and with his brother John in the band Electric Airlines. Roeser went on to perform with Jim Kimball (formerly of The Jesus Lizard) as L.I.M.E.
Kato and Roeser started feuding, resulting in Roeser leaving the band. Urge Overkill retained their sound for their next album, Exit the Dragon, released in 1995.
Urge overkill movie#
When the movie became a hit, the song made it to number 59 on the Billboard Hot 100. As the band recorded a follow-up album, cult filmmaker Quentin Tarantino used the group's cover version of the Neil Diamond song, "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon", in his 1994 film Pulp Fiction. In 1993, the band contributed the track "Take a Walk" to the AIDS relief benefit album No Alternative produced by the Red Hot Organization. The single "Sister Havana" finally gave the band a hit record and broad recognition. Despite some criticism for the label switch, Urge Overkill's major-label debut, Saturation, received strong reviews upon release in 1993, and to support the album, they opened for Pearl Jam on their Vs. Having a strong following by this time, they jumped from their indie label, Touch & Go, to a major label, Geffen Records. Produced by Butch Vig, Americruiser was widely praised, and scored a college radio hit with the lead single, "Ticket to L.A." Watt returned to Baron Lesh and was replaced by Blackie Onassis (real name: John Rowan) on the next album The Supersonic Storybook, which was named by Material Issue's Jim Ellison was released in 1991.Īfter opening for Nirvana on the American Nevermind tour, Urge Overkill returned to the studio to record another EP, Stull, in 1992 which featured the tracks, "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" (produced and mixed by Kramer) and "Goodbye to Guyville". Jack "Jaguar" Watt (of the band Baron Lesh) was the new drummer and their sound from then on has been described as a "Stonesy fusion of arena rock and punk". Their next effort, Americruiser, saw a drastic change in style. A full-length album, Jesus Urge Superstar, soon followed, again produced by Albini, and with Kriss Bataille taking over the drums. The EP was recorded by Kato's friend, Steve Albini. They formed Urge Overkill (getting the name from a phrase in the lyrics of the Parliament song " Funkentelechy") in Chicago, Illinois, United States, in 1986, with drummer Pat Byrne, and released an EP, Strange, I., on Ruthless Records. I didn’t want to stop them from going to Geffen I just wanted to be fully reimbursed for what I’d spent.Kato and Roeser met at Northwestern University in 1985. It was a special exception, based on something extra we did for them. It was the first time a Touch and Go band had ever owed us an album. Says Rusk in response: “I don’t recall mentioning a figure of what I was going to sue them for. They are not going to occupy the moral high ground on this.” We had nothing, and he was ready to see us fall. He has a business, he has a life, he has everything. Which stopped our record in its tracks for a few months. He thought that Geffen would pay him a hundred thousand dollars. He was going to sue us for a hundred thousand dollars, more money than we’d ever fucking seen in our lives. Roeser: “And because it was an EP, do you know what he wanted to do? He threatened to fuck our career entirely up with Geffen. That got the studio mad at me, and ended up costing other bands that came after them money.”īlackie: “The second-best EP for the year in the Village Voice.” The amount of time they said they needed to make the record turned out to be a lie. “On the last record I worked with them on, they took advantage of a deal I got them on studio time. “I have to admit,” he says, “that my hatred of them is slightly irrational, in that special way that you feel hatred when people who were once good friends turn into pieces of shit.” Urge, he says, are “scheming, careerist, and manipulative.”Īsked for specifics, Albini provided two. I asked Albini why he’d fallen out with the people he describes as having been his best friends for ten years. Hitsville is currently in the process of profiling Urge for Request magazine on the eve of its bombshell debut, Saturation, on Geffen. On the other: principled and hard-line defenders of the indie-record way of life. On the one side: an uncompromising, ambitious, and talented band that has never hidden its desire to sell records. The ongoing feud between Urge Overkill and their former partners in crime–producer Steve Albini and Touch and Go Records nicely illustrates the intense pressures that independent bands and labels are feeling as the majors embrace what was once the most uncommercial music imaginable. Whenever They Call You “Friend”: Urge vs.
7/28: Lawyers for Social Justice Reception.
Urge overkill series#
Sommelier Series (paid sponsored content).