Thursday, May 14, 2015

Grunggae...


A few years back I used to DJ (very badly) on a Thursday night for a few hours in a club night, that was listed as a Rock Club. To me, it was more of an Indie Club, although you still had to play some rock standards like Welcome To The Jungle for the diehards who came along early to have a dance before all the indie kids turned up. There were certain records that you played every week because you knew that you were guaranteed a full dance floor. It worked even better if I managed to play the song all the way through without pressing the wrong button and cutting the song off half way through. Looking back now it really was pretty awful. A large part of my "wages" for the night was made up of the boss buying me drink after drink while I was DJ'ing which probably accounts for the shambolic nature of my brief tenure playing records in a club.

One of the songs that was guaranteed a full dance floor was The Breeders' mighty Cannonball. Despite having to play it every week for months on end, it still remains one of my all time fave tunes, with its instantly recognisable bass intro and wonderfully nonsensical lyrics. Similiar in style to some of the stuff that The Pixies were doing at the time, with its loud/soft dynamic, it somehow only manged to make it to Number 40 in the UK chart, although the video directed by Spike Jonze and Kim Gordon helped propel them into the Billboard 100. Whilst researching tonight's post I discovered that the track was originally called Grunggae, a combination of grunge and reggae. I think most people would agree that Kim Deal made the right choice, re-naming it Cannonball. One of the defining songs of the indie scene in the 90's, I hope this makes it onto Brian's excellent Top 100 tunes of the 90's series over here.

Cannonball

7 comments:

  1. The only song I can think of that turned 'em out faster was Waiting Room by Fugazi.

    None of that would have been possible if the song had been called...I can't even type it.

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    1. Another song with a great bassline Erik, can see why it would fill the dancefloor...

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  2. I'm not sayin' it is or it isn't, Scott, but I loved the Breeders, long before and after Last Splash, and not having them somewhere on a '90s list, well, you would have to be some kind of idiot not to include them... but I'm not sayin'. Thanks for the plug, pal. More stories about your DJ days, please.

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  3. As Brian says more DJ stories required Scott

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  4. Brian and CC - have got a few more decent ones that will appear in the future. Don't want to spoil you with too many at the one time...

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  5. Ha ha ... sounds EXACTLY like a description of me back in my own club DJ days (or nights, rather) ... more of that, please!!!!

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  6. More to follow Dirk, no idea how I managed to get away with it for so long. At least once a night I would just stop a record while it was in full swing, much to the annoyance of those on the dance floor.

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