Wiki
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Release Date
1 January 1990
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Length
21 tracks
Transistor is the fourth studio album by 311. It was released on August 5, 1997. The album was certified Platinum, having sold over 1 million copies. It is the band's most experimental album to date.
Track listing
"Transistor Intro" - 1:36 (pregap hidden track)
"Transistor" (Music: Sexton; Lyrics: Hexum/Martinez) - 3:02
"Prisoner" (Hexum; Hexum/Martinez) - 2:50
"Galaxy" (Sexton; Martinez) - 2:52
"Beautiful Disaster" (Hexum) - 4:01
"Inner Light Spectrum" (Sexton/Martinez; Martinez) - 3:41
"Electricity" (Hexum) - 2:34
"What Was I Thinking" (Hexum) - 2:38
"Jupiter" (Sexton; Hexum/Martinez) - 2:45
"Use of Time" (Hexum) - 4:23
"The Continuous Life" (Sexton; Martinez) - 3:30
"No Control" (Hexum; Hexum/Martinez) - 3:09
"Running" (Mahoney; Martinez) - 3:42
"Color" (Sexton) - 1:53
"Light Years" (Hexum) - 2:27
"Creature Feature" (Wills; Martinez) - 2:38
"Tune In" (Sexton; Martinez) - 2:19
"Rub a Dub" (Hexum) - 2:41
"Starshines" (Sexton; Hexum/Martinez) - 2:36
"Strangers" (Hexum) - 2:40
"Borders" (Sexton; Hexum/Martinez) - 2:45
"Stealing Happy Hours" (Hexum) - 5:49
"Enter Space"
B-Sides & Outtakes
"Grifter" (Hexum) - 2:53 (Leaked in 2005)
"Old Funk" - 2:43 (Available via 311's website)
"Space Funk" - 2:35 (Available via 311's website)
"White Man In Hammersmith Palais" (Strummer) - 3:52 (Appears on Burning London: The Clash Tribute Album)
Unreleased
"Clone Me"
"Earth People"
"Everything"
"MTA"
"The Quickening"
"To the Future"
"Writer's Block Party"
Demos
"F*** the KKK" - Early demo for Electricity
Charts
Album
Year Chart Position
1997 The Billboard 200 4
Singles
Year Single Chart Position
1997 "Transistor" Modern Rock Tracks 14
1997 "Transistor" Mainstream Rock Tracks 31
1997 "Beautiful Disaster" Modern Rock Tracks 21
1998 "Prisoner" Modern Rock Tracks 21
Trivia
The music video for 'Transistor' involves the band playing on TV in a CGI-animated rotating cube with some famous places & buildings in the background and some scenes feature the band members spinning around in a room as well.
The 'Beautiful Disaster' video shows the band playing live in a venue with some of the scenes involving the audience entering and exiting the venue and cheering them on.
The 'Prisoner' video involves the band playing in a courtroom.
"Beautiful Disaster", "Prisoner", and "Transistor" were released as singles.
"Transistor" was originally intended to be a double-album, but was condensed to 21 tracks on one CD.
The 11th track "No Control" has no relation to the Bad Religion song No Control from their 1989 album of the same name.
"Electricity" was originally called "F*** the KKK". This further explains Nick Hexum's lyric "this song started as a rant against haters, but that'd be giving into the instigators".
Outtakes from this album are "Earth People", "Clone Me", "MTA", "Grifters", "The Quickening", "Everything", "Writer's Block Party", "Space Funk", "Old Funk", "To The Future" and "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais".
There is a secret track before the first song, "Transistor". Play track 1, then hold down the 'back' button on your CD player. You will be rewinding the track into negative digits. Rewind until -1:43, then release the button, and let the track play. When performed correctly, you will hear the studio version of an instrumental commonly used as an opener to 311's live concerts during this era. The track is now known as the "Transistor Intro".
Until the release of From Chaos, "Transistor" had the acclaim of having mentioned the name of every 311 album in its lyrics. ("Music critics, music critics," "from these grassroots we can breathe anywhere," "renegade sound system, 311, "You're a transistor")
"Old Funk" and "Space Funk" are both downloadable at 311's official website.
Producer Scott Ralston can be heard saying "There is just no denying it, that was it" at the end of "Galaxy."
"The Continuous Life" is about an out-of-body experience S.A. Martinez had in college.
"Stealing Happy Hours" contains the lyric "You make me feel like Hank Chinaski, In war all the time war war all the time." This is referring to Charles Bukowski's alter ego Hank Chinaski; also paying homage to Bukowski's War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984.
"Creature Feature" was written at a time when S.A. Martinez was contemplating breaking up with his then girlfriend.
Nick Hexum has described "Use of Time" as a song "about being depressed" while "Stealing Happy Hours" is "about having fun."
Additional Percussion was done by Eric Bobo from Cypress Hill on "Running", "Strangers" and "Stealing Happy Hours"
At the 1:39 mark of the track "Light Years", you can hear Wanda Coleman saying "When you comin' down?"
"Grifter" was an instrumental that didn't make the final cut. It resurfaced in 2005, remastered with vocals, as "Long for the Flowers" on the album "Don't Tread on Me".
This album noticeably has less rapping than the band's previous albums. Only 7 songs (Galaxy, The Continuous Life, No Control, Tune In, Starshines, Strangers and Borders) out of the 21 songs on this album has rapping in it.
Beautiful Disaster is featured on the video game Guitar Hero World Tour.
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