Speaking of 90s music, I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff lately that came out while I was in Boston, college and post-college. The city has a fascinating musical history, especially where rock and radio is concerned. [I highly suggest looking for Carter Alan’s Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN and Brett Milano’s The Sound of Our Town for a great overview.] There’s always been a scene of some kind in the city over the years, and it’s always been great. A lot of it is due to its eclectic mix of blue-collar families and college students.
I was glad to be able to listen to, if not go see, a lot of the local bands while going to Emerson College in the early 90s. Here’s a few of my favorites from that era…hope you enjoy!
You know, for all the classic rock I’ve listened to over the years, I haven’t really focused too closely on the 70s other than the hits. I’ve got a decent mp3 collection that covers a lot of discographies, but I’ve always tended to limit my ‘classic’ listening to the 80s (my teen years) or the 90s (my college/post-college/HMV years).
Granted, my age was in the single digits in the seventies, so my familiarity with the music from that era comes from the listening habits of my older sisters, the records I took out of the town library, and the usual culprits you hear on classic rock stations like Springsteen, Elton John, Billy Joel and Led Zeppelin. The rest of it tends to be filled with easy listening pop that we escaped like Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand, and variety specials filled with corny humor and the same central casting guest stars.
It is kind of fascinating, though, when you realize that this song..
…and this song…
…came out in the same month, November 1977.
I’m thinking it’s time for me to do another decade overview, this time of the decade where I was the bratty little kid brother. I mean, going past hearing “The Piano Man” for the 1,485,035,436th time. Expanding the genres between punk and sunshine pop, prog rock and early metal. If there’s one thing I enjoy immensely when listening to music, it’s listening to it within the context of its history. I’m curious to hear how they all intertwined.
For your listening pleasure, here’s my latest compilation/mixtape that I created a week or so ago. All the links are to their respective YouTube visuals and will open in a separate window.
On a side note, I’m greatly amused that I’m still using a mixtape name that I created way back in the spring of 1988. I usually used the LiS title for ‘favorite poppy alternative songs’ mixtapes (whereas Walk in Silence was used for ‘favorite moody alternative songs’). There was a stretch there in the early 00s when I used a different title and the mixes were more varied (this would be the Re:Defined mixes). Hey, if the titles still fit, might as well keep using them, right?
If you haven’t seen my recent post over at Welcome to Bridgetown, I’m currently celebrating the platinum anniversary of my starting a novel (The Phoenix Effect) that would end up morphing into my Bridgetown trilogy. All this month I will be posting fun things related to the original as well as the trilogy, and I thought I’d do the same over here.
Twenty years ago I was a few months in on my relatively new job as the lone shipper/receiver at HMV Records. Even though I was one of the oldest hires there (I’m pretty sure I was closer to my manager Tom’s age than the young’uns I worked alongside), I was still feeling my way around.
The biggest change from the years previous was that I had a much closer connection to the music I was listening to. I was listening to a lot of radio at the time but didn’t have that much money to spend on new releases, but this job let me listen to a lot more stuff (and yes, I may have dubbed a number of cds onto blank cassettes while in the back room, heh!).
But the sounds were changing as well. The bright bounciness of Britpop was suffering from hangovers and bloating (see: Oasis’ Be Here Now, a solid but WAY overworked album); the American grunge was kind of losing its way (not to mention some of its lead singers to overdoses), and let’s face it: the college rock I knew of then was essentially the commercial rock of now.
That’s not to say the quality (or quantity) of alternative rock was declining…it was merely evolving with the times. In fact, 1997 featured some fantastic, solid releases from bands both old and new, taking the genre in new and interesting directions.
On a personal level this was a positive and much-needed evolution for me, as I’d been in dire need of a change in my life and outlook. I’d been broke, angry and depressed for about three years straight, gone through some personal issues that were Not Fun At All, and needed a positive change ASAP.
Not only that, this change in mood is reflected in my writing. I’d essentially started a new project resurrected from the ashes of one that I had to close down for personal reasons. And let’s be brutally honest: back then, I’d had a collegiate view of being a writer. I was a special snowflake with the Powers of Story [insert sprinkly *whoosh* sfx here] and I wrote Important Life Allegories™. In reality, however…my writing was crap, I knew it was crap, no one was going to take it seriously, and I was going to need to be a shit ton better than the level I was currently at if was going to get anywhere with it.
So that meant dispensing with the mindset of Writing as Superpower and take it seriously. Making it a daily process instead of a casual one. Relearning the basics of story construction. (This included doing a hell of a lot more reading than before; not just the how-to writing books, but the different genres of fiction and nonfiction I was interested in. This plan kick-started my habit of visiting book stores on the weekends and, thankfully, a love of reading.)
Music has always been a part of my writing process, and this time it was no different. This time out I’d be making mixtapes of tracks that would inspire my writing (the four-volume Songs from the Eden Cycle from 1997-8, the sort-of sequels in the early 2000s, and the recent Eden Cycle Sessions mp3 playlists). Certain albums released during this time would get heavy rotation play on my cd player down in my basement writing nook. And I’d listen to a hell of a lot of stuff on my fifty-mile commute, which was always a perfect time for me to brainstorm.
I’d made a decision to be a writer quite early in my life, but 1997 was when I decided to take that decision seriously.
So I ended up buying the new Golden Earring box set, The Complete Studio Recordings, (at a pretty sweet deal — 28 cds for a little over $100, coming out to about $4 a cd) and I’m quite looking forward to giving it a listen.
They’re a band I’ve always wanted to hear more of, especially since their history reaches way back to the early 60s. Most of you know them from their two US hits “Radar Love” (one of the best 70s bass lines ever) and “Twilight Zone” (one of the most memorable early 80s MTV videos). I owned their Cut album for a long time and absolutely loved it as a kid. I never got around to picking up more of their albums though, as they were often hard to find and were never a big draw in the US.
Still, they’re considered the Netherlands’ biggest rock band and what I have heard of their early stuff I quite enjoy. Including their amazingly ridiculous yet fascinating seventeen-minute prog cover of The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”.
It’s going to take me a while to sift through this collection, but I’m looking forward to it!
Still working through a head cold right now and I’m not running at optimal speed. I thought I’d share some Love songs instead, considering it’s Valentine’s Day. We could all use some love now and again. 🙂
In the last few years of my run at HMV, I was given the go-ahead to do special orders for customers, as well as order the occasional import. This came in handy when NSYNC released the single “Bye Bye Bye” some time before the No Strings Attached album; I knew it would be a huge seller despite the price, so I had them order a good hundred or so copies. They all sold out within a few days.
Around that time, I’d been reading all the reviews in the British music magazines and catching up on bands that may or may not break here. One of my favorite finds was a five-piece called Ultrasound, whose sound was a fantastic cross between crunchy guitar-led Britpop (very similar to Kaiser Chiefs, predating them by at least a few years) and seventies psychedelia, with a bit of Pink Floydish prog in there as well. They released a handful of singles and one album, Everything Picture, before breaking up. [They would, however, reconvene twelve years later for a second album, Play for Today, and have just released a new mini-album at the end of 2016.]
It’s a sprawling album, twelve long tracks stretching an hour and a half over two cds (most of the tracks are around six or seven minutes long, with the last track featuring a truly epic freakout that lasts a little over 21 minutes plus a two-minute hidden track!). Due to its length and wide scope, many critics found it bloated and meandering, but despite that, it reached to number 23 on the UK Albums chart, and it’s remained a fan favorite. I for one loved that it was a long album; a sort of The Beatles only with fewer and much longer songs. I dubbed it onto cassette and listened to it constantly whenever I drove around New England.
The single “Stay Young” is one of my favorites from this album. It’s a wonderful rock anthem from the loud-soft-loud school, a twenty-first century rewrite of “My Generation” in a way.
The track “Aire & Calder” is another favorite. I love its driving beat and folksy melody that evokes the feeling of riding a caravan through the British wetlands. [Aire and Calder are two rivers that meet up near Goole and Castleford just outside Leeds; both towns are name-dropped within the song as well.]
The album still holds up well nearly eighteen years later. I can see where the critics were frustrated, as it slides all over the place, changing moods and sounds constantly (again, much like the White Album), but taken as a whole, it remains a strong record from start to finish.
As I dive once more into the 80s music nostalgia, one band I plan on checking out is Ultravox. I’ve always heard great things about them (both the John Foxx and the Midge Ure years), and I even owned the greatest hits and Vienna albums, but I never actually sat down to listen to them very closely. Chalk it up to being one of those bands I’d hear on the radio or MTV but could never find their stuff at the mall. [And when I did see them at the various record stores, often I’d be reserving my money for something else I was looking for.]
This past Christmas I finally got their box set The Albums 1980-2012 (aka the Midge Ure era), and during our visit to southern California this past weekend, I stopped in at Amoeba to pick up the John Foxx era box, Island Years. These cover all but two 90s albums (Revelation and Ingenuity, essentially keyboardist Billy Currie with a newer lineup) and only the latter box contains single sides and ephemera, but th0se are easily acquired online if I’m further interested in completing the discography.
I do love the career-spanning box sets, especially the ‘album collection’ ones, as it gives the new listener — or like me, the once-passive fan who wants to hear more — the ability to check out a band’s discography at a relatively decent price. I’ve bought quite a few of these over the years: Roxy Music’s The Complete Studio Recordings, Nilsson’s The RCA Albums Collection, Lloyd Cole & the Commotions’ Collected Recordings 1983-89, and The Boomtown Rats’ Classic Album Selection, to name a few. Not all of them are complete (there’s often a few items missing, like a cover or a live track or a b-side), but they’re complete enough to provide an excellent overview. Sure, they can be expensive, but sometimes you can find a great deal. Some are even available as mp3s, cutting the cost almost in half sometimes.
I’m looking forward to listening to these two Ultravox boxes!
Walk In Silence 