Tag Archives: influences

(Almost) Thirty Years On: October 1997

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When I think about late 1997 into early 1998, I’m of course reminded that this was when I worked on the longhand rough draft of The Phoenix Effect, but I’m also reminded that this was right about when I started working more often at my writing nook in my parents’ basement. I’d been transcribing off and on when I had a chance (or more to the point, when I felt like it), but by this point I knew that I had a pretty important novel project that kept me excited, and I’d started thinking about how I could up my game.

It didn’t feel right to me to wait until the longhand draft was finished before I began working on the revision. That’s how I’d always worked in the past (other than True Faith, which was direct to PC with an attempted longhand revision later on), but I was starting to feel, I don’t know…impatient? Like I didn’t want my interest to wane? That had happened to me in the past on several aborted writing projects, and I didn’t want this one to suffer the same fate. And that’s why I started transcribing and revising TPE down in the basement while still writing it longhand before my shift. And thanks to an old boombox of my uncle’s, I could listen to the new CDs I was amassing from work while doing so.

The interesting outcome of this was two-fold. One, the revision I was doing altered a few storylines here and there, so the longhand version goes off in odd directions in the latter half. And two, the longhand version stops cold and without a proper ending, mainly because I’d caught up with the transcription and chose to finish the novel on the PC.

Ivy, Apartment Life, released 6 October 1997. It’s hard to say if this was a Fountains of Wayne side project or a parallel one, considering they both started around the same time. Either way, this was the second album by them that caught the attention of critics and a larger fanbase, and its single “The Best Thing” got considerable play on alternative radio.

Big Wreck, In Loving Memory of…, released 7 October 1997. This Canadian-by-way-of-Boston band sprang up out of nowhere with the instantly catchy and bouncy single “The Oaf” which had considerable Alternative chart success. They were a huge favorite on WFNX and WBCN thanks to their local origins, and several album tracks got significant play during the autumn and winter. This got a ton of play at the store, both on the sales floor and in the back room, and it also got a lot of play during my writing sessions as well.

Various Artists, Invocation, released 7 October 1997. I mentioned this one over at Welcome to Bridgetown a short while ago: this is a sort-of holiday compilation that’s actually spiritually themed, and it contains music from several different genres including World, New Age, Orchestral, Electronic, and Vocal. I’d grabbed a promo of this on a whim, half expecting a New Agey dreamscape, only to discover something much deeper and more personal. I found myself listening to it constantly, enough that it ended up being a very important influence on Phoenix. It also introduced me to Pulusha, who I then found out was a side project of Global Communciation, who also became a major influence.

Various Artists, Lounge-a-Palooza, released 7 October 1997. Meanwhile, this odd little mix took the minor wave of lounge music at the time (thanks to an Esquivel and Stereolab) and went in the most typical Gen-X direction: covering unexpected popular songs in that style. You’ll get Ben Folds Five’s goofy take on The Flaming Lips’ “She Don’t Use Jelly”, a nightmarish version of Was (Not Was)’s “Zaz Turned Blue” by Polly Jean Harvey….and Vegas popsters Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme doing Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”. A really fun mix worth checking out.

Everclear, So Much for the Afterglow, released 7 October 1997. This album tends to be forgotten in their catalog other than the single “Father of Mine”, but the first single “Everything to Everyone” is an excellent track right up there with their hit “Santa Monica”. I used to hear that one on the way to and from work on the radio and would sing along.

Fantastic Plastic Machine, Fantastic Plastic Machine, released 10 October 1997. I first heard of this one via the above song featured on a CMJ mix cd, and was reminded of the loungey J-Pop I loved from Pizzicato Five. It’s clever album full of fun lightweight groove.

Soundtrack, A Life Less Ordinary, released 14 October 1997. This was an oddball black comedy by Danny Boyle that didn’t do all that well at the box office, but its soundtrack received considerable attention, especially with its lead song by Beck, who was still huge at the time. This one got a lot of play on the sales floor and in the back room as well.

Various Artists, Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project, released 20 October 1997. This collection was originally created basically because of producer Arnold’s love for the music of John Barry’s 007 work, but Barry was so impressed that he suggested to the Broccoli family that he try out composing for the next in the series, Tomorrow Never Dies. It’s a fascinating collection that remains faithful to the originals yet features them in different styles; Aimee Mann’s take on “Nobody Does It Better” remains one of my top favorite tracks of the year.

Mogwai, Young Team, released 21 October 1997. I believe this is right around the time I’d finally heard what this band was about, even though I wouldn’t be picking anything up from them for a few more years. I remember one of my coworkers really loving the epic “Mogwai Fear Satan” (which would become a calling card of theirs) and would sometimes play it on the sales floor on less busy afternoons.

Recoil, Unsound Methods, released 28 October 1997. Alan Wilder’s ongoing electronic project and his first since leaving Depeche Mode, it’s a much darker affair than his previous work under that name and reveals his desire to create much more experimental sounds than with his former band. It’s an odd listen but there are some really interesting tracks on there.

Roni Size/Reprazent, New Forms, released 28 October 1997 [US version]. I’d had a passing familiarity with the genre of Drum ‘n’ Bass — fast, twitchy, bass-heavy, futuristic, and inherently jazzy — but it wasn’t until I heard the absolutely brilliant single “Brown Paper Bag” that I fell in love with it. It’s an album right up there with DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing in terms of electronic excellence and highly recommended.

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Coming up: wrapping up the year, and looking forward to the next

Dave Kendall RIP

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Dave Kendall deserves all the props in the world for coming up with one of the most inspirational and influential shows in MTV’s history: 120 Minutes.

He’d been a writer for music magazines and the UK press as well as for the music channel, and had suggested creating a two-hour show that showcased the great independent music out there that deserved a closer look. He wanted something outside of the mainstream, something akin to the burgeoning era of 80s college radio which at the time was focusing on punk, post-punk, new wave, industrial, EBM, and pretty much anything that didn’t quite conform to the charts or corporate radio. Never mind that the show was on at midnight on Sunday evening, and never mind that, like the early days of the channel, they winged it as they went along; soon after its debut on March 10, 1986, it caught on with high school and college kids and music nerds like me, and we programmed our VHS recorders to catch the latest episodes. It was so beloved that it now has its own archival website, detailing several years worth of episode playlists.

Interestingly, he was not its original host, though he did show up in every episode in the first few years, hosting the music review and top ten college radio countdown segments, often obscured by discolored lo-fi video feedback. He’d finally come out of the shadows and take over from the oddball Kevin Seal in 1989, staying there until 1992.

His delivery was quintessentially Gen-X Punk despite his slightly older age, snarky as fuck when a band’s music threatened to fall into its own navel, chatty and knowledgeable during his interviews, extremely obsessive and encyclopedic whenever a band with a long history dropped something new (his later successor Matt Pinfield certainly learned from him in this respect), wasn’t above taking the piss (such as the above, decorating a studio Christmas tree with a bemused and possibly pasted Trent Reznor on the 24 December 1989 episode, which also featured the string quartet The Ordinaires playing holiday music and a highly confused Ramones stopping by as well). He even got a laugh out of The Whitman Samplers in 1990 when they sampled him over a Funky Drummer beat.

Dave and 120 Minutes helped lift alternative rock out of semi-obscurity and into the mainstream. So many writers say that the scene started in 1991 with Nirvana and PNW grunge, but it really started much earlier in the late 80s with college radio and this show. This wasn’t just a scene, it was a slowly-building and expanding movement, one where you didn’t necessarily have to dress up or go to a club if you didn’t want to (or couldn’t). You could sit in your dimly lit bedroom and just take this all in while you pasted pictures of The Smiths and Siouxsie and Sinéad O’Connor and Depeche Mode on your walls, wrote your song lyrics and learned how to play a guitar not in the style of squealy hair metal. Prefaced by an hour’s worth of British humor with The Young Ones, The Comic Strip and Monty Python during its late 80s heyday, those three hours together were like an open secret for those who didn’t or chose not to fit in with the mainstream. You didn’t just look forward to the episode, you watched it and rewatched it constantly, because this stuff was not played anywhere else on TV or on the radio in your town. It reminded you that there was more out there, so much more out there than just what you were being fed, and it fueled you to keep going.

It was a show that brought me together with a circle of friends in late 1986, who ended up being lifelong acquaintances because we all loved that sound so much. I admit I obsessed over it far more than everyone else in that group, but in the process I became the go-to when you wanted to dub a copy of an album or grab a few songs you didn’t own for your latest mixtape. And yes, for a while I even had those 120 Minutes episodes tucked away on video. I might not have those videos anymore, but my music library continues to expand to this day partly because of the show’s influence on me. I now get my music fix via KEXP FM, which has carried the torch and continued playing all the best at the left of the dial. But it all started there, on those late Sunday evenings.

As Kevin Seal would often say after each music review segment: Thanks, Dave!

The Boston Years Continued: Slacker Central, Part XIX

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So what happened during the summer of 1994? That’s a good question. Not too much excitement, really. Living day to day, working at Brigham’s slinging scoops and making frappes, and working on True Faith. One thing that comes to mind is that I started reading again.

As much as I loved hanging out in bookstores, I would usually only get magazines and music reference books. I was just too involved in the visual, renting and watching movies because of my college years, not to mention my lack of patience and focus in actually sitting down and reading. D suggested I start reading Stephen King’s The Stand since we’d watched the miniseries by this time (she’d taped it for later viewing). Yeah, I know…going from being a non-reader to investing time in a Giant Doorstop, and the Complete and Uncut Edition at that? But it was a great idea because King can be a very visual writer in his worldbuilding and prose style, and that was the same style I was trying to create. The Stand was an unexpected yet vital influence on the Mendaihu Universe in that respect; I was fascinated by how vast the story universe was, and that inspired me to do the same. I spent the next year or so devouring several of his novels, finally realizing how much I did enjoy reading once I allowed myself to.

Meanwhile, D and I had realized we both enjoyed parody songs and came up with our own, focusing on parodying alternative rock under the name Mercy Buckets. We even had an album cover idea: on the walk to her apartment, we’d pass by an alleyway that had a sign with the misspelled words “Do not throw any thrash here.” In stark black and white, we’d be captured pogoing and headbanging in front of it. Our proudest moment was a parody of Hole’s “Miss World” written about Dan Quayle running for president. Yes, we were nerds.

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The Smashing Pumpkins, “Rocket” single, released 1 July 1994. This wasn’t my favorite track off Siamese Dream, but this single featured a great b-side that WFNX picked up on: a live-in-studio cover of Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again”. The track would show up a few years later on the For the Masses DM tribute album, but this is where it first appeared.

The Prodigy, Music for the Jilted Generation, released 4 July 1994. A few years before the ubiquitous “Firestarter” song and video, this group was known then for their noisy yet exciting techno that always fired up the dance floor. This was their second album and “Voodoo People” would get minor airplay on WFNX during their weekend techno shows.

Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View, released 5 July 1994. I know WFNX wouldn’t dare to touch this band at all, but WBCN played the hell out of them. I’d switch to that station when I was in the mood for more commercial rock stuff, and you couldn’t go an hour without hearing at least one or two tracks from this record. Terrible band name aside, this is actually a pretty decent album!

Des’ree, I Ain’t Movin’, released 5 July 1994. I would hear “You Gotta Be” everywhere I went that summer. And it really is a great track, full of lovely melody and positive and inspiring vibes. I’d also hear it a lot into the next year when I started the movie theater job as part of their in-between movie music.

311, Grassroots, released 12 July 1994. The band’s second album didn’t quite get all the attention it should have, but it did have a minor hit with “Homebrew” which would get play on WNFX and WBCN now and again.

Harry Connick Jr, She, released 12 July 1994. “(I Could Only) Whisper Your Name” was another pop gem that I’d hear everywhere. More known for his jazzy covers of old pop standards, this was an album of fresh new songs for him and was an unexpected success.

Seal, Seal (II), released 19 July 1994. I loved the first album (“Crazy” remains one of my all-time favorite songs of the 90s), but this second record is the one that pushed him further into the mainstream with its many great singles, including “Don’t Cry”, “Prayer for the Dying” and “Kiss from a Rose”, which would be used the following summer in the movie Batman Forever. This remains my favorite album of his and I highly recommend it.

Satchel, EDC, released 26 July 1994. Shawn Smith certainly got around in the 90s and 00s. He formed this band with a coworker from Tower Records, formed the band Brad with Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard soon after, formed Pigeonhed in the late 90s and had a minor hit with the remix of “Battleflag”, and showed up as a guest member on several albums and songs with bands from the Pacific Northwest. This one almost fell under the radar, but I’d heard a track or two from it and eventually found a used copy that I’d play during writing sessions now and again.

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Next up: Summer’s end, making future plans and planning future moves