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

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Canadian Wonders #1 - Tom Cochrane

Who the hell is Tom Cochrane you ask?



Tom Cochrane is a few things:

1. He is the guy who made "Life is a Highway" which went to #6 on the US Hot 100 charts in 1991.
   
2. He is not Tom Petty, whatever Napster, Limewire, or Soulseek or other P2P program once told you. Petty did not sing "Life is a Highway." Ever. No, really, never. End of discussion. They don't even sound alike. They may be next to each other on your iTunes, but never mistake the two unless you want people to think you're a certified mouth breather.
   
3. He is Canadian. He was born in Manitoba and grew up in Etobicoke, Ontario, and as far as I can tell he is something of a national treasure in our nation's hat. Because of this he is the first in a series dubbed "Canadian Wonders". The series will cover artists who, however briefly, broke through to US audiences before heading back to the land that gave us You Can't Do That on Television.
4. He started out in the band Red Rider, who you may remember from such hits as "White Hot" or "Young Thing, Wild Dreams (Rock Me)". No? How about "Lunatic Fringe"?

That searing stare. The fashion sense stolen from the Osmonds. That inability to even strum the guitar he's holding cause he's just so into singing about the lunatic fringe. The surprising presence of a black guy. Pure Cochrane. Still don't remember it? Well don't feel bad. They never broke into the Top 40 on the US Hot 100, though "Lunatic Fringe" did hit #11 on the Modern Rock charts.
5. Probably disgustingly rich. "Life is a Highway" has been used in numerous TV ads, movies, TV shows, etc. It has also been covered twice by American country artists, first by the semi-well known Chris LeDoux who released the song in 1999, only to have it stall at #64 on the country charts and birth a crappy video that looks more like a clip from Hey Vern, It's Ernest! (note the presence of a keytar):



6. It was also a huge hit for Rascal Flatts on the Cars soundtrack, going to #7 on the US Hot 100 charts and even charting in Cochrane's native land, going to #9 on the Canadian charts. Their version changes nothing from Cochrane's version aside from sonically castrating the song's kick-ass chorus with the lead douchebag's whiny vocals. I refuse to even post a YouTube video of it here as it's amazingly redundant and shitty. Seek it out if you must, but don't blame me if you wake up soaked in a disturbing mix of cold sweat, hair gel and Abercrombie Woods cologne.
   
7. Cochrane is, at least in the US, a one-hit wonder. But he didn't want to be.

Cochrane followed "Highway" up with two singles from his album Mad Mad World.

First was "No Regrets," another driving rocker in a similar vein to "Highway". Unfortunately, like so many second singles, it may have been too similar, featuring the same reverbed drums, chorus of backup singers and insistent guitar of "Highway," but missing the huge payoff huge hooks of that hit. And where "Highway" had an incendiary harmonica play out at the end of the song, "No Regrets" opts instead for a saxophone.

Uh-oh. Bad choice.

As any rock fan can tell you, when a sax is used properly, it can't be beat. What would Pink Floyd's "Money" be without that tenor sax solo by Dick Perry? Unfortunately, many '80s producers listened to great rock songs like "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and must have thought a sax solo was the key to a classic song. This was not the case--sweet Jesus, it couldn't have been further from being the case. The producer of Cochrane's album almost certainly had a hangover from '80s productions, which isn't surprising since the album was probably made in 1990, when saxophone was still king. Many cite the synthesizer or the sampled drum beat as the worst examples of '80s production; they're wrong, it was the saxophone.

"No Regrets" didn't even chart on the US Top 100, but it did manage to go to #7 on the Modern Rock charts, keeping Cochrane in the game for a little longer. Unsurprisingly, the song was a huge hit in Canada. Then he had two more hits in Canada ("Sinking Like a Sunset" and the title track "Mad Mad World").

Still, Cochrane tried his hand at shaking the one-hit wonder blues one more time. But this time he steered clear of trying to duplicate "Life is a Highway" and instead went for another cherished '80s/early '90s staple: the power ballad.

"Washed Away" has got it all: palm muted staccato guitars (think Mike & The Mechanics), strings, big drum breaks, uplifting lyrics about redemption, and one of those outros where the singer is feeling the passion in the song so much, he's reduced to primal screams (while making sure to stay in key). There's really nothing in this song that says it shouldn't have been a hit--except that it's done by Tom Cochrane. If this had been released under Don Henley or
Glenn Frey's name. Also it's like five-and-a half minutes. C'mon, Tom! This is the early '90s. I can't be bothered listening to Tom Cochrane wail for nearly 10% of an hour. I have Designing Women to watch.

"Washed Away" got to #88 on the Mainstream Rock charts and didn't chart on the US Top 100.

But don't feel bad for Mr. Cochrane. He may not have made it in the US again, but Cochrane's career was far from over in Canada. Mad Mad World spawned four Top Ten hits on the RPM Charts (?) and he would have another three top tenners from his next album Ragged Ass Road before sliding down the charts in the late '90s. He also won seven Juno Awards (the Canadian Grammys) and received a National Achievement Award from SOCAN in 2003, a Canadian copyright organization. Looks like he's doing just fine.


Click here to learn more about Tom Cochrane and buy some stuff from him.