Tag Archives: Two Thousand

The Boston Years Continued: Slacker Central, Part XVI

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Tt just so happened that the day after I’d unceremoniously quit the Longwood Coop, I’d decided to drown my sorrows and frustrations by taking the Green Line T for a ride out to Riverside Station and back, just to get my mind off things. And of course, my mom happened to call the store for some now-forgotten reason, so as was normal in my youth, my parents found out about my misadventures before I could even get myself home!

Thankfully I wasn’t unemployed for too long. Boston being what it was at the time, I could find a job somewhere if I didn’t mind doing retail, or something completely not in my expected career path. As a GenXer in the 90s, you took what you could get, whatever it might be. Better to be paid than miserable, yeah? So thus starts my next job at Brigham’s Ice Cream on Cambridge Street, just up the road from the Charles Street T stop on the Red Line. An easy walkable commute, and the not exactly allowable ability to ‘forage’ so I wasn’t always broke and hungry.

On the writing end of things, I found myself finally pushing forward with the Two Thousand project, my attempt at the Gen-X-ennui-avec-excellent-soundtrack story. Hell, I was even writing more poetry again! Just fragments at the time, but the point of that exercise was to write something, just to get myself going again. More importantly I was also playing around with a few more ideas regarding the Nocturne idea, having recently rented Gall Force 2: Destruction, the second in the series. There was something about this series that resonated with me: the idea of resurrection, reincarnation, and the creation of life starting elsewhere sounded like a really fascinating idea to me.

It was also around this time that I started looking into new age spirituality. Not entirely to an obsessive degree, but as a way to think of my life so far from a completely different angle. I looked into Wicca among other things and took it semi-seriously; for me it wasn’t a way out or an escape, but merely an anchor to get me back on the path I needed to take. My new girlfriend and I both got into it to an extent, but neither of us were heavy practitioners; we were merely thinking of alternate ways to look at life.

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Mixtape, Crazy Little Thing Called WAUGH!!! Vol 5, created April 1994. The fifth mix in the WAUGH!! series continues with the ‘sourced from other people’s record collections’ theme with the occasional oddball single or b-side I enjoyed. I didn’t listen to this one all that much but it did contain a special bit: ten minutes of peeping baby frogs recorded by my sister from the swamp across from my family’s house! Heh.

Mixtape, Two Thousand OST, created April 1994. Signs are always good that it’s going to be a successful writing project, or at least one I’d focus on for a length of time, when I make a mixtape for it! In this case, I took a bunch of my favorite 90s tracks of the time and threw them together as an ultimate GenX mixtape to inspire the story. There’s also a single side of classic rock here: this was a side story in which the lead character’s band is known to do oddball cover songs during their live shows. I would eventually trunk this novel, but the mixtape is still worth it!

The Offspring, Smash, released 8 April 1994. This SoCal punk band had been around for ages, but this was their breakthrough, so huge that it helped label Epitaph gain some much-needed funds to expand their own catalog. “Come Out and Play” was on super heavy rotation on WFNX, and soon came the follow-up radio hits “Gotta Get Away” and “Self Esteem”. Three years later they’d jump to major label Columbia and stay there for the next several years.

Oasis, “Supersonic” single, released 11 April 1994. The Gallagher brothers entered the Britpop scene with this swaggering single and they were an immediate hit on both sides of the Atlantic. I wouldn’t get into them for another few singles, but this is definitely a hell of a fine debut.

Gigolo Aunts, Flippin’ Out, released 12 April 1994. This power pop band was a favorite of the Boston indie crowds, and “Cope” got a significant amount of airplay on both WFNX and WBCN. The album cover is known for featuring a pre-fame Chloe Sevigny, who was a friend of the band.

Hole, Live Through This, released 12 April 1994. A hell of a fine record and one that seemed to hit a little too close to the mark, as it was released just days after her husband Kurt Cobain had died by suicide. It does stand on its own, however, with several great tracks on it that got significant airplay on indie radio.

Pulp, His ‘n’ Hers, released 18 April 1994. A pre-“Common People” minor hit for the band in the UK, they did get a hint of play here but not nearly as much as they deserved. This was their first on a much larger label (Island) which helped them get heard.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Let Love In, released 19 April 1994. I’m pretty sure I skipped this album for the time being as I just couldn’t get myself prepped for the dark and brooding Cave at this point in my life, but the soon to be ubiquitous “Red Right Hand” surfaced here and has been one of his most well known songs to date.

Blur, Parklife, released 25 April 1994. This, on the other hand, was an album I was looking forward to! After the moodiness of Modern Life is Rubbish, this new record was loud, perky, and full of humor and classic British quirkiness. It’s one of their best.

The Smithereens, A Date with the Smithereens, released 26 April 1994. This was an album that sadly got overlooked and forgotten due to several events: getting dropped from Capitol, the inability to get Butch Vig to produce them, and not quite fitting in with the grunge scene. And yet it’s a great record full of their trademark guitar rock and blues, well worth checking out.

Live, Throwing Copper, released 26 April 1994. This record was a long time in coming, their last album having dropped over two years previous, and many wondered if they were going to continue their tight yet now-aging earnest guitar pop sound. Fans and critics were both surprised by the outcome: heavy guitars, heavy subject matter, and an in-your-face sound that showed just how powerful they’d become as a band. It’s an amazing record with several radio hits including “I Alone”, “Selling the Drama”, “All Over You”, “Lightning Crashes” and the epic closer “White, Discussion”. This one got a lot of listens during my writing sessions for Nocturne.

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Coming up: a hot summer begins and a sweltering apartment inspires an important change in a story idea.

The Boston Years Continued: Slacker Central, Part XIV

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The other day I found a chronology spreadsheet that mentions this era and puts a few personal things in their proper order, and I see that I didn’t meet up with D until March of 1994, which makes sense. [I hear you: why the hells do you have a spreadsheet of your past? What kind of weirdo are you? Well, a) I’m a writer, and b) it was initially built up for the Walk In Silence book project and thus laid out what I wrote at the time as well as personal and public events that went on at the time. Simple as that.] It does clarify things a bit, as I know my final months at the Shoebox were just as exciting as they were tense.

ANYWAY. Things were about to change pretty soon, but not just yet. February of 1994 wasn’t entirely without incident, as I’d been focusing on multiple writing projects: more examination of Nocturne and the possibility of finally working on the long-delayed Two Thousand project. Now as then, I didn’t always start from the beginning but wrote and gathered up several notes over several days (or months, or years) to see what I could make of them. At least something was going in the right direction!

Green Day, Dookie, released 1 February 1994. The breakthrough heard ’round the world dropped almost quietly and unassumingly with the “Longview” single. It was immediately picked up by WFNX and WBCN and you’d hear it several times over the course of a week. WFNX was a bit more adventurous and would pull out some of the deep cuts as well. A few months later they’d storm the Hatch Shell and cause chaos throughout the city.

Pavement, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, released 2 February 1994. I wanted to like this band but something about their deliberatelly half-assed slacker delivery didn’t quite gel with me. Still, “Cut Your Hair” was just as ubiquitous as Green Day on the airwaves.

Cake, Motorcade of Generosity, released 7 February 1994. I wouldn’t get into this band until their 1996 album Fashion Nugget, but I do remember hearing “Rock and Roll Lifestyle” on WFNX every now and again.

The Greenberry Woods, Rapple Dapple, released 8 February 1994. This band came and went rather quickly but I remember really liking the “Trampoline” single at the time. I bought the cassette for this at Tower and would listen to it at the Shoebox during my downtime.

The London Suede, “Stay Together” single, released 14 February 1994. A single-only release that often gets overlooked, but it shows where the band was headed, already evolving away from their glam swagger and more towards heady indie rock. I remember hearing it every now and again but it really didn’t do much here in the States.

Soundgarden, “Spoonman” single, released 15 February 1994. I’d been a passive fan of this band since first hearing them my freshman year, but even with this song I could tell they were taking a detour into a style that was less prog-meets-grunge and heading into darker post-punk territory. Its super-tight production and dense tension made everyone eager for the album that would come the next month.

Stabbing Westward, Ungod, released 15 February 1994. I initially lumped this band in with the industrial-alternative genre that was certainly out there but not quite making a dent, no matter how loud they might be. And this band was LOUD. “Nothing” got considerable airplay and the album would eventually become a favorite, leading them towards more popularity in the latter half of the decade.

Low, I Could Live in Hope, released 18 February 1994. This amazing duo’s debut dropped almost without notice in the early half of the year, hidden amongst the louder and more dissonant grunge and hard rock. They were hard to pin down but they had loyal fans from the beginning.

The Grays, Ro Sham Bo, released 22 February 1994. Jason Falkner’s group after leaving Jellyfish was with Jon Brion and it was unfortunately a one-and-done project, but it’s one hell of a fine indie pop gem. It’s out of print and hard to find, but it’s definitely worth checking out if you can find it.

Nine Inch Nails, “March of the Pigs” single, 25 February 1994. Speaking of teaser singles, this was Trent Reznor’s first since the dense and angry Broken and Fixed EPs and a handful of disturbing related music videos. And it’s one hell of an introduction to his next project, considering that it was both a bit more listenable than the EPs and a bit more terrifying in its moods.

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Coming up: Disconnects and reconnects, unknowns and spirals