A fortuitous meeting with producer Julian Raymond (who later worked with Cheap Trick), meant the band had an ally who understood their new direction. But, when their first album, 1996’s Make Your Mama Proud, failed to chart, the guys began working on more melodically sophisticated material. Originally guitarist/vocalist Miles Zuniga, bassist/vocalist Tony Scalzo, and drummer Joey Shuffield started out as a fairly average pop-punk band. Omnivore Recordings has just issued the album in remastered form, with some very interesting bonus tracks.įastball was an unlikely success story. Here’s the thing – atypical of that time period, this is an entire record of good songs, and it actually still holds up twenty years later. Yet, unlike so many bands from that time period (Marcy Playground, anyone?), Fastball were not a “one-hit wonder.” Two other hits followed, “Fire Escape,” and “Out of My Head,” propelling the album, first to Gold, then to Platinum status, within six months of its release. The debut single off Fastball’s sophomore album, All The Pain Money Can Buy, shot up the Modern Rock charts, eventually hitting #1 for seven weeks, and changing the fortunes of the three musicians from Austin forever.

One of the best albums of the late-Nineties’ alternative scene gets another lookīeginning with a snippet of someone turning the radio dial, then a primitive keyboard loop, “The Way” sounded like nothing else on the radio in 1998. Fastball – All The Pain Money Can Buy (Omnivore Recordings)

Fastball all the pain money can buy zip