Hello, and welcome back to 35,000 Watts, the podcast. My name is Michael Milner. I’m here with Keith Porter Field and Scott Mobley. We are three college radio alumni, and we like talking about college radio and college radio stuff and college radio music. And today is no exception.
But first, I, I actually have a not a correction to last week, but I have an addition to last week’s episode. I neglected to give a shout out to Mark Ehret, good friend of ours, Finn of, a supporter of the film since the beginning, was a Kickstarter supporter, and has, always given us great suggestions for the podcast. And we actually kinda used his idea last week, and I neglected to mention that, on the podcast. So thanks, Mark, for your help. Check out Mark’s Melody Shack.
He’s on Facebook, and, has a lot of great archives from his days in college radio. So, shout out to Mark. Thank you very much, sir. Today, we are, talking about, I guess, albums that you really, really loved that no one else seemed to get, I think is the best way to put it. We did I I forget exactly how we phrased it when we were kinda talking through.
But, I think we have three really great choices. Three kind of eclectic choices that are gonna be fun to talk about. I think we all dug a little deeper on this one to find some some gems. And this week, we’re gonna start off with mister Keith Yeah. So on this one to this week, we have over the past, you know, few weeks of doing this, been talking about some pretty obscure bands.
This is probably the most obscure band that I’ve mentioned anyway. The band I’m gonna talk about today is a band called Trip Master Monkey. Trip Master Monkey put out two albums in the nineties. They put out one in 2019, a reunion album they got back together. These guys are from the Quad Cities.
They started out, you know, playing live there, got a pretty big following. Their name, the name Trip Master Monkey, which is, you know, always been one of my favorite band names of all time, actually comes from a, a novel by a writer called Maxine Hong Kingston. It’s the name of one of her novels. Apparently, one of the guys was a big fan of that, which is disappointing to me because for all these years until I looked that up recently, I wanted to think that maybe one of the guys in the band had a pet monkey that, you know, was responsible for doubling out the mushrooms into LSD and so was the trip master monkey. But as it turns out, that’s not the case.
It’s just this guy that liked this particular book. So, anyway, like I said, they put out two records in the nineties. The first one, what came out in 1994, it’s called Goodbye Race. Based on the popularity of their live shows and all, these guys actually got signed to Sire Records. And so they were on a pretty big label when they got started.
Like I said, Goodbye Race comes out in 1994. It is a pretty good album. The one thing I would say about it is that it is very grungy. These guys, you know, they got picked up by Sire. Sire hired them a a big time producer to to produce the record.
And I don’t know if it was the producer’s fault, if it was the record label’s fault, if it was what the band wanted to do. But they were kind of a a power poppy band. And this album, like, got produced as though it were a grunge record. It has a very heavy guitar sound to it. It’s a little faster and a little lighter than most of your grunge records.
You can kinda feel the power pop vibe in there. But it was very much produced like a grunge record. It had a minor hit on it, a song song called Shutters Closed that got some MTV airplay. We at KTXT played a song off it called Albert’s Twisted Memory Bank, which was pretty good. But overall, it wasn’t an album that did real well or anything.
You know, we charted it a little bit at KTXT. You know, it had some minor success, but it wasn’t huge or anything like that. After that album came out, they toured. Basically, there was some kind of shake up at the record label, and they kinda lost their support there. Their tour money dried up on them.
And so when they got done with that, it came time to record the next album. They really weren’t getting much support from the label. And so rather than hire a big time producer, they got a guy they knew from there in the Quad Cities to do it with them and basically spent nothing on production. And so since since they weren’t spending any money, the record label largely left them alone and kinda let them do their own thing. And so the album that came out of that is called Practice Changes, and it sounds absolutely nothing like the first album.
The grunge elements are completely gone. You know, I hesitate to call it a power pop album because it’s got some more rocky stuff on it as well. But there’s a lot of, like, jangly, fast drummed guitar on this album. And so, there’s a lot of poppy song structures on it as well. Just a very different thing from what had happened on the first album.
They go on tour in support of this. During the tour or shortly thereafter, the label ends up dropping them. So, you know, they were right that they were kinda on their last legs, you know, after the shakeup at their label. But this album, you know, we played some of the songs at KTXT. I really, really like this album, but it just never really got much traction.
And the thing is, if you go to listen to this album, the first thing or one of the first things you’ll notice is that this album’s got a 20 song track listening on it, which can be a little intimidating at first. But five of those songs, including the hidden track at the end of the album, are all kind of like song stubs, you know, demo level, bits of songs that were not really ever fully fleshed out. So if you take all of that stuff off there, you’ve actually got 15 real songs on the album. And I suspect that the reason all that demo stuff got put on there I mean, if you’ve got those songs, you might think, well, flush them out, make a double album out of it, or hold them back and have that’ll be the first few songs on your next album. And the only the only reason I can feel think that all of that stuff got put on that album is because they probably knew they were about to get dropped by their label.
And so they were just kept trying to get everything that they could out onto something so that somebody was at least gonna hear these songs they were working on. For my money, it really clutters up the album. I think it’s the one strike against this album. There’s all those little extra song stubs. So if you listen to it the first time through, listen to the whole thing, because, you know, that’s the way they recorded it.
That’s the way they released it, the way they intended it for for it to be listened to. But I have to admit, even myself, you know, when I go back and listen to that, I always skip over the song stubs. You know, they just don’t need to be there. They they really do, to my mind, clutter up the album. But the actual songs on this album are really, really good.
The first song on the album actually, well, the first song is one of the song stubs, but the first full song on the album is a song called Beyonder. And it is essentially a shoegaze song, like walls of kinda droning guitar, vocals buried deep down in the mix. It’s the only song on this album that sounds like that. But man, it is really, really good. So if you’re a shoegaze fan at all, check out that song Beyonder.
After that, you get a handful of kind of more poppy jangle pop type songs. But then you get to a run of five songs that, for me, completely makes this album. The first one is called Sprocket Dick. And this is the song that really got me into the album. It is it’s a pop song, but it’s a really weird pop song.
It’s got a little bit of a quieter verse with a more of a hardcore chorus. The middle eight part of it has a violin that comes in and plays for part of the song. It’s just kind of a weird one, but, man, the, guitar riff on this song, the kind of jangly guitar riff that runs throughout it and the lead guitar line that go, over the top of that work really, really well together. And I just loved this song. This was the one that, like I said, got me into it.
It’s the one that we tried to run at KTXT, tried to get some exposure to, although it really never did take off there. But great song, my favorite one on the album. After that, you got a a song called Shirley on pills, which is a a really kind of pixies esque, tune in that it’s got the very much has the quiet loud, quiet loud dynamic going on in it to the point where, like I say, it would do the pixies proud. And like I said, it’s called Shirley on pills. It’s about a girl named Shirley who, based on her behavior, must surely be on pills.
So it’s got kind of a funny lyric to go along with the the rockin’ song. So it’s a good one too. The next one after that is called Colts. It’s probably the best song on the album. I think if I were to be going back and running the radio station now, I that’s the song that I would pick for, us to run.
I think we did Sprocket Dick just because I, really liked that song. But I think going back and looking at it now, Colts would have been probably the better radio song on there. Probably the strongest song album on the album. Not really a pop song, but really kind of a jangly mid tempo guitar rock song. Really good.
And it’s also got another kind of rocker called Chicago Oranges. Another one after that called Fizzle Like a Flood. Those five songs right in a row, and I say right in a row, they’ve actually got a couple of the song stubs stuck in between them. But those five songs to me really make up the backbone of the album, and that’s that’s the part of the album that really, really grabs me the most. After that, it gets a little more eclectic as you’re kinda winding toward the end of it.
There’s about a two and a half minute long acoustic country song called You Make Me Cry, that’s really good on there. There’s one on there called If You Were a Blank, I’d Blank You. It sounds like the whole thing from conception to writing to execution to calling it good took all of about fifteen minutes. I mean, it is a really loose lo fi song. But I think if they were to have gone in and rerecorded it or done overdubs and and tried to slick it up, the, you know, the charm of the song would have gone away.
I think the reason that song is as good as it is is because it’s so loose and lo fi and just kinda sounds like a demo that they were working on. And that I thought, you know what? That that worked just the way it is. Let’s just throw it on there. There’s another one that toward the end called Teleport, which is another good kinda rocker that’s got a long outro where the violin comes back in and plays, some on the end of it.
That’s one that I really like. So overall, like I said, I I really, really, really enjoyed this album. Kinda poppy, kinda rocky, pretty lo fi and, you know, loose recording. Like I said, gone are all the grunge elements from their first album. You know, why did this album not get bigger than it did?
Why did it not gain any traction either at the radio station or, you know, you know, kinda in a wider sense? I really couldn’t tell you. I, you know, I think the songs are there. I really think part of it was the trouble they were having with their label. Obviously, it wasn’t getting a lot of promotion.
I also, though, like I said before, I really feel like putting all that extra stuff on there, all those extra song stubs and demo parts and all that really cluttered the record up and and probably turned some people off. And I think, you know, they would have been better served to have left all that stuff off of there. To me, you know, some of those little song bits are good, but I would like to have heard them fleshed out. You know? I would like to have heard what they could have done if they’d really worked those songs out.
Just having it as a, you know, a forty five second long little bit of a song just doesn’t really work for me. So I think that worked against it. But, yeah, I, you know, I couldn’t really tell you why it didn’t take off any bigger than it did. I absolutely love this album. I’ve played it a lot over the years.
I know we were kinda in sending emails back and forth. I don’t think either of you guys had heard it since it came out back in the nineties. So I’m interested to hear kinda y’all’s take on it after hearing it again after all these years later. But, man, yeah, I loved this album. I really wish it would have gotten a little bit better or bigger audience than it did.
But what did you guys think about it? I was trying to remember why I listened to this back in the day, and it didn’t grab me. And it didn’t. I remember you being a big champion of it. I remember hearing it probably only once, I’m gonna guess.
And I could not for the life of me remember, like, why that was that I went, well, no. Not for me. So listening to it again, you know, you mentioned that there are these little sort of snippets on there, these songs that sound unfinished and and, you know, maybe a demo ish. On a first listen, I think the whole album kinda sounds like that. It and I don’t mean that there aren’t songs on it.
There are. But it doesn’t really have a flow from beginning to end, at least not on an initial listen. And I think maybe that’s what it was back in the day. As I listened to it, it was too all over the place. It was too unfinished sounding.
And so I I kinda just dismissed it. Listening to it again, and I gave it several listens this time, it definitely has a lot of individual great songs. And I I particularly like and it’s most of the ones you mentioned. I really like, Beyonder. I really like Crockett Dick is the other one.
I do you mentioned those two, and I really like both of those songs. There’s several others that I like a lot a lot as well. It’s just this album for me doesn’t flow from beginning to end. And maybe what you’re talking about is the answer, is you take out those little short snippet songs. You take out some of the, for lack of a better word, filler on there, and maybe there is a solid album there.
That said, I think this is definitely worth listening to. It’s got some great stuff on it. These guys are very musically talented. I think they’re great songwriters. I think what you were saying about maybe knowing that the label was done with them and kind of throwing everything against the wall to see if it would stick or not is what this album ended up being, and it definitely sounds like it on an initial listen.
But, yeah, if you give this one some time, it definitely grows on you. I enjoyed it after listening to it a couple times. I got confused. It’s funny. I I wasn’t paying attention to the song name, so I was just kind of remembering, like, oh, I really like what I thought was the first song that just had an intro, but that’s actually not Carson Chorus.
It’s Beyonder is the song that that you had mentioned that I that I caught my ear initially. I was like, well, I can see why Keith likes this album because it is such a shoegaze forward song, but then that’s really not kind of what the album is about necessarily. That was my very first thing because I don’t think I’ve ever actually listened to the album all the way through. I think I’d heard a few songs that, you and I played on our Internet radio station probably. Certainly, I remembered Sprocket Dick for sure.
That was never a song that really super grabbed me, which which is maybe why back in the day I wasn’t someone that you would consider like a trip master monkey fan, but I liked it a lot more this time and I, or I liked it listening to it front to back. Definitely a little disjointed with the with the stubs. There’s a couple that I kind of, yeah, would love to hear fleshed out. I think that could have been something on it on another album. I think you’re right that the middle section is kind of the strong.
It’s kind of an interesting album in that it’s it’s got almost like a bell curve where I feel like the the meat of it’s right in the middle where most albums tend to be more front loaded I feel like. So that was kind of a curve ball too just as it it felt like it got better as you went for for a lot of it. I think both of you guys also chose a really like you you both chose bands that are very very college radio. True Master Monkey should have been a very big I can see why it wasn’t a commercial hit. I can it doesn’t have that song that’s just gonna jump out on MTV or at that time even, you know, commercial alternative radio was starting to to pick up a lot of steam, and I I can see why maybe it didn’t break through there, but it really should have been.
Like, it’s it’s got that eclectic but still upbeat and very radio friendly listenable sound. There there’s certainly two or three songs that you could see being on rotation right next to Pavement or Sabado or or or a shoegaze band, all, you know, Catherine Wheel even that we’ll talk about later. Like, it it seems to fit the format really well, but I I yeah. I don’t remember it. I guess I was in Lubbock in ’96, so I probably was listening to your your your version of KTXD because you were still there.
So, what you said about it is is I guess kind of my experience with it on college radio, which is that it didn’t really take off. I wonder if it did better in in other markets you know, or other college radio stations than it than it did in Lubbock, but it certainly isn’t one that you really hear a lot about. I doubt many people that are listening to this right now have have probably heard it and certainly worth it. Yeah. I’d highly recommend it.
I I guess you’re probably right. You know, I think it is a little disjointed. For my money, I thought it kinda works, you know. I like the eclectic nature of it. But, but, yeah, I can see why that might have turned some people off.
You know, and these guys broke up after this, you know, after the label dropped them and after they put this album out, they didn’t have any support, they broke up. I did earlier mention that they did come back in 2019 and do a, a reunion album. It’s called My East is Your West. And, if you like anything on practice changes, absolutely go check out My East is Your West. Just a really, really good album that just kinda came out of nowhere.
I mean, I didn’t know that these guys had released another album until I went back and was doing some looking at this. But, yeah, they put out this one more back in 2019. They got back together between, like, twenty five years later, put out an album, and it is really, really fantastic. It’s one I would consider to be a power pop album. So, if you listen to practice changes, if you like anything at all on it, I would highly recommend checking that one out as well.
That’s a crazy long gap between outposts. Like I think these guys have all been participating in other bands. If you look them up, you’re like if you read their their bios and stuff, they all this band disbanded, but then they all have been working with other bands. It’s like that. But when you go to Wikipedia, those band names aren’t in blue, if you know what I mean.
Like, there’s there’s no further information. But Yeah. These guys have all been working, you know, for all that time. I guess, when you listen to something like this, and it does sound so eclectic and so kind of, all over the map musically, I think guys like that are going to find their way back to each other at some point. You know, they’re gonna go out and do other things.
They’re gonna drive things and go, oh, well, there was that one band I was in where we did all that crazy stuff, and I wanna go back and do that again. And I think that’s how something like this how how a band like this comes back together. I kinda teased it a little bit. Next up, Scott has a an album from a band that I I think is a quintessential college radio band, in my opinion. I’m not sure if everybody has that opinion.
Maybe that’s why it’s on this list, but, Scott, you can tell us more about it. I’m not sure this band’s on everybody’s list either. So I I’m gonna talk a little bit about the dead milkman. They’ve come up on the podcast before. I know, there are some fans out there.
This band for me has always been sort of my secret shame, I will call it. I have loved these guys since the second I heard them, in 1985. I bought a copy of Big Lizard in my backyard. I have followed them pretty much since. That’s fallen off a little bit in recent years.
But for the first ten, twelve years of their career, I was a huge, huge fan of these guys. And I can honestly say that that’s something I don’t know that I ever really shared with anybody. I mean, you guys were my best friends for, you know, a good chunk of the nineties. And you probably don’t remember me ever talking about the Dead Note Men because I was secretly listening to them at home. I this is a band that I love myself and have a really hard time selling to anyone else, and I might have a trouble even selling it to you today.
In fact, I when this came up, I had a few albums that I had thought of for this, and this is the one I really wanted to do. But in the back of my head, I said, yeah, but I’m gonna have to make Michael and Keith listen to it. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. So that’s kinda where I’m at. But, anyway, so brief history of the dead milkman.
Like I said, their first album comes out in 1985. It’s called Big Lizard in My Backyard. It has a massive college radio hit on it called Bitchin’ Camaro. I’m sure probably most of the people listening to this have at least heard that song in passing, if not pretty familiar with it. That album is labeled as sort of, you know, mid eighties early punk.
I I’ve never really thought of them much as a punk band other than their attitude maybe is punk. Musically, I would put it much closer to rockabilly, probably. They’re kind of a jangly pop band that just writes really, really juvenile and and silly lyrics. That’s kind of the best way to describe them. As their career moved forward, each album got a little more musically proficient, a little tighter.
Big Lizard is followed up by Eat Your Paisley, which has two pretty substantial college radio hits on it, Beach Party Vietnam and The Thing That Only Eats Hippies. The album after that in ’87, is Bucky Fellini, which has Instant Club hit on it, which was also a college radio jam. Then in 1988, they released the album Beelzebubba, which is in probably, I would say, most of their fans’ opinion, their best album cover to cover. The reason I didn’t pick that album for this today is because I think anyone that’s been around this band, exposed to this band, familiar with this band, they have heard Beelzebubba, the album. If nothing else, you heard punk rock girl, which is hands down their biggest hit to date.
So I didn’t do that one even though it is probably their best album. So I guess what I’m saying is I’m gonna talk about the album that follows Beelzebubba. If you need a place to start with these guys, it’s probably not the place to start. I would start with Big Lizard in My Backyard or Beelzebubba. But, the album I’m gonna talk about today is the one that I think is almost criminally underlooked.
It comes out in 1989 and is called Metaphysical Graffiti. Now after this album, they would get signed to a major label. They would flop miserably on that major label. And a lot of people that talked about that at the time said, well, why did they do that instead of just making Beelzebubba two? Well, they did make Beelzebubba two, and it’s this album, Metaphysical Graffiti.
It does not have punk rock girl on it, which is probably why no one heard it when it came out. Out. It does not have a big single. It does not have a big, you know, get this on MTV radio single on it. But it does have, I think, cover to cover, some fantastic songs.
Like I said about this band, they are known for really silly, really goofy lyrics. And if lyrics bother you, a song like I tripped over the ottoman is not gonna win your heart over. It’s silly and stupid, and that’s exactly what these guys have always tried to be. But if that bothers you, listen to what is going on musically on this album. Songs like I Tripped Over the Ottoman and Methodist Coloring Book, and If You Love Someone, Set Them on Fire.
And you’re listening to these titles going, wow, that sounds dumb. Well, it is. But musically, there’s some really good stuff going on here. Cover to cover, this is musically probably as good as these guys ever got. Production wise, it is a really, really fun album, I think, to listen to.
It has a lot of different musical styles on it. There’s some ska stuff. There’s even, like, a lounge singer number that’s kind of good. A lot of jangly pop numbers. Some real good rockers.
The song that opens this album, Beige Sunshine, is one of the Dead Moments finest moments in my opinion. And it’s also one of the least silly songs they’ve ever done. It actually has probably some of the most normal lyrics they’ve ever dealt with, and it is a straight up rocker, just a great song. To those people that maybe fell off with this band after this because of albums like Soul Rotation and Not Richard But Dick where a record label tried to convince them that they needed to be more mainstream, they needed to get away from the loud, raucous yelling and screaming they’ve done before and write pretty songs, and it it did fail miserably. They did another great album after Beelzebubba, and it’s this one.
And so if you haven’t heard the Dead Milkman in a while, if you maybe only heard Big Lizard in My Backyard and Punk Rock Girl, if you never really gave these guys much of a chance, like I said before, you really wanna start with Beelzebubba. But if you know that album and liked it, go to the one after it. It’s Metaphysical Graffiti by a dead milkman, and now I can’t wait to hear what you guys thought after listening to this. I gotta out myself. Like, I was also secretly a dead milkman fan.
I was hanging out with you practically every day for years, and we never discovered that. It’s it’s kinda hilarious. I love the dead milkman. I really do. Probably not, like, as much as you, but punk rock girl was my introduction to them.
I definitely had not run across them until that song broke on MTV. But that was also right around the time that I first discovered KTXT in college radio and first kind of discovered this kind of this whole other layer of music that was underneath all the pop metal and stuff that I was listening to. So I was kind of starting to reach out and and hear weirder stuff. And the one thing I will say is I was always kind of predisposed to being open to weird stuff because like as a kid I was really into Devo and I mean if you’re into Devo as a kid you’re pretty much gonna be open to anything that gets thrown your way from then on. So so I wasn’t put off by the lyrics or, you know, the juvenile, and I was a juvenile, so that probably spoke to me at that time.
His voice is either gonna put you off right off the bat or not. I mean, it’s kind of like a put on classic punk rock voice and you’re either gonna immediately just kinda back away from that or not. If you can get past that and listen to it, I mean these guys on the one hand you’re like well they’re kind of a joke and on the other hand you’re like this is as punk as punk. These guys are punk. Like this is punk.
Have you ever met a punk? That’s this is what they’re like. I mean like this is punk rock. It is unabashed, a couple of guys being stupid and silly, but also I would argue that there are some really good kind of deep lyrics on this album. If you go act to, like, big lizard in your backyard in my backyard, probably not so much, but, like, this album has really great, like, Methodist coloring book.
I mean, I’m probably gonna play a clip from this right now. But that line because God hates war and God hates crime, but he really hates people who color outside the lines. It’s genius. That’s freaking deep, man. That’s not juvenile at all.
Like, I love that. This is them probably at the peak of their, you know right around the time where they were really everything was coming together for them. Yeah. What can I say? I I don’t know if that’s surprising to hear and I don’t know how many people agree with me.
I don’t know if Keith agrees with you. We’re about to find out, but I’m disappointed that I hadn’t heard this album sooner. I have to say I I had Big Lizard, I had Beelzebubba, and then I had Death Rides, the pale cow, which is kind of a compilation. So I knew a couple songs off of this. I didn’t really know the album front to back until today when I listened to it, and it’s it it really is great.
Like, I’m sure there’s people that aren’t gonna be able to make it through or that aren’t gonna like it, but for for certain people out there that maybe haven’t heard, you’re gonna love it, and you’re gonna absolutely wonder why you hadn’t been listening to the dead milkman your whole life. The dead milkman was kind of a blind spot for me. I didn’t really know much about him other than punk rock girl. I used to play that on retro radio back in the day. That was really kind of the only song I knew.
So I was, going into listening to this album, you know, pretty much just without a whole lot of expectation or a lot of background on these guys. You know, we when we had been talking about this, we’d been talking about it as albums that you got that no one else got. And, you know, I have to admit after listening to this one, I don’t get it. It just didn’t do a whole lot for me. It’s not terrible.
There are some good songs on it. You guys mentioned most of them. I really liked Methodist coloring book. If you love somebody, set them on fire is great. Dollar signs in her eyes is probably my favorite song on the album.
I really liked I hate you, I love you. All of those were good. But, yeah, overall, I I just You guys have both described it as being really punk and and not terribly punk. I think it’s really punk in aesthetic, but not as much so maybe in in music and execution, you know. I I think there is a little more, you know, eclecticism going on there than just kinda straight punk rock.
But, yeah, I have to admit, the lyrics did bother me. They really didn’t do anything for me. The guy’s voice didn’t do anything for me. So, overall, you know, this was not something that I would want to pop on and listen to a lot. But like I said, there were songs on it that I thought were really good, and I can understand why, you know, people would get into them.
And if if you’re not bothered by the guy’s voice and and the kind of some of the silly lyrics, and if you like the the kind of fast paced poppy punky kind of stuff, absolutely check it out. Just because it wasn’t for me wasn’t, you know, doesn’t mean it’s not gonna be for everybody else. But, yeah, for me on this one, I have to admit I was not a huge fan. You bring up, some interesting stuff, and I I I kinda knew this one wasn’t gonna be for you. And I’m not sure why I knew that, but I just kinda did.
I just kinda knew that it wasn’t gonna be up your alley. I I really don’t know that it’s gonna be up a whole lot of people’s alleys, but the the point of this was, you know, is it up mine? And it is. I wanted to point out something about the the vocals, for the Dead Miltman because they do have two vocalists. One of them is the sort of gravelly voice, punk rock voice that you hear on, I would say, most of the songs.
The other one is guy’s name is Joe Gennaro. The first guy’s name is Rodney. He goes by Rodney anonymous. He has a a real name, and I forget what it is. Joe Gennaro is the singer of the two.
He’s the guy that sang punk rock girl. He’s the guy that sings, the one you mentioned, Keith, the the light in her eyes or whatever that is on Metaphysical Graffiti. I forget the Dollar signs in her eyes? Ballad that’s worth the end. Yeah.
He’s the one singing that. This is where the dead melt man went wrong after this album is all of their albums up until this point have both of them doing vocals. One song here, one song there, all kind of on and off, sometimes together, but rarely. Someone decided, and probably because of the popularity of Pump Rock Girl, that that’s the voice that Deadnobin needed to have was that guy. Soul Rotation, the album that followed this one, is 13 songs that all sound like that song.
It’s him singing. It’s a little slower. It’s there’s no rockers on it. It’s it’s just a bizarre album. And and for a band that had really built what was granted a limited and, you know, maybe cult following, they just completely threw that out the window and tried to record a pop album.
They’ve honestly never recovered from it. They’ve put out three albums since the two major label ones that flopped. They’ve put out three albums since then. They’re all pretty good. They all kinda sound more like this and Beelzebubba, but they they’ve just never gotten any traction because they just completely abandoned everybody by giving up what was a pretty good dynamic.
You know? Neither one of these guys are Pavarotti, but they had a nice, you know, sort of this is the screamy punk guy and this is the singer guy, and we’re gonna work those two things together and bounce off each other. And they came up with this really unique and interesting sound that, you know, granted isn’t for everybody, but it was at least theirs. And then they just completely threw that out the window and tried to record a pop album and you know? And, you know, if if nothing else, when they’re both going at the same time, you really get a feel for those almost comical Philadelphia accents these guys have.
And and which is also part of their sound and and really what makes them, I think, a unique and and interesting band. And so every album up until this point, I will recommend as something that sort of carries that on. After that, you’re you’re on your own. So rotation is a is a weird animal. And, even as a big Dead Milkman fan, I I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve listened to it since it came out, and I have no desire to ever listen to it again.
You really get the, the Philly accent on, Cousin Earl, the last song on the album, which has kinda got the spoken word deal where he’s where he’s talking about Earl and all his travails. That one’s actually really funny. That, that thing where they do this sort of obviously improv to, you know, little interspersed things throughout the album, they did that on Beelzebub and this album as well. So that’s that sort of became a thing for a minute. They got rid of it afterwards.
But, you could tell they just got in the studio and started banging away on their instruments, and Ronnie would just talk into the mic and whatever came into his head. Some of it’s hysterically funny. You know, it’s not the most politically correct stuff you’ve ever heard in your life, but it’s really No. It isn’t. I mean, much like the intro to Bitchin’ Camaro.
I mean, that’s, like, like, one of the Well, exactly. Same songs has that same just telling a story, and you could tell it was a one take shot. Like, they didn’t go back and redo that intro. They even like, in bitchin’ Camaro, the version that you can hear recorded, there are obvious mistakes in it. They switch characters at one point, like the guy that’s going to the shore is all of a sudden the guy that’s asking the other guy about going to the shore, and they laugh, you know, that, yeah, that was obviously one shot.
Throw this out there. I said this to somebody the other day, and it’s really true. That part of Bitchin’ Camaro is why Bitchin’ Camaro is popular. The song Bitchin’ Camaro that follows it is totally forgettable. It’s forty five seconds of nothing.
It is the intro to that song that made it the song that it is. It made it popular. And so, yeah, they kinda carry that through. And those little spoken word things, they are ridiculous, but they’re also kinda funny too. Classic classic college radio band.
And oddly enough, I shouted out Mark Era, earlier because he gave us a suggestion for the the podcast episode. He has a good story about the Dead Milkman, so you can go and check out his interview after this one, if you wanted to learn more about them. He has had a good story. Yeah. Very fun band and that leaves me with, my band and my choice for, or albums that that I like that other people didn’t get.
I think you guys probably did a better job of choosing than I did. I after, like, I was listening to this and kinda looking up some of the press and stuff. I think a lot of people did like this album, but it it still feels like one that that I, like, love, love, love. That was probably in my top two or three of the year. So it came out in ’97.
Catherine Wheel, Adam and Eve. But it’s not one that that anyone ever talks to me about or, like, mentions to me. It just doesn’t come up in conversation a lot or never did. And and so I guess maybe I have the perception that it wasn’t as appreciated as as it should have been or could have been. Catherine Wheel had three previous studio albums plus compilations album, and I think we’re kind of a, you know, they’re they’re a UK band, obviously, so some of it is always that, like, they were much bigger in The UK than than in The States.
I I I think they had a pretty solid run on college radio. I know they did a KTXT and and we played songs off of all the albums. Judy Staring at the Sun was a pretty big breakthrough hit that probably got played on most college radio stations in the country, I would say, and I think got some MTV airplay as well. So it’s not like they’re an unknown band, but it’s not just one of those names that instantly comes to mind when you think of, like, nineties alternative rock bands. By the time you get to ’97, in my opinion, it’s kind of where alternative rock starts to eat itself a little bit and you start to, you know, you have on the one hand, you have albums like this coming out and, you know, Radiohead, Okay Computer, but on the other hand, your your Smash Mouths and your Sugar Rays of the world are starting to also get airplay on the same alternative radio station.
So alternative is is getting more commercial. It’s starting to lose, I think, a lot of its edge. And so maybe that’s why this album kinda stood out to me that here’s here’s this band that already kinda has a pedigree that put out what I think is the best of their career. I think they’re at the height of their powers at this point. I think the songwriting, the production, everything comes together on this album, but yet I don’t think it’s really necessarily the one that got the most attention.
I I feel like from a college radio perspective and from an audience perspective, they were maybe on a downhill slope whereas quality wise, I feel like this is kind of the pinnacle. So it’s there’s like this, you know, kind of mismatch between where I feel like they were quality wise and and what kind of audience they were gathering or what kind of airplay this this record got. To me, it’s a little it drops off a little at the end, although Scott and I had a we’re briefly talking before we started recording and he likes it all the way through and I I I think it is solid all the way through, but I will say that I think the first seven or eight tracks are are the best. It’s to me, they’re showing off so much that they have a song called satellite on here that has not one, but two absolutely beautiful choruses. Like it’s it’s it’s got this great verse and then it goes into the chorus and you’re like, damn, this is a good song.
That’s a great course. And then there’s a whole other course that’s just as good right after it. They’re like, we have we’re we’re just blowing course. We’re blowing through courses now. We can we can stick to in this song.
But Love Satellite, Delicious was I think the big single off of this if if big is the right word, which I don’t necessarily think it is. You did hear Delicious a little bit on commercial radio, I think. I personally love, I like the intro. I love Future Boy, which is the first kind of real track on there. I love, My Solitude and Satellite to Me is is the highlight of the album.
But, I I think both of you guys are familiar with Catherine Wheel in general, but I don’t really kinda remember talking to you guys about this specific album. And I don’t I’m kinda curious, like, did it drop off your radar at this point? I think all of us were just out of college radio, like, by a year or two, but some of us are still working in commercial radio or in clubs or doing whatever. So so, yeah, I was kinda wondering, like, did this cross your path? Did you did were you kinda keeping up with Catherine Wheel, or or is this kinda your first time going back and listening to it?
I came to Katharine Weil a little bit late. I didn’t get into them heavily when they were popular, you know, at the radio station. I knew some of the songs, you know, obviously, the ones that we played. But then after the fact, I I ended up buying Chrome and Happy Days both, which, I also really like those albums. It’s funny on this one because when I was going to listen to it, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever heard it all the way through from end to end.
And yet somehow in my, my Apple Music library, I have seven of these songs that I cherry picked at some point or another. I, you know, wasn’t sure exactly how that had happened. So I went and listened to the album and listened to it all the way through. And now I know why I have seven songs off of it because for my money, there are seven utterly fantastic songs on this album. And then there are also five other songs on this album.
And so at some point or another, I had listened to it and went and cherry picked the ones that I liked off of it at some point, you know. But I will say, man, when this album is on, it is just incredibly on. The seven songs that I’m talking about that I liked on it are really, really, really good. And you mentioned Satellite, which probably my all time favorite Katherine Wheel song. All of them though, I mean, just the ones that you hadn’t mentioned yet that I like.
Phantom of the American Mother is a fantastic song. Here Comes the Fat Controller is a fantastic song. When this album is on, it is on to a degree that is almost impossible to state. I mean, these songs are really, really good. And then, like I said, the other five songs on it do absolutely nothing for me at all.
So at some point, in the past, I listened to this album and cherry picked the ones I liked. But, but, man, yeah, hard to beat the this album when it’s on. So, Michael, I told you when we before we started recording that, you know, we had three albums to deal with this week, and you won. Hands down. This is just a fantastic record.
And I my history with the Catherine Reel is that, you know, I loved Chrome when it came out. I really, really loved happy days when it came out. That round was right up my alley. Now if you look at, you know, this guy sort of history, that is considered their most rocking album. So, naturally, that’s the one I was gonna gravitate to.
Why I did not ever hear this album until this week, I can’t tell you. I don’t know how this man fell off my radar. I don’t know why I didn’t know, that this album existed, but, wow, this is just a phenomenal record. I I was just blown away at how something so good cover to cover for me. I didn’t I I’d be curious, Keith, to hear the five songs you don’t really like because I don’t think I have for any.
I mean, there’s some I like more than others, obviously, But I there’s really nothing on here that stands out as something that I would skip. I mean, I just think this is cover to cover, one of the best albums we’ve talked about, honestly. And, you know, you mentioned, you mentioned Fusion Boy. Keith, you mentioned Phantom of the American Mother. That one I’ve really liked.
Satellite, we’ve all mentioned. That, obviously, I think is the gemstone in this album’s crown. But, I really liked the two sort of epic sonic tracks at the end, Goodbye and For Dreaming. I like both of those quite a bit, actually. They’re the little bit longer, more sort of sonic soundscape y songs that maybe, you know, when these guys get lumped in with shoegaze, that’s kind of what they’re talking about, I think, is these guys do have the ability to do those sort of long, sonic epic, you know, shoegaze y sounding songs.
Although this album is not that. It is pretty much a straight up rock album that’s a little mellower maybe than these guys were known for being, but, man, had a fantastic result. This is one that I am really disappointed was off my radar for so long because I have I have found a new album, to to enjoy. This is a really good one. Yeah.
I’m not it’s the intro and the outro are two of the ones that I’m, you know, not a big fan of. And they’re just kinda throwaway pieces at the beginning and ending of it, or at least they seem throwaway to me. I don’t wanna insult the Catherine Wheel guys for calling their stuff throwaway. But, those two, obviously, were not just you can tell by the production on them, everything were not meant to be, like, kind of the the lead singles on the album or anything. The two longer ones you mentioned, Goodbye, Four Dreaming, are two of the ones that I I was not a big fan of.
Although, of those two, I like Four Dreaming better. And then Thunderbird was the other one that I didn’t care for just a whole lot. But Yeah. Everything else on that album is, like, an a plus song. It’s Yeah.
It’s really amazing that there’s seven just fantastic songs on it. And then, like I said, the rest of it really didn’t do much for me at all. Yeah. I don’t know how it also comes right after satellite. So, I mean, they maybe they could put stairway to heaven there.
You might be disappointed. Yeah. Also true. I mean, how how satellite wasn’t a breakout hit? I I really don’t know why this album wasn’t marketed better.
I I really don’t know because I think like I said, ’97 was a weird year, so I I don’t know. You know, maybe and Catherine Wheel did have, you know, kind of a reputation, I think, of being a shoegaze band. Their their earlier albums definitely were are more samey in the terms of I don’t think they have the diversity that this album has. They don’t, this album, you know, they slow down a little bit. I think they pull back that wall of sound guitar, and it lets them the melodic kind of nature of the instrumentation really shine, and it lets their songwriting shine more.
But I think the songwriting is also better on this album than it is on some of the other albums, which I love. And and there’s hints of this also on, like, cats and dogs, which is their b sides compilation, where you hear some of the songs that didn’t make the albums, and so they don’t necessarily fit that mold that like, I feel like if you listen to Chrome front to back, you have some upbeat songs, some slower songs, but it’s wall of sound. It feels like just all the way through. It’s just pummeling you with with sound, you know, from for the vast majority of the album. And and this album doesn’t do that.
It’s it’s more much more varied. Just just more thought put into the production and into the instrumentation. And then and I think they let themselves put those songs on the album whereas if you listen to, like, cats and dogs, you hear, like, oh, they were capable of doing this before, but they held those songs back or they felt like they shouldn’t be necessarily, you know, featured on an album for whatever reason. And it felt like they they must have felt like they had permission to to put those kinds of songs on the album because Adam and Eve has that yin and yang, which is what it I think was missing from their earlier albums. One of my favorite one of my all time favorite albums, probably one of my top 10, I think all time.
I think that, you know, a lot of times when a band that’s known for sort of big sonic production strips that back, it’s not always a good thing. It it usually kind of goes the other way. I think in this case, it actually maybe is a little bit of an improvement. And I’m not saying this is necessarily a better album than the ones before, but it’s so different for them. It sounds like them, but it doesn’t kind of at the same time.
But I wanted to I wanted to just mention this really quick because it really stuck out to me. In 1997, when this album comes out, Big Takeover magazine, which I’m not familiar with, but this was quoted on on their, bio, names this the number one album of 1997. Number two, Okay Computer by Radiohead. So, the critics heard this. You know?
They just It’s a big swing. Yeah. They just didn’t do a very good job of letting me know it was out there, I guess. But but, yeah, this is this is a good one, guys. Give it a listen if you haven’t.
And we should also note that, you know, we’re talking about their maybe deal dialing the guitar back a little bit on this album. It has still got a lot of heavy guitar on it. It’s not to say that this is suddenly, like, an acoustic, folky album or anything like that. I mean, there are some loud guitar songs on this album. So if you’re a fan of early Catherine Wheel loud stuff, there’s still gonna be some stuff on here that you’re gonna like.
It’s a little less of that shoegazy production that that sort of, you know, listen to all these crazy distortion sounds going on behind this wall of guitars. It’s not that. It’s a little more stripped down. But, yeah, I think it’s I I think maybe we’re giving the the the impression that this is a mellow album. It isn’t.
It it’s just produced a little differently than what they did before it. Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re right. I think earlier I think some of the songwriting may have been there, but it was obscured by just a a very, very thick wall of sound guitar sound that isn’t there, but that isn’t to say that guitars aren’t there and rock isn’t there.
It’s that very specific kind of thing that they were doing. So, yeah, absolutely. Catherine wheels, a great band just to dive into their catalog in general. They only have one more album after this and then, and then they hung it up. So it’s not like a deep, deep catalog.
So kinda like Trip Master Monkey, they have just a handful of of little gems that you can go listen to. All three of these though, another another great chance to go. And if you haven’t experienced I’m gonna guess a lot of people haven’t experienced Trip Master Monkey. Just guessing that. That’s probably the case.
So, yeah, I’m hoping that there’s some people out there that are gonna go check that out. I think probably familiar with Dead Milkman, but maybe not that particular album, Metaphysical Graffiti. So if you maybe dropped off of Dead Milkman or you’re only familiar with Beelzebubba, I highly recommend listening to that album. Again, it’s hit or miss. It’s it’s I love it or hate it kind of album probably, but but definitely For you or isn’t, you know, that’s Yeah.
That’s it. You’ll know probably two songs in if you’re gonna if you’re gonna wanna hit. You will know by track four if you’re gonna like the album or not. That’s Yeah. Pretty safe to say.
Yeah. But definitely worth it. And and Catherine will, you know, I think is probably the most accessible of the three and and probably the one that that will catch you here, but also maybe one that you’re you’re already familiar with. So if not, go check it out. Thanks for listening.
We, we have a lot of fun doing these podcasts, and we appreciate you guys listening in. Make sure you let us know what what albums that you really dug that no one else did on our social media or on our web page. Some fun stuff. We are thinking about working on an episode where we tried to defend your list of alien abduction albums. So if you haven’t heard the Alien Abduction episode, it’s basically Desert Island Discs, but with a caveat that you’re abducted from a certain place in in time.
And in this case, it’s your college radio booth. So you can only grab, like, what’s in the booth with you. So you’re kind of limited to what would have been in college radio airplay at the time you were in college radio. It’s a fun episode, and we’re thinking that we might take some suggestions from our listeners. We already have some.
But if you wanna give us some some list of things you would take, then we might try to defend those ourselves. That was a fun idea that Keith had, and so we need a couple more list of of albums that you would take with you if you were gonna get it back. I think we let you do five albums if I remember right. Yeah. It was five.
Yeah. So let us know on social media. That’ll be a fun one to do. Once again, thanks to Scott and Keith for joining me on the podcast, and thanks to everyone out there. Join us next time on 35,000 Watts, the podcast.