Spin Doctors - Pocket Full of Kryptonite
- FaceOff - עימות חזיתי
- 5 hours ago
- 7 min read
Written By: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 20.08.1991
"Hey, yeah, yeah, Di bi bi bip, di bi bi bi di Bi di-di-le-di ba da ba da ba da ba Da ba da ba da ba da ba"
Don't try this at home, as they say, but when Chris Barron happily let his voice bounce through a song about "Two Princes", everything seemed to flow almost effortlessly for him and for "Spin Doctors". Just how far did that song travel?
All the way to Israel. In 1994, far from New York and inside the Telad studios in Ramat HaSharon, a cult comedy show called "Ha-Comedy Store" began airing. Built around a rapid succession of sketches performed by a group of comedians, the program included Zvika Hadar, who created one of its most memorable characters, Jojo Khalastra. Jojo opened his segment with a song that by then was familiar to millions around the world: "Two Princes" by "Spin Doctors". It would eventually become the music that closed another successful episode of "Ha-Comedy Store".
But before that hit became quite so enormous, "Spin Doctors" spent roughly a year and a half watching their debut album "Pocket Full of Kryptonite" slowly fight its way out of relative obscurity. The album was released on August 20, 1991, but its commercial explosion would come much later.
Even after a year and a half, drummer Aaron Comess recalled that it had sold only around 60,000 copies, respectable numbers but hardly an indication of the phenomenon it was about to become.
During the mid-to-late 1980s, rock's mainstream was dominated on one side by pop-friendly hair metal bands such as "Bon Jovi" and the dirtier, more dangerous excess of bands like "Mötley Crüe", while another corner of the landscape belonged to darker alternative acts such as "R.E.M." and "The Cure". Then "Grateful Dead" scored an unexpected mainstream resurgence in 1987, helping bring the culture surrounding the jam bands of the 1960s and 1970s back into wider view. Veteran acts including "The Allman Brothers Band", "Little Feat" and "The Doobie Brothers" also returned to activity around this period.
At the same time, a new generation of improvisation-heavy bands was beginning to emerge in the space between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. "Widespread Panic", "Phish" and "Blues Traveler" built devoted audiences largely through relentless touring and live performances, but none had yet truly carried the jam-band mentality into mainstream pop. "Spin Doctors" were about to change that.
The band's roots can be traced to late-1980s New York and a group originally known as "Trucking Company", which included guitarist Eric Schenkman and harmonica player John Popper. Chris Barron, a friend of Popper's from Princeton High School, would eventually become part of the developing lineup.
Chris Barron was born on February 5, 1968, in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his father was stationed during the Vietnam War. Years later, Barron would become instantly recognizable not only for his elastic voice but also for the wonderfully eccentric hats that became part of his early-1990s image.
After his family returned to the United States, Barron attended Princeton High School in New Jersey, where he met John Popper. The two became close friends and regularly jammed together after school.
Barron later spent a year studying at Bennington College in Vermont and played with two local bands before returning to Princeton. He took a restaurant job while throwing himself increasingly into songwriting. During this period, he wrote early versions of material that would eventually include "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" and "Two Princes".
His friendship with Popper would prove crucial. Popper was increasingly committed to "Blues Traveler", but he was also involved with "Trucking Company". Barron eventually became involved with the latter project, joining a musical circle that would provide the foundations for "Spin Doctors".
When Popper chose to concentrate full-time on "Blues Traveler", Barron and Schenkman continued developing the other band. Drummer Aaron Comess entered the picture and eventually brought bassist Mark White into the fold, completing what would become the classic "Spin Doctors" lineup by 1989.
The musical transformation also demanded a new identity. "Trucking Company" became "Spin Doctors", a name coined by Schenkman that suited a group whose music refused to stay comfortably inside one category. Funk, blues, rock, pop and the free-flowing mentality of the jam-band scene were all becoming part of the same musical conversation.
With a stable lineup finally in place, "Spin Doctors" began rehearsing and playing live with almost obsessive intensity. They worked the New York club and college circuit, gradually building an audience through performances that were rarely identical from one night to the next. The band encouraged the taping of its concerts, embraced improvisation and developed extended jams that naturally invited comparisons with the jam-band culture associated with acts such as "Grateful Dead".
That live experience was essential to the chemistry heard on "Pocket Full of Kryptonite". This wasn't a group assembled inside a recording studio and taught how to sound like a band. These were musicians who had already learned to communicate through countless hours onstage, stretching songs, reacting to one another and allowing funk grooves to collide with blues, rock and improvisation.
"Pocket Full of Kryptonite" was recorded during 1990 at several New York-area studios, including the Power Station and RPM Studios in Manhattan, before finally being released on August 20, 1991.
Yet the album did not immediately explode. Its ascent was gradual, driven by touring, word of mouth, radio and eventually MTV. Even the band apparently had to push its label to recognize the commercial potential sitting on the record. Comess later remembered suggesting songs including "Two Princes", "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" and "Jimmy Olsen's Blues", only to be told that they were not hits and that the band wasn't grungy enough for the moment.
Eventually, "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" gave "Spin Doctors" the breakthrough they needed. Behind its playful rhythm and Barron's loose vocal delivery was something considerably more personal. The singer has repeatedly explained that the inspiration was not an ex-girlfriend, as many assumed, but his stepmother. Asked directly about its origins, Barron said: "That song is actually about my stepmom, my dad's ex-wife."
Years later, Barron revealed just how discouraging she had been toward his musical ambitions. He recalled that she predicted he would end up working as a janitor and playing guitar for rats in a school basement. Instead, "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" climbed to No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Then came the song that changed everything.
"Two Princes" transformed "Spin Doctors" from a successful touring band into one of the most recognizable rock acts of the early 1990s. Barron frames the lyric almost like a miniature fairy tale: two princes want the same woman, but one offers wealth and status while the other can offer little beyond love and sincerity.
The fantasy imagery was no accident. Barron was deeply interested in literature and later explained: "I loved The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." He had written the song when he was only 19, still carrying his childhood fascination with wizards, kings, queens and fantasy stories into his songwriting.
The contrast is part of what makes "Two Princes" so effective. The story sounds almost medieval, but the music couldn't be more immediate: Schenkman's sharp guitar attack, White's elastic funk bass, Comess' deceptively busy groove and Barron's unmistakable vocal phrasing turn a simple romantic proposition into one of the defining rock singles of the decade. It would eventually reach No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, taking "Spin Doctors" somewhere that few of their fellow jam-scene contemporaries had managed to go: straight into the heart of mainstream pop culture.
Strong airplay for the first two singles on MTV, followed by the band's appearance on "Saturday Night Live" in October 1992, gave "Pocket Full of Kryptonite" another major boost. The album was certified Gold in September 1992, reached the one-million mark in January 1993 and entered the Billboard Top 10 the following month. By June 1993 it had gone triple platinum in the United States. Eventually, it sold more than five million copies in the U.S. and another five million internationally, an extraordinary journey for an album that had initially taken its time finding an audience.
Another standout is the opening track, "Jimmy Olsen's Blues", written from the perspective of Jimmy Olsen, the young photographer from the Superman universe. But Barron's clever twist is that this isn't really a song about Superman at all. Instead, he focuses on the ordinary guy living in the shadow of Clark Kent and hopelessly attracted to Lois Lane. Jimmy has no superpowers and no heroic alter ego, just jealousy, insecurity and the impossible task of competing with Superman. In an album named after the one substance capable of weakening the Man of Steel, beginning with the frustrated voice of an ordinary man trying to compete with him feels particularly appropriate.
"What Time Is It?" turns a seemingly innocent question into one of the album's loosest funk-rock workouts. The title sounds like nothing more than a musician asking when the band is supposed to play, while stories surrounding the song have also connected the phrase with Barron and the band's marijuana-fueled lifestyle at the time. There is no sufficiently reliable source confirming that specific story word for word, however, so it is better treated as part of the mythology surrounding the song rather than established fact.
Elsewhere, "Pocket Full of Kryptonite" repeatedly returns to relationships and the complicated balance required to make them work, exploring attraction, dependence and the need for enough emotional space to allow both people to breathe.
The closing "Shinbone Alley/Hard to Exist" moves away from the album's brighter pop instincts and back toward the environment that created "Spin Doctors" in the first place. It paints a restless portrait of life in New York City, filled with the contradictions, characters and rough edges of the streets around them. The extended track also gives the musicians room to stretch out, reconnecting the studio album with the improvisational jam-band mentality that had shaped them onstage long before MTV discovered "Two Princes".
And there is even an Israeli connection to the later history of "Spin Doctors". After Anthony Krizan left in 1996, Israeli guitarist Eran Tabib was selected following an audition process and became the band's guitarist. He remained with the group until 1999 and played guitar on their fourth studio album, "Here Comes the Bride".
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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