How consequential were they?
The Breeders
Not very. They made some good tunes back in the 90s, but they were a fringe act that just happened to get more attention because of the alt scene being so promoted by labels.
They were also terrible live, so that didn't help them get a wider audience.
If this band appeared in the 80s, they would have been less known than Pixies. If they came in the 00s, they'd be a mostly obscure indie band.
They did have a very unique sound thanks to Deals' vocal harmonies and the quirky compositions.
Quirky artistic art hoe 90s music from the days of MTV
They went to shit after Matt Sharpe left the band.
They were huge in 1993 but instead of capitalizing on the momentum of Last splash Kim put out music that would appeal to almost nobody and changed the band name in 1995 to the amps then they waited too long to put out new music (next album didn’t come out until 2002 because Kim and Kelly were all fucked up on drugs throughout the rest of the 90s)
I don't know what you mean by consequential, but if you're implying they are a bunch of bull dykes you're spot on
I don't know what you mean by consequential
On a scale from 1-10, I mean.
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I dunno but I’m still in love with Kim’s cute cracky always sounds like she has a sore throat voice on Pod
Quelle chapeau, skeletor.
Probably wouldn’t be as remembered today if it wasn’t Kim Deal’s band. Otherwise would probably be one of the 100 other mostly forgotten all girl alt rock bands of the 90s like picrel
Kim’s singing style kinda reminds me of like a female Kurt Cobain, like neither are traditionally good singers but it works in the alt rock genre
2
They were a one hit wonder that only a few females of the era remember the name of the band
They were huge in 1993
Last Splash reached 33 on the US billboard chart.
So that's significant for such a band. But far from huge.
For comparison, Pixies' highest charting album, Indie Cindy, peaked at 23 in the US bb. I wouldn't say Pixies were ever huge either
Again for comparison Alice in Chains reached number 1 on the US billboard with the self-titled album.
I'd never think AiC were huge with normies, but the numbers kinda say they were. They sold millions of records. They just didn't have singles that charted well.
they had one song that anyone briefly cared about
normies
of consequence
i remember becoming aware of them as a kid from that sketch from The State on MTV where Michael Ian Black doesnt know what pants are
they were touring with Nirvana, they were def one of the hot bands for a minute, but that happened with a bunch of bands in the era of alternative rock dominating MTV airwaves. one band was huge for a few months, then was obscure and forgotten a year later. remember bands like Hum and Toadies? whatever happened to those dudes?
they looked like the kind of nice wholesome midwestern girls you can bring home to mom, who wouldve thought they were doing tons of hard drug like heroin all thru the 90s?
They were huge with music heads and college radio for a few years and then dropped off pretty fast, but Kim Deal was always beloved by the music dorks
Had one crossover mainstream hit too
That amps record is really good.
They don't have a bad record. Used to be able to say that about Pixies before they got back together...
I remember buying that CD for super cheap. I imagine they printed far more than they could sell, expecting it to be a hit. Loved the album.
Youngins will never understand the dichotomy between college radio and mainstream radio in the 80's and early 90's. The average kid at the time didn't either, just older music heads, because college radio wasn't on the kids radar. It's really rare that old indie classics ever had any mainstream success, and if they did it's only after they found success on college radio. I bet most of the kids I grew up with didn't even know about our college stations. The little bit of mainstream success they had isn't why The Breeders and Kim are still remembered. Last Splash sold almost double what Surfer Rosa did, but those sales are irrelevant. Doolittle took 24 years longer to hit platinum and it charted way lower too (33 vs 98). Useless to talk about chart positions with these bands. The Breeders don't have a bad record either, they just didn't hold onto mainstream success. Their brief mainstream success really just muddies their image now, like you can see itt.
Everything got bought up by the big labels after Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the actual radio djs and college radio have been memory holed since. There was already some consolidation before 96, but radio was completely wiped clean of indie by the mid-late 90's.
Most of the indie 80's and 90's classics on Anon Babblecore would've been obscure shit if not for those stations and the old taste makers though.
womyn band
let's call ourselves after our vaginas
why are women so gross?
i honestly listen to that Amps CD more than any of the breeders these days, I think Kim was trolling a bit with that one when she made it, the industry wanted her to make another commerical marketable pop type album like Last Splash and basically did the opposite of that (never realized The Amps is half the Breeders anyway, still had the underrated Jimmy Mac on the drums
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bragging party is a fun mellow jam to listen to after smoking a joint
did Britt get to take turns having sex with all those womens?
why did it seem like all the alternative rock that was popular in the first half of the 90s suddenly wasnt popular anymore as soon as Kurt Cobain died? Then it all became that post-grunge shit MTV started playing to death, then eventually nu-metal and rap-rock dogshit. did Kurt dying really kill the genre for the normies?
i'm still convinced kim is straight but has never had sex (with a man)
Didn't she write a song about BBC?
Imo they were already killing it by signing any and every act that had the tiniest bit of a grunge sound/connection and pushing all of them towards something more commercial.
Same thing happened with the sudden uptick of legit female led acts, where they signed any and every chick they could get their hands on and flooded the market with more commercial milquetoast versions of Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair and their contemporaries. Culminated in the Lilith Fair shit that none of the original artists would've been caught dead playing at.
Same thing with britpop, but less obvious what was happening there in the US for obvious reasons.
All of that late 80's early 90's shit lost it's edge pretty quick. We ended up with a bunch of grunge/britpop/industrial aesthetic hybrid acts that all actually just played slight variations of the same kind of pop rock. Googoo Dolls, Matchbox 20, Savage Garden etc.
By using your imagination, you can write about things you've never experienced.
They were also terrible live
they were really awesome when I saw them
in the gay community, calling someone a "breeder" is meant to be the offensive slur for "straight."
their equivalent of "fag."
yes so presumably by calling themselves that they're saying they're straight
yeah.
but that's not the same as naming themselves after their vaginas. it applies to the dude in the band equally. lesbians have vaginas but they aren't breeders.
i'm not the anon who said that, i was more relating it to the other posts calling them dykes
it was mostly Kelly in the early days who couldnt play, Kim basically taught her how to halfass play right before they recorded last splash, in that alt rock genre half the time it didnt matter if you were shit on guitar for the sound sometimes it sounded better when the guitarist was sloppy, see Kurt Cobain for example (thats why they eventually added Pat Smear during the live shows to make up for Kurts shit guitar work live)
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the interviewer on 120 minutes asks her about the name here
Tanya Donelly was a qt, never got into Belly cuz i thought that Save The Trees song was some hippy dippy bullshit, was there other stuff any good?
No clue but I never wanna hear Cannonball again in my lifetime
the androgynous looking bass player jospine wiggs kinda did it for me not gonna lie (i think she was the only actual lesbian in the band, in the 90s she was dating one of the lesbians from Luscious Jackson)
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she sang sometimes, i like this one
one of those examples of a bands biggest hit not even being one of their better songs
Head to Toe would've been a better single to put out as a muzic vidyo
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I mostly remember Cannonball was the bassed bassline and that weird loopy guitar sound and Kim going AWOOOGA or something, the lyrics to it are literal nonsense lol
they were at least a good test study on whether the arts or business for your looks.
kim and her sister were identical twins i think and kim is the better looker than her sis who was stuck at an office job until kim had her join the breeders.
*arts or business are better for your looks
Good band, but of 0 consequence
they have one popular song but are mostly known for having a pixies member
Never heard of them are they based on that shirt Dave Grohl always wears?
The supergroup that never was
Also that mouthbreather from Slint was the drummer in the early days