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

Sorry, I do not vote in poll threads (nor do I start them). I will stand by that assessment of Pop Tatari, though.

listening to interstate right now, first time in a while -- definitely not the best pell mell album but great nonetheless.

Do you think any of these actually paid off for the labels?
Pure Guava must've made some dough by now.

Trenchmouth was really trading

Raging

Yank Crime for me...will be checking a load of these out though, sweet thread!

Do you think any of these actually paid off for the labels?

royal trux definitely did not

Pitchfork: You started making Accelerator with Virgin but it was released on Drag City. What's the story behind that?

JH: We dictated the whole thing, actually. We requested to be let out of the contract after Sweet Sixteen. We knew that [Virgin] couldn't get their head around what we were doing. But having signed the contract for three records, they were going to have to pay us for a third record no matter what. And in the contract, we were given total artistic free reign-- we'd administer our own budgets and we didn't have to have them sign off on anything.
So after Sweet Sixteen came out, we basically freaked the fuck out of [Virgin]. We told them that we were going to make this other record right now, and that we were going to do it on eight tracks with no producer. Then we'd have the lawyer convince them that it would be easier for them to give us all the money for that record and not have to spend anything to promote it. That was our game. So we got exactly what we wanted, because the record was paid for by Virgin, even though it wasn't even started when we got the money. Then we went about recording it however we wanted and finished up the trilogy as it were.
NH: It wasn't really a relief to get away from Virgin since we had a good deal-- I think they were pretty lame though. Our [Virgin] deal was for two LPs straight out, then they had an option for the third, but they had to decline by a certain date. We got paid one fee if they declined, one fee if they accepted-- and then if they declined, they had to buy out the remaining options on our contract. If they had stuck with the contract, they would have put out Accelerator, Veterans, and Pound4Pound-- all of which would have been done with bigger producers, and they might have eventually been able to break one of them. But fuck them.

ha never saw this video before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGI6mbD0E9A

love Firewater, bums me out that Cop Shoot Cop's albums don't seem to be in print or on itunes/spotify, etc.

who could have predicted this wasn't going to fly off the shelves!?!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0MzSeqFbaZY/TpzchghicMI/AAAAAAAAAAk/GC23OaCxtAI/s400/Royal%20Trux.jpg

feel like this is the apex of major label weird
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a16igonZo20

it's funny at the time there was so much hand-wringing and angst about The Man co-opting the underground, but now looking back on it, it's like it was free ice cream day at ben & jerry's

http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/images/15/music/the_man.jpg

in a sense the underground was co-opted by signing everybody and showing them that anything beyond niche careerism was too hard a mountain to climb

also kind of funny how boomers get to be all WE CHANGED THE WORLD while 90s nostalgiacs are more "man remember when we dressed funny and the economy was decent"

would love to write a book full of stories about the creative and/or financial ruination of so many people involved in this gold rush. Our Band Could Be Your Tax Write-Off.

I didn't know Yank Crime was on a major! I haven't listened to half of these. That Mr. Bungle album rules but I voted Boredoms

― friday goodness thank it's (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, January 11, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If I recall correctly they were signed as a condition of Rocket from the Crypt's major label contract. Speedo wanted both his bands signed.

mid 80s probably more remembered for funny clothes and financial prosperity? the Nirvana generation still has plenty of illusions about how the world was changed.

the memoirs by dean wareham and the semisonic drummer definitely go that "lol majors" route

and yeah i realize those are broad generalizations but c'mon some dude

xposts
it's hard to say really what the long-range effects of this goldrush were since the bottom fell out of the music biz right after this period,...
and not because they signed a bunch of wackjobs, but because people stopped buying records. if people still bought zillions of records, i bet the majors would still splash out for longshot/niche/cred/vanity projects like these.

actually cds were selling more than ever in the late '90s when all these guys got dropped, they just weren't buy alternative cds

oh yeah - don't doubt this crop would have been dropped, just think the cycle of more far-out major signings would have repeated if not for the crash

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.