But both girl and boy were glad 'cause one kid had it worse than that

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

24/07/94 : God Shuffled His Feet - Crash Test Dummies


Only our second ever mention for Crash Test Dummies and this was one I nearly bought because of "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" (it used to be hilarious to get ask Alexa "what track is this?", but unfortunately she's been taught not to just say "em" twelve times now) but never quite got round to it - I'm expecting to enjoy it though.

I obviously like "MMMM" (even though it is a most peculiar song) but I'd completely forgotten about "Afternoons And Coffee Spoons" ("some day I'll wear pyjamas in the daytime") which also has an enjoyable level of quirk - and the rest of the album pretty much continues in that vein. Which I thought might get a bit too much, but it's OK actually - if anything got too much it's his incredibly low voice, but I think he just about gets away with it. I feel if I was driving down the Canadian freeway in the summer with the roof down, then this would hit the spot nicely but, until that happens, I feel I'm unlikely to revisit it. It's got some great track titles though eg "In The Days Of The Caveman", "Here I Stand Before Me" and "How Does A Duck Know?".

We're at #6 in the charts this week on their twelfth week of an impressive 31 week run, with it having peaked at #2 in its first two weeks. The top five this week were Wet Wet Wet (starting a four week run at the top), The Rolling Stones, The Prodigy, Eagles and Ace Of Base with the highest new entry being House Of Pain (#8).

Wikipedia tells us it's their second album - the only fact of any interest included is that the cover art is Titian's painting Bacchus and Ariadne with the band members' faces superimposed (and I bet you didn't know that). It was produced by Jerry Harrison (of Talking Heads fame, but I didn't know he was originally in The Modern Lovers or that he also produced Live's Throwing Copper, which is an album I like). Critically, it was well enough received but I think it's safe to say it somewhat exceeded expectations commercially, getting to #1 in Austria, Finland (it's surprisingly unangry to have managed that), Germany and New Zealand. Somewhat surprisingly it only got to #11 in Canada (this is a VERY Canadian record) but it got to #9 in the US, selling two million copies there and eight million copies worldwide - which is a pretty decent effort!

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for a quid and the most you can splash out is £25, so it's fair to say it's not going to break the bank. I didn't mind this (although I can see it would annoy plenty of people) and I'm glad I finally checked it out, but it didn't exactly grab me.

17/07/94 - Lovely to catch up with this
31/07/94 - A phenomenally successful debut

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