You have a biscuit head - a double decker biscuit head

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

10/07/94 : Turn It Upside Down - Spin Doctors


Our third mention for Spin Doctors ever and I have an interesting relationship with them - I really liked "Two Princes" and so bought Pocket Full Of Kryptonite, which I also liked. However, I always kinda thought I shouldn't like them - it just felt like they'd lucked out and were blagging it (but at least they were enjoying their time in the limelight). That was very much the end of my time with them though and I don't believe I ever knew this (the follow-up album) even existed - it will be interesting to see what I think of it.

Hmmm - it's not terrible, but there's definitely a feeling that the blag is running out of steam. They're obviously decent enough on their instruments but the songs aren't really here and there's way too much random jazzy-funky noodling to pad things out - I feel they might have gotten away with it if it was a nice summer's day, but it didn't really work so much in November. It's got a very Counting Crows kinda feel to it, so check it out if you like that sort of thing - it's kinda fun but it's not as good as their debut (which I feel less guilty about enjoying now - and I'm sure we'll get to see it at some point to see how it's standing up to the test of time).

We're at #7 in the charts this week on the unknownth week of an unknown week run - the website I use to gather this data has got confused and combined the numbers of their first two albums, but it seems like it peaked at #3. The top five this week were The Prodigy (a new entry), Ace Of Base, Wet Wet Wet, a Whitesnake best-of (a new entry) and Mariah Carey with the next highest new entry being a Nina Simone best-of (#9) - we've had a lot of best-ofs this year.

Wikipedia tells us it's their second album and the only extract you need to read is "not as commercially or critically successful as their debut album". Looking at their entry to pad things out, they've had their ups and downs (including one of the band members leaving the group around this time by walking off stage mid concert) but they're still going and the next album is on its way if you care about such things. Back to this one, it really wasn't received well critically with one star from Select and Robert Christgau but it did OK commercially in the US, selling a million copies - although this was slightly less than the five million units that their debut shifted over there.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for a mere pound but if you want to spend £50 on it then you'll get a rare MiniDisc version (I used to love my MiniDiscs, but I'm not sure I see the point in collecting them now). This album was bearable, but not really any good - unlike their debut which was a load of fun, whilst still (if we're being honest) not really being any good.

03/07/94 - Needs stronger songs
17/07/94 - Lovely to catch up with this

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