We like it loud on Stuck In Thee Garage, but sometimes it's good to mix it up. This week, I played songs about quiet in hour 2 of the show (after playing new music from Social Distortion, the Mountain Goats and Telehealth in hour 1). That doesn't mean the songs themselves were quiet; some were quite the opposite. At any rate, I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
This playlist is quiet. Maybe a little too quiet:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Social Distortion - Born to Kill/Born to Kill
Drakulas - Garbage Strike/Midnight City
Weird Nightmare - Never in Style/Hoopla
The Mountain Goats - Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds/Days
Cola - Forced Position/Cost of Living Adjustment
Telehealth - Cost of Inaction/Green World Image
Broken Social Scene - Only the Good I Keep/Remember the Humans
The Laughing Chimes - Trapeze Baby/Behind Your Blue Fields
The Lemon Twigs - Fire and Gold/Look for Your Mind!
Conscious Pilot - Internet Support/Human Poultry
Gottlieb - Optimized Child/The Far Fallen Fruit
Dread Spectre Council - Raven/Thetans
Pope - Song Two/BFM
Kim Gordon - Dirty Tech/PLAY ME
Sub*T - Standing Room/How My Own Voice Sounds
Body Shop - Exit Drill/Sex Body
Hour 2: Quiet
Phantom Handshakes - Quiet Quit/Sirens at Golden Hour
Shame - Quiet Life/Cutthroat
Cloud Nothings - Silence/Final Summer
Dyr Faser - Reductive Silence/Impressions
Smashing Pumpkins - Quiet/Siamese Dream
Fews - Quiet/Into Red
Mark Lanegan - Radio Silence/Somebody's Knocking
Pedro the Lion - Quietest Friend/Phoenix
Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Our Quiet Whisper/All in Good Time
Bob Mould - The Silence Between Us/District Line
The Beths - Silence is Golden/Expert in a Dying Field
When you start thinking about the passage of time too closely, it can get a little overwhelming. For example, it has been 45 years since 1981, which is kinda nuts, but when you realize that 45 years before THAT was 1936, that's really unnerving. All of which is to say I played songs from 1981 in hour 2 of Stuck In Thee Garage this week (after playing new music from Drakulas, Conscious Pilot, Cola and the Lemon Twigs in hour 1). It's most definitely o-tay!
This playlist is wookin' pa nub:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Drakulas - White Off Your Nose/Midnight City
Conscious Pilot - Face Down/Human Poultry
Gottlieb - What Are You Worth/The Far Fallen Fruit
Cola - Hedgesitting/Cost of Living Adjustment
Broken Social Scene - Relief/Remember the Humans
Dread Spectre Council - Hooves & Cloves/Thetans
Ian Sweet - Criminal Kissing/Shiverstruck
The Laughing Chimes - Zephyr/Behind Your Blue Fields
The Lemon Twigs - Nothin' But You/Look For Your Mind!
Weird Nightmare - Where I Belong/Hoopla
Pope - Newboi/BFM
Sub*T - Mirror Image/How My Own Voice Sounds
King Tuff - Invisible Ink/MOO
Body Shop - Fallacies/Sex Body
The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Emo Band/Acknowledge Kindness
Metric - Leave You On a High/Romanticize the Dive
Heavenly - Skep Wax/Highway to Heavenly
Hour 2: 1981
R.E.M. - Radio Free Europe (Original Hib-Tone Version)/Single
The Specials - Ghost Town/Single
Pete Shelley - Homosapien/Homosapien
The Stranglers - Golden Brown/La Folie
Romeo Void - Never Say Never/Benefactor
Black Flag - Rise Above/Damaged
X - We're Desperate/Wild Gift
The Gun Club - For the Love of Ivy/Fire of Love
The Cars - I'm Not the One/Shake It Up
Gang of Four - Cheeseburger/Solid Gold
Prince - Controversy/Controversy
Van Halen - Push Comes to Shove/Fair Warning
Billy Squier - Lonely is the Night/Don't Say No
The Kinks - Destroyer/Give the People What They Want
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) (1993)
By the time the 1993 rolled around, there was a lot going on. Grunge was omnipresent (you could get the whole look at K-mart for short money), alt-rock was on the charts, hip hop and new jack swing was all over MTV. It hardly seemed like the right time for a comeback from a sweaty, theatrical 300-pound singer who peaked 16 years earlier, but that's exactly what happened.
Meat Loaf (aka Marvin Lee Aday) started performing in the late '60s with his first band Meat Loaf Soul, opening for Them and Question Mark and the Mysterians and later (under the band name Floating Circus) opening for the Who, the Stooges, MC5 and the Grateful Dead. He joined the Los Angeles production of Hair, did some recording for Motown and also acted in plays, including the original cast of The Rocky Horror Show.
In 1972, he started working with songwriter Jim Steinman on an album called Bat Out of Hell, but they didn't get serious about it until a few years later when Meat Loaf decided to focus on music exclusively. They struggled to find a record label, but talked Todd Rundgren into producing and playing guitar on the album, which was adapted from a rock musical based on Peter Pan that Steinman had written. They were finally signed by Cleveland International Records, a subsidiary of Epic, and was released in October 1977.
The initial response to Bat Out of Hell was indifference. It was full of long, bombastic, wordy songs that didn't connect with label execs, but got a good response from radio programmers. A Toronto rock station, CHUM-FM, started playing songs from the album in January 1978 and listeners were enthusiastic. Similarly, videos made for some of the songs generated interest in the U.K. and Australia. Eventually, the U.S. caught on and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" became a huge hit. I remember hearing it on the radio all the time in sixth grade, complete with the Phil Rizzuto baseball play-by-play and the sexual innuendo.
Eventually, Bat Out of Hell sold over 43 million copies worldwide, certified 14x platinum in the U.S. alone. It's one of the biggest selling albums of all time. But Meat Loaf struggled to follow it up. He lost his voice after constant touring and drug use, so he turned to acting and cleaned up before recording 1981's Dead Ringer. The album was also written by Steinman, but it struggled in the U.S. (although it did hit #1 in the U.K.). Loaf had a falling out with Steinman and put together the next album without him, but it did even worse, failing to chart at all in the U.S. Adding to this, Meat Loaf had money struggles and faced 45 lawsuits totaling $80 million, which led to him filing for personal bankruptcy.
After a few more album duds, Meat Loaf and Steinman made up and started working on Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, which was released in September 1993. They went back to worked on the first album, releasing operatic and over-the-top rock as exemplified by the first single, "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)." Like "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," the new single featured Meat Loaf duetting with a female singer. And like that song, the singer from the recording did not appear in the video; on "Paradise," original singer Ellen Foley was replaced in the video by Karla DeVito.
With "I'd Do Anything," the female vocals were done on the album by Lorraine Crosby, who was credited as "Mrs. Loud" in the liner notes. But in the video, the female protagonist was played by model Dana Patrick, who lip-synched Crosby's vocals.
On the album, "I'd Do Anything" is 12 minutes long, but it's cut down for the video to a concise 7:48. Directed by Michael Bay, who replaced original director David Fincher after the latter's proposed $1.7 million budget was rejected, the video was filmed for $750,000. Apparently, Bay and Fincher had feuded in their music video directing days before becoming big-name movie directors; Fincher later worked with Meat Loaf in 1999's Fight Club.
The video was based on Beauty and the Beast and The Phantom of the Opera, with Meat Loaf made up to look like a hulking deformed beast who is on the run from police and hiding out in a castle. He comes across a beautiful woman in the woods and drama ensues; meanwhile, the police are on his trail. And then (spoiler alert), they embrace and Meat Loaf transforms back into a human and they ride off into the distance on his motorcycle.
The song never really specifies the one thing he wouldn't do for love, leaving that up to the listener's imagination.
It's not an exaggeration to say the video was in constant rotation on MTV at the time. Power ballads were big business, as Aerosmith and countless hard rock bands had discovered over the previous decade or so. The song was getting played to death on top 40 radio as well, becoming Meat Loaf's first and only #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100. It also topped the U.K. Singles Chart and was the best-selling single of 1993 in the U.K.; indeed, it went #1 in 28 countries. Meat Loaf won a Grammy award for the song as well.
Bat Out of Hell II sold over 14 million copies worldwide and this time, Meat Loaf was able to sustain his success a little better. His 1995 release Welcome to the Neighborhood went platinum in the U.S. and had some top 40 singles. He continued to release new albums and tour over the next few decades, including Bat Out of Hell III in 2006. His last album was released in 2016. He died in 2022 at age 74.
If nothing else, Meat Loaf's career proved that doing your own thing comes back into style every 15 years or so.
We typically steer clear of religious talk in these here parts, but this week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about religion in hour 2 (after playing new hotness from the likes of Weird Nightmare, Dread Spectre Council and Sub*T in hour 1). It's good stuff! Take it from Uncle Baby Billy.
He's not asking for the world here:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Weird Nightmare - Headful of Rain/Hoopla
Dread Spectre Council - Summon the Sparks/Thetans
Pope - No One (Kiss for a Treat)/BFM
Sub*T - Overcomplicate/How My Own Voice Sounds
Body Shop - Limits/Sex Body
The Orielles - Wasp/Only You Left
Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize - Parasite (Nine Inch Noize version)/Nine Inch Noize
Brother Ali - Another Country/Single
Gottlieb - Pipe Bomb/The Far Fallen Fruit
The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Heaven of Love/Acknowledge Kindness
The Bevis Frond - Romany Blue/Horrorful of Heights
Motorists - Scattered White Horses/Never Sing Alone
Metric - As If You're Here/Romanticize the Dive
Snail Mail - Butterfly/Ricochet
Gladie - Talk Past Each Other/No Need to Be Lonely
Courtney Barnett - Another Beautiful Day/Creature of Habit
Hour 2: Religion
Guided By Voices - Fly Religion/Universe Room
Fucked Up - Divining Gods/Another Day
Jesse Malin - God is Dead (feat. Agnostic Front)/Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin
Tunde Adebimpe - God Knows/Thee Black Boltz
Militarie Gun - God Owes Me Money/God Save the Gun
Bad History Month - God is Luck/God is Luck
The Kills - God Games/God Games
Los Campesinos! - Holy Smoke (2005)/All Hell
Beach Boys - Our Prayer/The Smile Sessions
The Afghan Whigs - I'll Make You See God/How Do You Burn?
Sugar - Tilted/Beaster
Motorhead - (Don't Need) Religion (live)/Another Perfect Day
The Flaming Lips - God Walks Among Us Now/In a Priest Driven Ambulance
Eldridge Rodriguez - The Girl Who Made God/Slightest of Treason
Yves Tumor - God is a Circle/Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Simply Consume
Hallelujah the Hills - God is So Lonely Tonight/Single
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Everything's Ruined (1992)
Last week, I wrote about one of the most expensive (and ridiculous) music videos ever made, MC Hammer's 14-minute magnum dopus, "2 Legit 2 Quit." But what happens when you don't have much of a budget to make a video?
In 1992, Faith No More was at an interesting spot. The Bay Area band had been around since 1983 (under that name; previously the group was called Sharp Young Men and Faith No Man). They scored a rock radio hit in 1987 with "We Care a Lot," but things blew up for FNM after the addition of new singer Mike Patton and the release of their 1989 album The Real Thing. Specifically, it was the single "Epic," a Chili Peppers-esque hybrid of funk and metal that took off, especially thanks to the video getting popular on MTV.
The band rode that album for nearly two years, touring extensively, playing Saturday Night Live and the MTV Video Music Awards, and maintaining popularity in both the alternative and metal scenes. For their follow-up, Patton was more involved in the writing process and the results were unexpected, as the band completely moved away from the funk-metal sound of the previous albums and into weird and wonderful territory. Released in June 1992, Angel Dust sold well, but fans of The Real Thing weren't quite sure what to make of it.
The first two singles, "Midlife Crisis" and "A Small Victory," received expensive, high concept video treatments, and by the time the band wanted to release "Everything's Ruined" as the third single, their video budget from Warner Bros. didn't have much left. So FNM and director Kevin Kerslake, decided to make the cheapest video possible.
The song itself is pretty straightforward by Angel Dust standards, a catchy ripper of a song. But the video is something else. It features the band (and some kids) performing in front of random B-roll footage of a couple getting married, wildlife, explosions and some graphic surgery. The extras in the video were found through a competition on MTV's Most Wanted, an MTV Europe show.In one scene, the band pretends to run away from footage of a giant tortoise. It's simultaneously ridiculous and awesome.
"It was our idea to take this further and make a video as cheap as humanly possible, in one of those video booths like they had at county fairs, where you sing and dance in front of a blue screen," keyboardist Billy Gould wrote in response to a question on the FNM blog. "We didn't quite get to do that, but we got it as close as possible."
I never saw "Everything's Ruined" on MTV back when it came out, as it likely got played infrequently and late at night. But thanks to YouTube, you can now watch it for yourself and see how, like one commenter noted, it's both the worst and greatest rock video ever.
I get the appeal of nostalgia, especially when things appear so bleak at times in the present. But while I reject the unimaginative claim that there's no good new music anymore, I nonetheless enjoy taking a ride in the ol' time machine every so often. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs in reverse chronological order from 2026 to 1992. Hail to the king, baby.
Awright, you primitive screwheads:
Hour 1: 2026-2010
Artist - Song/Album
The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Is It You, or Is It Them?/Acknowledge Kindness
Shame - After Party/Cutthroat
Mannequin Pussy - Loud Bark/I Got Heaven
Pardoner - Dreaming's Free/Peace Loving People
Oceanator - From the Van/Nothing's Ever Fine
Ovlov - Land of Steve-O/buds
Coriky - Too Many Husbands/Coriky
Ex Hex - Tough Enough/It's Real
Albert Hammond Jr. - Far Away Truths/Francis Trouble
St. Vincent - Sugar Boy/Masseduction
Jeff Rosenstock - Festival Song/WORRY.
Speedy Ortiz - Puffer/Foil Deer
Death From Above 1979 - Always On/The Physical World
Savages - No Face/Silence Yourself
METZ - Wasted/METZ
Wild Flag - Electric Band/Wild Flag
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Mighty Sparrow/The Brutalist Bricks
Hour 2: 2009-1992
Art Brut - Slap Dash for No Cash/Art Brut vs. Satan
The Raveonettes - Dead Sound/Lust Lust Lust
Les Savy Fav - Rage in the Plague Age/Let's Stay Friends
Destroyer - Your Blood/Destroyer's Rubies
Bloc Party - Helicopter/Silent Alarm
The Futureheads - First Day/The Futureheads
Ween - It's Gonna Be a Long Night/Quebec
Spoon - Something to Look Forward to/Kill the Moonlight
Stephen Malkmus - The Hook/Stephen Malkmus
Sleater-Kinney - All Hands on the Bad One/All Hands on the Bad One
Piebald - Mess With the Bulls/If It Weren't for Venetian Blinds It Would Be Curtains for Us All
Cat Power - Cross Bones Style/Moon Pix
Elliott Smith - Ballad of Big Nothing/ Either/Or
Sebadoh - Worst Thing/Harmacy
Jawbreaker - Sluttering (May 4th)/Dear You
Luscious Jackson - Energy Sucker/Natural Ingredients
