Nineties rock band unrecognisable 26 years after huge hit called ‘one of the greatest songs of the nineties’
IT has been exactly 26 years since Fastball rolled onto the music scene with their hit song The Way.
These days the US rockband look a world apart from the fresh faced musicians who won over an army of fans during the nineties.
Formed in 1992 in Austin Texas, bandmembers Miles Zuniga, Joey Shuffeld first got together in a band called Big Car.
After a stint with another group called The Wild Seeds, Shuffield introduced Zuniga to Scalzo who’d played in a band called Goods in Orange County, Together they decided to form their own band and Fastball was born.
The band built a big following in the Austin area, creating a local buzz after which they were spotted by a journalist who suggested that Hollywood records should check them out.
They did, and Fastball soon signed a recording contract Scalzo and Zuniga took turns singing and writing the songs, while Shuffield backed them up on drums. In 1996, Make Your Mama Proud arrived in stores.
Although the album didn’t sell very well, it did win the “Best Pop Band” category at the Austin Music Awards (they tied with another local Austin band, The Wannabes). The following year, the members of Fastball were unsure of their future.
Success was a long time coming and the members of Fastball still had side jobs, as late as January 1998, but that year they also enjoyed appearances on the big chat shows, The Tonight Show the Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Then their fortunes changed when their second album, All the Pain Money can Buy sold more than a million copies, staying on the Billboard 200 chart for over a year.
Their songs The Way and Out of my Head reached #1 and #14 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Songs Chart respectively.
In addition, the group have been nominated for two Grammy Awards- Best Rock performance by a group for “The Way”, and Best long form music video. They also received five Austinn Chronicle Awards-1998’s Album of the Year, Best Video, Best Single/EP, Band of the Year, and 1995’s Best Pop Band.
In late 2021, Fastball started a Patreon campaign supporting the release of new music, as well as demos of their songs and the stories behind them.