Last Splash

August 26, 2023 10:29 AM

Cannonball: The Most 1993 Song of All Time
posted by Artw (66 comments total)

Will the next 30 years go as fast as those did??
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:44 AM on August 26, 2023 [14 favorites]

Damn, I remember when that came out. I was DJ at WCWS-FM (Wooster’s Sound Alternative) and that shit just rocked. Spitting in a wishing well, indeed.
posted by slogger at 10:53 AM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Good god I love this song…
posted by Navelgazer at 11:19 AM on August 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

This song is the reason that, to this day, I consider wearing pants.
posted by stet at 11:46 AM on August 26, 2023 [12 favorites]

Fall 1993... me desperately trying to finish my overdue undergrad thesis while mainlining Last Splash, Bjork's Debut, and procrastinating with EA's Space Hulk game.
posted by kokaku at 11:47 AM on August 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Divine Hammer" on Conan. Stay for the awkward interview.

I always wondered if "Cannonball" was related to "Gigantic" since both mention a shady place...
posted by credulous at 11:59 AM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

It’s on every playlist that I make, even the jazz and classical playlists. So fine. Do you think that Wet Leg listened to it?
posted by ashbury at 12:15 PM on August 26, 2023 [9 favorites]

There’s a little list at the end of the vid if acts inspired by and/or that Kim Deal digs, and though Wet Leg isn’t mentioned it feels like they’d fit right in.
posted by Artw at 12:32 PM on August 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

My firm belief is that there are two "most 1993" songs.

Cannonball is one of them. Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) by Digable Planets is the other.

Between them is contained all that was 1993, all that is 1993, and all that forever shall be 1993.
posted by feckless at 12:39 PM on August 26, 2023 [49 favorites]

Breeders rule. That is all.
posted by kensington314 at 12:45 PM on August 26, 2023 [6 favorites]

I like Trash Theory in general, and this was one of his better videos.

Cannonball was inescapable in 1993, although I was surprised to hear that Last Splash outsold all the Pixies albums. My band just added Divine Hammer to our set, and it's a super fun one to play as well.
posted by sauril at 12:45 PM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Between them is contained all that was 1993, all that is 1993, and all that forever shall be 1993.

They’re both fantastic songs, but I can’t fit All That She Wants on that axis, so we may need to make 1993 at least 2 dimensional
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:52 PM on August 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

This song is the reason that, to this day, I consider wearing pants

Mouths "I LOVE PANTS"
posted by Kitteh at 1:03 PM on August 26, 2023 [7 favorites]

Do you think that Wet Leg listened to it?

I was /just/ listening to Wet Leg wondering if they'd had the Breeders imprinted in their psyche in the moments after being born.
posted by kaibutsu at 1:08 PM on August 26, 2023 [7 favorites]

2018 performance on Jools Holland Later...
posted by crocomancer at 1:09 PM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sadly, this is not the most 1993 song. That has to belong to Tag Team's Whoomp There It Is, which had to fight for its place in the pantheon against the extremely similarly named Woot There It Is on the most 90's arena available: the Arsenio Hall Show.
posted by pwnguin at 1:21 PM on August 26, 2023 [16 favorites]

I must have been 25 or 26 in 1993 and...that's all I've got. Sigh.
posted by maxwelton at 1:34 PM on August 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'd never heard Kim Deal's Marquis de Sade explanation for the origin of the song. She's such a beautiful weirdo, and top ten voices in the history of American song.
posted by kensington314 at 1:37 PM on August 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

For me, the most prominent song in my life at the time is Cherub Rock.. I know Long Hair Billy is Best Billy, but it's still pretty good.
posted by rhizome at 1:38 PM on August 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

I watched this last night and I agree, it was Trash Theory at his best. I was captivated, and I went back when it was over to get that list of bands Kim Deal lists, because they sounded amazing. Great stuff.
posted by gc at 2:08 PM on August 26, 2023

I first heard cannonball on the John Peel show, listening in the attic room of my grandparents house in Whitley Bay. It was an electrifying bolt out of the blue, this weird song that... just... worked? It was amazing. It's 1993 because its from a time before rap became predominant, but also in that period where music was much wilder and amorphous in its forms. Cannonball was shocking in its form of being other, stating that music could just exist in a weird way and did not have to be like other things. A formative experience for me.

Later on I would meet Josephine Wiggs at her father's house in rural Bedfordshire. Richard Wiggs was a talented campaigner for many causes, including rural music education and against concord, and somehow managed to buy an Edwardian manor on the edge of a small podunk town. I knew some people who lived there so I was invited to a loud night (I think there was a drum and bass night in the basement?) with a mixed group of friends. I didn't tell Wiggs what her music meant to me, as I was very shy.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:21 PM on August 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

I must have been 25 or 26 in 1993

I was nineteen in ‘93, which sounds like it could be a song.
posted by snofoam at 2:33 PM on August 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

93 Til Infinity
posted by chrchr at 2:43 PM on August 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

My big recollection is reading an interview somewhere where the band described that back-and-forth single note guitar riff as "spermy". I can no longer find the interview, but I've held on to that adjective all those years.
posted by credulous at 2:44 PM on August 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

"I remember people saying things like 'I guess you must be sad because you can't sing more. ' And I thought, what a weird thing to think. Eventually I began to understand: they're saying that because they like my voice."

WHO IS CUTTING ONIONS BY MY COMPUTER???
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:41 PM on August 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

@snofoam "I was nineteen in ‘93, which sounds like it could be a song."

well, it was '98, but Jonathan Richman was once Nineteen in Naples...
posted by pdb at 4:24 PM on August 26, 2023

The whole Breeders/Belly vibe has definitely been getting a reboot from bands like The Beths and Beebadoobee et al. Hearing it in a lot of the new stuff the youngs are doing these days. I’m totally here for it.
posted by misterpatrick at 4:43 PM on August 26, 2023 [12 favorites]

Isn't Belly on tour?

In 1993 there was someone I was trying very hard to date. She was over at my parent's place and we were watching MTV, and this song came on. I LOVED this song. My friend asked me, "What, do you think Kim Deal is like, pretty or something?" Romance, over!
posted by 1adam12 at 5:16 PM on August 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

I first heard the song "Cannonball" performed live by Phish in Dallas in May of 1994. That led me to discovering the Breeders and all kinds of music from there. Most lately there's a young band called Destroy Boys who are a bit like a punkier Breeders and are just fucking awesome, highly recommend.
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 5:21 PM on August 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

When besides the mid-late 60s and early-mid 90s could a rock song like Cannonball become a hit? It took several years during both of those disruptive periods for the gatekeepers to fully get back in control and force the more experimental rock off the charts.

I've been hoping for another rock revolution, but I fear now that between market fragmentation and the algorithm, any new Beatles or Floyd or Nirvana or Radiohead will end up lost in the noise or overtaken by sanitized soundalikes within weeks, killing any nascent revolution dead before it begins.

Even the hip hop charts, which always had more space for experimentalism within the genre, seems to have been exsanguinated by the algorithm in recent years.

I know for sure there's a lot of really interesting rock/alt-rock being made out there right now, and I hear interesting hip-hop still from time to time, but I don't think I'm just an old man shouting at clouds when I say that great music of any genre is becoming ever harder to find when only the very biggest artists have the freedom to really reach and take artistic chances.
posted by tclark at 6:49 PM on August 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

I mean, all those 1993 songs are good picks, but 1993 is also the year techno/EDM started to break big, so we absolutely need William Orbit's Water from a Vine Leaf. Just dropping it, onto my tongue.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:02 PM on August 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm just here to say that the most 1992 song is Sweet Lullaby by Deep Forest. I will not be taking questions.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:32 PM on August 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

I didn’t know how much I needed to hear this song tonight.
posted by interogative mood at 8:40 PM on August 26, 2023

Will the next 30 years go as fast as those did??

I recently read an interview where Seth passed along something an older man told him: "You're 30, then you're 40, then you're 50... and then you're 80."
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:17 PM on August 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

Christ, I did not need THAT today.
posted by Artw at 11:14 PM on August 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

(Especially as, via various jumps and leaps, this has gotten us watching a bunch of Yeah Yeah Yeahs videos, and the one I think of as “recent” is 14 years ago.)
posted by Artw at 11:16 PM on August 26, 2023

feckless: “Between them is contained all that was 1993, all that is 1993, and all that forever shall be 1993.”

Jon Mitchell: “They’re both fantastic songs, but I can’t fit All That She Wants on that axis, so we may need to make 1993 at least 2 dimensional”

I think we're off into n-dimensional space at this point because how can you 1993 without “Pets” by Porno for Pyros — my song of that summer — or the ubiquitous “Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms?
posted by ob1quixote at 5:20 AM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

This song is so fucking brilliant - it never sits still, it always pushes strives. It makes me happy every time I hear it.
All my favorite Pixies songs are by the Breeders.
... and you ever notice all the amaaaaaazing bassists who get damn near no credit whatsoever? (I'm talking about Tina Weymouth.)
posted by From Bklyn at 5:26 AM on August 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

market fragmentation and the algorithm

Claiming this for my new band's name.
posted by fairmettle at 5:30 AM on August 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

This hit my radar last year and first thing I though of was the Breeders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-WoTsWvLXg
posted by john m at 5:37 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I love this song. And I love the Breeders (and also The Amps, and sometimes the “Pacer” LP is my favorite Kim Deal project).

I used my some of my high school graduation money to buy this albumand the Beastie Boys “lll Communication” (and Nation of Ulysses “Plays Pretty For Baby” iifc) at a Tracks in my home town in June of 1994. All on cassette because I wanted to be able to listen to them in my car. The cashier made some crack about Lollapalooza and I was like, “Dude, what do you think I’m spending the rest of my graduation money on?”
posted by thivaia at 5:50 AM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

Good lord, I love this song. It’s permanently on my playlist. You simply cannot play it too loud. It’s also one of those songs where it just doesn’t matter if you hear the lyrics. It’s all just perfect, glorious noise.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:21 AM on August 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm not an nostalgic person but this one hits me in the feels. That album and especially Cannonball, the following year, was the soundtrack of my romance to my now partner. It is one of the few albums of that era that I can still listen to now without cringe or self consciousness.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:19 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I see tickets are on sale to their coming tour

Nice tune nonetheless
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 7:27 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

2018 performance on Jools Holland Later...

The Tinydesk Concert is also from 2018 - I hadn’t listened to any of that Album and can now it’s actually pretty great, and Metagoth is a new favorite tune.
posted by Artw at 9:17 AM on August 27, 2023

Wow, a lot of people misspelling "No Rain" in this thread.
I mean, Bee Girl was on the MTV Music Awards, fer cryin' out loud!
posted by the sobsister at 9:22 AM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

slogger, we were at COW at the same time! my friends and i tried to propogate the idea that the college's call letters stood for "wooster college wadio station" but it never took off. go fighting scots!
posted by gorbichov at 9:28 AM on August 27, 2023

Speaking as an Old, I have to point to Supertramp - "Cannonball" (1985).
posted by neuron at 10:09 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

My friend the consummate Pixies fan will invariably mention that Pod is the best Breeders album, but of course he’d say that because it mostly sounds like a Pixies album. Last Splash is unabashed warm fuzzy summertime pop and a hallmark unto itself. That said, I only learned this past year that Drivin’ On Nine was a cover.
posted by furtive at 10:38 AM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

As a kid who grew up in Dayton, Ohio, in the 1980s (graduated high school in 1990), I really sympathize with the part where they describe it like musically growing up in Russia. It really was. My wife grew up in southern California and was going to concerts by the Specials and Sparks in middle school while in my town the worship of Led Zeppelin was still in full swing.
posted by rikschell at 10:58 AM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

neuron,

My favorite Supertramp song! Both in and of itself and because I didn't hear it a bajillion times on a road trip where their live Paris album was one of only two cassettes available for hours of driving.

When you go home tonight...after the concert...
Me: No, please, not agai...
don't forget to Take the Long Way Home...
Me: [sobs]
posted by the sobsister at 11:28 AM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I didn’t discover this (now favourite) song until much later. Looking at the Billboard list for 1993, I see a lot of songs tied to vivid sense memories (hello, ALL THAT SHE WANTS and RHYTHM IS A DANCER), but CANNONBALL is the only one I’d turn up if it came on today.

( Looking back, apparently 1993 was a good year for Underworld, and Hardfloor’s ACPERIENCE 1 came out in 1993, depending on how you look at it :) )
posted by TangoCharlie at 11:44 AM on August 27, 2023

Oh yeah - Rez was 1993, which is bananas. I still listen to that semi regularly, as it is a nigh-on perfect running song, along with Fluke’s Bullet (percussion cap), they just barrel along with a terrifying/amazing sense of momentum.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:56 AM on August 27, 2023

i am mortified to realize i always though this was veruca salt
posted by graywyvern at 2:33 PM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

She’s Gone by Honest Bob & the Factory To Dealer Incentives makes the Breeders–Veruca Salt connection.
posted by mbrubeck at 2:45 PM on August 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is my new favorite YouTube channel, thank you!
posted by travertina at 3:57 PM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

This was the album where I finally realized my dad’s taste in music broke with mine generationally in a fundamental way, because I was a teenager and I loved it and he didn’t get it. RIP you drunk old bastard. There was a lot of really shitty pop in the 90s and this . . . wasn’t.

Title TK holds up for me too.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:55 PM on August 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is my new favorite YouTube channel, thank you!

Make sure to check out the New British Canon sub-series! Very nearly posted the Peter Gabriel one here as it’s got lots of nice chunky history and discussion angles but it’s the Aphex Twin one that makes me say “oh yes, I was there for this scene.”
posted by Artw at 7:48 PM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

The most recent Breeders album, from 2018, is called All Nerve, it features the Last Splash lineup and it fuckin rips.
posted by Dokterrock at 11:02 PM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Breeders are on tour right now playing the Last Splash album for its 30th anniversary.

Tour dates.
posted by BooneTheCowboyToy at 5:30 AM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

My wife grew up in southern California and was going to concerts by the Specials and Sparks in middle school while in my town the worship of Led Zeppelin was still in full swing.

I'm not sure the difference was that broad in reality, but if it was WTF happened? Radio in LA now is terrible. And the reason I say that is the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High specifically has a Zepplin scene, and my relatives that all live there and are the same age are far more into 'butt rock' than anything cooler.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:58 AM on August 28, 2023

WTF happened? Radio in LA now is terrible.

Kids these days have phones, data plans and Spotify. Radio is for the left behind.
posted by pwnguin at 3:39 PM on August 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Radio in LA now is terrible.

KXLU. KCHUNG. KSPC. Lookout FM.

Pod will always be my favorite, but Last Splash is a different animal altogether, and it's weirder than most people remember.

All Nerve is absolutely worthy of your ears also.
posted by mykescipark at 6:54 AM on August 29, 2023

Have I got a 1993 Cannonball story for you. I was in my best friend Simeon's dorm room & we were listening to Cannonball on cassette. We were puzzling out the lyrics, but since lyrics weren't widely available on the Internet for everything yet, we had to do it ourselves. There was this one line that kept puzzling us & we would forward and reverse the tape over & over again trying to puzzle out exactly what Kim Deal was saying. My first theory was that the line was in French, because at the time, Stereolab or some older Blondie songs might have a line or two in French. But since neither Simeon nor I knew French, we discarded that. Eventually, we kept moving the tape backward & forward until we finally thought we had cracked the code!

Eventually, we concluded that Kim Deal was singing, "That ball can just wreck a song," which we thought was pretty clever and meta at the time. It was only a couple of months later, when I saw a guitar magazine at the newsstand, which had the tablature for "Cannonball" in it. Normally, those guitar mags would have mostly tablature for classic rock or maybe some Nirvana or Soundgarden if you were lucky, but rarely would they have anything as weird and alternative as "Cannonball." Anyhow, my curiosity got the best of me & I had to read the lyrics at the newsstand, because I knew those guitar mags included actual lyrics. The part where I thought it said "That ball can just wreck a song" was actually "the bong in the reggae song." Although to be honest, I thought my interpretation of the lyrics was actually better. That's kind of what you did when you didn't have lyrics available on tap in 30 seconds on every smartphone.
posted by jonp72 at 10:28 AM on August 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

I was /just/ listening to Wet Leg wondering if they'd had the Breeders imprinted in their psyche in the moments after being born.

Both the Breeders and Wet Leg provide a perspective that is equally woman-centric and horny AF, which is quite rare in alternative guitar rock.
posted by jonp72 at 10:44 AM on August 29, 2023

The Breeders doing Cannonball on The Jon Stewart Show
posted by jonp72 at 12:43 PM on August 29, 2023 [1 favorite]