I loved Wax Ecstatic! I remember hearing it when it came out and having it pop in my head from time to time, but I was unsure what song it was until a friend of mine showed me it in 2008 and I've been listening to Wax Ecstatic on heavy rotation ever since.
How about all the other tracks? I'm dumbfounded how their next single "Have you seen Mary' , at least got some decent airplay for a little while, but it really should have solidified the Wax album platinum!!!
I always thought these guys were so underrated. I saw them in a small local NY club around 2003 and they were awesome. Picked up their more recent albums and they are still great.
@@gogoyubari366 Although they did receive a significant amount of airplay on radio stations & videos on MTV (When they actually played music videos), they should've got MORE attention & credit than what they received. Hence, underrated!
Saw Sponge in '04 in Peoria with some buddies, even got to meet them afterward. We still talk about the show they put on to this day, one of my absolute favorite concerts!
I have seen them in Michigan 3 or 4 times. Vinnie is the only original member since like 2005, but they have great live shows and still release pretty strong new music too
One of my all-time favorite bands. Tried so hard to get all my friends into Rotting Piñata back in the day and it never took. Easily in my top 5 of 90's records
Sponge is amazing every album is great. New Pop Sunday is amazing then you got for alll the drugs in world and the man. Really great albums still put out music and do shows. The lead singer is only founding member and he also sings for Lucid and the Orbitsuns. Sponge should had been big as Kiss.
Saw them on their first tour when they played with "Stabbing Westward" I believe "Molly" had just come out. But "plowed" is awesome.I remember it from "Empire Records" Movie.
I can say with absolute certainty (since my sister is married to Vin) that everyone in the band right now are mighty good people and extremely talented musicians. Vinnie is a great dad and husband on top of it all.
Not every band during the grunge era could bang out hits like STP or AIC , but with that being said , i really digged their sound, theirs differently a " punk " influence going on their, and if you were a teenager in the 80's, you were all about the shit man...
For All the Drugs in the World is one of my favorite all time albums. Some very well written songs on that album. It is a lot different from the first two.
Vinnie changed life for me man.. whoooooo I have a story of all stories with this band.. thanks for this doc bro.. it was great.. these guys are the very spirit of rock n roll as it lives and breathes.... I first hand can assure that. to the bone ..
They’re still around, I seen them outback at the Rainbow in Hollywood like 2 years ago. They looked like a bunch of guys in their 60’s or close, but they killed it none the less.
I really dug the album 'Wax Ecstatic', had alot of great tunes. 'Got To Be a Bore', 'Wax Ecstatic', 'I Am Anastasia', and 'Have You Seen Mary' are all great songs. I listened to this album about 300 times back in the 90s, good stuff... 👍
I was going to college in Columbus, OH in 1995 and was able to meet and see them live. They were touring the Rotting Pinata album and did a signing the afternoon of the show at a local record store. I actually still have the CD signed by the entire band. Really nice guys and they put on a great show that evening. Unfortunate that they never really took off after Molly became a big hit.
Sponge was always a Destroit radio fav, even to this day. I heard them on the radio here for the first time and it brought me back to the auto actory days when everyones ghetto blaster was playing on the line and you were guarenteed to hear Ploughed at least once a day on the radio (89X, WRIF and others I have forgotten). A friend was taking me back to the Detroit airport a few years back and guess what came on the radio...
I've seen Sponge three times in the last few years and they put on a great rock show full of energy and when given the chance I will gladly go see them again.
Criminally underrated band. If your a fan of alternative rock you can pick up any of their albums and really enjoy it beginning to end especially wax ecstatic
I have their second album which I got when I was maybe 27 in 97 and still listen to it occasionally. They are a great band that I feel flew under the radar as DJ culture and EDM took hold in the late 90's as well the grunge rock staples. I feel like Sponge had/has great rock music that maybe wasn't commercial or pop enough for the illiterate masses. I'm glad to find that they made more albums past 2000, which I will now visit if not buy some. I'd love to see them live.
I hated that song Plowed. It wasn't until the night after I met my ex-fiance as I watched the sunrise over the hills at 6 a.m.on a beautiful Texas morning, still high, listening to the radio in my friend's car when this song came on, but this song defined that summer of '96. I stopped hating this song and have since felt such deep nostalgia for this song. It takes me back to a time when I was living the happiest times in my life.
I saw Sponge multiple times in the 90's as a teenager living in West Michigan, where they had a lot of radio support for Piñata. Joey is underrated as a guitarist. Wax is a great album that suffered from bad timing, as that whole alternative era peaked in 1996. The local radio stations were changing formats. It was the end of an era. When they came around West Michigan to tour for Sunday, they couldn't even fill The Intersection, and played upstairs in a bar for about a few hundred people. It was a good show, but it felt like the end. Piñata and Wax still hold up and I still listen to them. It was cool they all reunited once in 2018 before Mike died. Sponge will probably remain a cult favorite among music nerds like myself and maybe with the right thing, they'll go viral and new generations will discover them. Cheers.
He didn't even mention all the other albums Vinnie is a part of! The Orbitsuns, The Lucid, Crud etc. Dude has a shit ton of music out there. His career is almost as active outside of Sponge as it is in Sponge
I first saw them on the Triple Bypass tour in 2001 with Blue October and Bowling for Soup. They also played the Summerland tour a few years ago with Lit, Sugar Ray and Everclear. Always a great time!
Sponge is amazing every album is great. New Pop Sunday is amazing then you got for alll the drugs in world and the man. Really great albums still put out music and do shows. The lead singer is only founding member and he also sings for Lucid and the Orbitsuns. Sponge should had been big as Kiss.
I got to meet them in person back in like 96. The band was great. Some gal won a contest to take pics with the lead singer and I was up next in line for autographs. I stood there talking to the band who'd basically planned on watching the Lions game at my house. I had DTV and Sunday ticket back when that was not a common thing. I was blown away. Normal guys. Later the lead singer came back and shot the idea down and said 20 minutes was too far to go from the club they were playing at so that was done. Either way, great normal guys.
Just saw Sponge last night (June 1, 2022) in Columbus, Ohio and they were as great as I remember them from seeing them in Pittsburgh May 28, 1999. Excellent show.
Saw these guys at the ROAR tour in '97 in Savannah GA. I went to see the Rev. Horton Heat. He was amazing as always, but Sponge was the biggest surprise for me. Singer just killed it on Plowed. Awesome show.
I was 9 years old hearing Wax Ecstatic on the radio in a bagel shop and it was among the first times I would think to myself: “whaaaaaat / I need to know how he plays guitar exactly like this.” 👏🏼
Sponge is one of me favorite bands they definitely deserve more attention. I loved Rotting Pinata, Wax Ecstatic, New Pop Sunday and Stop the Bleeding which is now unavailable on RU-vid and they now have a new album called Lavatorium which has a couple songs I like. Me Best Friends got me into this band and I thank them for it. Thanks Holland Kids I love you and thank you Sponge for awesome songs that take me back to a time I wasn't around to live. Love you all.
@@daniell1125 I have no idea I go to listen to Date to Breathe and it's gone. Me favorite song and now I can't hear it. That was a cleaner album compared to some of their other albums so I don't know the reason behind this but I hope it comes back soon.
@@curly_wyn Interesting. You say they deserve no attention, and yet you leave comments about them. I see that you deleted your previous comment so maybe you forgot about your other one.
Good band. I still listen to their first three releases. Bought the vinyl rerelease of Rotting Piñata when it was issued in May of last year. “For All The Drugs In The World” is a good album from their later stuff and there is a an even more recent song I liked called “What Were You Doing Outside If You Didn’t Like The Rain?”
I bought and listened to Rotting Piñata on tape as a kid and loved every song even the ones that weren't released as singles. They remain a nostalgic part of my life
They play Pittsburgh a lot. Different band but ya still have Vinnie. Great band all around. I love their first 3 albums. Classic stuff. I gotta look into their subsequent releases.
I had only a relatively recently discovered the alternate version to the video for "Plowed" and it kind of broke my brain to see the different take after all these years.
I feel bad for 90s bands that’s when we started burning cd’s and then file sharing. I always listened to sponge but never bought an album. I guess Lars was right, who knew?
I loved Plowed when it came out but never got into the band for some reason. I don't think I heard Molly until recently and I wish I could go back in time and tell my 16 year old self to buy their CD.
I got the chance to meet the band in either 1994 or 1995 when they came to Tucson. I wasn't able to afford to go to their concert, but they did a meet and greet at a local record store. They were really nice and signed my copy of Rotting Pinata. Unfortunately, when I went through a rough patch financially, I had to sell most of my books and CDs for money, and I let go of that disc. I honestly wish I hadn't done that.
It’s isn’t a bad album but it doesn’t check as many boxes as the debut . The drum change really hurt them . Wax’s drumming wasn’t powerful didn’t shake ass ..... it just sorta kept time . The record was pretty glossy as well and when I hear it I think the ingredients are there and there’s so many thing in it that have so much potential but they just missed a bullseye
I dont understand why Neenah Menasha never got big, it was a really good song. Super heavy, kinda psychedelic, and it just stands out from the other heavy grunge bands from that time. I think Wax Esctatic didn't do as well because it sounded so much different then rotting pinata, people really liked the sound of rotting pinata.
Neenah did not get a lot of radio play in West Michigan on WGRD and WKLQ, where they had a ton of support. Molly was actually the most played and well received in Grand Rapids, which is probably too conservative a town for a song like Neenah. Same for Wax...the title track did not take off, but Have You Seen Mary got a lot of airplay. If Sponge bent more to appeal to casual and commercial fans, they might have had a longer career, but they weren't that band.
@@oldirtydawson talked to jeff awhile after i made this comment, was told neenah was just pushed to college / small grunge radio stations because it was heavier and kinda meant to appeal to the heavy / grunge crowd. Not sure what you mean by too conservative of a town to play it. Some of the B sides from RP were pretty good too, Welcome home sounds like it could've been a single. I can imagine cowboy eyes opening RP instead of pennywheels. Yeah i think if they would've kept their Original sound longer they would've done a little better. I know at least one of the former members feels the same.
I always wondered how many units of "Pinata" we're actually purchased. I can't believe that it only went "Gold"? That just sucks! In an era when all these other groups were selling platinum pieces of shit! Sponge has been one of my all time top ten bands since I saw them live in '95, and let me tell you, Vinnie IS the ultimate frontman you could ask for. I was so disappointed once their third album finally was released. As you mentioned, it apparently failed to chart. I absolutely LOVED this disc! New Pop Sunday! They were featured on Rock-line radio program to promote it too...I think by then most folks just moved on to other awful things like rap rock. I Later bought "For all the Drugs", and it was great too! I'm extatic that they're still here, healthy, playing and recording. Thank you for covering their story. I know they have millions of fans from back in the "plowed" days. And I would highly recommend downloading or buying a CD or cassette copy of Rotting Piniata if you never did yet. You'll love it!
I love Sponge. Wax Ecstatic got me into them. Plowed was on all my playlists, but Rotting Pinata was the best song. Sick of it All brought me back here. Pollyanna, off the new record, is why I still love them. Stay up, homies!
I first heard plowed at age 3 with my dad and I’d have it play over and over again in the car, I actually think sponge and face to face are some of the first music I really listened too
My bass player is cousins with the Cross brothers we all grew up together and would hangout and party before they got signed and started to make it…Vinnie didn’t like me too much as I always messed with him and do stupid things to him and tell him his voice sucked…He had me kicked out of the loft studio cause I farted on him while he was sitting…Anyway my sister is engaged to my old bass player and I still see the brothers from time to time…
Loved Rotting Pinata. A gem of an album cover to cover. The hyperlink you have on the seven mary 3 video links you to Sponges video Plowed to let you know. 😎✌
