Good friend of mine was a bartender at a major DC/Baltimore area spot for 30 years. She met EVERY band you've ever heard of and she said the Spin Docs were the only band she ever met that actually waited in line for drinks.

I love how The B-52s were credited as the B.C.-52s on the Flintstones song

I briefly dated a girl who was into the Spin Doctors. She wanted their first album, but accidentally bought this one. It's nice to know that dating me wasn't the most disappointing thing that happened to her that year.

I was at an anime convention and there were two guys cosplaying as Prince (shortly after he died) and as I was leaving the security guard said “Two Princes… ha” and that is still one of the funniest things I ever witnessed.

"Do beer commercials count?" That's a sick burn.

"They killed his ass in the second act" makes the entire song almost worth it. Almost.

I can normally spot jokes like this coming, but I have to admit, going from "This is the new, more cerebral Spin Doctors" right into "This is Big Fat Funky Booty!" legitimately caught me off guard, and cracked me up. Well played, good sir.

Cleopatra's Cat is painful because it's like, just on the cusp of becoming a song I would really really love, but it just... never... clicks into place.... like several times i started vibing with the song and then it just didnt actually go anywhere.

Cleopatra's cat sounds like something you'd hear in a college coffee shop open mic night by the guy who pulled an all nighter for his literature and history final while taking tons of adderall and caffeine in a room with his girlfriend's cat and listening to beatnik jazz, before someone gave him a joint, he snapped and now he thinks he's a Jazz musician.

“This next song is called Big Fat Funky Booty.” How to destroy your career in one line.

One thing Todd is really good at is bringing up artists I don't think I know, but then it turns out I *do* know them, and then he reveals that they have these absolutely baffling careers. The band behind the "I Get Knocked Down" pub song were deeply political, flag-waving anarchists. The guys who did the Ferris Bueller sexy car song were led by an eccentric golf-playing millionaire who wants to open a chocolate factory. And now, the Two Princes band also did a jazzy comedy song about Caesar and Cleopatra, *with Latin lyrics.*

We need an updated list on the most WTF lyrics from each episode. I'll try to start it: Jewel - We love eating spam in America Styx - I am the Modren Man Lauren Hill - And now she thinks she's bisexual MC Hammer - A Tribe Called Quest is a bad investment Madonna - The godforsaken American Life rap Arrested Development - After I scold you, I hope I can mold you. Billy Idol - Jesus died for somebody's sins I've got my HEEEEEEEROIN Van Halen - In a word to the wisdom tooth Oasis - I've got my magic pie Hootie - I'd love to hurt the population Liz Phair - You're being a penis (colada that is) Metallica - My lifestyle determines my death style Human League - And if that girl won't swang with me, I'll swang me another girl yessire Spin Doctors - You've got a biscuit head, a double decker biscuit head

I can’t believe Todd, my ethical and moral role model, smoked a vape. I’m going to burn all my hoodies and stop standing in dimly lit rooms because of this.

"Cleopatra's Cat" sounds like something that weird dude you avoided at every house party because he only ever talked about LSD would write for a one-man rock opera he's "been working on forever".

Still the oddest line up I've ever seen. Hippie singer Funk bassist Rock drummer Blues guitarist Yet they made it work somehow

While I admit it saddens me, I respect Todd’s decision to abandon his career as a music critic for the life of a competitive vape trick performer.

I do love that transition. "Okay, so maybe they're trying to be more intellectual. I can go with that." ..."This one's called big fat funky booty!" ...dead silence.

Don't worry Todd, I'm stoned as all heck and it still sounds like ass.

I like how the bassist looked around like, "oh, my career is over."

Chris Barron tweeted that he wrote "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" about his stepmother who told him that he would be a janitor living in the basement of a school and playing guitar for the rats. Yikes…..

I don't know if I've ever seen a project that screams "WHO IS THIS FOR???" more than this one

Fun fact: This album was released on the same day as Arrested Development's Zingalamaduni (June 14th, 1994). Oof. Two bands that made their debut around the same time, were critically and commercially successful in spite of backlash from some circles (even if the Spin Doctors weren't quite the critical darlings that Arrested Development were), and then their second albums dropped on the exact same day and bombed like an unopened parachute. Eh, at least Turn It Upside Down doesn't have anything as insufferable as that fucking "Warm Sentiments" song.

I saw them in concert about 3 years ago at a ski lodge in Vermont. The lead singer kept doing these really high kicks for some reason whenever there was an instrumental break in a song. At one point he stood on one leg and held his other leg above his head. Super weird but they played pretty well.

Watch this, Lis. You can actually pinpoint the second when his career rips in half: “This song’s called Big Fat Funky Booty”

“I dodged a lot of hacky sacs in middle school” sent me time travelling for a minute

"What is this hippie gibberish?" is such an unexpectedly powerful line.

Update: The bassist, Mark White, refused to take the COVID vaccine so the other guys booted him.

The lack of a chorus or structure on “Cleopatra’s Cat” makes it sound kind of like an OpenAI Jukebox-generated Spin Doctors song.

The fact that bands in the 80’s and 90’s could literally only be one thing is just infuriating to me. “Oh no, we got played on the radio, now we can’t be a jam band! People don’t want to hear music, they want to hear hits!”

Holy moly it’s back, the great Todd and his great train of horrors.

With the beard and tight pants, Chris Barron had the hipster look about 20 years too early.

I don’t know why, but Cleopatra’s Cat sounds like it was written by someone that is still obsessed with Hamilton in 2021

"Cleopatra's Cat" sounds like RHCP trying and failing to channel Frank Zappa.

My parents' old CD collection has both this and Fairweather Johnson in it. I might need to start compiling how many Trainwreckords albums are hidden in my house (Note: Not doing CDs exclusively because I just remembered they also have Kilroy Was Here on vinyl)

Actually, Todd's the real "samurai with words": He always seems to find the right expression for the point he's making

@1:45 -- That's a fucking great point! Back in the 90s, hippie kids *way* outnumbered the grunge kids. You saw way more hackeysacks than flannel. Plus a lot of grunge kids turned into skater kids and graduated from Alice in Chains and Soundgarden to 311 and Sublime.

Maybe if they combined the two songs and released "Big Fat Funky Biscuit Booty" they'd still be a force on the pop charts today

Gotta love how on the article that's shown where "Two Princes" is on the Most Annoying Singles list, it has Arrested Development as #1 on Best Rap Acts. "Tsk tsk. You'll never get anywhere being so annoying, Spin Doctors. Now if you'll excuse us, we have to--" *falls into oblivion*

"Cleopatra's Cat" has Julius Caesar talk about Jesus Christ, despite the fact that Jesus was born about 40 years after Caesar's death, and I am really unsure if this is a joke that's going over my head or if the Spin Doctors just really, REALLY suck at being clever.

Spin doctors: *unintelligible* Todd:.....walk like an Egyptian? I'm dead.

To be fair, when you stop laughing at the scat part, at least "Cleopatras cat" has interesting elements in it. Jazzy rockvibes, latin, maybe not the best together but atleast it has personality. Everything, every song after that sounds the freaking same.

I remember reading a review that said that the album "lacked some Spin and needed some Doctorin' up." I don't remember where it was but I thought it was some of the greatest criticism I've seen in my lifetime.

Honestly, the edit at 10:38 slays me everytime: 'This is the new, more *cerebral* version of the Spin Doctors. Let's give it a shot.' 'This next song's called Big Fat Funky Booty' *visible confusion*

Basically if Shaggy from Scooby-Doo started a band

these guys are performing tomorrow in a very small Vermont resort community that i have a house in. just thought that would be relevant info

this sounds like a bad ween album

Saw the Spin Doctors on the Alternative Nation tour with Screaming Trees and Soul Asylum in 93. I was mostly just there for the Screaming Trees, but had liked the Spin Doctor's hits. We actually met the drummer and bassist before the show and they were very cool and signed autographs and stuff. They played Cleopatra's Cat and nobody in the audience knew what to do with it. After the show, my friend's little sister wouldn't stop telling everybody she ran into "did you hear? they played a new song called Cleopatra's Cat!" I felt the book shut on them in that moment.

I remember on Late Night with Conan Obriens "in the year 2000", one of the jokes was the army discovers Saddam Hussein's bunker and find something worse than WMDs...a new Spin Doctors album.

I was so damn sure, when Todd was talking about the Spin Doctors getting that Pinnacle of Achievements that proves You've Made It, he was gonna bring up their appearance on Sesame Street.

Trainwreckords is one of the greatest series on KZfaq. Please make more of these forever

As someone that loves weed I can’t think of anything worse than getting high and listening to the Spin Doctors

Huh, so that extremely 90’s “go ahead now” song is called “Two Princes” and it’s by “Spin Doctors.” You never know what you’re going to learn on KZfaq today!

I really thought "Cleopatra's Cat" was a euphemism, but I'm not sure if that stands up to some of the more bizarre lyrics. Regardless, all the latin speaking and Shakespeare references makes it seem less intellectual and more "pretentious theatre kid trying to prove they're cool".

It's kinda scary trying to break into a creative field and you see sophomore slumps like this. Knowing one big break isn't enough and you have to keep catching lightning in a bottle just to keep from being the Spin Doctors is mortifying.

What about a One Hit Wonderland for "Detachable Penis" by King Missile? That seems to be one of those 90s songs that no one admits to knowing until you play it for them.

Todd...Todd, Todd, Todd, Todd...*sigh*...I was there. I went to shows at the Wetlands in New York City, and saw Blues Traveler, The Spin Doctors, and The Authority. The Authority was an amazing band that came out of that whole NYC Jam Band/FunK/Improvisational scene that never got it’s due. I did front of the house sound for one of the Spin Doctors gigs in Syracuse, NY. I used to tape shows of these bands, and trade them, and I had a lot of Spin Doctor shows. I had their first two Demos. Cleopatra’s Cat was around a lot longer, and wasn’t a ‘new’ song that showed up on their second album. It came out of a Jam that was part of their song combo Freeway on The Plains -> Lady Kerosene. Chris would often go off on these impromptu raps during live shows, and the lyrics of that song came out of one of those impromptu raps, and Chris is really, really well read. I hung out with him at Jones Beach, and we spent about forty five minutes talking about Kerouac, and other Beat writers like Ferlinghetti. Talking about the rhythm, and meter those guys wrote in. Yes he could write some dumb stuff too. Big Fat Funky Booty, Yo Mama’s a Pajama, then he’d turn around and drop Rosetta Stone on you, which is a song about communication in a relationship. I think you hit the nail on the head early on in your assessment of this whole scene. The Jam band scene was more about the performances, and live show than the studio albums. I have way more tapes of live phish shows than I do of their studio out out. Same thing with the Allman’s, and the Dead. It was about the uniqueness of each different performance. The Spin Doctors brought a much needed level of funkiness to the scene, and when they hit big in the mainstream, I think the pressure they got from the record label for another Two Princes, or Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong, and internal pressure between Chris, and Erik just imploded them. Yeah the album sucked, but their performances before Erik left were still solid. Just some perspective from someone who was there, and was sober most of the time.

"This next song is called 'Big Fat Funky Booty'" Ah, so a song more embarrassing than "Swang" is possible

They really did pave the way (and then immediately got out of the way) for DMB

That Dr. Hook reference at 3:53 was made for maybe 5 people and I am one of them. Thank-you.

0:58 Looks like Layne Staley's wimpy (though probably much healthier) brother.

I love how this has slowly but surely become Todd's flagship show. Deserves to be. Also, I remember that two different Spin Doctors songs were parodied on Sesame Street: Two Princes, which they themselves came in to parody (same tune, now about two actual princes played by Elmo and Telly trying to get Princess Zoe to play with them) and Little Miss Can't Be Wrong (which became Little Miss Count Along, sung by the Count about Zoe, which I later discovered didn't actually sound all that much like the original but somehow sounded way better).

Todd, you are undervalued as a writer. It takes some skill to keep these from getting repetitive, but I find myself laughing and engaged every time.

this was very fascinating to me as someone who was born in 2000 and realizes how much I truly do not understand the 90s more and more each day

That man is not built to handle a booty that's simultaneously big, fat, and funky and I feel like his comeback should've been a sad, Mike Posner esque song about coming to terms with that fact

Chris looks like Amish Paradise Weird Al in the “You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast” video

Who knew that “Turn it Upside Down” would be The Spin Doctors’ Kyrptonite?

I honestly can’t tell if Todd loves the Dave Matthews Band or absolutely loathes them.

I did not think I would spend 20 minutes of today on the Spin Doctors but here we are.

Todd ain't gonna talk about what "H.O.R.D.E." stood for? They never said, officially, but supposedly it stood for "Horizons Of Rock Developing Everywhere." Smartasses said it stood for "Hippies On Recreational Drugs Everywhere."

Biscuit Head sounds like the intro to an annoying after-school cartoon that you sometimes left on between better shows.

Maybe I’m just too into stoner Dead music but I kinda unironically get a kick out of Biscuithead Edit: never mind I went and listened to the actual song

I think a lot of 90s bands suffered from not being “sellouts”. the minute they achieved any sort of success they were trapped. the audience back then was really anal abt that sadly.

Regardless of the failed follow-up, "Refrigerator Car" and "Shinbone Alley/Hard to Exist" both slap, as the kids probably no longer say

I liked "Two Princes" a lot growing up and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" was a pretty catchy song. Nevertheless, I've never wondered what became of the Spin Doctors after that album.

The Spin Doctors basically made the same mistake that Hammer made. Think about it: both acts had pop hits, got backlash from hardcore fans of their respective genres, tried to bend to those hardcores, and failed, only to discover that staying the course would've resulted in continued success in the late 90s. The parallels are there; the difference was that Hammer's hardcore attempt was a lot more embarrassing.

Pocket Full of Kryptonite is still one of my favorite records; Refrigerator Car and Forty or Fifty are criminally underrated songs. I saw them in Santa Cruz maybe 12-13 years ago and they all signed my flannel, which is still the most 90s thing I own. I think one of the biggest problems with a lot of the jam band scene at the time (SD included) was something Todd talked about in the Hootie episode - having years and years to build up a set of songs that were tight and given a lot more detail over time, while afterward having to deal with the pressure of needing to write material that was just as good despite not having that luxury anymore.

Every time Todd compliments a song on one of these or a One Hit Wonderland video, I always get worried some cringe lyric is coming up that'll blow the whole thing over.

If nothing more, these latest Trainwreckord videos have been proving to me that many bands/artists that I thought were just one hit wonders or weren't even relevant actually had briefly successful careers, let alone careers that could be destroyed by their next album.

Still think you should do one on JT's "Man of the Woods." Horrendous.

You should do Christina’s “Bionic”. I’m still surprised how she never recovered since that album

So... Cleopatra's Cat is basically discount Primus?

They opened the door for fun jam rock, then walked back out of it due to initial public disapproval, leaving room for much braver bands that would proudly weather the storm of praise and tomatoes.

I feel like releasing a single with "Mary Jane" in the chorus/title was just a losing proposition after Tom Petty's Greatest Hits came out.

I remember “You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast”. Either it did better in the U.K. or the rock-leaning radio show I listened to in my teens was desperate for content and scraped the bottom of the musical barrel. That particular DJ turned me on to a lot of bands that never charted but were great in addition to playing the Pearl Jams and Counting Crows of the world.

Once more with feeling.

I feel like the logical follow-up to this video is to do a one-hit wonderland on No Rain by Blind Melon. Same airy, jangly neo-hippie vibe, though obviously completely different.

Not gonna lie, I actually really love Cleopatra‘s cat. Totally uncommercial, but it’s just such a fun chill song. “An intellectual brand of goofiness” sums it up pretty well

Cleopatra's Cat has powerful Lauryn Hill Unplugged vibes

Was recently wondering where that one song with "just go ahead now" in the chorus came from. Was one of those things I remembered hearing many times as a kid but never knew the title or band name. Kinda neat now knowing those details, as well as how they paved the way for DMB, a band I still have a soft spot for.

Cleopatra's Cat still sounds like a rejected Primus demo

I remember discovering the Spin Doctors in upstate NY 1991. They were an awesome underground band, popular with punks, hippies, and freaks of all sorts. Got to see them once live at a mid-sized club in Syracuse and they were so fun, energetic, and creative. I was pretty happy for them when they broke out.. But it was like they bought into the wrong audience and early-comers like me were suddenly turned off hearing them played on the radio after Tag Team. That said, their early live album "Up For Grabs" still holds up very well. Todd, as always, thank you for your awesome videos.

"Biscuithead" sounds like David Byrne singing a Weird Al parody of the Grateful Dead

“I dogged a lot of hacky sacks in middle school.” I feel this on a deep level.

It says a lot that the piano cover at the end was the catchiest song in the video. Very rarely do I hear of an album that sucks this hard out of sheer _confusion_ on the artist’s part.

I always thought Little Miss Can't be Wrong and Two Princes were the one hits from 2 different one hit wonders. The more you know.

This could have been in the one hit wonderland.. I'm in my early 40s and when Kryptonite came out was in my teens playing in a high school cover band. Bass player loved Spin Doctors and we all liked covering their songs. The pop kids liked it and was always enough interesting stuff going on the guitar to be fun. There was this more upbeat funky side to the alternative scene that they were a part of. After that first album, never really followed them after that unfortunately.

Cleopatra's Cat is a weird mess, but it's mostly weird that it was on a pop-rock album... as a single.

For me it was a song called, “Big fat funky booty”, that signaled the end. Booty such a lame word. Seems like them and Soul Asylum were both examples of the brightest flames burning quickest.

I love this youtube show, there is just nothing like it. Thank you Todd, for all these years of entertainment!

"coz they killed his ass in the second act" Assuming he's talking about the Shakespeare play, the assassination of Casesar happens in the first scene of the THIRD act.