Left to right: Kim Deal, Kelley Deal, Jim McPherson, Josephine Wiggs.
Released in August of 1993, the Breeders’ hit “Cannonball” barely had time to be a summer anthem. It made the most of it, though, rocketing to the top of the alt-rock charts and launching the Last Splash album toward its eventual platinum status. For a certain crowd that had recently had their minds blown by Nirvana and Radiohead, and were just months away from discovering Green Day, “Cannonball” defined its moment.
But unlike the similarly enduring “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Creep,” “Cannonball” hasn’t been covered to death. In fact, it’s barely been touched by other bands, which perhaps goes to show just how strange and unique it was, even at the time. Other bands didn’t even attempt to put their stamp on it.
“I’d like to hear a really good reggae version of ‘Cannonball,’” Kelley Deal—who played guitar and shared lead vocals on the song with her sister, Kim—told me in a phone interview last week. The Breeders lineup from the Last Splash era, which also includes bassist Josephine Wiggs and drummer Jim McPherson, has reunited for a tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of the album. They play the Rio on Monday, Aug. 16.
A reggae version of “Cannonball” would be especially appropriate since the demo of the song reveals it was originally meant to be a hybrid of island riffs and grunge—or as the original title called it, “Grunggae.” Other than being shorter and having no words, the demo is remarkably similar to the finished song. Originally released on one of the many EPs the Breeders put out in the Last Splash era, that demo has been collected on a new 20th anniversary re-release for the album, LSXX. The box set contains not only the original album and all the songs from the related EPs, but the other demos from the sessions, as well as live documents of the Breeders playing a Stockholm show and a BBC show (and doing great versions of not only “Cannonball,” but other favorites from Last Splash like “Saints” and “Divine Hammer”).
That incarnation of the Breeders—which had originally been started by Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly as a side project while their respective bands the Pixies and Throwing Muses were on hiatus—played its last show at Lollapalooza in 1994. Kelley’s heroin drug bust and subsequent rehab put the band on hold for a few years, and both Kim and Kelley worked on others projects before reuniting for the criminally underrated Title TK, which was finally released in 2002.
“Sometimes it feels like it was six years ago,” Kelley says of the Last Splash era. “Sometimes it feels like it was 40 years ago. It depends on where I’m at emotionally.”
Though she’s been playing most of the songs from the album on and off for two decades, she’s enjoying rediscovering parts of the band’s history herself right now, in the process of putting together the box set.
“There’s a really cool melody line in the ‘Mad Lucas’ demo that I find myself humming when I walk around the house,” she says.
Mostly, though, she never guessed anyone would want to hear that demo 20 years later, since she had no clue “Cannonball” would ever become a hit and kick off the album’s legacy.
“I still am shocked that that got radio play,” she says.
The Breeders play the Rio in Santa Cruz on Monday, Aug. 26, at 8pm; $27.
