TRAINWRECKORDS: "Fairweather Johnson" by Hootie & the Blowfish

Todd, have you considered doing a Trainwreckords episode on the Genesis album "Calling All Stations"?

Connor Vance Shelton

Hey Todd you joked "next time I'll do Hulk Hogan's album" but what about his daughter? https://www.patreon.com/posts/30702017

This episode gave me an idea for Song vs. Song: "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows vs. "Only Wanna Be with You" by Hootie & the Blowfish Both are major hits by 90s roots rock/adult alternative acts that reference Bob Dylan in their lyrics. Or you could put one of those two songs against "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers, since that is a 90s roots rock band that is actually fronted by Bob Dylan's son.

James

I remember "exactly like on the CD" being in the Onion article about the P-funk Mothership unexpectedly landing in the middle of a Hoodie and the Blowfish concert.

Russet Burbank

i mean, one of the forms of plural for "blowfish" is "blowfish" so...

surasshu

One thing that I was surprised to learn about Hootie and the Blowfish is that the "Blowfish" in their name was singular. I always assumed it was plural, like "Alvin and the Chipmunks", but apparently "Hootie" and "the Blowfish" were two guys they knew in college

Don McHoull

One of the really awkward things is that a lot of the footage I need for these retrospective videos always seems to include Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Jimmy Savile, etc etc etc etc

Todd in the Shadows

when will we get a one hit wonderland on Vanessa Carlton

air budd dwyer

That Charlie Rose clip is really off-putting. Also todd if you’re reading this please do St. Anger

That episode always cracks me up, because NBC tried to market "Friends" as a hip show for young people, and here's the main cast in a big stink over going to see Hootie and the goddamn Blowfish.

SPBurke

Friend of mine went to see them on their recent tour, and said they were incredibly boring. Songs were exactly like the CD (like you said) and Darius was performing the songs unmoving on the stage like he was George Strait. But y'know who the opening act was? Barenaked Ladies. A band that's fun, goofy, experimental, off-the-wall, and super engaging with their live crowds. My friend said he was super happy to see them and was kind of bummed by Hootie by comparison.

SPBurke

Hootie & the Blowfish were basically Dave Matthews Band without the jam (or the horns).

James

I thought she did fine, honestly I think christmas carols suck ass anyways so she at least made them interesting. You want truly awful singing, listen to Roseanne singing the national anthem, dear god I wished I was dear listening to that noise.

RedBedroomRecords

You know, this kinda reminds me of another band and album I’d love to see you eventually do an episode of this show on: Wilder Mind by Mumford and Sons. They were inexplicably one of the biggest names in music for a bit, and even started a whole folk revival for a little while (you can thank them for the brief sparks of careers by bands like Of Monsters and Men and The Lumineers). And that seemed to be on account of their first two albums, which were pretty huge (their second one, Babel, even won the Grammy for Album of the Year a few months after it dropped). And then their third album came out, which not only caused them to go in a more U2 and Coldplay type pop rock direction, but also didn’t sell nearly as well as their other two. And while they did drop another album within the last year which sold okay and such, Wilder Mind seemed to alienate a lot of their fans and bring a lot of questions about the quality of their earlier work to the forefront. Like many people said their older songs all kinda sounded the same, but this album didn’t help their case any. I have seen them live twice, and while they have some good songs that I like (I even like some songs off Wilder Mind, especially Tompkins Square Park), they’re far from being one of my favorites.

Tom Carter

Darius' singing on this album reminds me of Miley Cyrus trying to perform Christmas carols on SNL a few years ago: "Oh Holay Naaaaaght, thesars'errightly shinnin!" Dear god, my ears wanted to vomit after the first verse.

HankMan

I only heard of them because they got mentioned in an episode of "Friends" (Monica got tickets to a Hootie concert in one episode).

RedBedroomRecords

You mean Yahtzee? It's not like he ever stopped making videos, for a good few years he was the only reason to even visit The Escapist.

RedBedroomRecords

Heh I remember when Monica, Ross and Chandler went to a Hootie and the Blowfish concert in Friends, I remember watching that episode and being like "who?" and I was stunned to see how well their debut album sold. Jam bands like them sure did crash and burn mighty fast though.

RedBedroomRecords

This is an incredibly well written, articulate video. Great fun

Jamie Daitch

Good call on contrasting them with Phish, Dave Matthews Band and the other jam bands. The rise of those acts was definitely part of the reason Hootie faded by the end of 1996. Especially DMB, who were a live draw who jammed out their songs in concert AND had a ton of big pop hits. I can totally imagine someone returning "Fairweather Johnson" to the record store and trading it in for DMB's "Crash", which came out the same month.

Damn Todd, I hadn't thought of the Zero Punctuation guy in like a decade, that was a deep pull

Joe Bush

You might be interested in this article written by the A&R guy that signed them to Atlantic, which discussed how indebted they were to R.E.M.: https://observer.com/2016/07/my-life-in-the-bush-of-hootie-how-i-signed-the-biggest-band-of-1995/ An extract: "They were also literally the biggest REM fans I had ever met, and they could churn out any and every REM song, on request. You could stand in front of them and say, “O.K., how about ‘Carnival of Sorts’?” and they could dial it up like a freaking radio. How could you not love that?"

I was born in the early 90's, so my memories of music in the mid-to-late-90's was Aqua, the Macarena, the Backstreet Boys, Britney, and other vapid and/or bubblegum pop. But even when I actively tried to learn more about rock in the 90's, I really only got into the huge bands with the massive cult followings like Nirvana and REM and Oasis. I have NEVER heard of Hootie until Todd referenced the band in a few previous videos. It blows my mind that they sold 12 million copies. (But it also makes sense, cause like you'd never hear a Hootie song on American Idol or Glee or even a Moulin Rouge/Rock-of-Ages-type jukebox musical) This was still a fascinating video though and I'm happy Todd was able to contextualize this generally unknown band to me.

Franco del Rosario

Well, *I* enjoyed this. I was way too into Guided By Voices and Pavement in 1995 to give Hootie the time of day (besides, anybody within earshot of a radio knew all about them), but they don't seem like the kind of band that'd benefit from a deep reassessment. It's a bit like McDonald's had gone out of business after everybody in America bought a Big Mac. What really baffled me was the R.E.M. "influence." Sure, there are superficial similarities (Southern band who toured their asses off), but it's like hearing BTS say how important the Velvet Underground was to them...

Kristopher Bluth

I've always wondered who Hootie and the Blowfish were, what kind of music they made, why they were popular and also why they were a punchline, so I have to say this video really catered to my needs.

Nowhere Girl

CAS has to be a Trainwreckords episode

Dyl

Great video as always. That Live line is a bit harsh, I still really dig their big album. I totally see the comparison though, Throwing Copper is very much grunge’s Cracked Rear View.

Dyl

I have almost zero Hootie experience (and I’m kinda shocked at that bc this seems like the kind of band my mom would have LOVED back in the day), so this video was really interesting! I know you’re not a big Prog Rock fan, but I think videos looking at ELP’s Love Beach or Genesis’ Calling All Stations would be fascinating; they’re both legendarily bad, but ELP at least poked fun at Love Beach-Genesis won’t even acknowledge CAS.

Christina Lohr

You’re so right in that Imagine Dragons is definitely the Hootie of the 2010s. Also, I really feel like 95% of Adam Levine’s staying power for most of the decade was powered by his looks and his stint as one of the judges on The Voice, and literally nothing else. What a boring musician.

Franco del Rosario

Love Hootie. Love their first album. Love all their hits (because I'm a chart whore). I get why their second album flopped.

Josh Spicer

I thought this was a rly interesting video. I’m from SC, and I think Hootie is the most successful act from here (unless you count James Brown who claimed GA more). Their success still baffles me even though I did like their main hits. I think you nailed it when you said “the band for everyone is the band for no one.”

Katelyn Brissey

Also, I suppose your analysis of Hootie & the Blowfish here sort of also explains why Imagine Dragons collapsed so thoroughly in 2019 despite their ubiquitous presence in 2017 and 2018. Adam Levine, on the other hand, gets away scot free because he's at least Hollywood enough to make himself interesting to people in ways other than his music.

Jacqueline Sailer

Wow, I had no idea Hootie's first album sold THAT many copies. I guess it's because they were big JUST before I started really noticing songs on my mom's car radio, but considering "Old Man and Me" and "Tucker's Town" were both top 40 hits, I would never have guessed their second record was Trainwreckords material. Their third album also went Platinum and produced one solid airplay hit, but they were still basically the musical equivalent of pogs in that they were very existent and nothing else in the mid-'90s and then disappeared.

Jacqueline Sailer

You can only imagine how much worse this would have done under both this market climate and also the way Billboard counts charts now. At least back then you can imagine that they were selling albums off their general brand, the new album possibly cashing in off someone hearing an old single and going to buy whichever album of theirs is in stock. Nowadays so much is based on raw streaming numbers where it's a lot harder to push people onto the new product. Fairweather Johnson lasted 10 months before it dropped out of the Billboard 200 (and it did so after Cracked View Mirror). By comparison, the latest, swiftly released Imagine Dragons album only took 4 months before it got overtaken by their previous one, partly because so much of that was driven by persistent streams of two massive singles which the new album did not have.

Matt Ryan

Any plans to open up OHW/Trainwreckords requests anytime soon?

Great episode as always, Todd :)) This is probably my favourite series of yours. Although, in this case, I'm shocked that you missed a spectacularly relevant Simpsons quote. Wiggum: Get them to say something incriminating on this tape. Bart: *reads* Hootie and the Blowfish? Wiggum: It's cheaper than blank tape.

Joe DL

I was wondering when we'd get this episode! Great work as always, Todd.

Patrick Thatcher

Not only will I bump the limit up to three this month, I'll raise the whole thing from two to ten bucks, because I have the money now and it's made me go mad with power.

Mitchell McIntyre

Me: *finally trying to fall asleep three hours after my girlfriend passed out* My side-hoe TITS: u up?

Christina Kelley