[1] In 1998, their album All the Pain Money Can Buy reached platinum sales within six months of its release, and stayed on the Billboard 200 chart for a year.
[4] 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.
Zuniga told Entertainment Weekly that it was named after the band's favorite pornographic film, and said that "It really has no meaning behind it.
He, Shuffield, and Zuniga would be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien just four months later.
Scalzo was inspired to write the song in 1997 after reading a news article about Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly couple who had disappeared in Texas.
They were discovered two weeks later, dead, at the bottom of a ravine near Hot Springs, Arkansas, hundreds of miles off their intended route.
[7] Scalzo chose to imagine that they began reminiscing and decided to become ethereal beings on a permanent romantic trip, the answer to the song's question, "Where were they going without ever knowing the way?
The release included "You're an Ocean", which featured the piano stylings of Billy Preston (who previously collaborated with The Beatles).
"Instead of tailoring the music for short attention spans, we tried to make an album that holds up well to extensive listening... kind of cinematic, where you notice new themes entering the frame each time you see the film," Zuniga said in the band's record company bio.
Although The Harsh Light of Day sold fewer than 85,000 copies (compared to All The Pain Money Can Buy's 1,000,000+), the trio didn't lose steam and chalked it up to lacking a musical category to fit into.
Despite the slowed success, the members of the group didn't regret any of their creative decisions, and their aim remained true.
"It makes me feel proud that we're one of these song-oriented guitar bands" Scalzo told Richard Skanse in Rolling Stone.
[12] In mid-September 2017, the band played a living room concert at the home of Los Angeles–based comic Chet Wild following a nearly year-long Twitter campaign (#FastballAtChets).
Several attendees at the concert took part in the filming of the video for "Best Friend" earlier that day, directed by Nigel Dick.