The Basics: In 1995, original Weezer bassist Matt Sharp turned a small, low-budget side-project into a minor hit with "Friends of P"--a new wave-ish tribute to producer Ric Ocasek's supermodel wife Paulina Porizkova. The Return of the Rentals--a collaboration between Sharp and members of that dog. as well as Weezer bassist Pat Wilson--was picked up by Madonna's Maverick Records label and thanks...
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The Basics: Cutting a balance between alternative rock and Americana that owed a debt to their Southwestern roots, the Tempe, AZ-based group The Refreshments never reached the levels of fame of their hometown compadres the Gin Blossoms. And while they briefly sneaked their way onto the modern rock charts with the clever tale of a Mexican crime caper, their lasting contribution would be the TV t...
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Hell has frozen over! I've written a new blog post. I apologize for not updating this blog regularly and can't make any promises about the future, but I will try my best to make this a consistent thing. I've gotten requests to do this band since the beginning, so hope you all enjoy.The Basics: Seven Mary Three (aka 7M3--their decal ready abbreviation) were a mid-90s grunge band who released the...
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So, sorry for the long delay. I finally got a job in this economy and haven't had as much time to devote to posts as I might like.Unfortunately, after doing some research I came to find that Lisa Loeb is not, in fact, a one-hit wonder. Not even in a technical sense. She had two top twenty hits ("I Do" and "Do You Sleep?") following her number one single, "Stay."Nonetheless, here's a few of her ...
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Next week, I promise...
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Few movies encapsulate an era like Ben Stiller's Reality Bites. That's not necessarily a compliment. I'd argue that only 1995's Empire Records bests it in the "middle-aged studio exec attempts to cash in on the humor and angst of the grunge generation using sub-John Hughes script, indie actors and eclectic soundtrack" department.Released in 1994 and starring Gen X superstars Ethan Hawke and Win...
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What was it about '90s rock music that lent itself so easily to female-fronted rock groups? How many times did you turn on MTV to see a cute girl sporting a dress she probably stole from her grandma and a hair color not found in nature standing in front of a wall of Marshall stacks singing about how much guys suck? They certainly weren't invented in the '90s. Janis Joplin, Patti Smith and Debbi...
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A funny thing about pop music is that there's always room for the singer-songwriters. A movement begun in the '70s thanks to the popularity of Bob Dylan (who was really just doing his best Woody Guthrie), "singer-songwriter" became a genre in its own right and was made popular by artists wielding nothing more than a piano or acoustic guitar, their sweet voice, and some lyrics that, more likely ...
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You know when a friend of yours keeps pushing a band/movie/TV show on you, and you've tried your best to like it, but it's just not catching? For instance, the HBO comedy Flight of the Conchords. Most of my friends dig the show, and I love the hell out of it. But I have one friend who just can't get into it. He's seen an episode or two OnDemand, but it didn't catch. He'll tell me a line that he...
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In the wake of Nirvana's success, tons of bands deemed "grunge" got signed to major labels. I'm not talking about the indie, alternative bands that majors raided to fill up their rosters in a vain attempt to discover the next Nirvana. No, I'm talking about the bands that were heavily mining Nevermind for how to construct this new sound even before Nirvana's tragic end.Around the same time, a yo...
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Hey all,There was a bigger-than-usual response to the Superdrag post last week, so I thought I'd follow up a bit on the band's new album.Industry Giants was released Tuesday, March 17, and is currently available in stores. If anyone wants to listen to it before you buy it, it's streaming over at Buzzgrinder.Also, Superdrag frontman John Davis did some blogging over at the same site early last w...
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SPECIAL NOTE: "Straight Outta the Buzz Bin" posts will be reserved for hit rock singles that were huge on Modern Rock radio and especially MTV, but may not have achieved the Top 40 or Top 100 status that might normally be required to make them a one-hit wonder. Future installments may include (but are not limited to) Wax, The Refreshments, and others.Superdrag have a similar story to many other...
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There is perhaps no less likely candidate for mainstream Top 40 success than the San Antonio, TX band Butthole Surfers. The name alone is probably the most profane thing Casey Kasem ever uttered--at least on air, sending up a red flag for parents and family groups all over the country. And that's not even to mention their bizarre brand of offensive psychedelia influenced noise rock and absolute...
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The ubiquitous nature of some one-hit wonder songs cannot be measured by singles charts or requests to Casey Kasem or Rick Dees. Take, for instance, "Mickey" by Tony Basil. A number one hit, yes, but the song has had staying power, showing up in all kinds of movies, TV shows, commercials, sporting events, and absolutely anything that has to do with cheerleaders, legitimate or not. It's a song t...
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This week we're talking about an artist who has the rare distinction of having been a one-hit wonder twice...Dan Baird.Who is Dan Baird you might ask? If the name might not ring a bell, perhaps his first band will--The Georgia Satellites. A Southern Rock group out of Atlanta who owed as much to the The Faces Ronnie Lane and Ron Wood as Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant, the Satellites formed in the ear...
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Like a lot of bands we cover on this blog, Jars of Clay are not really a one-hit wonder at all, but rather, a band with a huge fan base who only had one hit song that made the leap to mainstream radio.Jars of Clay were also the band that put the Christian alternative rock scene on the map. Christian Rock itself didn't come fully formed until the late 1980s and early 1990s. Up til that point, "C...
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One-hit wonders come in so many forms. For some, it's the only decent song they ever wrote. For others, it's just the only one that hit big.But for a band like the Cardigans, it's a different story. The Cardigans are a Swedish band who have been making music since 1992, and have had continual success before and after their big U.S. hit "Lovefool" in the UK and other non-English speaking Europea...
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Erstwhile teen soap star and singer Jamie Walters is appearing alongside other obscure former teen idols like Jeremy Jackson, Eric Nies and, er, some other dudes who will test your pop-culture trivia knowledge (their use of the word idol is about as loose as your average Rock of Love contestant...hi-yoooo!) for a new VH1 show entitled Confessions of a Teen Idol. The show sports the tagline "Fam...
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Of all the negative things to come out of the '90s alternative music boom, one of the positives was how the surge of interest in alternative styles of music allowed female fronted groups to move to the forefront. While women rockers like Janis Joplin, Blondie and Joan Jett had experienced success in the male-dominated rock world with and without the use of their sex appeal, those artists seemed...
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Often times, one-hit wonders come from the soundtrack to a hit movie, whether they be a theme song or just a track off the original motion picture soundtrack. But rarely does a previously released song from an album that came out half a decade earlier shoot to the Top Ten.Such is the unusual case of The Proclaimers--the slightly freaky looking Scottish twins duo Craig and Charlie Reid straight ...
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