Category Archives: 90s

Thirty Years On: March 1996

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By this time I’d been working not-quite-fulltime at the radio station, doing the morning shifts from 5:30am to noon, and also on Sunday afternoons to prep the religious programming on the AM station that still ran from dawn to dusk. I was on my own for the most part until the GM came in and nitpicked any slight errors I’d made. Let’s just say that she was one of those evangelicals that threw stones first and leave it at that, shall we? Anyway, it wasn’t the most exciting of jobs and as before, I was never on air, but it gave me time to play around with a few ideas. I revived my poetry and lyric writing, something I hadn’t done for a good year or so. I watched Sailor Moon on the station TV in the morning (this was when anime was finally becoming more popular and mainstream in the US instead of a niche thing). I read books and comics I’d been buying recently. I drew maps and comic ideas. Anything to get my mind moving instead of spiraling into self-pity.

This is when I’d come up with the idea of priming the creative pump, so to speak. While I was getting caught up on the Great Transcription Project, I was also playing around with various ideas longhand. We had scrap paper galore in the studio and I used it to let my mind come up with ideas. They didn’t have to go anywhere, it was just an exercise to get myself back into creative shape. I came up with about a dozen story ideas, none of which went anywhere in the long run, but the exercise did its job: I felt the creative spark reignite, and I was ready to start writing again.

I should also state that at this point, my then-gf (and cowriter on True Faith) and I had broken up though we did stay in touch, very occasionally meeting up with a few mutual friends to do things. I also met up with a few people via online New Age chatrooms and had a brief friendship with someone who gave me a lot of positive insight on my ideas that would eventually become a part of The Phoenix Effect in the future. So it wasn’t as if I’d cut myself off from the world; it was more that I felt a bit lost and trying to find my footing. These weren’t the most fulfilling of connections, but they were needed at the time and helped me stay out of that funk I’d been in a few months previous.

Lush, Lovelife, released 5 March 1996. The band’s last album before breaking up, it was also their most radio-friendly and popular, especially with the single “Ladykillers”. They still attained most of their dreampop/shoegaze sound, but it felt forced and overly polished to me, however.

Various Artists, WHORE: Tribute to Wire, released 5 March 1996. Around this time I’d started listening to my old standby college radio station, WAMH at Amherst College. I had to get used to the fact that they weren’t playing the post-punk-influenced alternative stuff I’d fallen in love with back in the 80s but was now fully immersed in indie rock that I was only vaguely resonating with. They’d play a few tracks off this one now and again, especially Band of Susan’s cover of the brilliant “Ahead”.

Stereolab, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, released 11 March 1996. I bought this one via Columbia House as I’d always liked them but never quite got around to ever buying anything from them! I’d heard “The Noise of Carpet” on 120 Minutes and that sold them for me. I still get the track stuck in my head now and again.

Cocteau Twins, Milk & Kisses, released 15 March 1996. Believe it or not, I wouldn’t own this for a good year or so! I was more of an early-era, pre-Heaven Or Las Vegas fan and felt their later work lacked the dreamlike sound I loved so much. It would end up being their final album as they would break up soon after.

The Beatles, Anthology 2, released 18 March 1996. I remember the ‘new’ Beatles single, “Real Love”, was supposed to drop on Valentines Day or thereabouts but got delayed, instead dropping a week or so before the second volume of the Anthology series. This one fascinates me, as it dials back the live and interstitial content that was prevalent on the first volume and focuses on the interesting alternate takes, like the trippy first take of “Tomorrow Never Knows”. At this point there was still a rumor that a third ‘new’ song would be on the third volume, but alas, time and technology kept that from happening.

Barenaked Ladies, Born On a Pirate Ship, released 19 March 1996. Before the hugely popular Stunt from 1998, this album opened the door much wider for this beloved Canadian band, with the single “The Old Apartment” getting major airplay on the radio over the next year or so.

Love and Rockets, Sweet FA, released 19 March 1996. Story goes that they’d recorded a significant portion of this album project when a fire consumed the studio they’d been working in. Guitars were burnt to a crisp (thus the album cover) and friend Genesis P-Orridge suffered injuries because of it, but in the end they soldiered on and came out with a sleek album that wasn’t quite a return to their psych rock origins or the techno of their previous album, and “Sweet Lover Hangover” became a radio favorite.

Tracy Bonham, The Burdens of Being Upright, released 19 March 1996. She’d become a local favorite in Boston with her indie-released The Liverpool Sessions EP, and for her major label debut she came out with guns blazing and several songs that became favorites on the local alternative stations like the blistering opener “Mother Mother”, the catchy “The One” and the oddball singalong “Sharks Can’t Sleep”. She’s still active as a musician and putting out her own works.

Superdrag, Regretfully Yours, released 26 March 1996. This band could be seen as a one hit wonder with its clever “Sucked Out” (a song about selling out, natch), but there’s a lot more going on with this band than just being a whiny Gen-Xer. They’re actually quite an excellent powerpop band worth checking out, and their amazing about-face with 1998’s Head Trip in Every Key (done specifically as an anti-“Sucked Out” album which did its job by having the label drop them soon after) is highly recommended.

Stone Temple Pilots, Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, released 26 March 1996. STP, on the other hand, seemed to be on the verge of self-immolation, as the first hints of Scott Weiland’s self-destructiveness came to the fore. This is a druggy haze of an album because of that. It’s not my favorite of theirs and a bit of a hard listen because it feels so sloppy, especially after the wonderful Purple from 1994, but it does have its finer moments like the above single that got a lot of play at the time.

Guided By Voices, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, released 26 March 1996. This is their ninth(?) album so I kind of gave up on trying to catch up with their work, but they finally resonated with me with the lovely “Official Ironmen Rally Song” single that got a lot of play not only on WAMH but on WHMP as well. I did get this song down on one of my radio source tapes somewhere, but it would be quite a few years more before I finally downloaded this album.

The Verve Pipe, Villains, released 26 March 1996. I immediately fell in love with this album not because of the ridiculously popular single “The Freshmen” but because of their other radio/video tracks “Photograph” and “Cup of Tea”, both of which would show up on one of my favorite mixtapes later in the year. It really is an amazing album, and Brian Vander Ark’s songwriting is at its highest here. I bought this one via Columbia House and played the hell out of it over the next several years, as it became one of my all-time favorite 90s records and became a frequent go-to for my writing sessions, especially when working on The Phoenix Effect and the Bridgetown Trilogy. I highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t already.

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Coming up: The birth of the writing nook.

Thirty Years On: January-February 1996

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I remember how I started 1996: two friends and I had gone out to see Jumanji at a local theater on New Years Eve — and that, by the way, was also when I saw the teaser trailer for Independence Day for the first time and thought ‘HOLY CRAP I need to see this’ — and followed it up by heading over to someone’s house to play pool in the basement. Between the three of us, the past year had sucked major ass in varying ways. You’ve already heard the story of how I’d moved back in with my family after failing to stay in Boston. Suffice it to say, we’d been so thankful to get the hell out of 1995 that we ended up completely missing the clock ticking midnight until about a half hour after the fact. We just wanted it to be over.

I’d been lucky in that I was able to transfer from my job at Sony Theater in Somerville to the one in Leominster (although borrowing a car could be tricky), though that would only last a few months and end in late fall when I somehow had landed a job at the very same local radio station I’d worked at back in 1988. Same responsibilities: monitor the satellite feed, take the readings, play the local commercials, and play with/feed the cat that had been somewhat adopted by the station owners. And still get yelled at by the station manager when I messed up the most minor thing ever. I spent most of those slow hours working on the office PC continuing my Great Transcription Project, typing out (and in effect reliving) most of the juvenilia I’d written from my high school days up to the present. And maybe working on True Faith when I had a moment, though that one was suffering from writer’s block and massive rewrites. And somewhere in all of that, I’d get out of the massive debt I was in.

But on a somewhat positive note, I’d managed to reconnect with that high school friend who also lived in town, and we often went on road trips, mainly to drive around, smoke, listen to a lot of music, and make half-assed plans to move out to Ohio where one of our mutual friends lived at the time.

It wasn’t the best of times, but it was certainly a step in the right direction.

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Cibo Matto, Viva! La Woman, released 16 January 1996. This was an early Columbia House purchase when I chose to rejoin, partly because I thought this was a good way to keep in touch with the music I liked. I didn’t listen to it nearly as much as I thought I would but I did like the “Sugar Water” single a lot.

Radiohead, “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” single, released 22 January 1996. The last single from their brilliant 1995 album The Bends — an album said friend and I would constantly listen to in the car — and the ssong seemed to perfectly encapsulate our moods at the time: it absolutely sucked that we were stuck where we were but we looked forward to the positive moments.

Tori Amos, Boys for Pele, released 23 January 1996. Tori’s music had always had that element of odd quirkiness, but this particular record really went in a strange direction, not to mention that it’s a super long one as well. Still, I did appreciate what she was doing and actually liked this one quite a bit.

Stabbing Westward, Wither Blister Burn & Peel, released 23 January 1996. I’d been a passive fan of their first album, but this was the one that really captured my interest. WHMP — the alternative station out of Northampton that we both listened to at the time — played “What Do I Have to Do?” quite heavily, enough that I ended up getting this one through Columbia House as well. This would soon become a frequent writing session album in a few months, once I finally owned my own PC and moved it down to the basement.

Ministry, Filth Pig, released 30 January 1996. I was at odds with this album, because it didn’t quite feel like the Ministry I used to love. It felt like they’d stayed in the ‘less industrial, more metal’ direction they’d explored with Psalm 69. I never played this one all that much, but I did appreciate their oddball cover of Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay”.

Voice of the Beehive, Sex & Misery, released 12 February 1996. This was their last album, but it was a great way to go! They’d gone from jangle pop to Britpop-infused rhythms to sugary dance rock here, and it’s super fun. “Scary Kisses” got a lot of play on WHMP at the time.

Gin Blossoms, Congratulations I’m Sorry, released 13 February 1996. After their extremely popular debut, they came extremely close to knocking it out of the park a second time with this sophomore album. It wasn’t as popular, but it does contain the big single “Follow You Down” which still gets played a lot. I was always a bigger fan of the other single “Day Job” which seems to be forgotten these days.

Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Come Find Yourself, released 20 February 1996. There were a lot of one hit wonders in the mid 90s, and this was a big one, partly because of its clever use of sampling multiple Quentin Tarantino movies. It’s actually a fun album, and they’d show up a few years later with a banger track on the Titan AE soundtrack.

Goldfinger, Goldfinger, released 21 February 1996. I’d say partial thanks to the success of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the pop-punk-ska hybrid did really well around this time, with several bands coming up with radio hits, like “Here in Your Bedroom”. They had a couple of really great albums in the 90s that I owned.

Brainiac, Hissing Prigs in Static Couture, released 26 February 1996. This was a favorite of the friend I mentioned above, and my reaction was: what if Ween decided to sound like Jon Spencer Blues Explosion? Weird half-assed punk infused with blues and heavily filtered through distortion. It’s not an easy listen, but it is a fascinating one.

The Refreshments, Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy, released 27 February 1996. Yet another one hit wonder with the extremely catchy singalong-able “Banditos”. This one got a lot of play in the late 90s and probably still shows up on (ugh I’m old) “songs from the 80s, 90s and today” stations. Silly light-hearted fun.

Cowboy Junkies, Lay It Down, released 27 February 1996. This band had somewhat fallen off the radar for a few years after their brilliant Trinity Session album, and this was a surprising switch to a more radio-friendly Adult Alternative sound, and “A Common Disaster” was an unexpected hit for them.

Bad Religion, The Gray Race, released 27 February 1996. How do you follow up with an unexpectedly popular album like Stranger Than Fiction? By staying true to your goals like Gregg Graffin would, coming out with another banger punk album. It only got some minor airplay with “A Walk” and some of the band felt they phoned it in, but despite that it’s a fan favorite.

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Coming up: future plans, writing goals, unexpected inspirations, and the start of the solo road trips

Favorite Songs: Squeeze, “Satisfied”

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This band’s 1991 studio album Play doesn’t get much attention at all for some reason, nestled between the perky but low-selling Frank from 1989 and the moody and also-forgotten Some Fantastic Place from 1993. Not that it’s bad, of course. It’s more likely that it dropped right in the middle of a huge wave of American Grunge and UK Britpop. If you were a fan, you loved it, but if you were a passive one, well…

“Satisfied” was the first single off the album to be released in the US, and to many listeners’ surprise, they sounded and looked slick. They were pared down to a quartet (Jools Holland having chosen not to return, most likely due to his ongoing TV projects) so the album sounds less expansive and more cozy, but extremely well-produced. There’s a dreamlike quality to this song, meandering along at its own pace with sighing guitars and keys, and a simple (and very Difford/Tilbrook) set of lyrics about the simplicity and peacefulness of mutual love.

Interestingly, I equate this song with one of the lowest points of my time in college. My long-term/long-distance relationship was coming to a close, I’d lost contact with several of my friends both near and far, I was creatively frustrated and barely scraping by academically. I really felt as though my life had become a long series of ill-advised decisions made more out of desperation rather than inspiration. This was a song I’d hoped would lift my spirits but instead reminded me of just how far I’d fallen from my wishes and dreams of the future.

That said, it’s a banger of a tune and one of my favorites of the second phase of the band’s career. They were now a band that might not show up in the charts as much as they used to, but they didn’t seem too bothered by that. I can hear this song now without the doom and gloom, instead focusing on the wonder of that simple lyric.

Thinking About: more early 90s techno

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Another thing that showed up in early 90s electronic music was the seemingly misplaced vocal sample that somehow fit perfectly in the song. I used to love those, partly because I enjoyed the game of ‘hey I know that bit!’ and how creative they slid it into the track.

Like “Papua New Guinea” by The Future Sound of London, whose main vocal line was lifted from Dead Can Dance’s “Dawn of the Iconoclast” (a track off my favorite DCD album, 1987’s Within the Realm of a Dying Sun). Several of my classmates at Emerson loved this track, and they’d play it all the time at the clubs on Landsdowne Street.

….or Utah Saints’ “Something Good”, which made liberal use of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting”. I loved cranking this one up in the car when it came on the radio.

Then there’s Apotheosis with “O Fortuna”, lifting the famous choral movement from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. This one I remember well because they’d lifted the sample from a classical recording and hadn’t gotten clearance, making the single hard to find.

And then there’s just the downright silly “Sesame’s Treet” by Smart E’s. Somehow they made this work despite how ridiculous it is. Peak Gen-X retromania here, mixing our present and past into one.

Much later in the decade, a friend of mine introduced me to the equally silly “Speed” by Alpha Team, and I literally had a coworker at the record store writhing on the floor in laughter when I played him the breakdown part of the Hardcore Mix (about 3:30 in).

I suppose this is partly why I eventually latched onto electronic music in the 90s, because it wasn’t always about the scene or the vibe. It wasn’t always serious. Sometimes it was just about having fun being creative with the technology you had, even if the output was more for laughs than anything else.

Thinking About: early 90s techno

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As mentioned a few weeks back, I’ve been catching up on Orbital, an electronic duo that I passively listened to in the 90s. I was vaguely familiar with a lot of their earlier singles like “Halcyon + On + On”, “Chime” and “Lush 3”, but it was 1996’s “The Box” off their album In Sides that caught my attention, especially with its otherworldly and unsettling music video featuring the always intriguing Tilda Swinton as a time-traveling alien visiting the grimier parts of East London. It’s one of my all-time favorite videos of the 90s and was one of the many influences for the Bridgetown Trilogy.

While listening to them, it got me thinking about my experience with electronic music in the 90s. Even then it had all sorts of different genres and names: techno, house, EBM, electronica, chillwave, trip-hop, and everything in between. If I had to pinpoint when I first started paying attention to this kind of stuff, it was hearing “Chime” on the techno show on WFNX during my freshman year in college. It intrigued me, because it wasn’t exactly the melodic synthpop of the 80s that I was so used to, but nor was it the vaguely creative club music that producers like Stock-Aitken-Waterman were churning out on the regular. To me it was somewhere in between: creative enough that you could groove to it at the clubs, but you could also chill out to it in the comfort of your own home. [Mind you, this was also during the height of rave culture so you could do both while completely blissed out, heh.]

Another track that stood out for me, of course, was Moby’s “Go” with its use of Laura Palmer’s Theme from Twin Peaks as the music bed. Creepy and weird yet somehow hypnotic and groovy. This was well before his huge breakthrough with 1997’s Play.

Trip-hop didn’t quite gel with me right away, as it didn’t get a lot of play on the local alternative stations in Boston at the time other than Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”, which also got a lot of attention for its hybrid of dance, soul, and heavy vibe. It wasn’t just about the lyrics or the melody, it was also about the mood, and that kind of thing always captured my attention. It also helped that its one-continuous-take video was so simple yet so cinematic. A lot of the best electronic music in the 90s strived to capture that.

I could go on, of course, but this is merely an overview, so perhaps it’s time for me to do another WiS series!

I wish I was as cool as Calvin

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I was introduced to Too Much Joy by my friend Chris back in 1990 when the major label reissue of their second album Son of Sam I Am dropped, and I was immediately hooked. At that point in time I was still listening to far more doom and gloom music than I really should have been listening to, and TMJ was refreshing, noisy and funny but without being too absurdist or corny. I put this cassette in my Walkman quite a lot near the start of my sophomore year when I needed a pick-me-up. Later on in the summer of ’91 I would see them live at the Hatch Shell, where I very nearly got hit by flying glass. Whee!

It’s not a brilliant album by any means, and they’re firmly entrenched in the ‘punk band that definitely doesn’t take itself seriously at all’ genre, but instead of going the meathead drunk-and-partying route, they took the intellectual Gen-X ennui-and-irony route, which caught the attention of several kids my own age. While it never got enough major airplay, they were a firm favorite on alternative radio and retained a loyal fanbase. Years later in 2020/2021 they reunited and have released two new albums since then.

The album ran the gamut between the ‘bad karma thing to do’ action of making fun of bums, to being traumatized by clowns…

…to singing about reincarnation (a song I still know all the words to!)…

…and not just a cover of an LL Cool J song….

…but a cover of the weird-yet-catchy classic by Terry Jacks.

So why a major reissue of an album from 1988 and reissued in 1990? Simple: after thirty-five years, the rights to their breakthrough album finally reverted back to them. They’d gotten the quite-aged masters back and got them cleaned up, and they sound fresh and vibrant once more.

Pure silliness, but I highly recommend this album because it’s just that much fun.

I’ll see ninety-five in Doledrum

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It’s funny that I remember this song quite well by the time 1995 rolled around. I’d hoped, back in 1991, that I would be better off and in better emotional shape by then, but alas…

It’s been thirty years since I’d moved out of Boston, and I still think about that from time to time. It was one of the rare moments in my life where I’d said “fuck it, I give up” so utterly completely. But even then I knew that it was the best decision in order to fix a terrible situation. Thankfully I’d been able to transfer my job to a different theater, even though I knew I probably wouldn’t be there for long. I just needed some kind of anchor so I wasn’t completely unmoored. I allowed myself the entirety of September to get all the anger and defeat out of my system before I started fixing my situation.

But in a way, being unmoored to that extent wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I knew I had to change a lot of things in my life. Grow up some. Deal with some personal shit that I’d been avoiding for years. Think about who I was, who I hung out with, and what I wanted and needed to change. Living with the family from ’95 onwards certainly had its own ups and downs, but it remained that steady platform I could build something new on. It gave me time and breathing room in order to do better.

Fast forward thirty years, and here I am, twenty years married and owning our own home. I’m still a writer — one who’s self-released seven books, with another one on the way and hopefully many more in the future. I still have a stupidly large music collection that is still expanding (though thankfully taking up much less space these days). Life still has its ups and downs, but for the most part I’m doing okay.

Was it worth staying there for a full decade? Definitely. I probably could have moved on earlier if I’d planned better and saved more. Sure, I still made a few dumbass decisions here and there, but doesn’t everyone?

Catching up on music…with Pulp

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It’s been a long twenty-four years since their last album, 2001’s We Love Life, though like The Cure they’ve been busy off and on in the interim, doing various tours and shows when they can. I’d been a passing fan during their 90s heyday, aware of the classic “Common People” single but little else until 1998’s This Is Hardcore, one of my favorites from the HMV Years. They were yet another band I’d finally get into just when they’re on the back end of their cycle.

Anyway, it’s great to see them back in the spotlight, with a lovely lead single that feels like they haven’t missed a beat at all. I’m yet to sit down and fully experience the new album More, but I’m looking forward to it!

Something’s Got to Give

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I mean, yeah, I’m trying not to be overly (or overtly) political here on this site, but sometimes extenuating circumstances call for it. Heard this Beastie Boys track other day on KEXP, one you rarely hear on the radio these days as it’s a rather downbeat track and not one of their Big Hits, but I remember hearing this a ton on WFNX when Check Your Head came out in early 1992. It’s my favorite Beasties album and this is my favorite track of theirs.

Anyway, the KEXP deejay the other day pretty much said what I’ve been thinking lately: this second go-round is mask-off. They’re not even trying to hide it this time. And as A said a few days previous, we knew what happened last time so we’re ready for whatever bullshit he brings along this time out. We’re far more prepared to fight back, and more decisively at that.

They can call us names and spew and inspire hate towards us, and it still hurts just the same. But something’s giving this time. They’re ignoring it at their peril.

I’ve seen better days than this one
I’ve seen better nights than this one
Tension is rebuilding
Something’s got to give
Something’s got to give

All this talk about Bridgetown…

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…has given me a hankering to listen to some tunes from the HMV years when I wrote The Phoenix Effect. I’ve mentioned numerous times before that a lot of the music I listened to around that time heavily influenced and/or inspired many of its scenes. But it was also when I had a lot of positive things going on in my life for the first time in ages.

So now the trick is to find some current tunage that can take its place as the writing soundtrack for MU4….I do have a few in mind that have been on frequent rotation here in Spare Oom!