Ball-Hog Or Tugboat? was Mike Watt’s first solo album, and when it came out in 1995, I had never heard of the Minutemen. But I bought it anyway because of “Against the ’70s,” which was about the ’70s being bad (of which I was aware) and was sung by Eddie Vedder (of whom I was very, very aware). When I bought the tape (!), the insert was laid out like a wrestling poster, listing the personnel who played on every song, and while I was only aware of a handful of them (Henry Rollins, Dave Grohl), the fact that people like Petra Hayden and Nels Cline were given equal billing made me think that they were important, too.
I wonder what the reaction would be to this sort of project today—if, I dunno, Mark Robinson was to make a play for the mainstream by gathering together a bunch of middlebrow superstars and releasing an album on Universal. The possibility of a backlash seems large, and while I don’t know what the reaction was to Ball-Hog at the time, suffice to say it served its purpose for me: I slowly but surely began exploring the landscape mapped out on the insert, and while the people who drew me to the album then wouldn’t really interest me today, I can still hear probably my favorite singer of all time covering a fantastic Sonic Youth track, played by the members of Sonic Youth basically like the original but faster (Carla Bozulich on “Tuff Gnarl”). Add to that a bunch of great, poppy Watt originals and J Mascis wailing on a Parliament track and you’ve got an album that, I think, still stands up today.
The video above is for “Big Train,” while the link below will send you to a video for “Piss-Bottle Man.” Ah, the ’90s: when a major label would pay for a video for a song about peeing in a bottle, the big selling point of which was that the frontman of the Lemonheads was on vocals.
Piss-Bottle Man [YouTube]
Mike Watt - Big Train [YouTube]
Ball-Hog Or Tugboat? [Amazon]
And Kathleen Hanna never got her Annie record back. :(
“about the ’70s being bad (of which I was aware)”
“J Mascis wailing on a Parliament track”
DOES NOT COMPUTE
(also, “Maggot Brain” is Funkadelic)
@Bob Loblaw: oh man, yes. And see, because I didn’t know shit about shit, I thought Kathleen Hanna was really lame because of that. I know, I know. I was a teenager and I really liked Beck! What can I say.
@natepatrin: but I was unaware of Parliament (as I clearly still am) so I was unaware of them being bad. I thought disco sucked at this time. It was the 90s! Mixed blessings and all.
Haha I just did it again. Sigh.
@Mike Barthel: Well, I was half-needling you and half-needling the fact that an album can contain both a song warning kids about ’70s nostalgia and a song that pretty much justifies it.
The tour was equally bizarre, with Hovercraft (w/ Vedder) and the Foo Fighters opening for Watt.
Yeah, this record introduced me to Watt and really opened me up to soooo many artists that ended being hugely important to me (the Minutemen, Nels Cline, and Carla Bozulich especially), and has aged better than practically any guest star clusterfuck album ever…”Drove Up From Pedro,” “Intense Song For Madonna To Sing,” “Sidemouse Advice,” “Chinese Firedrill,” all genuinely great songs that utilized the guest musicians really well.
Watt’s got a new solo album in the can called My Shunbun No Hy that’s coming out this year too!
Add this album to the long list of reasons why 1995 was a strangely wonderful year. This album was on Columbia, people.
Hey, alright - I played guitar on Piss Bottle Man! That dude is aping my (supremely fucked up) solo! I have a couple really funny stories about that session at Cherokee Studio in L.A., one of them involving Eddie Vedder.
I loved this album when it came out too! I actually have a deluxe CD version whereas the packaging is the size of a “CD Longbox” but thinner.
Me too! And it comes with a guide to Wattspeak!
if this record existed now, Brooklyn Vegan would have a 300-post thread on whoever Kathleen Hanna is talking about :/
@beefheartfan: I have that weird “Longbook” edition too. Impossible to store with the rest of my cds.
@Al Shipley:
I didn’t know that Watt has a new album coming out! I’m excited!
MIke Watt was in a band other than Firehose?
@Mike Barthel: Hah, I’ve always had a thing for vaguely unhinged girls who talk lots of shit, so I love this rant. (Fun fact, it was actually recorded in the studio, not on an answering machine.)
@En Vague: The Secondmen, Minutemen, 3M, Ciccone Youth, Dos, and the reunited Stooges.
I had mixed feelings about “Ball-Hog” when it was released, I felt that many of the songs didn’t quite live up to their great potential. My 15-year-old self also felt that much of the album was too folksy to be “punk.” Looking back, the record definitely aged well and works best as a Class of ‘95 yearbook for alt-rock. Remember, “Ball-hog” was from back in the day when major labels had no problems with releasing incredibly abstract or bizarre albums (i.e. the Boredoms’ Reprise albums, Ween’s “Chocolate and Cheese,” and Mr. Bungle’s “Disco Volante”).
@John P Strohm: Don’t leave us hanging!
@John P Strohm: I would like to hear those stories, yes.
@Cam/ron: I was also shocked to learn that Paul McCartney was in a band other than Wings.
I started singing “Against the ’70s” to myself the other day for no apparent reason. Perhaps I knew subconsciously that this post was coming.
@Dan Gibson: I saw that tour at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis. To this day its one of the best concerts I ever saw. The Foo Fighters before their first record was out. I went and saw Hovercraft a few times after that. I also bought 2 of their albums but 15 minute noise rock jams aren’t quite the same without the science stock-footage movie playing behind the band.
@Lucas Jensen: I posted those stories in a blog that I’ve since taken down. I’ll email them to you.
@Rory B. Bellows: The Ball-Hog tour came to Sacramento but Vedder and Hovercraft chickened out before the show since the local paper announced that Eddie was in town.
@moulty: I posted a long version about that session on a blog, and it’s full of hilarious details; however, here’s a capsule summary:
Regarding Eddie Vedder, I was playing a Lemonheads gig that night at Melrose High across the street, and Eddie tagged along when I went to check on the status of sound check. On the way back he pulled a ratty old wetsuit out of a dumpster. When we got back to the studio he disappeared for awhile and then he reappeared wearing the very wetsuit he’d pulled from the trash! It was way too big for him so the sleeves went over his hands. He wore it to record his vocals!
Regarding Watt, with whom I’d toured a number of times at that point, he only let me hear the song once or twice and then I had to play it right the first time without mistakes - “it’s a wrestlin’ record,” he said, “if you fall down on the mat, you don’t get up!” I wanted to re-do my solo so he made me re-do the entire song. NO PUNCHES! WRESTLING!
Watt remains my hero - the greatest guy I have ever met.
@Cam/ron: I got my tickets when they first went on sale. A few days before the concert, rumors started spreading that Vedder was going to be there. All of a sudden, it was the hottest ticket in St. Louis. Hot girls from my high school who I would never have expected to be into Mike Watt were trying to find tickets. Some of the cooler ones did.
Hovercraft came back a few months later for a show. There was a line around the block to see them. People assumed that Vedder would be there again. He was not.
As a side note though, the opening band for that show was Fastball. It was their first album, before “The Way.” They were actually really good. I talked to them about playing my college and the singer gave me his home phone number to set something up. The fact that I had their home number cracked me up everytime I saw their video on Mtv.
@Cam/ron: And Minuteflag, no?
Haven’t listened to this for a while, but I think I’ll pull it out of the shelves and give it a spin now. The K. Hannah cameo cracks me up every time.
@John P Strohm: That’s great, thanks so much. I can’t claim ever to have met the guy, but he does seem like an amazing human being.
As a side note, Thurston does a pretty great Mike Watt:
@John P Strohm: My quick Watt story: I read his Grand Royal magazine essay about the troubles of his knees and he mentioned that when he was a kid he used to run in circles to get himself into a trance. I wrote to him that I did the same thing as a child. Several months later, Watt sent a postcard to me where he wrote, “Hot damn! You too?”
Yeah, it was some crazy times. I remember not being surprised this kind of record was released on a major label or that someone like Mike Watt was indeed signed to one. I guess, in that regard, the ’90s were a lot like the ’60s: the majors had no clue exactly what the kids were into–only that the hair bands were kaput–and practically signed up everything they could. Lots of chaff, very little wheat.
If I recall correctly, Watt was backed onstage by Vedder (gtr) and Grohl (drums) on this tour, and both refused to talk to the press in deference to Watt who was the headlining act. Very cool.
Watt’s performance of “Big Train” live on 120 Minutes is also a fond memory for me.
@moulty: He’s so generous, and it’s such a pleasure to listen to him tell stories about the Minutemen and the early days of L.A. punk. One time I asked him what I should call my new band, to which he responded “shit with corn in it.” Dude’s a fuckin’ genius.
I saw that tour in Chapel Hill and the coolest memory I have about it is how gracious Dave Grohl was to the fans. He was taking photos and talking to fans hours before the show. He even got some guys on his personal guest list because they couldn’t get tickets to the sold out show. Vedder, however, was the exact opposite. 2 years earlier with Pearl Jam at the same venue he was very cool and laid back, this time he was a real dick to everyone. He wouldn’t even speak to fans who would come up to him and say hello. This was very odd considering most artists who played Chapel Hill have very little ego(Sonic Youth, Greg Dulli, Paul Westerberg, Pixies, Mike Watt!) and always hang out after the show and talk to everyone.
The Foos were great that night and you could tell that Grohl knew how to play guitar very well. Grohl would rotate between guitar and drum duties and it was great. Eddie struggled with all his guitar parts and honestly looked like someone who had just picked up a guitar the week before. Sorry Pearl Jam fans, but it’s the truth.
@antistar2000: Everybody knows EV went a little overboard with the wine for a couple years in the mid 90s. Once he sobered up, he was cool again.
@Christopher R. Weingarten: I put that track the majority of the mix tapes I made in 1995 for people, and almost all of those tapes were called “Big White Baby With An Ego Problem”
I enjoyed this piece, but this isn’t really comparable to Mark Robinson releasing an album on Universal in 2009. Mike Watt was already signed to Columbia at the time as a member of fIREHOSE, his profile was considerably higher then (and very arguably still is) than Robinson’s is currently, and this was the midst of the post-Nirvana major label indie-rock signing craze, in which an album featuring players like this wasn’t all that unusual. In fact, a very high percentage of the participants were also in bands on major labels at the time, even if we don’t think of them as “major label” artists today (the Haden sisters, for example).
That said, this album is incredibly worthy of tribute, everyone I know who’s ever met Mike Watt says he’s one of the nicest people alive, and watching him play bass is a sight to behold.
@CarWashHair: Regarding major labels, Watt is actually one of the savvier major label recording artists I’ve heard about. I don’t see his name on the current Columbia roster, but he released an album on Columbia as recently as 2004 I think.
His policy, as I understand, is that he pays for the albums himself - he doesn’t take any advance money from the label. I believe that’s the way he’s done business since fIREHOSE left SST. Since there isn’t the usual financial risk to the label, he gets better than usual financial terms and there isn’t the huge deficit that’s typical of non-superstar major label artists. He actually earns artist royalties.
@antistar2000: “Eddie struggled with all his guitar parts and honestly looked like someone who had just picked up a guitar the week before. Sorry Pearl Jam fans, but it’s the truth.“
Which is why none of the subsequent PJ records have the guitar chops heard on Ten. Stone and McCready are much more talented guitarists than Vedder, and once the latter took over most of the songwriting duties the music became simpler gtr-wise. For better or for worse? Well, that’s another story.
The desire to play guitar is just one symptom of LSD.