Smoking Popes
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
Johanns Face released the Popes debut album, Get Fired, in 1993, and their strange style is even more refined on their second album and first major-label effort, 1995s Born to Quit. The latter spawned the heavily rotated single Need You Around, and tours with Jimmy Eat World, Green Day, and Goo Goo Dolls brought their music to an ever-expanding audience. Destination Failure followed in 1997.
To the heartbreak of many, the Popes called it quits in December 1998. Their appropriately titled final effort, Partys Over, was recorded in 1998 for Capitol but was not released until 2001 by Double Zero. This label also released two compilation albums of theirs -- Smoking Popes 1991-1998, a collection of many previously hard to find songs, and 2000s Live. In November 2005, however, the brothers Caterer reunited with new drummer Rob Kellenberger for ~the Flower 15 Festival in Chicago. This performance was captured on tape and released by Victory in February 2006 as the CD/DVD At Metro. A two-month North American headlining tour with Bayside followed.
