You may remember The 5.6.7.8s as the band in that scene of Kill Bill, and damned if it isn't one of the realest things captured on film (that year?).
or that Vonage commercial.
1994 to 1996 was a glorious time, ripe for them to put out two good albums. That's all I got streaming here anyway, although there are actually a handful of other albums between 1991 and 2014 that aren't showing up in my digital library. [But that's what I'm listening to- whatever is available streaming.] They released two new songs in 2016 - still great! Yes, the vocals are raw. That's why we are here! File under garage rock - for real! And yet they were in that mainstream movie and commercial. Love those 90s. They are a Japanese trio that is playing American rock music, so there's that.
And Wikipedia says,
"Even though the group mostly sing their songs in Japanese, they do many covers of American rock and roll records from the 1950s to the 1980s. However, their official website and most of their fansites and fanclubs are in Japanese, as they have their biggest following in their home country."
(But you know what Wikipedia does NOT mention? That time The 145s from Austin,TX played in Japan with the 5678s, in what I can only imagine was called The 145678 Tour. As there is now a cheesy cover band also called the 145s, limited evidence of their very existence continues to diminish, but I found this. It might as well be on geocities. Love it.)
The 5678s are super fun. Enjoy them at your next mixer. I guess we are stylizing it as The 5.6.7.8s, but I can't bring myself to use the apostrophe.
One of the great things about this project is that if anyone ever asks me, "Hey - do you like 50 Cent?" then I can be like, "No," and it's not some sort of half-baked, unfounded position. I have listened to every single 50 Cent song at least once and found them all to be severely lacking. I don't have to like everything. At least I listened to it once.
Please don't tell him. I do not want to piss this guy off, but... he mumbles. He's a truly awful singer. The beats are boring, and the music is an afterthought. I suppose in that golden era of 2005, before America suffered mass-shooting on a semi-regular basis, someone thought it would be a good idea to recreate all the horrific sounds of a mass shooting on an album, but I have no idea who considers that valid entertainment. Not me (and I'm pretty open minded). Even the hits are mild."In Da Club" may have set a Billboard record as the most listened-to song in radio history within a week, but it is totally forgettable; I have literally already forgotten it. "Candy Shop" is not as good as it sounds like it should be. I'm sorry- I normally come to the defense of East Coast rap and I <3 NYC, but this stuff does nothing for me. His six albums felt like 20; I did not like the redundant and hackneyed themes of the lyrics and found it all to be virtually amusical. And then I gotta listen to Eminem too?! Nah.
At one point he had a viral video of him making fun of an autistic teenager working as a janitor in an airport. Another time he got hauled into court for claiming to have no money but posting pics of stacks of bills on Instagram. He has various complex business ventures. He's got feuds with Ja Rule, The Game, and Rick Ross among others. He's had various ugly civil and criminal matters to handle. I guess that's the whole point of the appeal to some, right? Legit street cred? That and the abs. You really can't argue with those guns either. Glad he started acting. Not trying to be mean, but seriously.
ELEVEN albums. I'll give'm this - it is consistent. It does not change. It does not evolve. It does not ever innovate or get any better. It might get a little worse. But it goes on and on and on. Song after song the same. I wanted to quit. I wanted to give up on the whole project. I wanted to listen to anything besides another 311 song, but I did not. And now I am invigorated about this whole listen-to-all-music-chronologically project: if i can listen too eleven 311 albums in a row than I can listen to anything!
The first album kinda sounds like a demo tape, but it's deeper, dubbier, and groovier than most anything that follows. Good for them for continuing to play some of the songs from the first two albums live even these days.
They achieved a mainstream breakthrough with 1995's self-titled non-debut (self-titled non-debuts are always irritating), known as The Blue Album because it was blue. It seems everyone in college had that album. I did not, but I remember seeing them live in college. More accurately, I remember they played at my college and I got very drunk. Their big hit was "Down" (See below), but I genuinely like the song "Don't Stay Home," which was technically the first single from that album. It's a good song with a great message.
Here they are in all their mid-1990s glory:
I also really enjoyed their cover of Human Rights' "Who's Got the Herb?" from the Hempliation compilation that NORML put out in 1995. The hardcore break at the end is pretty satisfying. I'll admit to being more familiar with this version than with the original. (Although if "Human's Rights" doesn't sound familiar it is HR from Bad Brains.)
But then it just goes on and on. They tour with G Love and Special Sauce and O.A.R. They get another mild hit by covering The Cure. They have a 7th album, and 8th, a 9th. It just keeps going. The songs are all relatively the same. They hosts cruises to the Caribbean. They have big events on March 11th every year. They sponsor NASCAR and their own cannabis vapor pen dubbed the "Grassroots Uplifter," which I guess is a song or album. I don't know, it all sorta started blending hopelessly together. It is all very monotone.
And can we talk about the live albums? The first one, after their big hits and pretty impressive mainstream stardom, is not good. It sounds like someone playing their studio album loudly in front of a crowd. There is so little improvisation or anything interesting for the audience to hang their hats on. (I went to AllMusic guide instead of Wikipedia for the first time in years to try to get some sort of subjective confirmation that I had just listening to ten consistently sub-par albums in a row by the same band, and AllMuisc was at least able confirm the pointlessness of 311's first live album). But then their next live album, recorded many years later in New Orleans- where they have also celebrated 311 Day occasionally, is a real mind-boggler. I had just listened to every single song of theirs in a row before listening to this live album and then they hit me with a set of ALL new songs I had never heard before, with an orchestra, maybe one old song. It was super-weird, and not in a good way. Them playing with an orchestra was not all-bad, but it was also good because their discography was finally coming an end.
Although some would even call them nu-metal or rap-rock, and they are irritating sometimes (frequently?), it's sorta hard to hate these guys. They DO like to party. And they do preach positivity consistently, and yet they and their fans got mercilessly mocked (See below). It's hard to get aggressive in the face of their apparent mindfulness. But it's also hard not to get aggressive in the face of their actual music. I might have punched the steering wheel and screamed a few times towards the end of the several weeks it took to listen me to this band's entire discography from start to finish. I did not listen to the Greatest Hits collection, so I can't speak to that. I make no apologies for the exclusion.
And then this happened in 2016 - right after I'd been through all this - but I'm not exactly OK with it
3 Inches of Blood is a very fun metal band from Canada. At first they had two lead singers - a growler and a screamer - but then the growler left after blowing his vocal chords out. The band broke-up after five albums. The first two are good enough to start with. The middle one Fire Up The Blades (2007) was when they really hit their stride; it's very solid, soaring metal fantasy. The one after that Here Awaits Thy Doom continued well enough in the same vein, but their final album was not as great.
The theme is usually fantasy - orcs and demons and such. Good! They are also big on praising the concept of metal itself, as the last album title illustrates. Also good! Musically, they are definitely coming from the old-school metal school of rock, especially British stuff. The Judas Priest comparison must be made. Manowar too I suppose. Just check out all the patches on lead singer Cam Pipe's awesome denim jacket.
They have some excellent songs from that middle period. My favorite is "Trial of Champions," mostly because of the great use of an organ. "Beware the Preacher's Daughter" is almost LOL funny. "Deadly Sinners" is tight and memorable. I also enjoyed hearing "Execution Tank" as the lead single on the follow-up-to-the-best-one-yet album. Here they are playing it live:
Here's an interesting bit from their Wikipedia page: Following a fight with Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler on November 10, 2007 at the Hard Rock Hell festival in the UK, 3 Inches of Blood fired drummer Alexei Rodriguez and issued an apology for his behavior.[17] The fight left Glockler with broken glasses and a black eye. Four security guards intervened and beat Rodriguez severely, hospitalizing the drummer with a broken elbow. He was replaced by Ash Pearson (of Sound Of the Swarm & Just Cause) who later joined the band permanently.
I saw this band live once at the Ottobar in Baltimore. It was super fun. It was very un-crowded and we were right up front by the stage. Pipes joked about how it was a Battle of the Bands or something. The opening band, Children, blew our minds too: it was so great seeing a band that we had never heard anything from before be so good and interesting and heavy and freaky.
2 Unlimited is sorta great. Still - either they were bigger in Europe or I just barely missed their peak with my attention, but I could never point them out in a line-up nor really even identify their name before this project. However, they have two massive and omnipresent early techno hits. The duo has a cute origin story where the guy was remixing something for a friend and unbeknownst to his friend he added his lady friend singing on the track, so then they form an overproduced duo. Later they break-up, then have a reunion, then the original female lead is replaced, then she comes back, then she is replaced again most recently.
"Get Ready" has survived indefinitely as a constant jock jam at sports and other hyped events. Apparently it is particularly huge at hockey events. If you know any techno song you know this one. Rave to Dawn (1993) is where I first (and repeatedly) heard it. That was a great compilation, but it has not aged well; early techno sounds as primitive as it is.
But also "Twilight Zone"! It seemed to find its way into mixes of every conceivable sub-genre of electronica over the decade after its release.
I really don't think there should be an apostrophe in this band's name, but that's how I see it presented more often than not.
They are from NYC. They probably had a following based on tapes prior to the first album; I recall a famous song "BBQ" that became a live favorite. They self-identify as nerd-core rap and even have a song called "Riot Nerrd" on their first (and best) album, 1998's Supermercado! I saw them in 1998 at the Capitol Ballroom in DC with a girl from NY who vaguely knew them. They put on a great show and were super friendly and inspiring chatting with us at the merch table afterwards. They didn't make much of a splash after that; they were one of many unfortunate victims of their label Capricon folding. Their most recent and last album came out in 2003, but their most recently brief reunion tour was in 2012.
"2 Skinnee J's performed at Woodstock '99 and later criticized the event".[2]
I think it's weird that they have a song on one of their two later albums that makes fun of metal-rap, but they kinda are that; in fact they played on a cruise with 311. Trying not to hold that against them. It's mostly good stuff that is far better than most rap-rock. Positive vibes and interesting instrumentation help.
Here's the first song from their debut album. Good opening track, nice political allegory, and a very 90s video:
The feminist in me wanted to hate this band more than I did, but really I could hardly stop laughing.
However, I must say there are far too many 2 Live Crew albums and they continue well past their prime. It's a bit of a one-trick pony. It's a very dirty pony, and they ride that dirty pony all the way to 1998 before fizzing out in a blur of solo projects and line-up changes. In their defense, those handful of late albums are certainly made tolerable by their consistency, but they are definitely not in the same vein as their classic work. And their work is classic. I must admit to shouting some of these lines in a schoolyard in 1980-something- without having any idea what I was saying.
The whole thing reeks of Florida, but I learned they only relocated there from LA because their first single was doing well in Miami clubs!
After the success of some early singles, As Nasty As They Wanna Be (1989) will always be a classic hip-hop record, and perhaps it earns that honor. It does not seem like anybody was this filthy before with literally every song being explicitly vulgar and pornographic. Of course they are also heroes for taking their obscenity lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court. Record stores were being busted in Florida for selling the album. At the trial Henry Louise Gates Jr. testified in their defense that their entertainment was rooted in African-American folklore and traditions. They won and celebrated on their next album Banned in The USA, the title track of which effectively samples Bruce Sprinsteen, where they gloat hilariously and patriotically- turning their shenanigans into something larger. They also bolstered our rights to fair use in parody, after getting sued by [the people who owned the copyrights of] Roy Orbison and winning again. A surprise standout in their catalog was the live album that comes out right after those two breakthrough albums. It shows a band at the top of their game absolutely owning a crowd, that hilariously chants back all the dirty lines with astonishing enthusiasm. All the current hits are performed ably and some of the older tracks are teased. There is some of the usual nastiness, but I could not abide by the part where they bring girls up on stage and boo fat girls and stuff. Of all the nasty things they talk about doing to and with women (it sounds mutually pleasurable?), for me that moment on the otherwise excellent live album went too far and made me question the innocuousness of everything else.
Perhaps, remember them, if nothing else, for this awesome party song from the Firday soundtrack, which despite it's vulgarity is really just a watered-down version of their early-career libido:
I bet a lot of people who never even heard "Me So Horny" love the heck out of that song. Note also the Jimmy Smith sample.
It is nothing if not offensively crass - mission accomplished. I'm sorry, but is there a member of this band called "The Chinaman"?! It's not clear to me if he's actually of Asian descent or what. He also had a solo career (as did most of these guys) as Fresh Kid Ice. He also wrote a book:
Maybe I'm not trying hard enough, but information seems scant on this act. They are early techno.
I heard them on XL Record's CD The First Chapter, which came out in 1990. So...they are British?
Weirdly, in the streaming library the song from that compilation does not appear, and their only 2 EPs are confusingly from 2011 and 2016. The streaming library is weird sometimes.
Was this techno as briefly ubiquitous as we remember? Maybe this song sounds familiar or maybe we are just remembering the songs it samples*:
They are not to be confused with 2 Unlimited - although that mistake could easily be made.
Kinda crazy band name that has never been adequately explained to me, but this is wonderful bubble-gum pop group from New Jersey. (The one guy still sells pianos at his showroom in the suburbs.) As a few bonus tracks on some recent remasters make clear, despite originally disbanding in 1970s these guys continue to pump it out on the oldies circuit, and I'm OK with that. At least there are some of the original members still involved. Unexpectedly, they put out a Christmas album in 2007! "Simon Says" seems like such a ridiculous idea for a song, but its infectious melody was stuck in my head all day. "Goody Goody Gumdrops" is great too, but I'm a sucker for a songs about candy. Still, the less said about "Indian Giver" the better. It did sell a million copies though. They don't have much of a discography but a few gold records on the pop charts of the 60s makes them a worthwhile footnote to pop rock history. Surely The Ramones heard this at least once.
Yet, good for them for not being afraid to STILL play "Indian Giver"
And here they are lip-syncing on TV in 1968 with their other #1 hit. Way to mine the juvenilia
* Note- they do NOT play "Yummy Yummy Yummy" - that's the Ohio Players. But file them under the same bubble-gum pop rock of the 1960s.
