This album is largely forgotten. Oh, every few years you might hear their cover of The Rolling Stones' "I'm Free" in a TV ad, but overall, unless you're Gen X, and even then, not most of them, this can probably be bought for 99 cents in the racks that you have to kneel down to get.
And yet, for many members of Shlep Music Club, this album is a classic.
In 1990, right after Glen and I moved to the Bay Area and rented a house with Nick, Glen brought home the single for "Mother Universe" and played it loudly and we all dug it. Over the summer, "I'm Free" became a huge hit. We were all doing so much LSD that summer - as, apparently, did The Soup Dragons when making this album (they sampled heavily from The Monkees's cult classic Head) - that it became the soundtrack to our summer in that house (along with Sly and the Family Stone, Deee-Lite, Leadbelly and a few others).
On November 14th, 1990, in celebration of my 21st birthday the prior day, Glen and Nick scored us tickets to see the band at the woefully small venue New George's in San Rafael. New George's holds maybe 500, but by that time, the Soup Dragons were huge.. far too big for a club of that size.
We showed up early and, with our friend Craig, were witness to an opening band only maybe a dozen people saw... Material Issue!
By the time The Soup Dragons took the stage, it was so packed that the undermanned security guys - no doubt trying to keep the county from shutting them down - were just grabbing who they could and throwing them out. It was chaos.
It remains the most epic show I have ever seen.
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