Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from The Supersonic Storybook (1991)

Track 8 from the Stull EP (1992)

Urge Overkill had kind of an unusual career arc as an underground Chicago band who made sludgy Steve Albini-produced albums for Touch And Go Records but ultimately became known for the radio hits like "Sister Havana" and a cover of Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" that became an iconic part of Pulp Fiction. That said, Nathan "Nash Kato" Kaatrud and Eddie "King" Roeser had goofy stage names and a retro hipster swagger that made them less unlikely hitmakers than, say, their labelmates Butthole Surfers. And in retrospect it's not surprising that a cover became their legacy -- the band's early releases included Jimmy Webb and Hot Chocolate covers, and "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" appeared on their Stull EP two years before Urge Overkill fan Quentin Tarantino used it in his film. Stull's "Goodbye To Guyville" is also famous for inspiring the title of Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville (which had a cover photo taken by Nash Kato). 

Both of Urge Overkill's permanent founding members took turns singing lead, but the earlier albums were heavier on King Roeser songs, with the balance shifting towards Nash Kato songs by Saturation, including most of the band's best known tracks. Blackie Onassis was Urge Overkill's drummer for all of their most famous records, from The Supersonic Storybook through Exit The Dragon (so tracks 5 through 16 of this playlist), and appeared on Nash Kato's 2000 solo debut. When the band reunited and released new albums in 2011 and 2022, however, they had different drummers. 

Onassis sang lead on "Dropout" and "The Mistake," which gave Exit The Dragon its title. He also co-wrote "Henhough: The Greatest Story Ever Told," and obviously "Today Is Blackie's Birthday" was written about him. Saturation has some odd little experiments with loops and drum machines towards the end of the album on "Dropout," "Nite and Grey," and the hidden track "Operation Kissinger" that surprised me a little the first time I heard them. I feel like fairly few guitar bands were doing that kind of thing in 1993, before Beck's Mellow Gold really started to change the alt-rock landscape and bring in more hip hop influences. I think Exit The Dragon might quietly be the band's best album, it seems like one of those unfortunate situations where a band was just hitting its stride creatively but had lost commercial momentum and got dropped from their label soon after.