No Filler Music Podcast - F*cking Phil: Drop Nineteens' Delaware

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

For those just getting into the shoegaze genre, there are a handful of albums that are must-listens. Of course at the top sits My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless", Slowdive's "Souvlaki", and Ride's "Nowhere". But while there are must-listen albums, perhaps more important are the must-listen songs. And for many, Drop Nineteen's Delaware features one of shoegaze's greatest moments: the ethereal, slow-build simmer of "Kick The Tragedy", a near 9 minute drone with an unexpected sucker punch two-thirds of the way through that left a lasting impression on new and old fans of the genre and cemented the band as one of shoegaze's greatest acts. Tracklist: Winona Mayfield Delaware Ease It Halen Kick The Tragedy Angel (Madonna cover) Skull This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Pantheon is a proud partner of AKG by Harman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. I got my brother Quentin with me, of course. That was Winona off of Drop 19's 1992 album, Delaware. And that is the album that we are talking about today. Look at that, dude. I got, I said it within the first 10 seconds. Sometimes it takes us like 10 minutes before we even mention the name of the band of the record and we're talking about. So look at that. Well, I got a, I got a question for you, dude. Yeah. You think they're singing about Winona writer? Because that was probably like primetime Winona time. 92, yeah, probably. When did Beetlejuice come out? I'm actually on her Wikipedia page because I'm curious. 88. Oh, really? That was the funny thing that Michael Keaton

was Beetlejuice and then immediately was Batman in 1989. And people were like, I don't know about this Keaton guy as Batman. I just don't know. He's goofy. I bet people were saying that about... The Alt Kilmer. The Twilight dude. Oh, yeah.

Which I hear he did a pretty good job. I haven't seen it yet, but yeah. Anyway, dude, this already went off the rails. What happened? My bad. But no, it's a good question. It might be about Renona Ryder. She was in Beetlejuice in 88.

So it's possible. So she had already blown up. Yeah. Oh, dude, she was in Edward Cisorhands in 1990. Yeah. Dude. Like you said, Piquinona.

Yeah. Could be about something completely different. Anyway. So I'm excited because what was the song that you, I guess we're going to play it tonight, how you shared a song from this album, yeah, with me a while ago. And I loved it. And then for whatever reason, I completely forgot that this album existed. And that was the only time you ever listened to that song?

Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. I'm definitely bringing that track. And it wasn't on here. You didn't share it with me as a watcher heard or anything like that. No. This is all new to no filler.

Yeah. To those listening, hopefully this was the first time you're hearing some of those stuff as well. Because I think it's, like I said, if you follow certain communities on Reddit, one of them being the shoegays subreddit, this is like one of the albums that gets tossed around all the time. Like you always see, you know, sort of like the Shugee starter pack and stuff like that. You know, you've got My Bloody Valentine Loveless, of course. You've got slow dive. You've got Chapter House, which I think is a band we're going to talk about maybe after what you heard. We're going to talk about Chapter House at some point.

We talked about doing that. Usually some cocktail twins in there as well. Cocktail Twins, yeah. But this record is on there. As we'll kind of hear from these songs, it's not. Shoe gaze is such an umbrella term now is what I'm learning. To me, shoe gaze is like part of, well, let's put it this way. Loveless is pure 100% shoe gaze, right?

To us. Or at least that's what I think of when I think of the sound. Yeah, it's our shoe gaze. And then, you know, if a band is called the Shugays Band, they might have elements of a shoe gaze sound, but that doesn't necessarily make them a pure Shoegays band. And I think that fits with these guys as well. They have a lot of sonic variation, like, on this record. But you can see why maybe they have that label because of some of the stuff they

were putting out before the record came out. So this is their first record, but they had some demos that they put out that that garnered them some attention with college radio and stuff like that. And that's what got them to the label to put out their debut. And we're going to listen to the song that sort of garnered them some attention. And you'll, you'll hear. You'll hear why. So this was 92. And, you know, we borrowed the title of that article that we quoted, from last week for Lush called A Different Shade of Grunge, which I believe it was from NME, and I believe it was probably around 90 or 91 when the article came out. And it was talking about most of the bands that you mentioned.

But that to me is a huge, like, turning point in how I think of shoegaze now. Yeah. Different shade of Grunge. And when you think about the time this music came out, it's two sides of the same coin. And if you wanted to throw it all under one giant umbrella, it's all, all, all. alternative rock, right? Yeah. And we've been saying this for the last month straight now, but it's worth bringing it back up in case this is, you know, your first time joining us on no filler. We've been in this pocket for the last month or so, and there's just so many great bands to discover in this

feign. Yeah. Around the early 90s, most of its early 90s. Right. And we actually did an episode on REM. We did their debut record Murm, which came out in 83 and how, you know, they got the college rock label kind of thrown on to them. Yeah, so early 90s is graduating class. You know, these are the people that were listening to REM. Yeah, and, you know, alternative rock is like a sound. Miracle Lesion as well, who we covered. Miracle Legion, yeah, the early bands that were sort of lumped into that crowd. But this is just like more of that, right? This is the evolution of some of that. Anyway, so, yeah, we're not going to do too much chatting here about the band, but their origin story is kind of interesting. And this has happened, you know, we've talked about a lot of bands where a

of them, or maybe like three of them, had played in a band together in high school or something like that. You know, they knew each other before. That's the case with these guys. So Greg Ackle is the main guy, the brain's behind it. He's the vocalist, guitar player. Chris Ruf is on drums. Paula Kelly is sort of the second vocalist.

Also plays guitar. Steve Zimmerman on bass. and Motohiro Yasui on guitar. So that's important to note. Three guitar players, right? So that contributes to the wall of guitar sound, if you will, or wall of sound. So yeah, Greg and Chris had played together in high school, and they didn't realize that they were both going to Boston University.

So they met in Boston. They bumped into each other and said, hey, let's start a band again, right? And that's kind of how it went. So I got a lot of my material here, my research here from this really interesting article on this website called Boston hassle.com where this guy sort of got together with five of the former members, most of the founding members at least, and sort of interviewed them and got the whole story from them. This was like a Boston website, Boston Rag. Did you get that reference to you? Boston Rag? Oh, nice, dude.

Hey, I've got my steely dance shirt on today. Nice, dude. Stars are aligning right now. So this is like a post hummus. Homous? Yeah. Post hummus, dude, I just, I'm post hummus right now. I had some hummus for dinner.

Man, what is going on, dude? So this is after the band had broken up. This is several years later. Exactly. So they're years removed from the scene and from playing together and all that kind of stuff. they're kind of reminiscing and sort of telling the story about how they formed and their initial demo tapes and stuff like that that they put out. So anyway, Zimmerman, who again is one of the guitar players, is just talking about how Greg was sort of known as a, an A student of New Wave.

Let's just say, you know, he's well-versed in New Wave bands and stuff like that. So like he had done covers of like New Order songs and the Smiths and the Cure, right? This is right, right. right out of the 80s, right? So that's kind of the stuff that he was brought up on and that he knew very well. So that's kind of what they started doing, doing covers of new wave bands, right? Which is interesting. And so the, you know, the band is sort of forming in a way. But it was just the two of them.

And originally they went by the name in April rain, which is a cool name. That's cool. I like it. So there is a demo tape that they put out as in April rain, but apparently it's not, you can't hear it anywhere, but one of the original members still has the tape, he says. Well, what's he waiting on, dude? That's a good question. Lots of people would want to hear that show. Let's hear it. So Paula Kelly, who is like the secondary vocalist, the way that she joined the band, I think, is kind of interesting. Apparently, her and Greg were hanging out in some dorm room, his dorm room,

I guess, freshman year. She says he whipped out his guitar and started playing a cure song. And when he done, I took the guitar from him, and I don't remember what I play, but I don't know I was trying to one up him. I guess it worked, or at least annoyed him enough to ask me to be in his band. So there you go. So she was kind of like this, she wasn't a permanent member until later, but she's a very important part of the band. And you'll hear her in a couple tracks that we're going to play. But she's great. They have this nice counterbalance to them, the two vocalists, right? And I love it when bands trade singers, you know, it's just a cool way to keep things. interesting right definitely but anyway so um yeah let's jump ahead here they started rehearsing and started

messing around with their sound initially because you know they were in no rush to go out and play shows they wanted to get their sound figured out and um says here from their early days of experimenting came a mix of atmospheric guitar layers and co-ed harmonies exemplified by predecessors my bloody and slow dive with Lee guitar hooks reminiscent of classic 80s dance pop. That sounds cool. So that was the early stuff that they were doing. So let's listen here. This is the demo tape that sort of got them some attention on college radios, of course.

And this is eventually what got them signed, right? But this is actually, I haven't actually heard this yet you. So we're going to listen to this together. All right, man. Before we play this, let's take a quick break and we'll be right. bag. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. So, Trave, I actually have used Better Help in the past, and it was a really, really great experience. I loved my therapist. He gave me a lot of great tools that I still use to this day. You know, without a healthy mind, being truly happy and at

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I want more of it. Yeah, and you can hear some of the new wave influence for sure, especially with the drums right there. I was going to say, the first thing that jumped out of me was how different that drumbeat was compared to most shoegays that was coming out of that time. I love it. Talk about a wash and a wall of sound. Yeah, and that's an early demo.

So, like, they didn't have access to the best equipment. Obviously, they didn't have a studio behind them. But it definitely, it works, contributed to the, yeah. Yeah, the sound. Dude, something jumped out of me, man. If you look at the bottom of the track list, they did a cover of Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. So let's use that as our outro.

Yeah. Well, speaking of covers, they also have a cover of a Madonna song on this album, Delaware, but I'm not going to play it. Didn't Sonic Youth do a lot of Madonna covers? They had like some kind of, like a slight obsession with Madonna early on.

I remember reading that in David Brown's book. You know, if I read the book, Hugh, I could. I could concur with that. Yeah. You should read it, man. It's a good read. I should. I should.

I feel like I read it, you know, after interviewing him. Anyway, so yeah, this is the demo that sort of got them some attention. And you can see why they got lumped into the shoegaze camp because of that sound. When they were coming up with their sound, it was based around guitar layers. And when you have three guitar players, that's what's going to happen. So you heard some like flange in there, that effect. That's how we try to make it sound like we know what we're talking about. I just say flange.

I'm going to continue to pronounce it as phalangey like I did last week. Yeah. But anyway, so basically this garnered them enough attention to where they started playing some shows. And this is important to note for something I'll talk about later. But their first show was actually in a different state. So they go off, they do some shows. They are opening for Chapter House, which is just, there you go. The stars are aligning, brother.

They're all just playing together. And this is when they got the attention of the label that eventually they make Delaware on. And then we'll dive into Delaware and just play Delaware song from here on now. But this is a cool story. So I'm going to, this is a quote from Zimmerman, again, the bass player. He says when we played with Chapter House, they were there for the last few minutes, meaning the record label people that showed up, the representatives from the label. He said that all they saw was their angel cover of Madonna.

But basically, it sounds like they played the best they've ever played in those few minutes that the label was there. He says all the starts and the stops from the song, the wah-wa pedal that Motto was doing on his guitars, they called him Motto. was perfect. Everything was flawless for that few minutes that Virgin showed up. Well, that's, that tells you something. If all they heard with the last few minutes of their set, and it wasn't even an original song, it was a cover. Basically, it sounds like they were just, everything was, you know, they had the mojo going and stuff at that point. So the timing was, was perfect.

Yeah. But that's what got them the attention. That's what got them the record deal. So anyway, they made a note to talk about, or at least in this interview that they did with this guy, that they apparently shoe gaze was getting bad press in the early days. Maybe it was getting made fun of or something like that. But they basically wanted to tweak the sound a little bit more and come up with another more sort of like refined sound and stuff like that for this album. And you'll hear it. But basically the way that Zimmerman or whoever was being interviewed at the time,

he basically said that like at this point there were two incarnations of or two versions of the band at this point that I'd put music out. It was the stuff that they put out as in April Rain and then the demos that they put out before they signed and now they wanted to make the next version of the band for Delaware. So they changed the name and everything. Yeah. Now, I mean, they had already changed the name at that point, but. Oh, okay. Anyway, they just, they wanted to work on the sound again, right? So things are going to sound a little bit different, but it's still the same band at the end of the day. So all right, let's jump in here and now we're going to play some tunes cue we're going to start with the opening track off of delaware and it is the title track

so it is called delaware here we go really love the rhythm section i think that's something that's really different about them the base yeah the bass line in this song almost like takes it from me dude i love it that might be my favorite part of that song that is what is different i think yeah you know i think you're right like maybe that's what they really wanted to to change up a little bit the bass is definitely front and center. But yeah, the guitar is doing nothing too intense. Had a little bit of the glide guitar kind of sound, you know, that Kevin Shields created. They definitely pull that trick out of the bag on this record. You know, they're like, they're like, don't worry, guys. We learned how to do Kevin Shields slide guitar. I mean, weren't they all doing that? Yeah.

Around that time. If you're going to make a Shugays record, you better figure that one out. And if you have three guitar players, somebody's going to do it, you know. You better get to gliding, you know. Stargline. Anyway, compared to that demo that we heard, at least the Mayfield song, there's a lot more tracks on that demo, but you can actually hear the words being said. So like the vocals aren't as washed out, you know, not at all. You can actually pick out the words and stuff. It's not as fuzzy. You know, that's probably just the production quality, but it actually has a verse, chorus type flow that it follows. It has more of a typical song structure. And there's, you know, aside from maybe the guitar sound, you wouldn't really call this a shoe gaze song necessarily.

I might call it a different shade of grunge. Different shade of grunge, maybe, yeah. Well, that is intriguing. For track one, hearing this for the first time, I want to hear more. Bring it. I'm about to play my favorite song, Q. Already, man. I'm about to play Kick the Tragedy.

Yeah. I'm just going to go right into it. But first, I wanted to talk about this song. I'm not going to play it, but you should listen to it because it's kind of funny. Track two on this record, and I think this is, this kind of makes sense, right, because of the attitudes toward the 80s over the top, hair metal and stuff like that, and glam metal. They have a song on here called Eez It Halen,

and the entire song is made up of lyrics and song names from Van Halen songs. That's amazing. All right, fine, I'll play it. This is actually kind of important to play because it shows the more playful side of this band that comes out in this record a little bit and certainly comes out in the next record. But anyway, all right, let's just play this real quick. This will be a good palette cleanser

before we go in to kick the tragedy. This song is called Eez-It Healen. I'm so glad you played that. Yeah, it's pretty funny, right? That was straight up Sonic Youth style, you know, with like just the speaking, the droney kind of way that they delivered those lyrics.

Very no wave. Yeah, and they're poking fun of rocks. previous incarnation, I guess, because we're in the 90s now, we don't do that kind of rock anymore. Bring it down a notch, Halen. Yeah, calm down. We wear plaid shirts now. We don't wear leather pants, you know. We don't wear spandex.

But I just think it's funny that literally in the second verse, they just named the first two records. They're like, Van Halen 1, Van Halen 2. Anyway. So, yeah, I think it's funny because, you know, that was a big thing with the 9th,000. 90s rock scene and grunge was like, you know, we're tired of this, you know, all this like over the top bands that were coming out, like we're just going to be more, we're going to just come as we are, right? Do you see what I did there? Nice, dude. Let me, let me say his name one more time

because I think if you want to hear, you know, a conversation about more of this from someone who actually knows what they're talking about, check out our interview with David Brown, where we covered Sonic Youth's Geffen years with David Brown. He is a senior writer at Rolling Stone, and he also wrote a book called Goodbye 20th Century. It's a biography on Sonic Youth. And we talk about this at length, about just the tired sounds of the 80s

and how they really just wanted to flip rock and roll on its head. Really great conversation. One of my favorite episodes, obviously. Yeah, I mean, we peaked, basically. It's all downhill from here, dude, for sure. So let's jump ahead here to the showstopper cue. This is the song that we're here for. This is your favorite moment in shoegaze.

Yes, it might be my favorite shoegaze moment. So I have to break this into two different clips because it's a nine-minute song. But you don't have to play much of the first part to get the idea because it's very, and this is what makes it such an effective song, is it's very, repetitive. They build this vibe and they keep it, they hold it for a very long time until the next part. Anyway, I'm not going to say anything because I just want to play it, but I absolutely love the way that they pull this off. It's perfect. So here we go. We're going to play the first part of this song. It is called Kick the Tragedy. What about those layers? It really took their

time with that. I love it. Yeah, it goes on like that for another three minutes. That's really cool. Changing up slightly, you know, every few bars or whatever. But what I like about that, there's like an acoustic guitar that's being strummed in the background. Another guitar on top of that. And then there's a guitar on top of that that's doing these sort of like slide effects and stuff like that. And almost like, what was that thing that's like a little electric, it's called like an ebo or something like that that you kind of hover above the string. Like you hover over the. Yeah, and it kind of vibrates the string. I think that might be what's going on in the background. This is what you can do with three guitar band. Yeah, exactly. This is kind of

a reflection of all the time they spent experimenting with that atmospheric guitar layered sound that they had perfected before they started making demos and stuff. This is it. Are they making layers with loop pedals as well? I wonder? Maybe, but they don't necessarily have to with three guitar players. I guess not. Yeah, I just was wondering if you said it's another three minutes of that. I was wondering if they just continue to add more and more different layers. Yeah, it's possible. It's totally possible. That would be really cool.

Yeah, I'll pick it up a little bit before so we can hear that carry into the next part. But this next part is what does it for me. And I'm going to share the lyrics so you can read the lyrics, cute, because there's this spoken word thing that happens with Paula Kelly, the other vocalist. And it is just, you know what, let's just play it, cue. I feel like, let's just give one shout out to Kim Gordon one more time, because I feel like she was the one who really brought that around, man. Sure, yeah. Base player for Sonic Youth.

I love the way she does that. Anyways. Yeah. I'm sure they were fans, man. Yeah, it would be hard to imagine them not being fans of Sonic Youth, right? All right, let's pick it up again here. So I would encourage you, if you're listening at home, which most of you are. Nobody's listening in the room with me right now, so that's the only other option.

Well, they could be listening on their morning commute. True. Wherever you're listening, I would suggest pulling up this song, maybe after this episode, and playing it in full so you can get the full experience, right? But here we go. I'm going to pick it up again, maybe a couple minutes later. Here we go, dude, my favorite shoegaze moment of all time. That was the first time I realized that I could change the world,

or at least changed the way to my sister at the clock and every take just to see what happened. The time is really full by, I guess, and it's hard to think of the way at my life. been or remember really specifically the words and all the rest of it. I was down, more than I'll ever beat, probably. That is more to do with it altogether. Like the orange trees in the backyard, and it's Easter, and it just won't end. Fucking Phil, he's off on his boys somewhere, and I'm just sitting here getting more and more lost with everything. That is the thing about it, it's not as if a cousin had promised something and taken it away.

It was like maybe could share my so-called dreams, but really that none of it was happening. And that reach around midnight left with just about that, nothing. There's not anything particular about either. And I think that the whole thing gets vague every second. But I am too and there's nothing wrong with that. It's even funny when they stopped and realize I'm just 19. How serious could anything be? And I knew they were going to drop that beat, but still got me good.

There's something so perfect about the way that they pulled that off. there was like a chord change a little bit like three quarters of the way through that dialogue like maybe it shifted into more of a minor tone or something well that's kind of what i want to talk about so first of all i love the it's like a like a poem or like she's reading from a diary entry or something like that it's very like this sort of like spoken word uh train of thought type thing um i'm actually going to quote an article that i read a review that somebody wrote. This website called The Big Electric Cat. It's just a blog. But I like the way that this person puts it. I don't have a name or do I. Rob Winfield, I guess is his name. But he says here, Kick the Tragedy plays like a lazy

shoegaze, coasting on an easy wash of sculptural guitar drone, ethereal and melodic, tonally fluid, drifting in wavering oscillations of tempered feedback. It's more akin to a simmer than a full-on blast with an almost innocent and naive take on the wall of sound genre. So I like that thought of like a slow simmer because that's definitely what is happening with that instrumental drone repetitive melody that goes on for almost five minutes, more than five minutes. You want to talk about a slow simmer? This one line jumped out of me drifting and wavering oscillations of tempered feedback.

Yeah. Think about it. Like, if it's a slow simmer, maybe it's going to get to boiling soon. And that's what happens later, right? You get blasted with that feedback and stuff once it comes back. And what I like about it is once she starts talking, it's just the acoustic guitar and the drums, I believe. And then they pull the guitars completely out and it's just the drums for that brief moment. It's very quiet, too. Yeah, it gets so quiet. And then they take away the guitars completely out. And it's just the drums for that brief moment. It's very quiet, too. It gets so quiet. And then they take away the guitars. drums even for like just a half second and then it all comes back right they drop that beat and then they just bring back more of those wavering oscillations but it's just full blast that's great to me what she's talking about just any any thought that could go through like most of our heads when we're you know young just like confused adolescence or whatever right what's that last line she says like i'm just 19 in anyways. She says it's even funny when you stop to realize I'm just 19 and how serious can anything be anyway, not very. And then everything gets pulled out and then it comes back with that

massive guitar rush that you hear. I wanted to read a couple things because I have to give the Shugay's subreddit community credit for turning me on to this song. But this is the meme. There's actually a meme created cue that got me to like, oh, I better pay attention. Let me pull this up and listen to the song. This is the thread right here. you. When Kick the Tragedy hits six minutes and 52 seconds, I just got this picture of this guy wearing headphones. Everyone's probably seen, seeing this before. Yeah, this person's like raising his hand up in the air and like sort of like screaming with what looks like, you know, enjoyment with headphones on. Ecstasy, I would say. Yeah, it captures that moment. And what I like about is

you know, this person gave the timestamp right when it hits, right? Anyway, let me read one more thing here. If you search Kick the Tragedy on the Shugge subreddit, there are a ton of posts from people being like, there's something about the song, you know? And that's what this person said. You jugger Trout, not that it matters, but that's the username. He sort of breaks

it down here. Now, I don't know what this word means because I'm not that smart, but let me look it up. Apotheosis, cue, means the highest point in the development of something. He says here, for me, this song is the apotheosis of Shugays. In other words,

This is the peak, Shugays. He says the opening kick, like breaking open the door of your mind, then the wall of beautiful noise transfixing you in a kind of stupor. So it's like the slow simmer, right? The way the layers keep being added and subtracted feels like some kind of spiritual journey. Little melodies that glide in and out of focus, dancing around the distortion, drawing you deeper into this ethereal nether world. He goes on to talk about the lyrics, poetic and mysterious, dreamlike,

capturing the rambling unguarded self-reflection of youth. For most of us, it's a nostalgic moment. Then the distortion comes again with a bang. And then he says here, and this is a good point. The most incredible thing of the song is that it comes out of nowhere in an album mostly made up of pop shoegaze tracks and slightly twee. There's a word, cute. I cannot believe it.

Tweed acoustic numbers. The fact that this seems to emerge fully formed out of nothing makes it all the more mysterious. Yeah, he's right. This song totally stands out on the record. It's nine minutes long. The rest of them are, they hover around, you know, three, four minutes. So anyway, I just love this song, man. It's one of those things that you have to listen to all the way through when it queues up because you have to get the full immersion of it, man. You got to, you know, surrender yourself to it, if you will. You got to listen to the full six minutes and 50 whatever seconds, get to that moment. Yes, you do. You have to. You have no choice, but you have to.

That's the slow simmer effect that really adds to the payoff that happens, right? All right. Anyway, I don't know why I said earlier that it wasn't going to play the Madonna cover because I am. That's the last song that we're going to play. Awesome. I didn't realize there was a Madonna song, which makes it even cooler. And this is, it's worth noting that this is the song that they were playing when the Virgin record representatives walked in and were blown away by the performance that they heard. So this is an important song because it's what got them signed eventually.

This is when they were firing on all cylinders. Exactly. All right. So this song is to close us out here. It's track number eight on the record. It's called Angel. And if you're a Madonna fan, you should recognize this. Here we go.

Harmonies. I love that they brought in that like very 80s sounding guitar. Yeah. There's like a solo kind of guitar lead sound happening in the background. And this was 84 Madonna, right? This was off of like a virgin. Yeah, this came off of like a virgin. So the funny thing is I remember, you know, when I was picking the tunes for this episode,

Angel stood out to me for having lyrics that seemed very, I don't know, straightforward poppy kind of lyrics. And all shit, it makes sense, doesn't it? Straight up Madonna. Yeah. It's a Madonna song. So anyway. It was great, dude. I loved it.

I've never heard the Madonna song. Now I feel like we should outro out with Angel. Let's do it. Let's do it. This is one of my favorite tracks on the record. That's the funny thing. That's great, man. Anyway, I was actually going to play, but I'm not going to since we played the demo.

But there is the next full link that they came out with is called National Coma. And it took a turn, man. And that's kind of what I'm reading to amongst fans and stuff of Drop 19s is that their sound kind of changes a little bit. But there was one song that stood out to me that I was going to play. But, I mean, come on. Of course we're going to play Madonna, dude. got to play Madonna. And National Como was just one year later, so yeah. There's a song on there called Skull that stood out to me. They kind of got into this weird, I don't know, the songs were like a little

bit more goofy. I don't know, dude. It's weird. Their sound definitely changed. And maybe they had a lineup change. I'm not sure. But because it sounds like they changed members quite a bit. Oh yeah, let me just say this real quick. This was interesting. Because I talked about it. I was going to circle back to it. You remember how I said that their first show that they played was in a different state? After they put out the record, Delaware, they finally played a show in Boston. And apparently, you know, this is a band that went on, got signed and had some success without putting in the time, if you will, if you want to think of it in that kind of way. And so a lot of the other local bands from Boston kind of gave them shit, you know, and like...

Lush dealt with the same thing, man. Yeah. I didn't really bring that up last week, but yeah, they did. Like, they didn't earn it or whatever. So Paula Kelly mentioned in this 2018 interview with some publication called Hassel. She remembers this performance, the first one that they played in Boston as being a train wreck. She says it was our first show in our hometown since we'd had a buzz built up around us, and all the local bands who'd been playing around town for years were so skeptical of us. Like, they went to see us because they wanted us to some.

suck and we did. So that's interesting, right, to think about like... How can you escape that? Like, you know, how can you not think about that the whole time you're playing? Because, yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're, think about being a local band in Boston and you've been playing shows locally for years, you're slowly starting to build up a following. Hey, maybe that maybe we'll put out a record finally, guys, we're doing it. And then, you know, this band kind of comes out of nowhere, puts out a demo, gets some success,

puts a record out, comes back and like, hey, hey, guys, where you're doing? here. Where's the ticker tape parade? You know? And then nothing. There's this flyer here of them from something. It says sick of them yet. It's got drop 19s on it. So they got, you know, this is Buzz Magazine from Boston. Buzzzine reflecting the prevailing local opinion of the time. Damn. So there you go. They got hate in their hometown. But yeah, it just shows you the importance of like putting in the time, you know, not everything's going to go so well for you. If it wasn't for that of Angel. Maybe they wouldn't have had that immediate success. I mean,

dude, who didn't like Madonna? All right, well, that's it, Q. Another great standout record from the Shugays realm, the alt-rock realm of 90s, records that if you weren't plugged into the scene at the time where you weren't, you were only paying attention

to what was on the radio and stuff. Not the college radio, on the mainstream radio. You may have missed something like this. You may have missed this record. We just barely dipped our toes in, too, man. Yeah, seriously. On this episode. So I'm going to dive in head first. Yes, you should.

You definitely should. But Delaware is just one of those required listening records, right? For people who like this kind of music. So the next group we'll be covering in this same vein is a shoegaze group called Chapter House, which, Travis, you mentioned. They also pop up in a bunch of Shugays, like, must listens. Yeah. And specifically that record.

Yeah, this album's called Whirlpool. It came out in 91. on. So I still haven't even listened to the album all the way through. I just know it's going to be great. I've heard the first two tracks and I immediately thought, all right, we need to cover this next. So before we cover that, next week will be our monthly What You Heard episode. This is going to be our April What You Heard. That's our episode where we each bring five songs to the table, just music we've been hearing in between our regular episodes. So that's always fun. So that'll be next week.

And then we'll come at you with some chapter house. And I don't remember where we're going from there. But we're actually going to do a stint of Alt Metal from the 90s. Yes, that's right. That's going to be awesome. The heavier side of Alt Rock, I guess. Awesome. We're going to shake things up a little bit there.

But it's still within the umbrella of alternative from the 90s. So that'll be good times. And as always, you can find us on the Pantheon podcast. Network. That is our home, the network for music lovers. There you can find probably damn near hundreds, at least approaching 100 shows within the network that are all music-centered, music-heavy podcasts. That's pantheonpodcasts.com. And as always, we want to give a shout out to AKG for supporting the show. And that's it. All right, Hugh, let's actually play that song that I mentioned. Because you know what, let's face it, dude. If you want to hear Madonna, you can go listen

Madonna right now. That's true. Angel is a song that probably a lot of people are familiar with. Plus, you've just heard it by the drop 19s. So this is from their album where they get weird. They get weird, but this song is pretty good. So, all right, so here we go. We're going to close out this episode with another drop 19 song. This one is off of National Coma. Their very next release, this song is called Skull. And that's going to do it for us. Next week we'll do our What You Heard, and that'll do it. My name is Travis, and I'm Quentin. Talk to you all next week.

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experiences behind the music we love. Artists of all genres are welcome. And I've been joined by some pretty amazing folks like glass animals. I guess that was the idea was to try something personal and see what happened. And Japanese breakfast. I thought that the most surprising thing I could offer was an album about joy. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, and remember, so much happens before the chorus.