aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser
# 093: Smoking Popes – ‘Need You Around’ (Parlophone Records ’96)
Dear friends,
again, as it happened quite often within this series, there isn’t pretty much I can tell you about today’s band. I must confess that below single is the only thing I know by them – but what a single it is, to be sure!
As far as I’m concerned, it perfectly captures what made the Popes so unique: loud punk-pop guitars (no uniqueness so far, but bear with me), but fronted by laid-back lounge vocals and lyrics with a touch of romance from former times … it is very hard to describe, and probably I am not capable to do it even halfway properly. So I can only urge you to listen to the tune, you’ll really miss something if you don’t, promised! Personally, I don’t know one single band who would be comparable to this special way of making songs.
Let’s keep it sweet and simple today, first it doesn’t have to be a long essay every week and second: basically there isn’t much more which I know about the band … apart from the fact that the vocal style derived from the singer’s (Josh Caterer) obsession with big-band records and black-and-white movies. They formed in Chicago in ’91, called it a day in ’98 but reformed later, as far as I can tell … probably they are even together today, who knows?
This is from their second album – as I said, this song is a bloody masterpiece
mp3: Smoking Popes – Need You Around
Enjoy,
Dirk
PS: aren’t you utterly astonished by this most perfect just-in-time performance of mine? Because by the time you read this, you all will be shouting out ‘habeus papam!’ at the top of your lungs … but whether this new pope smokes or indeed how many of his precursors did, will remain one of the many Vatican’s well hidden secrets!
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Like Matt Berninger singing “Rockaway Beach” at karaoke. Pretty cool.
If I understand the Wiki article correctly, the Smoking Popes were briefly famous. Mainly because “Need You Around” was used in the teen comedy “Clueless,” a film starring Paul Rudd, who is Ant-Man in real life.
I’m quite familiar with the band name – I guess the music press, but have no clear idea? The song is interesting enough but based on what was released from then till now, for me it’s not quite a game changer. I wonder if I’d heard it back in the day if my view would be different? We’ll never know. A nice blast of a morning. It has it’s place.
Flimflamfan
When this series started, what I never expected to see featured in it would fill a book, and right there on Page One would have been the Smoking Popes! See, a buddy of mine rather fancied himself the Alan Horne of the Chicago Punk Scene and started up his own label, Radius Records…which, if I recall correctly, actually had more output than Postcard, but not as much impact. I guess, it’s a bit easier to be influential with a new trend than a genre that’s been around more than a decade and a half.
Anyroad, my buddy put out the first record by the Smoking Popes, an EP called Inoculator. I didn’t care for it, I generally find punk to be a bit tedious. My friend did not put out anything more by them, but I did hear him mention them a few times over the years, so I knew they were still active. I just figured they had fallen into the limbo that so many bands do after putting out some vinyl of “local bar band.” Didn’t realize they’d garnered some small amount of fame. And sure didn’t expect some guy on the other side of the pond would have come acrost them! And put them into his 111 singles series!