Don’t know what to get your friends and loved ones for the holidays this year? If they’re lovers of merriment, obnoxious humor and immature behavior, we can think of no better gift than The Popdose Podcast, Episode 4! Sure, it doesn’t cost anything to give as a gift, but that just leaves you more money to spend on yourself this season. Because let’s face it — you’re worth it.
In this episode, our illustrious hosts discuss — you guessed it — the holiday season, from gifts to music and everything in between. You’ll also find out exactly how Cabbage Patch Kids are born. We only wish we were making this up. Please leave us your thoughts in the comments, and if you like the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Enjoy!
The Popdose Podcast, Episode 4: Cabbage Section (1:01:45, 70.7 MB), featuring Jeff Giles, Jason Hare, and Dave Lifton.
TRIXTER TITLE: “Give It To Me Good” ALBUM: Trixter RELEASE DATE: May 1990
Why You Remember Them: For one of two reasons: Trixter hails from Paramus, N.J., which makes them one of the most robust Against arguments in the debate about New Jersey’s overall contribution to the American music lexicon. But also, Trixter was famous in the early 1990s for their ridiculous song “Give It to Me Good,” as well as for their very successful line of rabbit-flavored cereal.
Listen, I’m Gonna Be Honest Here: I know metric amounts of jack poop about Trixter, other than they’re my go-to band when making fun of music Bradshaw used to listen to. But on their debut tour they opened for Stryper and Don Dokken. Separately.
Number Of Your Judgmental Hypocrites Who Bought This Record in 1990: Well, the damn thing went gold, and the band was presented with gold albums after a show at the Meadowlands, which was promptly sprayed down with disinfectant before Springsteen came by again. Also the video for “Give It to Me Good” stayed #1 on the Dial MTV top ten video countdown for five weeks straight. Eat that, Gaga. (more…)
FIREHOUSE TITLE: “Don’t Treat Me Bad” ALBUM: Firehouse RELEASE DATE: Aug. 21, 1990
Why You Remember Them: For one of two reasons: Either for their two-ply, baby-soft semi-rocker “Don’t Treat Me Bad,” in which our protagonist testifies, at some length, about being treated bad (he’s against it), or the power-tool ballad “Love of a Lifetime,” which actually caused spontaneous intestinal combustion in listeners in California in 1990. Oh, of course you didn’t hear about that in your elitist anti-Firehouse mainstream media. Number Of Your Judgmental Hypocrites Who Bought This Record in 1990: 2 million. I see you, Bradshaw.
Key Tracks: “Don’t Treat Me Bad,” “Love of a Lifetime,” “All She Wrote”
Means by Which Firehouse Served as Unintentional Metaphor for the Uncomfortably Visible Death of a Major Awards Telecast: Legendarily, at the 1992 American Music Awards, Firehouse won for best New Hard Rock/Metal Band over Alice in Chains and Saigon Kick. Wait, I mean Nirvana. Their acceptance speech, in short, went something like this: “Guys, we are so, so sorry.” (more…)
True fact: Right now, this very minute, in autumn 2009, three decades after he ducked into a college radio-station bathroom to record “My Bologna,” “Weird Al” Yankovic is absolutely more popular than he ever has been in his life, and we can prove it, with math:
2006’s Straight Outta Lynwood, Yankovic’s 12th album, debuted at #10 on the Top 200, making it his first Top 10 album ever. Its first single, the wondrous “White and Nerdy,” reached #9 on the Billboard Hot Singles chart, making it both Yankovic’s first Top 10 single and his highest-charting single ever (besting the personal best set by “Eat It,” which reached #12 on the singles chart back in 1984). The video for “Nerdy” was in iTunes’ top 10 for like a year. More weirdness: “Nerdy” performed a second-week jump on the singles chart from #28-#9, making Yankovic one of a very few artists to have only one top 40 single in three successive decades.
Part of this is due to the Interweb machine, which Yankovic has been using masterfully of late, part of it is nostalgia for us dorkwad 30somethings who grew up with this stuff and are gleefully fascinated to see that it’s still funny, and part of it is the UNBRIDLED BARELY CONTAINABLE GENIUS, which is collected this week in a new greatest-hits comp, The Essential ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, featuring two discs of material picked by the man himself and liner notes from music snob Stephen Thompson. But you don’t care about that. All you want to know is HOW you can get your sticky, slightly orange hands on one of these things without paying for it. This is where Popdose becomes your angel. (more…)
STRYPER Title: “Honestly” Album: To Hell With The Devil Release Date: Oct. 24, 1986
Why You Remember Them: Because at one point you stood with your fist in the air and shouted “To Hell With the Devil” like a hot banshee on fire. Didn’t you?
Alarming Sales Figures: 2 million moved for To Hell. The damn thing spent three months on Billboard’s album charts. Even the, ahem, poppier follow-up In God We Trust moved half a million, although that was mostly from older fans who mistook it for currency.
Recent News: Well, that’s the thing; evidently these fellas are on a 25th anniversary tour, according to this Press Release I have just received, which is accompanied by a very thoughtful-looking blood-red tinted photo of four guys looking downward in a pose of either deep prayer or a nap. One of them is wearing Archie’s ascot, or maybe five candy-cane ties. Whatever. All I know is, Jesus would hate this tie. (more…)
SLAUGHTER Title: “Fly To The Angels” Album: Stick It to Ya Release Date: January 27, 1990
Why You Remember Them: Credit Slaughter with arriving (late) to the hair-metal party without any even vague designs on rocking it. Slaughter’s tapes, available at Kmart and Venture stores nationwide, were solely prom-theme delivery machines; their attempts at lip-licking lasciviousness, mostly in titles like “Stick It To Ya” and “Up All Night,” were about as dangerous as a Tuesday night episode of Jay-Walking. “Fly to The Angels,” the video for which was made for $49.50, most of which was spent on airplane stock footage and an oscillating fan, is 50 minutes of viscous cheese puncutated by seagull sound effects, in case you were unclear about that whole flying thing. (Sorry – I’m told it’s actually only 4:30. How about that!)
Sales Figures:Stick Moved over 2 million copies, and was nominated for an American Music Award for best metal album in 1991. Yeah, I said it. AMERICAN MUSIC AWARD. Suck on that, haters. (more…)
Why You Remember Them: You cannot imagine how often, in the research of this column, one comes across the phrase “lumped into the hair metal category,” as though being a cornball Southern-rock outfit with a wacky-eyed lead singer and a schlong obsession is better. Jackyl formed in 1990 as a hair meta … ahem, Southern-rock boogie band, but if you’ve read this far you’re probably going, “The jags with the chainsaw, right?” Right.
Total Sales: Jackyl moved 1.35 million units in 1992, making me sad for 1992.
OK, But I’m Pretty Sure Those Are Dogs on the Cover of This Album: Right, you tell the chainsaw-wielding redneck he’s got his canids misidentified.
GET THE EFF OUT OF HERE, BRENDAN O’BRIEN?: Before resorting to producing hillbilly crap by “Bruce Springsteen” and “Pearl Jam,” O’Brien ran with the big dogs. I am desperately hoping these are people who still keep in touch.
Jesse: “Brendan, it’s Jesse, listen, I have a great idea for a new track that…” Brendan: “(interrupting) Does it have a chainsaw?” Jesse: “Yes.” Brendan: “Christ.” (click)
STEELHEART Title: I’ll Never Let You Go Album:Steelheart Released: May 10, 1990
Why You Remember Them: Previous installments of this award-winning series have included bands with numerous hits, if not multiple albums, to their names, but we bring that streak to a screeching, flaming halt with Steelheart, whose sole contribution to the poufy-hair zeitgeist is “I’ll Never Let You Go,” a song whose fierce, animalistic coda explodes with such visceral fury that it is entirely likely that lead singer Michael Matijevic, a man with a consonant-y name so clunky and Eastern European-sounding that I’m sure we’re related, exploded his carotid artery straining for the last note and is still lying in a pool of blood and Aqua Net in a studio somewhere. It is quite simply impossible to achieve that level of valkyrie screaming without attaching a car battery to your face.
But Suck on This Little Bit of Kevin Bacon Game Madness: Matijevic in 2001 provided the voice for the Mark Wahlberg character in Rock Star, itself modeled on the story of a Judas Priest cover band singer-turned-actual-Judas-Priest frontman. The film featured a version of “We All Die Young,” which originally appeared on Steelheart’s third (!) album, Wait. So, good for Matijevic. (more…)
Why You Remember Them: Much like the poor suckers in Extreme and the Goo Goo Dolls, Mr. Big spent years producing extraordinarily forgettable rock music before backing into an accidental hit with a marshmallowy ballad, forcing them into the uncomfortable position of determining whether it was best to continue rocking in obscurity or turn into a prom-or-Nic Cage-movie-theme production factory. Unfortunately while Mr. Big was deciding which color pill to swallow, people ceased to listen.
Chart Attack: “To Be With You” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Follow-up single “Just Take My Heart” was their only other charting single, peaking at No. 16. That’s in America, though. Apparently in Japan, Mr. Big is like what Led Zeppelin would be if they had Jesus on guitar, but more on this later.
Other Key Tracks: None.
Bunch of tools: Kickoff track “Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy (The Electric Drill Song)” was easily the third-best power-tool themed rock track of the early 1990s, behind Jackyl’s chainsaw-powered “The Lumberjack Song” and Neil Diamond’s “Searing Hot Love,” recorded entirely in a smelting yard. (more…)
WARRANT Song Title: “Cherry Pie” Album: Cherry Pie Release Date: Sept. 11, 1990
Why You Remember Them: Arguably, and along with Winger, Warrant for one reason or another has become something of the go-to punching-bag band of the state fair-metal universe. Scientists believe this is due to the cover of Cherry Pie, which depicts a raspberry-lipped waitress dropping a piece of the titular pie — that’s right, titular, we hear your snickerings — and the plummeting treat was photographed just as it passed her nether regions, an art-directed “metaphor” that’s responsible for making Warrant the hair band of choice among English grad professors.
Worldwide Album Sales To Date for Cherry Pie: 3 million
But Why Would Such Nice Rockers Objectify Women Like That? Well, you’d be traumatized too if you walked in on your best chick tagging some other dude, as singer Jani Lane did on “I Saw Red,” the power ballad of choice on Cherry Pie and sort of the slutty cousin of the band’s previous “Heaven.” “I didn’t need to see his face … I saw yours,” Lane howls, heartbreakingly, and though we don’t see his face, the other guy is Mark Sanford. (more…)
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True fact: Right now, this very minute, in autumn 2009, three decades after he ducked into a college radio-station bathroom to record “My Bologna,” 
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JACKYL
STEELHEART 
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MR. BIG
WARRANT
