number of different categories. This is a good example of one that just is it rap?
Yeah. Is it hip hop? Not really. It’s it’s unique in that I mean, you know, it’s a spoken word is what it is. I mean, it’s not even almost like rap the way you normally think of rap.
MC 900 for Jesus, not 900 feet tall, by the way. Actually, a a normal sized man. He his stuff was all over the map. Like, if if you heard, this track, if I only had a brain next to another track, which I believe is on the same album or maybe the one for it called The City Sleeps, you would never even guess it was the same artist. Very, very, very different, like, musical landscape, very different vocal delivery.
He was probably because of what you were saying, him being a a more, a a jazz trained kinda classically trained musician. I think a lot of the jazz crept into his backing tracks and the way those became maybe I don’t wanna say part of his sound because I don’t I don’t know that he really had a sound. He was just he just liked doing, I guess, kind of the same way we liked programming the station with all kinds of stuff. He loved just making all these different tracks that all sounded different. This one was just it’s funny.
It’s clever. It, you know, he uses a custom word in the very first line of the song, so you know you’re getting good stuff. Right off right off the bat, you know, you’re getting something good. I remember this also being included on CMJ Certain Damage, which was a a CD compilation that CMJ folks put out. And that was kinda cool because he was a Dallas artist.
He was known to us at KTXT more through that local regional connection. We were probably already playing it before we got that, but I remember when we got Certain Damage and seeing him on there and being like, oh, cool. It’s kinda like one of your own has made it because that was a a pretty influential, compilation that went out. I know we would sometimes find music on there that we hadn’t heard yet because the record label hadn’t serviced us or what for whatever reason, a song hadn’t come across your desk. Sometimes, you know, we’d look at certain damage and be like, oh, man.
That that’s a great track. How did how did we miss that? I’m sure there are probably stations on the other side of the country that weren’t familiar with MC 900 Foot Jesus until they got that, and that probably helped that become, you know, kind of a college radio hit. I think you said it did not hit the Billboard charts if I if I’m remembering correctly. But for sure, yeah, I think it was very close to being a number one for us and and well deserved.
Okay. So here’s some more fun facts about our friend, MC 900 For Jesus, AKA Mark Griffin. We were in our twenties playing this music. He was in his forties when this came out. He was quite a bit older than us.
He was a graduate student in the music program of the University of North Texas, which is one of the best music programs in the nation. Not surprised at that at all. One thing that does surprise me is he was a professionally trained trumpet player, and I don’t recall hearing any kind of trumpet tracks on any of his tracks on any of his albums because I had both of them. He was one of my favorites as well. I think one of our DJs, CJ the DJ, actually knew him, and she was really excited to have us playing her friend’s music, so that was pretty cool.
Did you guys know how we got this name? And no, he’s not 900 feet tall. Do do you know the name, the origin story? I do. I or at least I know the story or I don’t know, you know, as with all good stories, is there a lot of truth?
Probably. Is there some, some, tall tale involved? Maybe, I don’t know. But what I from what I understand, he, got his name from a sermon by the televangelist, Oral Roberts, who said he had a vision of a 900 foot tall Jesus that appeared to him and, told him that he should build a a hospital on the campus of Oral Roberts University. And so I I guess, mister Griffin heard that and decided, hey, that would be a great name for a for an emcee.
So, yeah, Russ was born emcee 900 foot Jesus. Yeah. That’s what I heard too. Oh, here’s a fun story. My son is 16.
He has a friend that he goes to high school with that his family’s from Texas, and his family knew Mark Griffin. And, at one point, Keaton, that’s my son, was sharing his AirPods with his friend, and he’s got MC 900 on his playlist because, you know, we listen to it at home. And, his friend was like, wait. You know about MC 900 for Jesus? And Keaton was like, wait.
You know about MC 900 for Jesus? And it was just this really cool moment. 35 years later in Denver, Colorado, you know, and it’s just like, you know, you’re in the right place at the right time when things like that happen. I love knowing that, yeah, he still has a a following. I get I don’t know if you I don’t know.
Maybe he doesn’t have a following as such, but I like to think he does. I can’t think of another artist to even compare him to, nor can I think of any artist that came after him that we’re trying to emulate? But I don’t know. Maybe that’s a good question for Keith because he’s the music guy. The only one I can think of at all really was another, rapper called Lucas, and he did a song called Lucas with a lid off.
There was another one called Wawa Wawa spelled wau wau. He was similar, although probably you know we were talking a little bit a moment ago about the kind of spoken word nature of, of 900 Foot Jesus’ vocals and Lucas was a little more, I guess, of a of a typical flow, from a rapper. But that’s the only one right off the top of my head, the only one that I can kind of think of that, seems similar to me. Yeah. I can’t think of anybody that I would kind of draw a line directly from him.
You this episode is the first time that I really kind of thought about the fact that he really isn’t rap or hip hop in any traditional sense of those words. Maybe more so this song, but, like, the city sleeps, which is another track that was not a hit, but that we played on KTXT. Even more so like a spoken word performance, basically. You know, a spoken word performance over kind of a jazzy backdrop, which I think was maybe a little more of his normal thing. But, yeah, I I really you know, you had groups like like us 3, cantaloupe that sampled jazz music, but still that still had a very, you know, rap hip hop flow.
And I think you would easily identify that as a rap song. Whereas with him, I mean, it’s really only the fact that he’s not singing and that he’s speaking his lines that you would even really associate it with rap and certainly with hip hop as a large you know, as a genre. We had a lot of unique artists at KTXD, but he is he is unique. MC9 Enterprises, if nothing else, is a unique artist. Someone we tried to get for the film, by the way, because we did our 1st shoot in Dallas.
We had, like, a tenuous connection to him, and I got what was purported to be his email from somebody, but I just never made the connection. It was one that fell through the cracks, unfortunately, because I really wanted to beat him. I thought it’d be really interesting, particularly his perspective because now he’s well into his sixties. Like Lisa was saying, he was much older than you would have than you would have guessed by, you know, his music and what he was putting out at the time. I thought that’d be a very interesting conversation to have, but didn’t quite work out.
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