One Song - The Black Crowes' "Remedy"

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

What makes “Remedy” by The Black Crowes retro done right? Diallo and LUXXURY delve into the 1992 anomaly that fuses Southern soul, classic rock bravado, and punk attitude into a seamless, organic ...groove. Songs Discussed: “Remedy” - The Black Crowes “Hard to Handle” - The Black Crowes “Hard to Handle” - Otis Redding “Sometimes Salvation” - The Black Crowes “Mother of Earth” - The Gun Club “Boom-A-Dip-Dip” - Stan Robinson “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” - Beastie Boys “Miss Judy’s Farm” - Faces “She Talks To Angels” - The Black Crowes “Apache” - Incredible Bongo Band “Words You Throw Away” - The Black Crowes “The Logical Song” - Supertramp “You Can’t Turn Me Off (In the Middle of Turning Me On)” - High Inergy One Song Spotify Playlist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 What's going on, One Song Nation luxury here? And I'm Diallo, and we are so excited to share that we will be taping a live episode of our show at On Air Fest this November. We could not imagine One Song Live without you, our fans. So please join us on Wednesday, November 12th at KCRW in Santa Monica. For more information, please visit Onair Presents.com or go to the link in our bios. Can we wait to see you all there? What a minch. I love fucking Chris Robinson.
Starting point is 00:00:36 So luxury, today we're diving into one of my favorite songs in the 1990s, and I don't say that lightly. It almost made me make my piece with Southern Rock. Cool. It's saying a lot. Almost, but not quite. We didn't quite get there. Still got some issues.
Starting point is 00:00:49 That's right, Diyala. And with its classic rock bravado, this song stood out against the trends of the era, ruling the Billboard rock charts for 11 straight weeks, making this band impossible to ignore. natural bourbon and your barbecue because we're talking one song and that song is Remedy by the Black Rose. I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddell.
Starting point is 00:01:26 And I'm producer, DJ songwriter and musicologist Luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break down the Semson stories behind iconic songs across genres, telling you why they deserve one more listen. You and you will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify. while you're there, please like and subscribe. All right, when did the Black Crows first come across your radar?
Starting point is 00:01:50 Yeah, listen, so first of, let me just say right off the bat, like Southern Rock, it has a little bit of a hurdle to get to me because I grew up in the South. And usually when you see the adjective Southern, it's not followed by something that I want. Yeah, I mean, the legacy, the Leonard Skinner and the Confederate Flats, all that stuff. I grew up in Atlanta. Anytime Leonard Skinner came to town, you'd just see all these trucks with the Confederate flag.
Starting point is 00:02:10 And I knew with that, man. I wasn't dumb, you know? Like, it's just, it's a complicated relationship with the musical legacy of the South. But what's ironic is so much of the musical legacy of the South owes its sound and its vibe and what makes it good to black music and gospel and blues. But I do remember being a teenager in the 90s and hearing remedy by the Black Crowes and loving something about this song that I did not love necessarily about other songs like it. It was bluesy.
Starting point is 00:02:39 It felt organic. You can hear the piano, be a. played, like, and not necessarily even the best piano, but just whatever piano that restaurant had. Right, I love that. You know what I mean? Like a bunch of guys playing instruments, like a band jamming on stage, maybe loosely. Yes, it's an upright piano. It ain't no grand piano. You know, the guitars sound good. The drums are like
Starting point is 00:02:58 driving. Yeah. And it sounded like what I thought good, organic, guitar-driven music could sound like, should sound like. Right. And so interesting, you keep saying the word organic, because that's like, that is a very, like, subjective wording. yet I, of course, understand what you mean. It sounds very, like, authentic. It's authentic. Another tricky word to, like, narrow down and define.
Starting point is 00:03:17 Sure. But I get it. I get what you're saying. Listen, this is a time when MTV is shoving a certain processed, it's like almost like a processed food. And I like certain hair metal bands. Yeah. But it's like processed food.
Starting point is 00:03:29 This felt like a rich meal prepared by your grandmother. Right. This is 1989 when that first record comes at, like, to your point. Yeah, so I shake your moneymaker. You're right to point out that this is a kind of rock music. That's a bit of an antidote to maybe what's, become this heavy metal is on the radio. It's White Snake. It's Motley Crew, some bands of whom we like, but it's a different type of rock and roll. It is a different type of rock and roll. It's very visually
Starting point is 00:03:51 oriented. It's kind of coming off the glam rock. It's very like maybe fake sounding. Well, I was going to even take a little further and say, we're all kind of products of when we were born because right at the peak of hair metal, Oliver Stone releases his movie The Doors. And that was sort of the first time I was like, oh, there was like rock music from 20 years ago that might be a little bit more to my like it. I didn't like the doors until I saw that movie either. There was something about that movie that I don't think I knew the doors until I saw that movie, but it was such hero worship that I was like, oh, I think I like the doors. And then fast forward just a few years later, shake your money maker comes out with that amazing cover of Otis Redding. And I remember,
Starting point is 00:04:32 I wasn't even the only black kid in my school who liked that song, like hard to handle. You candle calls the mama I'm sure all the hand And I just around There's a lot going on in that song That I really, really like Not the least of which is how the drums go boom And then he's got like
Starting point is 00:04:57 Three or four bars of just him singing I mean that's up there with Jay-Z Like allow me to reintroduce myself My name is ho like anytime you can drop out All the music and the singer just Hose your attention Yeah And then they bring back in the drums in a strong way
Starting point is 00:05:12 That's exciting. That shit works Tension and release It works We love it Shake Your Moneymaker was a huge success as debut albums go. And there was a lot of pressure on the group to come back with something on their second album. They hear them saying they delivered an album where the label didn't hear any hits.
Starting point is 00:05:28 But that's okay because the label didn't hear any hits the first time. They had previously worked on their debut album with Rick Rubin. And Rick Rubin had so little faith in there in the album that they turned in, that he actually didn't have his name on the first present. That's so crazy. He later went back after. sold, I think, half a million copies. He went back and put his name on. Also, one of the things I liked about this group as a kid was that it seemed like they had black people all around.
Starting point is 00:05:55 And it just seemed like even in their remedy video, they're two black women in, you know, in the video singing background on this song. So they just, they seem like they could be cool white guys. That's where I came in. How about you? When did you first come across the black girls? Listen, let me just say that that answer is so interesting to me, especially what you're saying about their, what in my mind might have been a little bit like heavy-handed association. Like, I think when I first heard hard to handle, first of all, I didn't know that it was Otis Redding. That ain't nothing but drugs don't love it. Pretty little thing let me like to count.
Starting point is 00:06:27 Call, Mama, I'm so hard the hell on that. I didn't either. I knew that it was old. It had that sound. It sounded like an older song because of just the chord changes and the structure of it. But also sonically, and it's important that we both saw videos of these guys first as an impression. Because what they look like really mattered. You have to remember in 1989,
Starting point is 00:06:45 the idea of 70s retro was really new. Lenny Kravitz was one of the first. Give him credit for that. But these guys came in with a similar idea of like Bell bottoms and sort of Robert Plant, flowy, frilly, Stevie Nick stuff. We really hadn't seen that since it happened the first time. And my reaction to seeing it was a little bit like,
Starting point is 00:07:04 that happened the first time kind of recently. I don't think I need it again yet. I'm glad to bring up Lenny Kravitz because I definitely think there was a point in the early 90s where it was like a lot of groups were wearing their influences on their sleeves. So, like, Lenny Kravis was the new Jimmy Hendricks, and this group could have been considered maybe the new Rolling Stones, yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:21 But I will say in addition to the retroeness of it all, there was one other thing I think was going on here, which is I don't think I knew this group was from Atlanta, but maybe subconsciously they were relaying it to me because there was something authentically southern and specifically like cool white southern about this group. These didn't seem like the guys who were, like, being obnoxious, you know. They seem like the kind of guys who you might run into
Starting point is 00:07:45 in Five Points, Atlanta. Or like... What is five points? Five points for those who don't know. It's like sort of like the cool area around Emory University. It's like where you would go and like you'd go shopping for... Like the college town area.
Starting point is 00:07:59 Yeah, it's like a little... It's like... It's Inman Park and it's little five points. And these are places where like, for the lack of a better word, cool white kids would hang out. But these are communities are integrating and work like together. Yeah, you go... Hanging out together.
Starting point is 00:08:14 You go... This is fascinating to me because you picked up on signifiers. I picked up on signifiers. To you, the signifiers. In other words, the sound, the recordings. You know, outside of what the songs were maybe, you were picking up on signifiers that the band was sending out on purpose, what they wore, what they sound like. And so was I. But my reaction to it was the opposite of yours. To me, I was like, this feels appropriated, but not just like black music appropriated. That's in the mix. Don't get me wrong. But it felt like, you know, Led Zeppelin appropriated. It felt Rolling Stones. and I wasn't hearing enough in it that sounded new and original and interesting.
Starting point is 00:08:47 And you're picking up on similar signifiers that tell you that these guys are actually from this area and they're vouching. They might be cool. I'll say the big cosign that comes across in this video, the big cosign are the two black women in the video. We're going to talk about them later. But I think that that had a huge impact on my willingness to be like, oh, so this guys who did hard to handle, Mama Mama, as we called it. Now they got two black women in the video. In fact, let's play a little bit of that part of the song. These background singers, their names are Barbara Mitchell and Taj Artis.
Starting point is 00:09:22 Give them their flowers. Tage artists. I'm not sure how you pronounce your last name, Taj. But let's see that part of the video because this was very important to me as a young youth watching this video. Check this part out. To someone's credit, maybe it's Chris, maybe it's probably them. Like, they didn't tell these black women to dress up like 1950s. I'm going to church in Mississippi clothes.
Starting point is 00:09:52 It was like, no, they look like they literally walked off the street, you know, in Atlanta. Like, they look like 1991. They look like the moms of the kids in my high school. You know what I mean? The Bandit off, as you would say, they also didn't do the late 80s whitewashing thing where you would have Martha Wash singing it. They didn't put a skinny black singer replacing the actual singer. They were the actual singers.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Yeah. They looked like real people. And there was something that made the whole thing feel authentic. So, again, it just, I wasn't worried about these guys being the wrong guys to sort of let into the party. And one last thing I'll say, it didn't bother me that white guys were playing bluesy music. Like, honestly, it's 1991.
Starting point is 00:10:31 As a kid, like, I didn't even know that the Blues Brothers, quite honestly, were referencing Sam and Dave. Like, I'm not even kidding. No, I think the black culture by that point, it was just, it was good. Dan Aykroy, John Malushi, 1979. I thought that they were, like, weirdly dressed white guys in black suits were hanging out with James Brown and Aretha Franklin.
Starting point is 00:10:48 And Ray Charles, come. And Ray Charles. But that's the thing is that, like, You know, to be a teenager at any point is to have usually a pretty limited view of what came out 30 and 40 years ahead. You only know what's in front of you. And then later you find out what came before. Absolutely. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:03 So it was just like if you went to a blues bar in Atlanta in 1991, chances are it was like all white dudes, you know, on instruments. And so like to me, I mean, if we were having a conversation about cultural appropriation, it was probably about the white rappers at that time. Like we were talking about, oh, you know, vanilla ice is fake. But third base, they're cool. That makes sense because you're also, you're growing up in that moment where that is a new musical phenomenon. You see it today. You see it today. Just right now, Haley Williams was on a podcast and she was, you know, talking about how racist Morgan Wallen was. And I couldn't believe it. But in the comments, all like the, all the, uh, Gen Z and I guess young millennials who grew up with her were just like, oh, you know, Haley's always been invited to the barbecue. She's always gotten it. Like, it's funny how whether it's Haley, for that generation or maybe somebody like Chris Robinson for my generation.
Starting point is 00:11:55 There's always like a couple of like white musicians who you're like, oh, that, they see it the way we see it. You know what I mean? Like they, for whatever reason, they're able to tap into like viewing the world through someone else's eyes. And they're like, oh, I get it. Yeah, I kind of understand what that is. So God bless the Chris Robinson and the Haley Wences, I guess I'd say.
Starting point is 00:12:15 So just to be clear, I did have a come to the crow's moment. It was in 1992. It was when this record came out. I was living in Paris. I went to the Virgin Megastore where you can sample records. I miss the megastore. And I put on, I think it was the single. I don't know why I chose this because it's song number four.
Starting point is 00:12:30 But song number four, the first sound of this song hooked me immediately. Let me just play it. Let's talk about it. Okay. This is sometime salvation. Oh, I love this song. Freckin love this song. And it changed my view of the band.
Starting point is 00:12:42 Right here. That silence. Yeah. And then the imperfections. And then you hear this. and this time he plays the ride It's so good This drummer
Starting point is 00:13:04 There's like some weird witchcraft in this music Yeah because like even watching your reactions to this Like I had never really thought about the fact that he comes back to the ride Once Chris starts singing But yeah that's pretty sweet Oh it's so good and it just got my It got its hooks in me It's got its claws in me
Starting point is 00:13:23 I fucking love this tune and that was my moment You just said the word Silence. Yeah. Like they use silence as a weapon. I love that. Just like in hard to handle. We have that like two bar break.
Starting point is 00:13:34 Hey, little thing. They know how to use, they know how to use silence. And it's so you're sort of like floating for a minute. Yes. And it makes all the sounds that come before and after more, you know, more powerful. There's some wonderful. Which are coming up. And I, again, just I love the fact that the Black Crows give so much credit to black music.
Starting point is 00:13:54 Being from Atlanta, Black Crow's singer, Chris Robinson. is quick to cite Sly on the Family Stone. Johnny Guitar Watson, Prince, Bo Didley. These are just a few of their touch points and inspirations. I think that witchcraft that we're talking about, we're hearing that. But there are also other influences going on, maybe not so much in their music,
Starting point is 00:14:12 but in their musical personality, if that makes sense. What can you tell us about that? No, it's perfectly played. And we've had a bunch of episodes in a row now where we are just really delving into what genre means and really separating out because it's a misused word. It's a misunderstood word.
Starting point is 00:14:26 it means different things to different people. But we really think on this show that it's easier to understand it if you separate the musical content, the sound of it, in other words, from the lyrical content and that from who made it and who listens to it. Like those four pieces are you can kind of mix and match. And suddenly it changes what the words all mean, right? So in this case, what surprised me in doing my deep dive for this episode was like that there's a really strong L.A. hardcore and punk connection. That Chris Robinson in particular talks about being a huge influence on him. And I was like, I didn't get it at first until I realized.
Starting point is 00:14:56 oh, it's about the punk attitude and lyricist. It's about, there's a little bit of the music. It's like, you know, when I think of the gun club and X and the blasters, there's all these like L.A. punk bands and a little bit the cramps because they ended up moving to L.A. There's a real kind of southern, swampy, bluesy vibe to it. And most of punk rock outside of that isn't very bluesy. But this particular L.A. strain was, and Chris Robinson cites that as being an influence. And it took me a minute to kind of place it all together because I was,
Starting point is 00:15:26 so hearing the stones. I was so hearing the 70s British blues and the guess who and all that, that it kind of clicked for me when I heard that those two things were what the Black Crows were really a marriage up. This is the Gun Club. This is Mother of Earth from their second record. This is from Miami. Yeah, the Gun Club are great. That's Jeffrey Lee Pyrriss on vocals. They've made five or six records. He passed away very young in the mid-90s, but really eclectic catalog. There's one record that's super underrated. Sounds like Johnny Cash. Total. It's punk rock, but with all these other influences. And from song to song
Starting point is 00:16:07 an album to album, it's extremely eclectic. What's interesting is Chris Robinson's father was in a rockabilly group of some kind. So it makes sense that something like that would be on his radar. Since you mentioned it, should we hear it? This is Stan Robinson. This is Boomer Dip Dip from 1959, which was
Starting point is 00:16:23 Billboard 83. Number 83. Boom, he is fans. I mean, You know, to hear Chris say it, like his father is like this troubadour who's making cool songs like that. His mom is a sturdist on Eastern Airlines and she's like, you know, waiting on Dr. Martin Luther King. He's got cool parents. He's got cool parents.
Starting point is 00:16:51 He's got the kind of parents who seem like cool, open-minded, you know, musicians and, you know, willing to look at other people who don't look like you and see the human behind the behind the eyes. I love this family and it makes so much sense that Chris has the, you know, music that he's produced with his brother, Rich that we'll get into. But can I also say, you know, because again, I said I didn't know that they were from Atlanta, but I thought that maybe they might be telegraphing some Atlanta. Like I said that they reminded me at parts of Atlanta, like Inman Park, Piedmont Park, that have like these cool white kids. Go back and listen to our Liljohn episode. Little John used to work at a skateboard shop right by Pete Monpard.
Starting point is 00:17:28 Yeah. I feel like they, I feel like Chris Robinson and Liljohn, ironically, we're both digesting a lot of the same stuff. And Little Five Points has to be there because that was sort of like the hub of the punk community in Atlanta at the time. All of that stuff was in Atlanta. That punk was like making its way from L.A. and from England and from New York.
Starting point is 00:17:47 And it was making its way to Atlanta in really weird ways. And Lillian John literally said that on the episode. He talked about it was the energy and the attitude of punk. Maybe not literally the guitars and drums because he did something different with his music, but he took some of the attitude and he took some of what he wanted you to
Starting point is 00:18:03 feel as a listener from punk. Crunk came from punk as we talk about on that episode. Right. To hear Chris talk about like the record labels they said no to when they were like really the hot buzzy band in Atlanta is to hear somebody who's like, these suits don't get it. Yeah. But we get it and we're just going to push back anytime, anytime they try and get us to sell out and be commercial, we're just not going to do it. And we're not going to give you an album that you expect.
Starting point is 00:18:26 It's that same punk attitude, even if not that punk sound. So luxury, is there somebody who comes along and helps Chris find his voice, so to speak? Absolutely. As a matter of fact, there's an one of a few unsung here. of this episode is producer George Strugulius, who is... George Trucullius, who Beastie Boy fans know because he's famously mentioned in this song. This is from B-Boy Bouye Bees on Paul's Boutique. Now, who's George Rucleus, that he's getting these shout-outs from the Beastie Boys and playing
Starting point is 00:19:07 this key role? This is what we wondered all these years. So George Draculius, when I first heard his name, I was like, who the hell is George Chucleus? But then later I started seeing his name on the credits of... Deaf American records. So he met Rick Roof at NYU, and Def Jam Records comes out of Rick Room's dorm room famously.
Starting point is 00:19:25 But then he has this offshoot called Deaf American for not hip-hop. And I remember I used to work at this radio station KUSF in high school, and I used to see these Deaf American promos come in. I'm like, this is a cool label. They got Slayer. They had Masters of Reality. And then they had Black Crows. And George Draculius actually signed Black Crows, is credited for discovering them and signing
Starting point is 00:19:45 them. He was the A&R for Deaf American. and records. So Chris credits George Draculius for helping him find this other voice that he, I think, had in him with his southern roots and background in Atlanta, which was, in addition to all the punk rock and Susie and the banshees that he was loving, he also, to your point, grew up listening to Prince and the SOS band and, like, you know, Sam and Dave and Sam Cook and all this black music and Stax Volt and just all the stuff that he had been listening to. He hadn't connected the dots necessarily that he too could sing like that.
Starting point is 00:20:15 And to George's credit, he brought that out. It was already in Chris Robinson, but he hadn't necessarily tried it yet. And he found his voice. He found the bluesy singer that he turned out to be. And that authenticity clearly was in him to your point. Like something happened in his Atlanta upbringing that made it not sound unnatural when he was starting to sing that way. Something clicked. What was one of the songs that George played for Chris that, you know, he thought could be influential?
Starting point is 00:20:41 So this is the faces featuring Rod Stewart on vocals and Ronnie Wood on guitar, the song. Miss Judy's Farm, 1971. You know, I've never... He's great. Rod. Rod Stewart is great. Rod, Rod's got an amazing voice. I mean, it's easy to forget
Starting point is 00:21:05 because, like, later in life in the 80s, he changes the sound and he starts to do standards. This man has a voice. Fight me. Infatuation is an amazing song. Young Turks is the song. Young Turks is the song. Young Hearts, Breathe Free Tonight. Time is on your side.
Starting point is 00:21:19 That song gets me. But I love his voice. I love this music. I forget sometimes that I love the faces. The faces, by the way, I still get them confused. with the small faces. That's just me. They are connected. I will say I never really drew the line between Rod Stewart specifically
Starting point is 00:21:31 and the way Chris uses his voice. I can totally see it. Wow, Rick Rubin rears his head again. You know, he's been a part of so many of the stories of artists that I love, and yet he's so problematic for me personally. I don't know, stop me if you've heard the story, but originally the group was called
Starting point is 00:21:47 Mr. Crow's Garden. Okay. And I remember... I don't know the story. Apparently, Rick wanted them to change. their name. I mean, he did want them. We know this. He wanted them to change their name. That's how they went for being Mr. Crow's Garden to the Black Crows. But he originally wanted them to be named after Cobb County, which is C-O-B, like a Cobb Salad. But he wanted them to spell it with a K. So they'd be the Cobb County
Starting point is 00:22:12 pros with a K. No, he didn't. That's insane. That's insane. Rick, what the hell, bro? Like, you- Wait, are you kidding me? That's insane. Rick, come on the show. Let's talk. I think you need to talk. Yeah, he wanted to be the Cobb County Crows. I'm really glad that they didn't, and I will even say, as a black kid growing up in Georgia who, who was so, you know, had his black consciousness well intact. Even the name of the black crows was a little
Starting point is 00:22:35 suss. You know, like, it's a little suspicious. You know, because they're singing blues music. Rare rabbit and all that stuff. I think that the, I think they made a pass all that because they were so cool and they seemed like they were so chill. And they were smart enough to not listen to Rueben. Right. Yeah. There's something on the nose about like, even the white
Starting point is 00:22:53 stripes and the black keys, like, what is it about, like, we keep diving into the same well musically and nomically. The black keys are still on notice. That is way too close. It's like, oh, who you going to go see tonight? The blackies. Oh, what? I never thought about that. Oh, you never thought about the first time I saw that name. I was like, yeah. So the first album, Shake Your Moneymaker blows up. She talks to Angels was like a staple on rock radio. Which, by the way, Rich Robinson wrote when he was 15, apparently, which is crazy. Yeah, and it propels them to this huge level success. They're opening for AeroSmith.
Starting point is 00:23:35 They're opening for ZZ Top. I love the story about how Miller Light is the official sponsor of this ZZ Top tour. Right. And so every night he gets out there and he says, This is brought to you commercial free. And Miller Light hates this. Yeah, as they would. As they would.
Starting point is 00:23:51 And Zizi Tos managers like beg him to stop. But he wouldn't. He wouldn't. He said every time he got out there and said something that sort of called out the corporate nature of this rock tour. He sold war records and he has this great quote. He says, quote, as a young person, I was arrogant and angry and all that stuff. I'll gladly accept those days because it was my right as a 24-year-old rock star who's making these adult business people millions and millions of dollars. Dot, dot, dot, fucking A.
Starting point is 00:24:17 Fair point. Fucking A. I mean, this is a band. They're touring so much. And to hear Chris say it, one of the reasons they wanted to tour is because they knew that, like, musicianship-wise, they weren't quite as good as their eyes. Oh, totally. And this is one of these situations where that's their first album. Yeah. And they hadn't, they didn't have lots of touring and live experience behind them. But after the record came out was a hit. They go and play for 18 months, 350 shows. 350 shows in 18 months. And they get tight.
Starting point is 00:24:45 Or tighter, I should say, because they still keep a lot of that like rolling stones and they changed their lineup a little bit. They got rid of one guitarist and brought in another one who they thought was better. We'll be talking about that a minute. But they do get tighter and they do road test a lot of the material that they're about to work on. And they go in the studio in January 1992, Atlanta's Southern Tracks Studio to work on, to start work on what would become the Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, the second record, which is
Starting point is 00:25:08 named, by the way, after a post-Civil War Southern hymnal. We like post-Civil War Right, post-Civil War. Big fans of Post-Civil War. Exactly. So they banged out this record. They recorded the whole thing in only eight days, in no small part because of this road testing. Yeah, which I love, and they actually made a joke. They said, like, bands like,
Starting point is 00:25:24 deaf leopard will take like three years between albums. They're like, we're not doing that. They're like, we're going to do it the old-fashioned way, like the 1960s way of like, we're going to come up with an album, we're going to tour it, and then we're going to come home, and we're going to immediately go into that next album. That's a great point, too. You're right. This is an absolute opposition to the prevailing trend of going to Montlang to have, like, your rock and roll record be a pop record, a perfect pop record, which we also like, we like the, I like Motley Crew. But this is a different kind of rock and roll
Starting point is 00:25:51 that we hadn't been hearing in a while. Right. So we're going to take a quick break, but when we get back, we're going to listen to the isolated stems of this rich and rock and track and reveal the origin of that iconic riff. Even Chris Robinson might want to stick around for this. Don't go anywhere. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck
Starting point is 00:26:24 by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields, like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Welcome back to One Song. Let's get into the stems luxury. Let's start with the drums. All right. One thing we love about Steve Gorman is that he's such the outlier in this band.
Starting point is 00:26:51 The guy with his short hair. He looks like he's like an accountant the way he's dressed. The rest of them are like full 70s regalia. But this guy's a monster drummer. So here's what Steve Gorman plays at the top of the song. You'll recognize the riff in the drums. Listen for it. You'll hear it.
Starting point is 00:27:19 And it hits hard and it's so dry. I don't care if he looks like an accountant. I will get my taxes done there every year. if that man can play the drums like that. It sounds so good. It sounds so good. I have a theory. Maybe what we've messed up is,
Starting point is 00:27:33 I've always thought that hip hop and dance music sounds good because it has electronic drums. Okay. But maybe rock is just better to my ears when it's a human playing it. Because I'll say like, I'm sorry, I'll piss some people up. Groups like Imagine Dragons, like today's rock bands,
Starting point is 00:27:49 like often they're using the same drum equipment that hip hop and dance is using. And I'm missing. You know, we talked a little bit about this on the Oasis episode. I'm missing that sort of, you know, like, I kind of need that. You need the size or what is it? Is it too precise? Is that part of what you're doing in?
Starting point is 00:28:07 Yes, I think we talked about that. It's gritted out. It's pro-tooled within an inch of its life. A human is not quantized. So you feel the drums. And I think something like rock, actually, you've got to feel those drums. We talked to a little bit about this on the Sylvester episode as well. There's a BPM fluctuation.
Starting point is 00:28:22 That definitely happens on this song. This song is roughly 80. to 81 BPM. Yeah, but it changes. Because Steve Gorman's kind of playing the drums in real time and feeling it out. Well, I'll even argue like when the riff comes in,
Starting point is 00:28:33 the boom, boom, bum, ba-dum, done, da, da, da. Like as it goes into the verse, it kind of speeds up a little bit, but whenever it gets to the fills, I guess you'd have to call him, like it does seem to slow down a little bit just to punch through.
Starting point is 00:28:47 There's something super interesting that you're referring to. So as I was going through this and breaking it down, one of the things is that even counting this off was challenging to me. In my mind, I was like, this song, does it start as a pickup? In other words, one, two, and two, and three, four, one, two, three.
Starting point is 00:29:03 Let's count it together. Tell me where you think the one is. Okay. Where's the one? Okay. I'm going to play the one. We're going to play the one. We're going to take a moment.
Starting point is 00:29:10 We're going to pause from the stems. Find the one in the actual song. Here we go. Here we go. Three, four, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, three, three, four. But that means that this is two, three, four, four. One, two, three, three, four. So that pickup comes in like halfway.
Starting point is 00:29:33 It's like, it's on the three. I think so. The, bam, bam, but it starts on the three. But even with that, when you're in the four, the duration between the end of the four and the beginning of the one feels endless. Oh, by the way it changes. Because there's no down, there's no kick on the downbeat.
Starting point is 00:29:48 Right, right. And also that might be another example of them, not putting something in there. It doesn't need to be there. Once again, weaponizing the silence. Weaponizing the silence. Weaponizing, listen again, and no. Notice how there's no downbeat on the one, I think that's what's causing it.
Starting point is 00:30:01 It's a one drop, right? Like from reggae almost. Yeah. Just literally no kick drum makes you float in space. Listen for it here. One, two, three, four, one, two, one, two, one. There's a one there. That one, there's no drum on the one.
Starting point is 00:30:18 You're totally right. It's very vague and floaty in a really wonderful way. It's fun though that they play with that, and I think a lot of that's intuitive. From my understanding of their songwriting process, Rich and Chris, together, together are writing a lot of this song without a lot of necessarily theoretical musical knowledge. We'll get into that a little bit more when we get into the guitar. That's part of, I think, why the song is wonderfully, like, unique sounding because they didn't like overly study at Berkeley School of Music to make this movie. No, not at all. Yeah. The brothers, the siblings have
Starting point is 00:30:44 a shorthand. They have a shorthand for songwriting, yeah. So another thing to point, I'm going to play for you the verse beat. And one thing that's interesting, you'll notice is that he reverses what's typical in that the verse is not played with a hi-hat. It's the ride. And then in the chorus, he reverses it. So the chorus is actually the high hat and not the ride. So this is the verse even though it sounds like it might be a chorus. So that's where Chris is singing. This is just the verse.
Starting point is 00:31:15 And there's some fun stuff going on there. We actually have some, speaking of the Rolling Stones a little bit. Got some Procution. I got some percussion that definitely gives it a little bit of a Rolling Stoney bounce to my ears. And this percussion is by Chris Trujillo. Oh, yeah. I'll just isolate that. So that's going through the whole song. And in fact,
Starting point is 00:31:37 later on, there's a little more percussion that gets added. So the full beat is, which is very incredible. Congas. It's totally congas. That's the right way to say it. I just learned today the correct presentation. Thank you, Melissa. Our producer, this is very, to my ears, very incredible, like, bongo band sounding. It has that kind of like, the incredible bongo band. Absolutely, right? Like Apache has this sort of thing flavor to it. Yeah. What's going on with the bass here? Johnny Colt on bass. Johnny Colt. I got to say, having gone through some of their old interviews, yeah. Cold is a pretty funny guy.
Starting point is 00:32:19 He's a very funny guy. You want to hang out with these guys in general. Dude, I'm serious. Shoot, I mean, say no more. I definitely want to go hang out with them. I think he lives in Topanga. We should just go over to his house. But what is Cole doing on this record?
Starting point is 00:32:32 Colts laying it down. I'm going to play you one of my favorite moments. This is coming in the verse. So I'll play you Johnny Colt's bass and then I'll bring in some other stuff. Okay, great. Just rhythmic. Let's bring those beats back.
Starting point is 00:32:50 Laying it down. Moving to the next chord. Yeah. He's doing his job. He's doing his job. Well, you know, he also plays the riff. Like, you know, he's not crazy. This thing's fun to play.
Starting point is 00:33:07 Yeah, that part's fun. It sounds good. I mean, that is a full, rich bass tone. George Triculius knows what he's doing. Brendan O'Brien, who mixed this record. We talked about him on our Jane's Addiction record. You've got some of the best of the best here, making this sound super good.
Starting point is 00:33:24 I love it. And that's a nice contrast with how much fun they're having and the tempo sort of moving around. And when we get into the guitars, you'll really hear. again, the undeniable Rolling Stones parallel is really there with the interplay, but all of this to say that the bass is really locking it in.
Starting point is 00:33:39 It's part of what's making it really locked in. There's a stability there that you need to have fun with some of the rest of the stuff. All right, now we come to the guitars. There's a lot going on with the guitars. In fact, this song has two guitars. It does have two guitar players. And the origin of that iconic riff
Starting point is 00:33:51 that starts the song is actually an earlier Black Crow's song. It was a B-side. And they used to play it as a sprawling 14-minute opus. But when they came into recording, the second record, they're like, we like this, but we don't need all 14 minutes of it. And they ended up distilling it down to just this part. This is a live version of a song called Words You Throw Away, live in Atlanta, December
Starting point is 00:34:11 1990. Oh, wow. There it is. That's the bit they kept. I didn't even hear it. When can you miss it? There's the riff. I'll play it again.
Starting point is 00:34:21 I didn't hear it. Here it comes. There's three notes. I heard it. To our point when we were like, let's find the one. Yeah. Because it didn't come in like, on the three. It actually comes out on the four
Starting point is 00:34:36 on that one I would argue. Like, it came in a different part of the measure. More he and up, one he and a, it's like, it's in that little floating zone before the one hits. It's in a weirder zone. It's like it's not quite where it goes. It's kind of on the downbeat. A little bit. Let's listen again. Let's listen one more time. Am I crazy? Oh, you know what it is? It's a different rhythm though. You're right. It comes in
Starting point is 00:35:00 on the one now as opposed to the three. And so that's what threw me completely off. That's really, I'm so glad you found that. I would, I would, I'm so glad you found that. I would have never found, I would have never figured that out. Yeah. On this 14-minute sprawling song, they're like, well, let's just take the best part of that and it ended being that three notes. I'm just, my, my time is limited, so I don't often listen to 14-minute concert live versions. Sure. But I'm so glad to you know. Nor are you obligated to. Two guitar players, Rich Robinson and Mark Ford, we're going to start with Rich. And they're doing a little interplay, kind of like what Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards would be doing. So let's start with what Rich Robinson plays.
Starting point is 00:35:36 So that's Rich just doing a little suspended And on top of that His cohort Mark Ford Who joined for this record Replacing by the way You actually heard the previous guitar player Jeff Sease
Starting point is 00:35:57 Who got fired from the band Yeah But he is who we heard playing the original riff By the way But this is Mark Ford who replaced him He was former guitars for Burning Tree And for the record They said they only replace
Starting point is 00:36:09 Seas with Ford because they said that like, you know, Sees was maybe a little bit limited in his abilities, whereas Ford was like this guy who's going to come in and make them all better musicians. As demonstrated by what we're about to hear, which is him playing the part on top of that, and then I'll play them together. So here's, I'll put Rich back now, and it sounds like this together. Can I just say this is going to, Rich Robinson, I want no shade. I love what you and your brother cocked it, but I can hear what Mark Ford is doing.
Starting point is 00:36:51 I can hear the more dialed-in musicianship in there. It's very subtle, but some of the choices are slightly more next level, so to speak. It's like confidence. Yeah. It's the confidence that I had when I used to go to Six Flags and ask a girl for her number. I used to be really good at these things. Don't do it now for many reasons. No, nowadays it would be an officer.
Starting point is 00:37:13 He's there. No, but seriously, like I like a good confidence drum. Sure. And that's what I hear when I hear Mark Ford. No, I'm so glad you said. I mean, part of the like two guitar interplay thing, because it is a thing. You see it in the stones. With Keith and Ron, you obviously see it in Guns and Roses with Slash and Izzy originally. And actually, at the time that Mark Ford joined the Black Crows, he was also offered a spot in Guns and Roses. Oh, wow. But the difference was that in Guns and Roses, he'd be replacing Izzy, which would mean that Slash is the main dude. So Slash will be playing the sort of more interesting parts. But in the Black Crows, he could get to be kind of Slash, as it were. So Mark was able to sort of be sort of more of the lead. Sure.
Starting point is 00:37:55 And they both talk about this in interviews. This is no shade. But Rich is primarily songwriter and rhythm guitar. He plays solos over time. He gets better and more accomplished. In this moment, Mark is there to sort of be the more accomplished musician. And to bring some of that slash type. I don't feel so bad about my earlier comments now because it sounds like everybody in the group sort of knows that like Mark is, he's here for a reason.
Starting point is 00:38:16 And I think he earns his freaking paycheck on this song. Are they doing anything else? differently. Yeah, one interesting difference between them is that Mark Ford, you generally uses standard tuning. And on this song, he's playing standard tuning. And by contrast, Rich Robinson is playing what's called open tuning. It's an open G tuning. I'll explain what that is. I'll even show you on the guitar here. Amazing. So what he does is he tunes what's usually an E string, the lowest string down. And in fact, the lowest two strings are tuned down one whole step, and the top string is tuned down one whole step. And the reason why that matter is, is when
Starting point is 00:38:48 I'm about to strum it with nothing fretted. My fingers on my left hand are not holding down anything on the guitar. And you just hear what's called, that's an open G chord. Open G. Which means that anyone easily, you can use, this is helpful when you're using a... Even I, like when you're using a complete idiot in the studio, and you're like, hey, play open G. It's like, I can do that. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:39:10 And it means for slide guitar, you can play slide guitar and can move things up and down with a slide. It's just another thing in your arsenal as a guitar player. I might need a slide guitar because you were trying to teach me how to play some stuff earlier. And it's hard for me to keep my finger straight. But with a slide, I could just pull that thing down, right? And it always be straight. Absolutely right. And if you, at home, get out your guitar, if it's been in the corner gathering dust because you're not a guitar player.
Starting point is 00:39:34 Finish listen to the show, but after that. There is a subset of One Song Nation listeners who own guitars but don't play guitar. So grab that guitar, tune it down to Open G. And you can play this song because it's simply, you put your fingers on this fret. I'm on the 10th fret and you go, 10th, 9th, 5th, 3rd, fret. And then you go 8th, 7th, 3rd fret. And that's the riff. And by the way, I could just picture a young Rich Robinson who's still, he's a songwriter and his brother's older than him and the two of them are writing all these
Starting point is 00:40:07 songs together. This is, first of all, super fun to play. Yeah. Second of all, not unimportantly, it's what Keith Richards and Rai Kuder and a lot of his heroes are doing these open strings. But when I put this together to like get it ready for the show, I lost an hour of my life just having a blast with like, like anything you do sounds good. It's super fun. All right, I got to hear the guitar solo because I, you know,
Starting point is 00:40:32 even though I don't play a guitar, I love it. Can we hear a little bit of that? All right. So here's the solo. This comes right before the final breakdown. We get this wonderful solo from Mark Ford. And Riches underneath it. That solo guitar is so great.
Starting point is 00:41:04 It's so great. It's so great. It's just Steppenwolf. That's what I heard. I heard Steppenwolf, which I only knew because Steppenwolf, was very popular in commercials around this time. Like I feel like,
Starting point is 00:41:14 I like to dream and born to be wild. Like I feel like that level of guitar play. And again, back to Lenny Kravitz, that stuff was actually getting back into the cultural bloodstream. And this would have been like...
Starting point is 00:41:28 But this is such a bluesy solo. That is pure pentatonic scale blues. Not 101 as in basic. But in a sense, this is a guitar solo that an early learner of guitar can play. because pentatonic is the first scale that you learn. Is it really called pentatonic?
Starting point is 00:41:44 Yeah, because there's five notes in it. And he's adding some blue notes. There's technically six notes in there. No wonder satanic panic. Because pentagons, pentatonic? The devil's music, the black keys, if you will. Watch it. But can I just say that when that guitar solo finished,
Starting point is 00:42:01 I immediately started like doing piano, air piano. Oh, yeah. Because I heard the piano coming in. Now, what can you tell me about the piano? Is it a Rhodes? I need to know. This is possibly my favorite part of the entire song. Okay.
Starting point is 00:42:14 Oh, my God. I love this song. I hope I can deliver on what it is. You're teeing up here. You better get your facts straight. What is the piano? Is this the Rhodes? This is another recent addition to the band Eddie Harsh.
Starting point is 00:42:26 And he is playing not a Rhodes, but it's close cousin. Eddie Harsh. What a freaking fantastic name that is. He's playing the Whirley. He's playing the Worley, which sounds similar to a Rhodes. It's a little harder sounding. It's less watery. And maybe most famous, in my mind,
Starting point is 00:42:39 I always think of it being the super tramp instrument. So when you think of any super tramp, the logical song, he's playing the Whirley very famously. Love the logical song. But I'll tell you, what the Whirley doing on the Logical song is not what is doing on Remedy. So can you please lay it down, brother, that solo, really wonderfulness.
Starting point is 00:43:05 Is that the bass you just brought in? Was that the bass? Give it to us harsh. Give it to us any harsh. That's some boogie-wogie in there. I heard, I was reminded of like the Charlie Brown cartoons for a little bit. I don't even know why.
Starting point is 00:43:42 It was like Charlie Brown like grew up man. Because Charlie Brown is boogie. He sees some things. That's boogie whigy piano on that Charlie Brown stuff. It's so good. I could just listen to that all day
Starting point is 00:43:51 just like cruise around LA with like the top down just like and this is another connection to both the Rolling Stones who famously had Ian Stewart. One of the founding members of the band but they kind of backburnered him
Starting point is 00:44:03 because he didn't look the part unfortunately poor guy. But he was in the band and he played you know, he played bro. and piano and all the sort of keyboard parts, and also Billy Preston and the Beatles. These are kind of members of those bands
Starting point is 00:44:16 that you often forget, burn in the bands officially, but you hear them on so many songs on that. Chris has an amazing voice, I'd say. You think so? And I think he's got one of these, you know, everybody's made the comparison to Jagger in this video because he's, you know, he's the front man.
Starting point is 00:44:33 He doesn't play an instrument. Doing the gestures nonstop, maybe is that? While singing in a band that sounds like the rolling stuff. I wonder why. Let him do it. Because to me, there's not just Jagger. There's, there's Velvet Underground. There's, like, to me, he just looks like, you know, rock god.
Starting point is 00:44:48 So, like, let's give him his credit. And he's earned it because this is an incredibly fun song to listen to from a vocal perspective. Great lyrics. You can start us off with the verse. Baby, baby, baby, why can you sit still? Who killed that bird out on your window seal? Look at that. We're a seal.
Starting point is 00:45:06 On you the reason that it broke his back. He's just living in that blue note. Then we get to the chorus. Yeah. And even though we've been calling them the background vocals, they actually kind of sing the chorus. Right. And then Chris sings backup for them.
Starting point is 00:45:20 Arguably, they are not backup singers in this chorus. Arguably they're singing the chorus. Kind of. They're back up, which once again, what a minch. I love fucking Chris Robinson. Let's hear the chorus. Can I have some remedy? All I want is a remedy.
Starting point is 00:45:38 He's louder, though. for all other things Can I just say I think the difference between Because I have issues with You know, a lot of Rolling Stones stuff You know, brown sugar notorious, right? What I like about this is that he's like
Starting point is 00:45:56 Yeah, he may be higher in the vocals It makes sense. It's 1992 and you know, we're not, you know, we still need to star the song as the star But it's almost like he was like Hey, let the black ladies go to the forefront and I'll sing back up for them. This is not brown sugar.
Starting point is 00:46:12 You know what I mean? Like this is him letting Atlanta and letting, you know, Barbara and Taj sing their part at the forefront. Barbara and Taj unsung heroes, man. I think that they are probably one of the things that made me connect with the song that was being played on MTV with a lot of other songs that I don't remember or don't particularly care for. But like this one I was like, you weren't a Warren fan? No White Snake for you?
Starting point is 00:46:36 But this was good because this is like, you know, this is at a time when, like in vogue is starting to get their songs played on MTV. So for me, this is just one more song with like, you know, black women on the chorus. But it's got these cool white guys like playing instruments, you know, in the background. So I love it. I love this song. I love this energy.
Starting point is 00:46:54 So let's give some flowers to Barbara and Taj. Just so you guys can know, these people had careers too. Barbara was a member of the R&B group high energy with her sister Vanessa Mitchell. And they had some success with a song called You Can't Turn Me Off. Song peaked at number two on the R&B charts and number 12 on the U.S. charts. And Barbara would go on to do duets with the likes of Smokey Robinson. Taj, meanwhile, continued to record secular and gospel music, including with acts such as Third Day and Philip Bailey from Earth, Wind, and Fire.
Starting point is 00:47:32 She also sang solo at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and performed with Michael Jackson. So these wonderful singers, thank you. Thank you, because without you, I may not have really noticed. this song in quite the same way. But it just goes to show that sometimes a good collaboration can bring more people into the musical fold. Okay, so now that we've heard the song lecture,
Starting point is 00:47:57 what can you tell us about the splits? Even Stephen, my friend, but only between the brothers. 50-50, Richard S. Robinson and Christopher Mark Robinson. 50-50. It makes a lot of sense. They're not the Gallagher brothers. They're not the Davis. They're a little bit of the Davies brothers. Well, listen, to hear some of the other band members talk about it, These guys are literally like throwing stuff at each other in the studio, getting into fistfights.
Starting point is 00:48:20 It's a little bit in there. It's hard to be around somebody who you consider your brother in creative space. There have definitely been some throwdowns between me and Bashir, not physical, but emotionally jarring. Why haven't we had throwdowns? We have not had enough throwdowns. We have not had enough throwdowns, but we're not that good yet. We're just not that good yet. Let's manufacture one for clicks right now.
Starting point is 00:48:38 Luxury, what do you think is the legacy of Remedy and the Black Crow's? I think the Black Crow's legacy, specifically with this song and this record. is they are demonstrating something that we've now gotten kind of used to, which is that when things come back, when sounds come back, when musical ideas come back a generation or so later, they transform and they're different. Not only are they, as a new audience may be hearing them for the first time, right?
Starting point is 00:49:01 Greta Van Fleet leaps to mind, right, with Led Zeppelin. When Greta Van Fleet came out and got lots of comparisons to Led Zeppelin, very similar to how then the Black Crows came out, they got the Rolling Stones and the faces comparisons, right? But I think what's now easier to see is that while there are similarities when bands are influenced by a previous blues band in both cases, what they change and what's different and what their own story and their lyrics and their personal, what they bring to it is unique and different and can be transformative and reminds us all episode to episode of the show especially. It's like nobody owns the idea of what a sound is. Nobody owns a genre. And those things are constantly evolving and in flux. I think the unique storytelling of these unique people shines through and they use as a vehicle, perhaps some sounds and guitar tones and tunings. We've heard before. But when the stones did it, they were also building on something that came before them. So the thing that you brought up very
Starting point is 00:49:59 early on, which is so important is when you're a kid or when you're in your early 20s even, when you hear music for the first time, you just hear it for what it is. And those other associations, you learn later and they're helpful, but they're not necessarily important for the music on its own. They're not the driving force for the music. Led Zeppelin had precedence before that. We go all the way back to Robert Johnson. You can go back before that. So what the original of anything is, who's everyone's borrowing from everybody. That's the story of this show, right? I mean, come on. What about you, DL? What do you think is the legacy of the Black Crows and this song? Man, I think that for me, looking back, it really does feel like it was a perfect concoction of many things Southern in a way that was welcoming. to all Southerners. And I think that that's something that is not easily achieved.
Starting point is 00:50:48 Just 10 years later, you had artists like Bubba Sparks and Paul Wall who were full-on hip-hop personalities, working with some of the biggest hip-hop producers of the day to merge that sort of like all-incumbencing Southern culture into one thing.
Starting point is 00:51:06 But it was a lot harder in 1991 when this was recorded in 92 when it was released. So I think credit, Chris and Rich and Johnny Colt, Nettie Harsh and Mark Ford for having the wherewithal to release what I think is a fantastic album, a fantastic indie rock album, alternative rock album, in the Southern spirit, in the Southern vein.
Starting point is 00:51:32 And I think that their choice to bring in Barbara and Taj's vocals and have them sing the chorus and we'll sing their backup, damn it, it just worked. I think everybody's musicianship is polished, but not too polished. And I think that it's just a bunch of different cultures in one great song. All right, one song, Nation. We got a new segment. We're calling one genre where luxury and I break down a subgenre and share a record that we think is essential listening.
Starting point is 00:52:00 That's right. Today we're talking about shoegaze or shoogazi as our videographer Casey apparently likes to pronounce it. Shugays is one of my favorite genres, very briefly definition. Listen, the name literally comes from the idea that you have so many guitar pedals and so much hair that you're looking down on stage and not at the audience. So shoegaze. Can I just it? Yeah, no, I tell you, and by the way, I've always felt like of all the genre of music, this is one of those that is very much made up by journalists and our execs. Like more than typical, right?
Starting point is 00:52:35 Yeah. At the time it was absolutely, yes. When this was happening, the bands who were defined by that term weren't necessarily crows. crazy about the term. Absolutely true. Yeah, I feel like even to this day, most of them, a lot of them reject the term. But, you know, but it is useful for a type of alternative rock that became quite popular, sort of like very late 80s, early 90s. So late 80s, early 90s, especially in England, you've got a handful of bands, particularly my bloody Valentine. You've got slow dive. That's the big one. That's the big one. You've got slow dive. Lush, one of my favorites,
Starting point is 00:53:06 one of our shared favorites, I should say. Who else? Curve is another underrated band. and what the, at Ride would be another one. And I'd say like a defining characteristic besides, again, to your point, being journalists created in England. So there are British bands that are working in the late 80s, early 90s. But sonically speaking, a big part of their sound is there's a wash of mostly guitar driven, if not exclusively, not a lot of keyboards. I can't think of any keyboards actually in those bands.
Starting point is 00:53:32 Guitar effects. A lot of it is influenced by and linked to in no small way, Robin Guthrie from Cocktoe Twins. Yeah, Cocto Twins. actually is, you know, precursor to these bands. So anyway, by the time we get around to the bands that we're talking about right now, that sound and maybe the idea for it is as an image for the band members themselves, is that they are not terribly charismatic, right?
Starting point is 00:53:55 That's the idea. They're on stage looking down at their instruments and plug in pedals, chorus pedals and reverb pedals. Look at the album covers. We have two albums here right now, and neither one is showcasing the group. They're showcasing sort of like a feeling. Yeah, so Lush, you're just, Yalo's show. Lush's Spooky, their first full-length album.
Starting point is 00:54:14 And 4-A-D records, it's got the full 4-A-D treatment with the Von Oliver graphics. Abstract imagery, basically. You can't see any of the band members. And I'll hold up a couple more because I've got some of the EPs that came before it, which are some of my most expensive discogs purchases, by the way. I've spent a lot of money to get their first two EPs. But yeah, beautiful artwork, gorgeous for it, classic for the label, 4-A-D, classic for the genre.
Starting point is 00:54:37 So for me, my Bloody Valentine is just, just one of the greatest bands of all time. This is their first full-length record, isn't anything. The classic, the one to get, if you have extra money to spare. That would be Loveless. I... Loveless was going to be one of my picks. Oh, my God. I have it on CD.
Starting point is 00:54:54 I also have the Glider and Tremole-O. E.P. Such an incredible record. And Kevin Shields, who's the mastermind behind the project and the guitar player, who basically innovated making these guitars sound like something that weren't guitars. How would you describe the Shugate sound of my blood Valentine. I think the fact that those two EPs are called glider and tremolo are perfect,
Starting point is 00:55:14 because you have the tremolo on your guitar. And Kevin Shields famously has like a secret formula for how he gets his sound. But you're hearing guitars, but they do not sound like guitars. They sound like this wash of sound. It sounds like whales and water and ocean and the past and the future. But he's doing it all with guitars and you feel like you're gliding. Totally. And it's a really wonderful evocative. It sounds like the future in many ways. And actually there's this great, Brian Nino famously said after hearing one of their songs that he heard the future and it's this band and it's this song. Which makes sense because Brian Nino always did very cinematic, hard to like tie down to like traditional song structure type songs. And very tied to sound as well. So sound is very important in the shoe gaze phenomenon.
Starting point is 00:55:59 That's so funny by the way because I almost chose My Blade Valentine Loveless as my selection. But I went with one that I know that you also own, which is Lush. is an album called Spooky from 1992. And I love this. I really love this album. It washes over you, I think it's the best way of it. It's shimmery. It sounds shimmery.
Starting point is 00:56:20 I mean, one thing I remember about the genre in general is that like, generally songs ran longer, you know, you know, because it takes some time to sort of build up that momentum. The sonic wash. Also, like, could I just say, there were groups that weren't even considered shoegaze, but I feel like they could have been like Stereo Lab, early Stereo Lab sort of sounds like, a little bit like Lush. Like, it's not, it's not building completely different labs. Like, it's, it's definitely got that sort of, like, you know, chord progression quality.
Starting point is 00:56:48 And Jesus and Mary Chain, too, like the idea of using sound as, like, a component, like, it's still songs. These are songs that are, like, with songwriting, some more than others. I think, like, slow dive is a little less songy to my ears. Totally. And Lush is very... Slow dive is almost like a jam band for people who don't like the jam band genre. I used to put slow dive on to do my homework, too, because, like, it's sort of.
Starting point is 00:57:08 sort of zone out to it. I wouldn't like, it would be unnoticeable in the background. But Lesh was a little too noticeable. And the record, by the way, Spooky is produced by Robin Guthrie from Cocto Twins. And it's sort of like if Cocteau Twins were like a rock band, you know, with more intelligible lyrics, for example. And harmonies
Starting point is 00:57:24 done by two different people. And by the way, this genre didn't just go away one day when more popular genres come in. I mean, like, they do, there is an argument that like when Brit Pop explodes in England, all of a sudden the new group started chasing that and they start moving away from shoe gaze. But I would argue that even groups like the
Starting point is 00:57:44 deaf tones are kind of doing 10 years later a sort of shoe gaze sound. Oh yeah. That's a cool connection. If you go back and listen to their pony album and you think about, you know, change or songs like that, there's a shoe gaze quality to how those songs wash. And you're making me realize too that going back even further, I mentioned Jesus and Mary Chain. They were just doing a Phil Spectre wall of sound. The wall of sound idea, it really is a wall of sound, but sort of modernized in a British sensibility maybe. And again, not tied down to like, oh, this song's been going on for three minutes and 20 seconds. We've got to end it.
Starting point is 00:58:16 Turn it off. There's no time. And by the way, one of my number one on discogs right now, like on my wish list, is Gala by Lush, which is their compilation, which is their early singles. Even though I have those singles on the specific EPs, I do kind of want Gaila. Anyway, if anybody out there wants to go to my discogs wish list, like, you know, we can be friends. We can meet each other through discogs. I got to say when I went to find Lush, I had a hard time locating them. I feel like Lush and some of these shoegaze bands have been kind of forgotten.
Starting point is 00:58:47 A lot of the records were out of print until recently. Yes. So I do feel like exactly when you're looking for something that's out of print, discogs is your friend because you've got to figure out, okay, where am I going to find this thing? And in what format is going to have the song that I'm looking for. So I'm glad that we were both talking about this genre that might have been overlooked by people who are maybe slightly younger than us,
Starting point is 00:59:06 God forbid. So those are our genre. Conra picks for Shugays, let us know what you think in the comments. And if you want to hear our selections, please check out the one-song playlist, linked in our episode notes. As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-L-O, and on TikTok at D-A-L-L-R-R-R-W. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-Y and on TikTok at Luxury-X. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at at One-Song podcast.
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Starting point is 01:00:24 We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duane. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo, mixing by Michael Hardman and engineering by Eric Hicks, production supervision by Razak Boykin, additional production support from Z Taylor. The show's executive
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