College Rock Goes Pop

Thinking about late 80s/early 90s when college rockers made the grab for the big brass ring with singles that sought mainstream radio acceptance. Seems like some of these were self-conscious, semi-tongue-in-cheek "pop" moves that became hits in spite of themselves (think REM's "Stand"), and some were songs that were dressed up with slicker production than was the norm for a lot of these bands (something like the strings/big drum sound on the Replacement's "Can't Hardly Wait"). Anyway -- the classics, the duds, the good, the bad, the ugly. Let's talk about them!

B52's are the first thing to spring to mind.

Yeah, like when Cosmic Thing came out did longtime fans of the band think they had just completely sold out? It's a great album, but it definitely sounds like their play for the big time. I'd say "Roam" is one of the ultimate examples of success with this -- an amazing, pretty undeniable tune that isn't embarrassing or out of character, but has mass appeal. They knocked it out of the park with that one.

...whereas "Channel Z" (which I think was the first single from Cosmic Thing) was kind of like a miss version of frantic-B52s "Private Idaho" and "Rock Lobster"

weird, was that the first single? i just assumed it was "love shack"...

i remember at the height of Cosmic Thing's success my dad said something to me about how they had changed their sound and lost their way creatively after the death of one of their founding songwriters, and so for a while i had this weird idea that the B-52s were a much more 'serious' band before that

xpost -- No it was very much "Channel Z" as the first single, I remember it getting a lot of airplay on the 'alt' MTV shows at the time.

Bob Mould's "See A Little Light" fits here, too. Good straight catchy song.

yeah, i love that song. might have to make a mix of this stuff -- most of the songs I'm thinking of are great! i think the feelies' "doin' it again" is the closest they ever got to something like this. that big opening riff is fairly unique in their catalog

There was kind of a similar thing going on in Australia with people like the Go-Betweens and the Triffids putting out much more overtly commercial stuff (16 Lovers Lane and Calenture respectively, both GREAT albums too).

BTW is 'college rock' a term that's just limited to US acts or what? Or was it applied to stuff like Echo & the Bunnymen or whoever as well?

i dunno, i think that things like new order were kinda considered college rock in the US, right? at least for a while?

& yeah both Tallulah and 16 Lovers Lane are big examples of this. Both awesome albums -- the Go-Betweens really benefitted from that weird tension between their commercial instincts and the spikier side of things.

Butthole Surfers - Pepper
the Flaming Lips - She Don't Use jelly
Ween - Push Th' Little Daisies
Sonic Youth - Kool Thing

I'm not sure if these all fit. "Pepper" seemed like the most obvious 'grab for the big brass ring'

For part of the B-52's fanbase (at least those with Athens connections) the success of Green made Cosmic Thing less surprising. I don't think the B's changed their basic sound all that much -- less so than R.E.M. had by the time of their Warners albums.

the Flaming Lips - She Don't Use jelly

90210 performance of this is hilar

^ i'm not a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house!!!

Does 'Walk Like An Egyptian' count? The Bangles were college/indie at first iirc

i've been getting into this era too, alternative before Nevermind

Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing
Love and Rockets - So Alive

Lemonheads It's a Shame About Ray

Jason and the Scorchers crashed and burned trying to make this move.

yeah, dream syndicate sort of had the same trajectory as jason and the scorchers.
robyn hitchcock had a series of these -- "balloon man," "So you think you're in love," "ultra unbelievable love"... don't know if any of those really ended up being hits.

I'm not sure "Jelly" constitutes a big grab at the brass ring of alt-rock. That song was a total fluke, and more indicative of Drozd's contributions that the band actively triangulating or something.

yeah, not like that song was all dressed up -- i think it's success was more a result of the weird, post-Nevermind musical landscape?

Not a fan of those Hitchcock pop songs above, but I like Madonna of the Wasps and (as I remember it) the rest of Queen Elvis (Peter Buck production):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryLSFWgxDzA

yeah i feel like pre-Nevermind is kind of the time period this thread is about, and "She Don't Use Jelly" and "Pepper" are both resolutely post-Nevermind

REM had 'Pop Song 89'

my favorite of all of these

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB0fj6_j2yQ

xp yeah, it's more like post-REM era, where the post punk/college rock bands (or rather, their labels) thought there was a possibility for big hits.

Before Nevermind, it's like these bands with dark, brooding, difficult sides made "sunny" pop songs--whereas after Nevermind, the darkness made it into the pop songs. ("Stand" vs. "Drive".)

Oh, and even though it's about parenthood instead of being college rock, Little Creatures is definitely this for Talking Heads vs. even Naked.

yeah! actually it was hearing "Stand" and "And She Was" back to back on the radio that started me thinking about this.
guess 10,000 Maniacs stuff like "Candy" fits here (was that pre- or post-nirvana?)

Iggy Pop "Wild One"

Camper Van Beethoven - Pictures of Matchstick Men
Cracker - Low
Dramarama - Work For Food
Meat Puppets - Backwater

Pere Ubu - Waiting For Mary

shriekback deserve an award for going so quickly from marxist to popist.

For me, R.E.M.'s "pop" move was "The One I Love." I distinctly remember the first time I heard it on the radio; apart from being diappointed/underwhelmed, the heavy arena-rock ending made me chuckle -- as one of my friends put it at the time, "Yeah! Foghat!"

all those goth bands. was playing some mission u.k. album a couple weeks ago and it was so slick and shiny. same with sisters of mercy and flesh for lulu.

what was the big thing that made all the brit mopes tease their hair and go for gold? when they saw what kind of houses simple minds were buying?

psych furs too. was john hughes all people needed to turn out shiny pop stuff? he probably gave out some big checks.

Also, Husker Du's "Turn It Around" sounded like their pop move at the time...or at least, it was the only song of theirs I could imagine hearing on the radio. Don't think it was a single, though.

makes no sense at all was all the rage on mtv. they were ahead of the curve.

what's that paul westerberg video where there are wind machines going and he's all bon jovi? can't find it on youtube. maybe i dreamed it.

The Smithereens: A Girl Like You

That was on the radio all the time

I seem to remember that "Makes No Sense" was relegated to the 120 Minutes ghetto, but I did see "Could You Be The One" in frequent daytime after-school rotation. For about a week, but still.

xxp

Suicaine Gratifaction also the greatest Bush album title that never was. poor paul.

i definitely saw makes no sense in the day time. i remember it clearly. not like it was a big hit or anything, but it definitely got a lot of college air play and the shape of things to come.

maybe jesus & mary chain's "head on"? that was the first time i ever heard them, anyway. i bought the cassingle!

the cure - friday im in love

xxp haha, now that I remember, I don't think I had MTV in '85, so strike my comments from the record. But yes, tons and tons of college airplay, even the occasional spin on commercial radio (WXRT in Chicago once in a while).

all those goth bands. was playing some mission u.k. album a couple weeks ago and it was so slick and shiny. same with sisters of mercy and flesh for lulu.

Not to mention the March Violets' 'Turn To The Sky'

Concrete Blonde's "Joey" fits in here somewhere

I followed that RS college chart when I was in high school, but realized in college that no one there listened to the Lightning Seeds or Robyn Hitchcock--it was either Hip Hop or Pop or Reggae. The "cool" kids were into more undergroundy stuff like Pussy Galore or Negativland.

While "Friday I'm in Love" was definitely one of the Cure's high commercial points, for me their first push into the mainstream was "Inbetween Days", which got a lot of play on our local pop/rock station. In line with bendy's comment about RS's college charts, and with the notes about the rise of the 'mats and Husker Du above, I'm thinking this thread is just as much about 1985 as it was about post-Nevermind days.

Eh, I would have said 'Lovecats' was as blatant a move towards the mainstream as anything else, and that was 1983.

I can only imagine what this sounded like to ears used to their first four lps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t2_06xtVRg

True about "Lovecats" though it didn't get any play on our local. Then again, I guess that's not necessarily the point of the thread, so.

In some ways though "In Between Days" was part of a massive push from Warner to get some of these college-friendly acts into the mainstream. The X song just above was part of that, I think, as was the PiL generic album. I remember Church's Heyday and an album by The Call being part of that as well. So yeah, some of the bands themselves were not unfamiliar with poppiness but the industry finally saw cash in it.

I guess Lovecats, Let's Go To Bed and the Walk were kind of a blip too. I remember my Lovecats-loving friend looking like he'd been burned when he played The Top for the first time.

The Cure had plenty of radio friendly songs from 83-93, but their audience grew more and more with each release. After finally hitting the Top 40 in the US with "Just Like Heaven" (#40), it was a sure thing that their next album was going to be a mainstream hit, even if it was less pop than the previous one.

yeah, i mean the cure have always walked this line -- we're talking about a band that came to prominence with "boys don't cry." the pop side has always been there.

there was some sort of pop to high hair ratio thing going on.

the higher your hair got the more you were reaching for the stars or something.

i think there's kind of an unspoken cultural divide here between US and British acts -- throughout the '80s lots of indie/alternative/post-punk UK acts were able to get singles on their home country's pop charts. in America even getting onto mainstream rock radio was tough for those kinds of bands, and top 40 was even rarer.

Faith No More- Epic

Good call on Ain't Love Grand.

I can only imagine what this sounded like to ears used to their first four lps.

I was there. Bought it when it was brand new. Hated it. Sold it back. (And I keep most sucky albums by my favorite bands in my collection for the sake of completeness.)

i bought it too when it came out and ummmmmm yeah i didn't love it. not like i loved the knitters album man i played that knitters album a ton back then. the only alt-country album i ever loved!

and yeah under the big black sun was one of my favorite albums back then and i guess i understood the direction x were going in cuz so many people were sorta doing the same thing. its not a terrible album but then again i haven't heard it in 20+ years so that must mean something.

I love Big Black Sun, and More Fun In The The New World too, which some fans of the first three albums aren't so hot on, but Ain't Love Grand just seemed so hamfisted. I'm gonna have to look up who produced it, that was a big part of the problem iirc.

This explains a LOT:

Michael Wagener is a music producer, mixer, and engineer from Hamburg, Germany, best known for his work with many top hard rock and heavy metal bands in the late 80's. ... In 1981 he produced the first Dokken album, and would go on to produce such seminal albums as Skid Row's self titled debut, which sold five million copies in the US alone, and Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tears, which sold seven million in the US. Wagener also mixed Metallica's 1986 classic Master of Puppets.

Wagener has produced or mixed platinum selling albums by Mötley Crüe, W.A.S.P., Overkill, Accept, Great White, Stryper, Poison, Keel, Alice Cooper, Extreme, Megadeth, Janet Jackson, Ozzy Osbourne, Dokken, Metallica, White Lion, and Skid Row.

My introduction to lots of these bands was by seeing their name dropped in some article and then jumping on whatever I saw by them in the record store bargain bin, which usually turned out to be some major label flop. First X I ever heard was See How We Are and I could not fathom why they were such a legendary band. Pleasant enough record though. Same thing as when I bought the Saints' All Fools Day.

i love all fools day! don't tell anyone but its kinda my fave saints album.

but i know what you mean. i would buy punk rock books and stuff and i knew about all the bands before i ever heard them and i would pick up late albums first and get really confused.

read about the stranglers forever and first thing i ever spotted by them in a store was the "thrown away" 45 from the meninblack album and when i took that home i was completely baffled. these were punk legends? totally love that song now of course.

Ha Scott, well I have a still have a huge soft spot for 'Just Like Fire Would'. But why was Byron Coley making such a big thing about them in FE?

xxxxxxpost

yeah i guess i think here midnight oil was perceived as college rock, but yeah some dude OTM about the divide between US and other parts of the world. we kept the underground pretty underground in the early 80s

Yeah, I'm wondering about the case of the Smiths. In the US "How Soon is Now" had a little bit of exposure on 120 Minutes, but "Girlfriend in a Coma" was their first video that got a lot of MTV time.

girlfriend in a coma was the first smiths song i ever heard. put on a mixtape by a friend's older brother, misidentified as the misfits haha :)

was so confused

lol that's awesome. i guess girlfriend in a coma could work as a misfits song title?
I was thinking about the smiths though -- they may have broken up too soon to really do their big glossy pop hit single in this era? (not that they didn't have totally poppy songs...)

I think, like with the Cure, it was just a matter of time until the Smiths had a big US hit, and without really changing their formula/approach. But not touring the US after 1986 probably didn't help.

My introduction to lots of these bands was by seeing their name dropped in some article and then jumping on whatever I saw by them in the record store bargain bin, which usually turned out to be some major label flop. First X I ever heard was See How We Are and I could not fathom why they were such a legendary band. Pleasant enough record though.

Definitely had this same experience. Specific to X, though, first time I heard them was just John Doe solo on MTV (120 Minutes, maybe?) playing "See How We Are" solo-acoustic. Loved it, bought the album, tried to listen through the production to keep what hit me the first time.

A bit different, but Human League's "Human" does fit with all of this, in terms of a band giving up their original "sound" and arrangements to go for a more generic hit single.

I'll cop to it: I actually LIKED both Ain't Love Grand and See How We Are when the first came out, and still enjoy the latter quite a bit. Mostly this was because I was living in a smaller market and we didn't really have a whole load of access to "underground" music at that point, even stuff like X that was distributed by the majors...it just wasn't racked at the stores for the most part, and when it was, it wasn't promoted worth shit. I'd heard about some of these bands by reading a Canadian mag named Graffiti, so I started checking the bands out whenever I had the chance.

So Ain't Love Grand comes out and the local station starts playing "Burning House of Love" and to MY ears it was a refreshing change from the craploads of ultra-polished rock I was used to, so I ran out and bought it. And yeah, I enjoyed it. Listening back on it these days I appreciate some of the songs but not the sound of the album quite so much. I believe there's a whole lot of discussion about this in the notes of the Rhino reissue, and IIRC (the CD's currently packed away) the band wasn't all that happen with having Wagener foisted on them. But here's the thing: the album was good enough at the time to be my gateway to the better, earlier stuff. So mission accomplished in at least one regard.

buffalo tom - sodajerk

dinosaur jr - where you been...start choppin especially.

then they moved right into Without a Sound in which Feel the Pain put them right on the pop map.

I believe there's a whole lot of discussion about this in the notes of the Rhino reissue, and IIRC (the CD's currently packed away) the band wasn't all that happen with having Wagener foisted on them. But here's the thing: the album was good enough at the time to be my gateway to the better, earlier stuff. So mission accomplished in at least one regard.

Hmm, this was my first X album too. Found it used on cd in '98 or so. I've recently really gotten back into X and was tempted to start a "defend the indefensible" thread for Ain't Love Grand, but this thread will do fine.

I've now got two copies of the reissue at hand (long story), and in the liners, the rejection of Wagener is presented as more of a hindsight thing. John Doe says that when they pitched their '84 cover of "Wild Thing", somebody @ Elektra mentioned Wagener for the job. The band agreed and liked the result, so he got the call for the album in the hopes that the new sound would translate into airplay. (Doe also says that Hair Metal production didn't bother him--"it was the writing I objected to").

They cut the album--including a cover of "All or Nothing" Elektra forced them into (and is now bounced out of the track order and into the bonus tracks on the reissue)--but got shut out of the mixing and mastering. When they finally heard the album, they discovered Wagener mixed down alot of Exene's harmonies (he thought she couldn't sing), and--not realizing they had power of veto over the mix--that's really when they started to disown the project.

"On The Greener Side" is a really lousy example of this, following up the great Short Sharp Shocked.

that dog. - Retreat from the Sun as an album is a particularly blatant example, though it didn't cross over at all and actually is better than their "authentic" work.

This fits the bill, I believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lxOq9TxEHE

and their cover of "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me"

was that that dog record good? i just remember hearing a single on the radio and thinking they were really going for mainstream acceptance. so it definitely fits here! was thinking the closest yo la tengo ever got to something like this was "Upside Down" from May I Sing With Me. They even made a more radio friendly single mix! i can almost see that song sneaking onto kroq in 1990-91.

Retreat From The Sun is a dope album imo, way better than their first 2 records

hm, maybe i'll check it out. i remember it being a perennial used CD bargain back in the day.

I wonder how Depeche Mode fits in to this trend... I guess they had their biggest pop success with _Violator_, but it doesn't seem like they made any drastic changes to court pop success with that album. Anyway, they'd always had a pop element, starting from "Just Can't Get Enough".

sort of funny with them, they gained more acceptance in the US (i think) when they adopted a more guitar heavy sound with "personal jesus." which is the opposite of a lot of the tracks in this thread, kinda.

"People Are People" hit #13 in the US in 1984, so that was probably their "pop" move (if it was even much of a move).

xp

That's a good point - not sure if it was a pop move as such - one of the more accessible tracks on that album, but not that much different in production or style.

I really like Retreat from the Sun. Once you stripped out the lo-fi stuff and put real production under there, the prettiness of the tunes and the singing was really able to shine.

Yeah, here's a third for Retreat From The Sun. That record is just great tune after great tune, with this being probably my fave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A68qS2Svq7A

Wd "Something So Strong" and "Don't Dream it's Over" count, or wd you say that Mr. Finn always had a pop trajectory?

Yeah, he was never a punk. He looked most uncomfortable in makeup and playing his bro's unnecessarily convuluted songs.