I’m here to talk about two bands that both had enormous hits when I was in middle school. Chumawamba, with Tubthumping (which most people know as the “I Get Knocked Down” song,) and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, with Zoot Suit Riot.
Most people liked these songs a lot while they were on the radio, then forgot about them. I didn’t; I actually bought “Forever” by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, and my mom bought me the Tubthumping album.
I didn’t have much musical taste back then, but I do now, and I can tell you these two albums are two of my favorite albums of all time. Why? Because the music on them is really, really good. I don’t know how many actual fans there are of these bands, but the music on their CDs besides the one song that became the huge radio hit is actually very good. I need to stop staying up this late…
My contribution to this list is Harvey Danger - Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?. I know Harvey Danger had a couple of other questionable hits with “Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo” and “Sooner or Later”, but neither of those measured up to “Flagpole Sitta”. Some of the other songs on WHAtMG are really good though: “Carlotta Valdez”, “Private Helicopter”, “Jack the Lion”, and “Wooly Muffler” are all songs that I enjoy.
Pity the ‘a-ha’ fan. They say they like ‘a-ha’, and you say, “Oh, yeah, I seem to remember ‘Take on Me.’” And they get all snitty and say, “They didn’t just do that song! They did lots of others!”
‘A-ha’: a really quite good band obscured by an early hit.
Many people don’t realize that the Zombies, most known for “time of the season”, were actually an incredibly inventive, interesting band who should be held as equals alongside the Beach Boys and the Beatles.
Chumbawamba were the first band I ever saw live, sometime around 1991. I liked a couple of their albums, but their worthiness just grated - there’s only so many agit-pop songs about miscarriages of justice or the iniquities of capitalism you can hear in a row without grinding teeth.
Thirteen albums, stretching back to 1986, isn’t a bad run. I suspect their lack of hits has more to do with their (generally admirable) refusal to play the record industry game and their (less admirable) one-trick musical style.
Mind you, their collaboration with rapper Credit To The Nation on Enough Is Enough is by far and away the best non-hit they had, much better than that bloody drinking song.
I’ve been a Chumba fan since 1985 (a penpal taped me an early demo, which I still think is the best thing they’ve ever done). I like “Tubthumping” as well, but I did have to do some work to convince people just hearing them for the first time then that there was so much more to them than that.
A lot of people, particularly in America, think of the La’s as a one-hit wonder (“There She Goes”) … but the album it’s from is a classic from start to finish.
Going a bit further back, I always loved the entire first Icicle Works album, even though most people thought that apart from the single, “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)”, it sucked.
I’m a huge Cherry Poppin’ Daddies fan, along with many of their late-‘90s swing revival contemporaries, the Royal Crown Revue, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (my online namesake), Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Brian Setzer Orchestra: probably the biggest five bands to break into the mainstream for that short period. The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies are probably unique among all of those in that they weren’t just a suit-wearing swing band, but they played several different musical styles ranging from ska to punk to country to metal to Vegas lounge cheese to straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll.
Also, their lyrics (written by frontman Steve Perry–NOT the same guy from Journey) were much wittier and more interesting than the “zoot suit baby cadillac boogie jump martini swing” cliches that most of the other swing bands of the time sang about. “Zoot Suit Riot,” their one big hit, was actually based on a historical event from the early '40s, where zoot suit-clad gang members, rowdy sailors on shore leave, and the police got into a major brawl through the streets of Los Angeles.
Most of the '90s swing bands featured excellent musicianship and a great sense of fun–honoring music of the past while updating it for younger audiences, but the fad died completely except for a few smaller scenes scattered around the country. Luckily, most of those bands are still around, in one form or another.
The Flaming Lips were something of a one hit wonder when She Don’t Use Jelly off of their Transmissions from the Satellite Heart became a radio hit.
They started to get a bit of attention again with Fight Test and Do You Realise? from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, but between those two albums, they released Clouds Taste Metallic and The Soft Bulletin, two of the greatest albums of the 90s, the latter of which is hailed by some as being one of the greatest albums of all time.
Just popped open my copy of the Billboard Book of Top Forty Hits (I have their book of one-hit wonders, but it’s 13 years old).
I like to start at the back.
It has:
Warren Zevon, who had a #21 hit with “Werewolves of London”, and no other top 40 hits. I think many on this board could agree that a much greater portion of his catalogue rates much higher than merely “listenable”.
Same for Frank Zappa, who hit #32 with “Valley Girl”.
But then on the same page, you have “(I’m Gettin’) Nuttin’ For Christmas” (#21 for Ricky Zahnd and The Blue Jeaners) and “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)” (#1 for 6 weeks for Zager & Evans). Anyone want to defend the legacy of these two acts?
Marcy Playground had a minor hit with “Sex and Candy,” then pretty much dropped off the cultural radar as far as I could tell, but the self-titled album it came off of was a rock-solid piece of work. Thier second album, Shapeshifter, is one of my top-ten favorites, and they recently came out with a third album, MP3 (appropriately enough, the first album I ever bought and downloaded on-line) which was also pretty damned good, if not quite up to the standard they set with their second album.
Spin Doctors! Sure, everyone loved “Two Princes” and subsequently forgot about them (or confused them with other one-hit wonders), but I went out and bought their CD because I liked “Two Princes” a lot. I mistakenly got “Turn It Upside Down” (which does not have “Two Princes”), which was pretty fortuitous cause I loved it! “Cleopatra’s Cat” is probably one of my favorite songs. Their other CD (“Pocket Full of Kryptonite”) is good as well.
Being a ska fan, I gotta say Mighty Mighty Bosstones and The Specials (2 hit wonders… but whatever). Definately more to those bands than “The Impression that I get” and “Too Hot”&“Ghost Town”, respectively.
And I want to second Cherry Poppin Daddies and the rest of those 90s swing bands. Definately some of my favorite bands right there.
I’ve been a Blur fan since 1990, but many people only seem to know “Song 2” (aka “Woohoo”). And that. Song. Blew. They did it on purpose, to prove that they could actually get famous in the US if they wanted to. I’ve heard them say otherwise today, but I have Mr. Albarn and Mr. Coxon on videotape talking about doing it on purpose just to prove a point You see, around that time period, they were being heckled for only being popular in Europe (and Japan), but couldn’t seem to break into the States, like Oasis did. (blech).
You see, around that time period, they were being heckled for only being popular in Europe (and Japan), but couldn’t seem to break into the States, like Oasis did. (blech).