The 40 Weirdest Post-'Nevermind' Major-Label Albums (according to Spin)

it'd be interesting to see similar lists for the 60's-80's

I'm not sure about the order, but these 3 for me:

Flaming Lips (half this album is still some of my favorite Lips stuff)
Ween (love most of the album, but only a couple songs still get played)
Mercury Rev ( I still listen to this. it's a roller coaster of beauty and noise)

Yank Crime for me, one of my favorite records, and certainly the most influential to me when it came out. By far the biggest "event" record on this list for me.

Disco Volante for me.

That RTX video is hilarious.

Voted 'Steel Pole Bath Tub' - Chicago record store and label Permanent Records released their swan song, 'Unlistenable,' last year. It's named after the Slash Records A&R team's reaction when they brought it to the table. It's pretty friggin' awesome too. Just looked up their wikipedia entry and it seems they've had a good run of making video game music!

― BlackIronPrison, Friday, January 11, 2013 10:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

always been curious about these dudes. a friend of mine told me he saw them open for Faith No More once and that instead of playing their own originals, they just played Sabbath's "Paranoid" for 45 minutes. And I don't mean a 45-minute jam of Paranoid, I mean they'd play it through to completion, stop, then start it again.

haha, sounds like they lost a bet

ha, sounds like something they would do! pretty sure they did a version of paranoid on one of their albums too btw

the one time i saw them they were supporting the melvins but iirc also they played the second support slot too under the name "duh!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5FqS4XFOto

^ this song of theirs is sooooo fucking great btw

Saw Steel Pole Bathtub with The Fluid and Mudhoney in 1989 - all three bands were opening for GWAR at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ. Don't remember much about 'em.

The three I've owned at some point (not sure if I still do) are the Mercury Rev, Ween and Butthole Surfers. The one I'd be most likely to want to listen to now is the Mercury Rev.

fontanelle 4eva

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

are we supposed to vote for the best or the weirdest

fav, i think.

Vote for fav.

Kevin Martin must have A++ powers of persuasion if he managed to convince someone at Virgin that God were a "jazz" group. Voted for it due to it being the only album on this list to feature members of Henry Cow, Naked City or Bill Fay's band.

Voted for God.

i voted trux of course. i would have voted jesus lizard (so weird they were on a major, i guess death grips was on a major just last year so plus ça change etc.) but it's not their best album by any means.

lots of good choices here--Melvins come really close--but goddamn I love that Pell Mell record and always forget about it

Hmm. I always thought God were on the jazz offshoot, but I dug the cd out and it was on Venture instead which was Virgin's "ambient/modern classical" offshoot. Which is possibly even less likely.

Here's the catalogue list: http://www.discogs.com/label/VENTURE

Wow. That's some set of records.

That is a great list indeed!

Reminds me that Techno Animal were on Virgin too weren't they? And obviously so too were the Ambient Series CDs that Kevin Martin did:

- Ambient 4: Isolationism (KK Null, Disco Inferno, Jim O'Rourke, Labradford, Aphex Twin etc)
- Macro Dub Infection vols 1 & 2 (Coil, Tortoise, Spring Heel Jack, Laika etc)
- Monsters, Robots & Bug Men (Bardo Pond, Flying Saucer Attack, Long Fin Killie, SOTL etc)

These are all pretty weird comps and there's no way I could see them coming out on a major now, but they're probably only post-Nevermind in a chronological sense (they're more of an extension of the other tiles in that series that were kind of post-rave electronica or spacey new-age ambient type things)

^ at the time, those three titles seemed to be specifically aimed at Wire readers. One thing that's slightly strange from a Virgin marketing POV is that they all seem to be specifically directing *away* from major label music

directing the listener

Those Macro Dub Infection comps were marketed as ambient dub type things weren't they? Though obvious cross-over with drum 'n bass, post rock etc.

voted Royal Trux, I obviously need to check a whole load of these records out though.

Those Macro Dub Infection comps were marketed as ambient dub type things weren't they?

Oh sure, I only bring them up because of the Kev Martin connection, who somehow got himself the job as Virgin's go-to man for weird music in the early 90s.

gotcha. David Toop's Ocean of Sound comp (and the other comps he put together around the same time) were also on Virgin. Certainly some interesting A&R choices going on there!

Oh yeah, those things - more flirtation with the Wire readership!

i would have voted trux except sweet sixteen is one of my least fave albums by them. so i did the boring vote for yank crime.

Only one I've heard is Pell Mell, iirc.

Pure Guava is one of those albums where track 3 will gets stuck in my head, and I forget it's there and go about my business, and then 10 minutes later I'll hear track 7 or 8 playing in my head and then realize the entire album had been progressing without being aware of it. It was the first weirdo album of its type that I had ever heard when I was 13. Bums me out hugely that repping for it was immediately followed by people saying "fuck ween." Y'all haters are markass bustas. I don't actually wish for you to eat shit and die.

pure guava would have been one of my other top choices, along with disco volante, pop tatari, and boces.

tbf, 95% of ween hatred is just people hating ween fans

they're mostly lame, but i'm not.

i believe u

so i did the boring vote for yank crime.

I wonder why this is considered a boring choice? Certainly not a boring answer to me (I am extremely biased though), but also, I spent years trying to get people to talk/listen to this album and it seemed to have slipped by most of them, even those into Fugazi/Slint/June of 44(and Rodan) etc. (not exactly like Drive Like Jehu, but "big" guitar bands of the era that everyone I knew listened to in some capacity) Somehow this just did not get into their rotation, perhaps BECAUSE it was on a major label. Wasn't until the early 2000's or so that I found other folks who had spent time with this record at all, which says something about whom I was hanging out with for sure, but also just seemed to be a lost record for a lot of people that should have heard it.

Just curious if other people had a similar experience with this record or, as n/a's comment seems to suggest, for a lot of people this record was a big deal when it came out with their friends and has been considered great from that time forward?

i just meant there's already a ton of other people voting for yank crime in this thread. but it was certainly seen as a classic album when i was doing college radio in like 98/99.

jehu was sort of a blink and you missed them kinda band, so it took at least a couple years for people to catch up. i even saw them play in 94 or thereabouts but didn't really pay attention to the record until a few years later.

drive like jehu - yank crime: classic or dud?

Cool, thanks. Won't clog this with any more DLJ talk, just curious.

dunno what to vote for here as i love a lot of these albums but i like the yank crime love. was big into early rftc but jehu blew them away

ok its fudge tunnel or unsane since noones mentioned either

sad that AG killfiled me :(

and jjjusten by the looks of it

what what?

oic

didn't butt trumpet win a Spin contest looking for the worst band in America? I'm assuming that was *before* they were signed ... ? help me out here, I don't really feel like googling for the history of butt trumpet

pretty sure the a&r guy meant to sign poopshovel instead but just got confused

34 MERCURY REV - BOCES (COLUMBIA, 1993)
27 DRIVE LIKE JEHU – YANK CRIME (CARGO/INTERSCOPE/ATLANTIC, 1994)
26 FLAMING LIPS - HIT TO DEATH IN THE FUTURE HEAD (WARNER BROS., 1992)
17 ROYAL TRUX - SWEET SIXTEEN (VIRGIN, 1995)
4 THOMAS JEFFERSON SLAVE APARTMENTS - BAIT & SWITCH (AMERICAN, 1995)
1 BOREDOMS – POP TATARI (REPRISE, 1993)

I own and like all of these and have heard the Ween, Flipper, and Jesus Lizard records ... probably voting for TJSA

This was the exact time frame that I worked in college radio (1993-97), definitely a weird time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRtrFVtAgRo

Notes from the LP back cover:

"Album done in a $50.00 a day studio that friends own. It's in the stone basement of a 3 story house built in the early 1900's. We only broke a few things while there. One reel of half-inch tape running at slow speed. Original title of album was "Harvard Zombie Meat" which basically means "educated people without a clue". The lyrics document this theory, though a few songs MAY be considered "positive."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXXJOUeHQcY

col poo said one of those bands? i need to read better