One Hit and That's It: Willi One Blood

Note: The "One Hit and That's It" will feature people who, for whatever reason, didn't have a second single--or not one to speak of--and seemed to virtually disappear from the music business. This is the first entry.

As a teenager, my friends and I wiled away our Saturdays at boarding school by taking the bus to the Hamilton Place Mall in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The suburban mall is a melting pot of every social group of teenage society: rednecks, skaters, goths, preps, sluts, indie kids, Anime/Dungeons & Dragons kids, stoners, hippies, etc. My friends and I watched from the food court, munching on warm pretzels and Chik-fil-A, wasting time until the next showing of Blade by fitting everyone who walked by into one of the above groups.

When the ultimate mall rat--the wigger--walked by, decked out in Tommy jeans and red FUBU shirt, his fitted hat turned to the side, tag still attached, with wispy hairs scattered across his upper lip and chin--a sad but earnest nod to a real goatee. We all groaned.

"Wiggers have got to be the worst ever," my friend said.

"Without a doubt," we all agreed. What could beat a wigger?

"Hippies," another friend said. I didn't agree. I had friends who could be considered hippies, they weren't bad, though I knew deep down that hippies at their worst could easily rival even Snow himself.

As if to silence our conversation, walking past the Great Wraps gyro place at that moment was a young man with light brown, shoulder length dreads tucked into a beanie, his skinny frame covered in an XXL tie-dye shirt with the sepia-toned visage of Bob Marley printed on the front, shorts so long they almost touched his Birkenstocks, and a kinky chin beard that reached his chest. He carried a bag from Camelot Music, no doubt stuffed with drug paraphernalia and black light posters.

He was a White Rastafarian. The worst of wiggers mixed with the worst of hippies to create the ultimate cultural insult.

And what goes with White Rastafarians? Reggae music. The problem is, the White Rastafrian's knowledge of reggae extends no further than Bob Marley's greatest hits album Legend.

By 1994, the white guy dreadlocks had made their way into mainstream rock music through Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, but, mercifully, the white guy reggae was still held at bay--until our hero came on the scene with the Dumb & Dumber soundtrack.

The Dumb & Dumber soundtrack is like a time capsule of flash in the pan bands from 1994-95--The Proclaimers, Green Jelly, Pete Droge, Deee-Lite, Butthole Surfers, Deadeye Dick, and, as previously covered, the Crash Test Dummies all appear, some playing hits, some playing covers or b-sides. Quite an amazing collection for anyone who was incredibly impressed with that year's modern rock output.

Then there's our hero, Willi One Blood's (aka William Harbour, Jr.) "Whiney Whiney (What Really Drives Me Crazy)". Mr. One Blood is an artist who came out of nowhere, as if his sole purpose was to have this song appear on this soundtrack and later disappear into a cloud of ganja smoke and incense. The song starts out with the sound of a door closing, some cowboy sounding guy saying "hold it stranger!" and then a cartoon sound effect leads us into Willie making proclamations about a "New dance! It's an old dance come back again!" over a vaguely Middle Eastern Indian melody, he then gives us a cliched "Lord-a-mercy!"--leading one to think he might actually be Dave Chappelle's Rasta character from Half-Baked-- before the song's beat breaks in with a saxophone goofily doubling One Blood's vocal melody. The song then begins to borrow heavily from '60s music, filling up several measures with at least two classics--"The Locomotion" and The Kinks "You Really Got Me," but screwing both up with unnecessary Willieisms. The song even credits Henry Mancini as a songwriter, although I'm admittedly not knowledgeable enough to know which parts are him ripping off that great composer.

Mr. One-Blood might defend his choice of using other songs as sampling, but really, it sounds closer to a reggae version of one of "Weird Al"'s famous polka medleys in which he runs together ten or so popular songs, all played as traditional polka. That's actually the best comparison I can come up with for Mr. One Blood. He's like a reggae White Rasta version of "Weird Al"--and yes, that's as good as it sounds.

But here's the problem--I don't think he's joking. Sure, he means for the song to be fun, but not quite for it to be the joke that it came out sounding like. The song's lyrics (and video) really seem to be calling for people to start doing this new "Whiney Whiney" dance that he's proposing. He desperately wants this thing to catch on, although, strangely, he never gives instructions, except for explaning that a) It's a new dance, and b) it really drives him crazy.

Here, in all its glory, is the video featuring Mr. One Blood, many stereotypical looking Indian people, some scantily clad women doing what I assume is the "Whiney Whiney" dance, and some random clips from Dumb & Dumber (by far the best part):

The song went to #34 on the Top 40 charts, #62 on the Top 100 and #34 on the "Rhythmic Top 40" which is something new to me, but which apparently leans towards rhythmic (key word) R&B, hip-hop and dance based music. The Dumb & Dumber soundtrack peaked at #62.

But that's not quite the end of Willi One Blood--first he appeared as "1st Stansfield Man" in Leon aka The Professional opposite Gary Oldman, Jean Reno and Natalie Portman. Um...I think you'll be able to pick him out.
Caution: ultra violence in this clip

"The fuck you know about music?" -- Willi One Blood, The Professional.

And did you see the way he shot that gun at that little kid? That deserves at least an Independent Spirit Award. One Blood continued his acting career in the box-office smash that turned Jerry O'Connell into a mega-star, MTV Films' Joe's Apartment.

Also, somewhat surprisingly, he did release a second single in 1996 called "It's True," but I'll be damned if I could find any evidence that it actually existed beyond an entry on AllMusic.com. That's right, no second single this week, I have failed you, dear readers! Regardless, the song--if it was even released (and I do have my doubts)--failed to do anything and saw Willie drop off the planet for a good, oh, 14 years.

What was One Blood doing all those years? Did he take the cash from his one hit, skip down to Kingston and blow it all on weed and Wailers bootlegs? Probably. Did he travel to different countries, with nothing but a turntable and microphone (perhaps two turntables?) singing his one song, and trying in earnest to teach his "Whiney Whiney" dance to hundreds of people in war torn, third world countries? Man, I hope so.

However, the picture to the left suggests a Hook-like scenario wherein Willi got amnesia, forgot he was ever a white rasta/hip-hop/reggae singer, and instead married, had children, settled down in Coral Gables and became an accountant or PR rep. Whatever he's been doing, Captain Hook must have captured his kids 'cause he's back in action, crowing his ass off and reggae-rapping like nobody's business.

Like all other has-beens or never-weres, One Blood has a MySpace page that reveals him to be, among other things, 104 years old, female, currently residing in Miami and a self-described "true original." It would also seem from the pictures that he's decided to spit in the face of all women by going and cutting off his lovely dreads--so as to just look like a normal white guy singing reggae.

The songs range from the sub-Sean Paul to sub-Wyclef Jean. Try not to roll your eyes at the sample heavy awfulness of "Best of One Blood" or "Life is Like a Road" (paging Tom Cochrane), both of which sound like they were made using Windows 98 versions of Audacity and Acid Music. Maybe this just isn't my type of music, but the vocals sound more like a parody of reggae than respectful. According to the page, these songs all come from the aforementioned forthcoming album, Blazing, a title which I can only assume is a social commentary on the devastating forest fires California has experienced over the past few ye--what? Oh. He's talking about weed again, isn't he? Damn these White Rastafarians!

I will leave you with a question for today, followed by a quote from Mr. One Blood:

Dumb & Dumber's soundtrack CD was only the second CD I ever owned. I'd also count reggae as one of the two or three genres of music I've never managed to get into. Coincidence? Is Willi One Blood to blame for my reticence to experience Lee "Scratch" Perry or Burning Spear?

"One thing I've learned in my travels is that people have more in common than they want to admit. So we might as well learn to live together. One world, one love, one blood."
--W. One Blood, MySpace page

Download: Willi One Blood - Whiney Whiney (What Really Drives Me Crazy)

Primitive Radio Gods - "Motherf**ker"

Few one-hit wonder songs from the '90s hold up as well as Primitive Radio Gods' "Standing Outside a Phone Booth With Money in My Hand." The song was ahead of its time with its perfect use of a B.B. King sample and hip-hop beats mixed with a more traditional piano-based rock ballad. How could a song so good lead to jack shit?

But first, let's get the other stuff out of the way. who the hell were Primitive Radio Gods anyway? Where did they come from and where did they go?

Primitive Radio Gods' story is one of extreme disappointment, extreme luck, then just regular disappointment, followed by more extreme disappointment.

The Gods' album Rocket started as a project by Chris O'Connor, the bassist/singer from some Southern California band called I-Rails. Around 1990-91, O'Connor made a demo of ten hip-hop inspired tunes on a shoe-string budget, recording in a friend's garage using a barely-working 16-track tape deck. He sent the tapes out to local radio stations under the moniker "Primative Radio Gods" (sic) expecting airplay, but instead got silence.

And O'Connor became so used to the silence he decided he'd continue the silence with a job where he couldn't hear shit. He used his Navy training to become an air traffic controller at LAX and got to wave those glowsticks and wear those super-intense ear muffs--no doubt working to muffle the cries of his inner thoughts, screaming at O'Connor that he should be backstage somewhere, doing blow off Winona Ryder's big toe.

Instead he wussed out, put the tapes in storage and forgot about them until 1994 when he finally grew a pair--or had some surgically implanted--and decided to send the demo out to a bunch of record labels as a last ditch effort to revive his flagging music career (get it? Flagging! Cause he flags down planes! No, I'm not Bill Shakespeare, I get that a lot though).

Weeks later, O'Connor heard from the executive of Fiction Records who said that he was very interested in the demos, but namely one song--"Where the Monkey Meets the Man." Okay, not really. Predictably, the exec. liked the only song worth a damn, "Standing Outside a Phone Booth..." and soon O'Connor found himself with a publishing deal, a contract with Columbia Records and "Standing" on the uber-'90s soundtrack to the massive box-office failure, The Cable Guy--directed by Ben Stiller, written by Judd Apatow and starring Jim Carrey, and nobodies like Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. Of course that movie would fail! We were all geniuses in the '90s. We knew what was good. Batman Forever, now that was a fuckin' movie!

The song became a huge hit, going to #7 on Top 40 and #1 on Modern Rock Tracks. Kids and grandparents alike were singing the B.B. King sample at the top of their lungs, "I been downhearted baby, ever since the day we met!" and people were so pumped by the song, they went out and bought the album.

Er, bad idea. You see, the album, to put it in Wesley Willis terms, sucks a caribou's asshole. "Standing" is, like so many other one-hit wonders, far and away the best song the band ever released and not at all indicative of the rest of the band's work. At the time the song may have seemed like a novelty, but with its earnest lyrics, inventive, lo-fi production and innovative sampling it was ahead of its time and wouldn't sound out of place coming from a lot of current indie bands. The song is actually affecting--I still get chills up my spine when O'Connor begins to sing the B.B. King line right before the song delves into instrumental feedback and dissonance.



Unfortunately, the same can't be said for their great choice of follow up single--"Motherf**ker." Right off, that song has hit written all over it, right? It should be noted that I'm not censoring myself, I'm writing the word at it is written on the back of the album, and in turn, the word that earned them the much coveted "PARENTAL ADVISORY" sticker. I don't know if they bleeped it on radio cause, frankly, it was never really played on radio.

Sure, "Motherf**ker" isn't bad for a lo-fi alternative funk-rock song with hip-hop elements. Okay, yes it is. First, there's this annoying siren that plays throughout the song, as well as a beeping that sounds like a garbage truck backing up. Then, O'Connor tries to actually sing on this one--gone is the low-key talk-singing he did on "Standing." His voice cracks and breaks any time he goes out of his vocal range several times, making him sound more like a terrible Soul Asylum tribute act vocalist than a singer with a major label contract. Add to that the atonal, amateurish lead guitar that has not one, but two solos. The chorus is the only decent part, but it sounds like it was taken from an '80s monster ballad and sticks out like Sarah Palin at a PETA meeting (topical reference quota fufilled).

Perhaps the worst part is the production. It doesn't just sound cheap, it sounds like a cheap record where the producer desperately wanted to make it sound expensive--and failed miserably. We know O'Connor made it under less-than-ideal circumstances, but tons of great records have been made with fewer resources than he had and sound a lot better (Bleach, Bee Thousand, Nebraska, to name a few)--hell, "Standing" perfectly utilized his cheap tools and budget; it sounded cheap, yes--but in a creative way, like when you were a child and your parents would give you a cardboard box and magic marker and tell you to make a game and you had more fun than you would playing Sega Genesis or Ninja Turtles.

(No? No one else's parents did that? Just mine? Okay.)

Despite Rocket being cerfitied gold, "Motherf**ker" received no promotion by Columbia, who clearly saw "Standing" for the fluke that it was. And in a case of assholism that might make even James Spader's character in Pretty in Pink gasp, the label dropped them soon after.

Things only got worse from there on out. The group was lucky enough to have a fan in the executive from Columbia who had signed them in the first place--Jonathan Daniel. Having moved on to Sire Records, Daniel got the group a deal at Sire to release their follow up album, Mellotron On! Unfortunately, Sire was merging with London Records at the time and were having issues negotiating the release of Mellotron On! During the hiatus, the band was forced to go back to day jobs--O'Connor held out for as long as he could by living off songwriting royalties, but eventually he caved in and became a flower delivery boy. Yikes.

After they were dropped from London-Sire, Daniel once again stepped in and signed them to his independent label, What Are Records? where they released a modified version of Mellotron On! titled White Hot Peach. The album did nothing on the charts and after releasing a couple of other EPs and compilations, the Gods moved on to releasing music independently from their website.

Most recently they released an mp3 Internet-only, "shoegaze inspired" album titled Sweet Venus on their website. The only information I can find on it is from some Australia-based music magazine called Tomatrax, which listed one of the album's songs as #1 for 2006. Check out their site if you want, (it's hosted by geocities, so you know it's legit).

Next time we'll talk about an artist who made one hit and disappeared into the ether, never to be seen again--something Primitive Radio Gods probably should have considered.

Download: Primitive Radio Gods - Motherf**ker
Download: Primitive Radio Gods - Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand

Visit their website and buy stuff here!

Martin Page - "Keeper of the Flame"

If today's artist ever wrote himself a PR blurb, it might read something like this:

Did you ever have a hankering to hear some Sting but were so disturbed by images of him and his wife, Trudie Styler, in various sexual positions, liberally incorporating the practice known as Tantra? Just wish you could hear his music and think of nothing and nobody actually playing it?

You do? Really?

Meet Martin Page.

Born in England, in 1949, Martin achieved fame and fortune as a pop-songwriter, writing smash hit after smash hit--songs like 'We Built This City' for Starship and 'These Dreams' by Heart. In fact, think of a song you consider the nadir of '80s pop music. Thought of it? There's a 90% chance Martin had something to do with it.

He is a former member of techno-pop group Q-Feel--not to be confused with Q-Lazarus--and enjoys the music of other cultures. That is to say, he really likes Paul Simon's Graceland and Peter Gabriel.

The title track off Page's 1994 album, In the House of Stone and Light, is an amalgamation of everything I hate about '90s Adult Contemporary. White guys playing music 'infused with world rhythms'--shorthand for having African singers and drums dubbed over your white-guy pop song--that sounds like something they'd put on the Pure Moods compilations and play at Pier 1 Imports.

Oh, and the lyrics. It's another New Aged themed song about spiritual concerns meant as something of an anthem for liberal white people who consider themselves "spiritual" but not "religious". Driving home this vagueness are the only two specific references--the first to Mount Kailas, and the second to a "Havasupai shaman." Both references seem to be apropos of nothing.

Now...the Havasupai are a Native American tribe located in Arizona. They probably have a shaman, or spiritual guide, I guess. And Mount Kailas is a spiritual mountain in the Himalayas--far, far away from Arizona. At least be consistent with your vague spiritual references, man. Now we just feel insulted.

I like to think that, when he was writing this song, he had a checklist of New Age buzzwords to throw in and get people who do yoga and wear hemp clothes all excited. The people who like to say "I borrow from all religions." You know the type; they wear patchouli, eat raw foods, go to Yanni and Enya concerts, wear lots of hideous turquoise jewelry and run day spas. They talk about dogma and ask you what your sign is and have African masks on their walls that they're dying to tell you about.

Picture Tim Robbins in High Fidelity. That's them. They used to be called hippies, now they're just called weirdos or cult members. At least by me.

And they would eat this song (and video) right up.



He's even playing the bass like Sting. Give it up dude, we already have a Sting and God (or Havasupai shaman or Krishna or whoever) knows we don't need another. It's just embarrassing.

To be fair, as far as Sting rip-offs go, there have been worse. Sonically, it sounds almost perfect-- and it should. Page's album featured an all star cast of musicians totally embarassed to be there--Robbie Robertson played guitar and Phil Collins played drums, and that's just for starters.

Predictably, "In the House of Stone and Light" went to #1 on the Adult Contemporary charts, hit #14 on the Hot 100 and went all the way to #9 on the Top 40 chart.

And then came the inevitable follow up: "Keeper of the Flame." Why didn't you hear it? Maybe you did, it didn't do too poorly, reaching #14 on the AC charts, but there's also a distinct possibility that you thought it was the same damn song.

But there is one huge difference in this one, Page isn't singing about vague spiritual concerns, but rather, love. The song is basically about a guy who wants a girl to "know his name" and he explains that she will know it one day, when he is the "keeper of the flame," wherein her heart is the flame. Or maybe he's just going to burn her until she agrees to have sex with him, again, Page is incredibly--almost masterfully--vague.

Whereas the "Stone and Light" was a fine facsimile of Sting's music, "Keeper of the Flame" comes off as a really bland Peter Gabriel b-side. One that wouldn't ever end up on a compilation cause everybody, even Gabriel, would have forgotten the song ten minutes after recording it.

It ended there, with "Keeper" being the second and final single from the album and then...nothing. Complete silence from Martin.

For years, 50-year old hippies would sit in their "energy rooms" sipping their herbal tea, resting after their Kabbala exercises and discussing Harmonic Convergence and someone would inevitably ask, "Martin Page, what became of you? Did you find the Havasupai shaman? Was your soul cleansed?" And the room would fall to a mournful silence.

Mourn no more, creepy tree-huggers, cause he's back. That's right; Martin Page has recently (self) released a follow-up album titled--I kid you not--In the Temple of the Muse. One can only guess what lies beneath that gorgeous gold hued cover. The key to wisdom? The gateway to his soul? The path to a non-religious specific heaven? Maybe.

Or maybe it's just a bunch of crappy Sting rip-offs.

Download: Martin Page - In the House of Stone and Light
Download: Martin Page - Keeper of the Flame

Martin Page.com
Martin's MySpace

Canadian Wonder #2 - Crash Test Dummies

If I had been really thinking ahead in 1993, I would have made a pop culture time capsule, just to represent where America's mind was in that year.

In the capsule would have been a VHS copy of Pauly Shore's Son in Law, a John Stockton Utah Jazz jersey, a couple of R.L. Stine Goosebumps novels, and, without a doubt, a cassette single of the Crash Test Dummies' hit single "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm."

What was going on in 1993 that would allow Americans to accept such a bizarre song into their homes and cars? Did the Bills losing their third consecutive Super Bowl open a door to an alternate universe? Did David Koresh seek vengeance on America from beyond the grave by making a Pauly Shore movie a box office smash and giving R.L. Stine an insanely lucrative career as an author? Maybe a gas leak that reached every suburb in the country?

But I digress. Perhaps "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" isn't even the most unusual one-hit wonder of the '90s. Might I remind you that just a year earlier, a Flatwoods, Kentucky redneck with a mullet the size of which no man can measure unleashed "Achy Breaky Heart" on an unsuspecting public? And when there are artists like Green Jelly and Willi One-Blood out there, you can't call it the weirdest--but it's probably in the top 5.

The thing about "Mmm" is that a description of the song can't really do it justice. I'll give it a go though: "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" is a a folky alternative rock ballad that tells three different stories of bizarre hardships suffered by children, sung by a vocalist who vaguely sounds like he's just inhaled sulfer hexafluoride, with each verse followed by a chorus that's entirely hummed (hence the onomatopoeia title). That's as good as I can do and it still doesn't hit on the specific creepiness of the lyrics about girls with birthmark ravaged bodies and boys whose parents belong to a strange, unnamed religious sect that requires them inact seizures from their pews. This being the '90s, the song was of course given the MTV treatment with a strange little video that featured children acting out the incidents in the Dummies' song as one-acts plays (shades of Rushmore), as well as an excessive number of shots featuring vocalist Brad Roberts' making peculiar facial expressions during the chorus (gotta emote somehow when you're humming I guess).

The first single from their second album, God Shuffled His Feet, the song was a worldwide hit, going to #4 on the Hot 100 US chart, #2 in the UK and #1 in Australia. Surprisingly, in their native Canada (they hail from Neil Young's town of Winnipeg, Manitoba), the tune didn't even break into the top ten, falling behind the success of the group's first single, the amusingly earnest "Superman's Song," which hit #4 in Canada and only made it to #56 in the US.

But these are just numbers. For time-tested, scientific proof that this song was a massive hit, we turn to our friend "Weird Al" Yankovic, who turned his mad parodyin' skills on the tune with "Headline News"--a song that replaced Dummies' lyricist and singer's stories about childhood oddities to humorous accounts of Michael Fay's caning in Singapore, the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding incident and Lorena and John Wayne Bobbit's ordeal, the climax of which was described with one line, where Bobbit awakens to find that "Mr. Happy was missing." Oh, "Weird," what will you do next?

But how to follow up such an unusual hit single? The problem is, you really can't.

After the non-showing that was the group's next single, "Swimming in Your Ocean," a slightly more uptempo and rocking track with a video possibly creepier than their hit single's , the group managed to hit the US charts again with "Afternoons and Coffeespoons," a song based on the freshman English student favorite The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock, a poem by T.S. Eliot. If we learned anything from Andrew Lloyd Weber's CATS--a musical adaptation of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats--it's that T.S. Eliot poems do not translate to popular media. Brad Roberts and the rest of the Dummies were apparently unaware of this fact. But who am I to criticize? CATS ran for approximately 80 years on Broadway, so maybe they were hoping for quantity and longevity instead of quality.

But again, here's an example of a song that's not bad at all. It's a fun, catchy song. Not great, but it's a fine follow up, but likely not what the public was looking for. Unless you count the references to T.S. Eliot or Roberts' vocals, there's nothing all that unusual, and, despite an enjoyably hooky chorus, to audiences today it may come off as a bit generic. Dare I say people might have wanted it a little bit weirder? The music, instrumentation and song itself doesn't sound that far removed from the '90s roots based college rock bands to come later in the decade--Blues Traveler, Hootie and the Blowfish, etc. Except it has that voice, which, granted, sounds far more palpable on this track. Still, I'd wager US audiences just weren't ready to hear that voice outside of any context except "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm." "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" peaked at #66 on the Hot 100 charts.

But for me, I never even heard "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" on the radio. The next Dummies single I heard was a cover of XTC's Nonsuch classic, "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" which was released on the original soundtrack to Dumb & Dumber--a movie which also featured "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm," though it wasn't included on the CD. "Pumpkinhead" is a fairly straightforward and unimaginative remake of XTC's hit, except there's something unusual about it. See if you can guess what I'm talking about:

No, not the Jeff Daniels cameo, though that is quite awesome. No, it's not that they omit the second verse from XTC's original (though they do, and huzzah for noticing). Get this: Brad Roberts is only the backup vocalist! He's not singing lead! Yeah! They've got some chick named Ellen Reid singing lead. Who's Ellen Reid? How the hell should I know? Far as I can tell she was a band member who usually sang back up, but they gave her this shot since Roberts, no doubt, couldn't quite reach those Andy Partridge notes very easily.

Now, forgive me, as I'm about to contradict myself. I realize I just said "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" didn't hit because people couldn't get down with Roberts' voice, but in the end, that is their hook. Roberts' voice is the band. You either like it or you don't and there's no in between. If the track were just a one-off for the soundtrack, it'd be one thing; but they released it as a single! Bad move. Makes it look like you're trying to change the band's image and sound by changing what makes the band unique (even if not everyone likes it). Giving some generic chick the mic just makes you into a generic bar band. Sorry, Dummies, but The Second Single is all about tough love. There will be no coddling here.

Though God Shuffled His Feet was the pinnacle of the band's career, the Dummies nevertheless charted with their next album, A Worm's Life, and continued to be successful in Canada up through their fourth album, Give Yourself a Hand, which reportedly found Reid taking on more vocal duties, Roberts trying out a falsetto and the band including "electronic elements" (shudder).

After Hand, they left (or were dropped by) BMG records, and Roberts was nearly fatally injured in a car accident. While recuperating in Nova Scotia, Roberts became friends with some local fisherman/musicians and reportedly wrote and recorded a bunch of songs with these guys. Though intended as a solo album for Roberts, the Dummies agreed to tour behind the album, titled I Don't Care That You Don't Mind, and slapped their name on it. According to AllMusic.com the album has an almost "Southern feel," and they compare it to Chris Isaak. Mmm-hmm (mmm mmm). The next album, 2003's Puss N Boots, also started life as a Roberts solo album, but soon became the Dummies' six album. In 2004 came their eighth studio album, Songs of the Unforgiven.

Though the band is said to be done with touring, and Roberts has moved on to solo material (reportedly promising not to slap the Dummies name on it this time), the band did manage to squeeze out a Best of album in 2007, giving new audiences a chance to hear the magical baritone and folky alt. rock that was the Crash Test Dummies. But why the Dummies get a Best of and the Criterion Collection Encino Man isn't any closer to being a reality, I'll never know.

Download: Crash Test Dummies - Afternoons and Coffeespoons
Download: Crash Test Dummies - Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm