$5 //
Edition of 100 //
http://www.funnynotfunnyrecords.com/products/610043-droopies-responsible-people-cassette //
Listening to Droopies is like being taken through this portal of rock n roll history somehow. When I think back to my earliest days of listening to music, I can see this evolution from R&B to rap to punk to hardcore to emo and then everything after the 21st Century just got weird for me. Of course in there somewhere is also grunge- as it was taking over MTV at the time- but I never went through a "rock n roll phase". Isn't that odd? I've researched the deeper songs of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and a lot of the bands like Zeppelin and Pink Floyd... but I never really went through a phase where I'd say "Yeah, I'm really into The Beatles right now", even though I love "Rubber Soul".
"Responsible People" is a solid rock cassette. There are elements to it which blend within bands I've heard that I maybe don't consider to be rock n roll so much. At times, it sounds like Stone Temple Pilots (from their fourth album) while at other times it has that "Tiny Music" feel to it. Ultimately, when Scott Weiland was with the band, Stone Temple Pilots proved to be a rock n roll band, this is true, but I always kind of think of them as grunge since they came up at that time and were kind of grouped in with all of those other grunge bands which went on to do something different.
As it gets heavier, there is this feel like Blind Melon's "Galaxie" and what a treasure Blind Melon was outside of that one song. I really miss them more than I should miss a band. This makes me feel like the songs are getting a little psych and the thing you have to understand here is that these songs come through big and distorted with the guitars but it's not fuzzy. When was the last time you heard something with such distortion that wasn't "fuzzy"? For me, I'm really not sure but it is rare these days.
A slower acoustic number gives me vibes like this is something from the 1990's. I want to say Spacehog but that doesn't seem right. Parts of Nada Surf do come through as do Foo Fighters. The more I think about this, the more I hear some Nirvana because what was grunge other than our version of rock n roll. During one song specifically I can really hear those "About A Girl" chords. It puts the Nirvana influence somewhere earlier in their career, not with the later stuff like "In Utero".
Synth makes an appearance and then it becomes darker and slower like Pink Floyd meets Alice in Chains. One of my favorite thoughts about music is how artists should sound original because there are so many possible sound combinations now given how many existing and well known artists there are. Droopies somehow managed to take the most rock n roll pieces of all of the bands they have drawn influence from and created a pure rock n roll cassette here. This is not common in 2018 because everyone either wants to sound like Buddy Holly or Zeppelin and this sounds like neither. Droopies are bringing back a style of rock n roll which seems forgotten.
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