400 episodes of Tripping Balls
This week Dr Yobbo and I will record our 400th episode of our music podcast. It was born out of our sports podcast, where we would stick the dirty needle of nostalgia deep into the biggest vein we could find and talk about music, live shows, favourite albums, the death of music and the album, how shit NME, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, SMH et al were at ranking and reviewing (some things never change). At a certain point though, we realised we were nothing more than a cliche. Anything new we were discussing was from bands we already liked. The spectre of becoming Boomers arguing about the Stones or The Beatles loomed like a Vw Beetle just in the hazy horizon. Time for some action.
The conceit we came up with was fairly simple. 2 new albums every week, from the current calendar year. Originally we also did a “classic” album as well, but that well turned into “questionable classic” so we pivoted to a joker album, mainly just let me save face when I inevitably picked an EP as an album. The early episodes were mostly the drunken ramblings of two fools, which has slowly improved to being the rambling of two fools, that is somehow….quite good? I understand new music isn’t for everyone, and is completely subjective but you’d do much better listening to our year end episode than reading Rolling Stones list, thats for sure.
While thats the description of the birth of Tripping Balls, the conception of it came much earlier, when you had to write things down instead of speaking into a microphone and the filtering the overwhelming sounds of cicadas out. Back when we both had blogs, we both did a Top 50 albums of all time. There was rules and everything. To see just how much the podcast has changed the musical chemistry of our brains, we are going to revisit this list, and perhaps try to modernise it.
This was mine
No 50. Dire Straits - Dire Straits. No 49. Good Gracious - M-phazesNo 48. Achtung Baby - U2No 47. Manipulating Agent - No 46. Stone Broke - Brothers StoneyNo 45. Based on a True Story - Fat Freddys DropNo 44. Unit - Regurgitator No 43. Apocalypso - The PresetsNo 42. Signs of a Struggle - MattafixNo 41. GRand Theft Audio - Resin DogsNo 40. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness - The Smashing PumpkinsNo 39. Elephant - The White StripesNo. 38 Chutes too Narrow - The ShinsNo 37. Stoned and Dethroned - The Jesus and Mary ChainNo 36. Alright Still - Lily AllenNo 35. Sea change - BeckIf you were a fan of Odelay than you'd be mighty surprised to find Beck writing sad assed country songs. Bloody good at them though. No 34. In the Nude - PornlandNo 33. An Elefant Never Forgets - The HerdNo 32. Felt Mountain - GoldfrappNo 31. Orchid for the Afterworld - Sonic AnimationNo 30. La Roux - La RouxNo 29. Renegades - Rage Against The MachineNo 28. Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords No 27. Play - MobyNo 26. Mezzanine - Massive AttackNo 25. The K&D Sessions - Kruder and DorfmeisterNo 24. You've come a Long Way Baby - Fatboy SlimNo 23. Rocking the Suburbs - Ben FoldsNo 22. Tragic Kingdom - No DoubtNo 21. Prozac Beats - 2 DogsNo 20. Dummy -PortisheadNo 19. Kick - INXSNo 18. Fashion Nugget - CakeNo 17. Think Tank - BlurNo 16. Ok Computer - RadioheadNo 15. Power in Numbers - Jurassic 5No 14. Nevermind - NirvanaNo 13. Wild Colonial - Ozi BatlaNo 12. War Stories - UnkleNo 11. Two Shoes - The Cat EmpireNo 10. Decoder Ring - Decoder RingNo 9. Taste the Secret - Ugly DucklingNo 8. Surrender - Chemical BrothersNo 7. Angel Dust - Faith No MoreNo 6. Deep Down and Dirty - Stereo MCs No 5. Blood Sugar Sex Magic - Red Hot Chilli PeppersNo 4. Shin Ki Row - Shin Ki RowNo 3. Killervision - Salmonella DubNo 2. Foggy Highway - Paul Kelly No 1. The Calling - Hilltop Hoods
I am attempting to revisit all of these that I haven’t listened to recently (almost all of them) to try and do this justice. There will definitely be a top 50. I encourage comments. Will the recency bias of the last 1012 albums hold sway or will nostalgia hold firm? Stay tuned.