1999 was the year I got my driver's license and then broke my leg three days later playing soccer. One thing I remember from that ordeal was that the TV was messed up in my hospital room and so I requested that my parents bring me my discman and the CDs that were in the 6 disc changer in the car. I'd put 6 of my favorites in because duh, I got to drive and I was excited. I know Chumps on Parade was on there, probably Suicide Machines and Skankin' Pickle as well. And probably some Less Than Jake. Etc. Another thing I remember about the ordeal was that I decorated my crutches and walking cast with band stickers. All of this is to emphasize how much skapunk defined this experience for me, music was my life. My own music.
1999 was also the year my brother went to college. We drove down to Arizona with him to help him move in. I don't remember much about that trip except that I must have just gotten the Dan Potthast album Eyeballs right before, because I listened to that CD repeatedly on that trip. I was obsessed with that album. It emphasized the lyrical skills he had, the stories he told with multiple meanings, the clever way he turned a simple story into an analogy about life. And cute love songs, there are plenty of those as well. With Rivers Cuomo/Brian Wilson levels of insecurity. I wrote him a fan letter by hand and sent it in the actual mail and he wrote me back by hand. Such a cool guy that Dan Potthast is! And he's still at it! His band MU330 also put out two albums in '99 because he was so damn prolific in these days. There was a Christmas album that I always put on around Christmas even 15 years later (that wasn't part of this project because I've excluded Christmas music, not wanting to listen to the stuff in January-November) and their self-titled album. I remember this one being new, getting the album at that show I spoke of in a previous entry. The production on it was a little odd, a little lo-fi for MU330, but yet another showcase of Dan P's increasingly personal lyricism.
The Hippos improved when they put out Heads Are Gonna Roll. They shed their Reel Big Fish copping style for a synthy 80s flavored skapunk. Like The Cars meet skapunk. This time I listened to it while running my first half marathon and still really like their cover of "Always Something There to Remind Me."
The next album that came up during the half marathon was Fun in the Dark by Groovie Ghoulies. I don't know why I never got more of their albums because this one has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I always bust it out around Halloween time. It's just perfect spooky-ish pop punk. Spooky in the 50s horror/sci-fi style and pop punk in the 70s Ramones style. I'm glad it came up during October because that was perfect, and I'm glad it came up during the race because it was quite motivating.
One album from this era that I loved at the time and hadn't revisited in a long time but it all came back when I did was Hopeless Romantic by The Bouncing Souls. In '99 I enjoyed the earlier Souls records but they were both from a million years ago (i.e. from before I knew about them) and Hopeless Romantic was the one that came out while I was into them. So to me it feels a bit more mature but not too mature. Some sentimental tracks and some fun tracks. "Bullying The Jukebox" takes me right back to the time I saw them with my brother. They were playing with Less Than Jake and we saw them in downtown Denver. My parents dropped us off there and picked us up at Hooters (the only place we could find with a pay phone...remember pay phones??). Anyway, I'm getting off topic. They played and the singer just bounced around stage and it was just so much fun.
Another one I listened to contemporarily was Weird Al's Running With Scissors. This was a weird one for me but also the perfect one for me at the time. I had just enough exposure to mainstream music at the time to know and understand what he was parodying, and enough hatred for mainstream music at the time to laugh at it. Maybe too much hatred and too much laughter. But I really did hate that Offspring song "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" so I doubly appreciated Weird Al mocking it. It was also funny when the Backstreet Boys were in the polka and my little sister's friend got mad about it, "he can't be allowed to do that!!" I think this was the one where he shaved his mustache too, so it kind of signifies the second era of Weird Al or something. Where he was contemporary to me, up to date, and relevant. Yes, those all kind of mean the same thing.
After The Broadways (about whom I wrote very lovingly if you will recall), The Lawrence Arms formed and put out their debut album A Guided Tour of Chicago, featuring two of the members of The Broadways. The Lawrence Arms would soon become my favorite band for several years and are still up there. The debut was a lot more lo-fi than anything else they would do, and that made it feel like a step back from The Broadways at first. Some political songs, some songs of self loathing, it's a decent collection but their second album (coming up in 2000!) is where it's at.
Their peers Alkaline Trio put out their most solid release of all in 1999, the I Lied My Face Off EP. Four songs, all four stars or more in my ratings. Two Matt songs, two Dan songs. They were just on the top of their game, with Matt getting more poetic and Dan reaching the pinnacle of his angry side.
Alkaline Trio "This Is Getting Over You"
It was my college days when I got knee-deep in this melodic punk/"emo" stuff and Piebald was one of my favorite groups in those days. If It Weren't For Venitian Blinds It'd Be Curtains For Us All is probably their best one. I remember seeing them live and how awesomely unkempt the singer's appearance was, all with a white t-shirt and messy hair and scruffy face, and thinking of how awesome that was. Such beautiful music coming from someone who looked like he just walked in off the street. Maybe that's why I always let myself go in the facial (and head) hair department(s). Look up the song "Fat and Skinny Asses" though, because that's the good stuff.
I lost track (and then re-gained very recently) of Brian Moss, the singer for many projects over the years, starting with The Wunder Years. They had a couple releases in 1999. One was a split CD with Sorry About The Fire called On Behalf of Rock n Roll. It's decent, and I love the first track "You Know Who You Are" but the other album is one of those all-time favorites, Pitstops on the Road Less Traveled. Just an album of motivational songs for a high school kid, delivered with high amounts of passion. I hadn't listened to this album in a long time and of course it was another one of those where it came on and I was immediately singing along, remembering those days.
The only cure for cynicism is optimism. Or something like that. In the early '00s I was all down because my girlfriend had broken up with me and I listened to lots of that pseudo-emo stuff (and some real emo stuff!). I went to a show at Tulagi's in Boulder and Dressy Bessy opened (or maybe who I was seeing opened for Dressy Bessy?) I went by myself and I don't even remember who I was there to see. Because the thing that turned me around, changed my life in a way because it was what told me it would all be okay, was this Dressy Bessy set. Just some pure pop sugar to turn me around and show me that it will be okay. Optimism without sounding like something trying to tell me to be happy when I was not happy. I must have just been ready for it. I bought their CD Pink Hearts Yellow Moons and it's always been there for me since then.
Dressy Bessy "If You Should Try to Kiss Her"
Jim O'Rourke put out two amazing releases in 1999. The first was Eureka, and I don't know how to explain how brilliant it is. I'm sure others have been successful at that. But I just think it makes me feel good. It's comforting and the right kind of sad at the right moments. I think "Movie On The Way Down" is what exemplifies it for me, as it reminds me of the scene in Love Liza that uses it. Just the composition and the words it uses. The drunkenness of the horns. How it stumbles around in sadness.
Jim O'Rourke "Movie on the Way Down"
Keep it Like a Secret is arguably the best Built to Spill album. I think I might prefer some of their others, but they scaled back on the jamminess of Perfect from Now On without losing its technical brilliance. Pop music with respectability. Very 90s indie rock. The end of 90s indie rock?
Where do I fit Tom Waits into here? Mule Variations is yet another brilliant work by him, maybe even more brilliant than most of his other work. It starts off lo-fi-ish and pushes out from there. His blues songs have always been on point and the chaos around him splashing around, not overtaking the power of his vocals. I kind of hope one day to have a child listen to this with me and sing along with "Cold Water."
I didn't get into the Flaming Lips until a bit later than '99, even though I know my friend was a fan. But in retrospect, yes, The Soft Bulletin is one of the greatest albums of 1999. Full of songs of hope and hopelessness but trying. Just doing our best and it not being enough. It's sad but from a perspective of persistence. And selflessness. It wasn't until around 2006 that I saw this video but it is just so touching and everything I love about this album contained in a clip.
The Flaming Lips "Waitin' for a Superman"
Notice I called The Soft Bulletin "one of the greatest albums of 1999." That's because, without question, the BEST album of 1999 was a three-CD collection of 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields. Sometimes an artist just has a time period where everything they do sounds just perfect, they're just tapped into this something. And Stephin Merritt took advantage of that by letting it all pour out over 69 damn songs. Sure there's filler, but it's barely any. Just a few silly songs like "Punk Rock Love," a repeating of the lyrics "Punk rock love punk love, punk love love..." Otherwise though, these are completely solid and overwhelming. Romantic, hopeful, sad, sadder, funny, and all very clever. Several perfect songs, as far as I'm concerned. My wife thought "Papa Was a Rodeo" was a cover of an old country song, and I have to think that's because it's so timeless now it's hard to imagine it being new ever. Like that line from Inside Llewyn Davis, that blues songs were "never new and never get old." My friend introduced me to the band with the song "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side," which was funny and true and full of longing and sadness in a happy song. But the first song I actually ever heard by them was the result of grabbing a bunch of songs off a file sharing program in college. I didn't know what to think of it at the time, it wasn't really "rock" so why was it in the "indie rock" section? It sounded like an old song (as usual) and it stuck with me until I eventually figured out who this band was and put the song into context. And eventually, that was the song I danced with my wife to as our first dance at our wedding. No, not "The Book of Love," which everyone uses (even people who don't know who Stephin Merritt is!). This one. Simple but perfect, obvious but not too obvious. A song I love to associate with my marriage.
The Magnetic Fields "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing"
Other Stuff:
- Jay-Z's album Vol. 3...Life and Times of S. Carter is okay. It's got "Big Pimpin'" on it.
- The debut of !!! and sister group Out Hud was seen on their split EP Lab Remix Series Vol. 2. Very promising (and knowing history, both bands would turn out to be killer)
- Goodnight Pavement, Terror Twilight was their final album I believe.
- Fat Wreck put out a compilation of 101 30 second songs called Short Songs for Short People. I remember liking it for a few reasons. It introduced me to lots of bands. Blink-182 had a very profane song on it as did MTX. I don't know if anything else really stood out to me other than stuff like "hey cool a Rancid song!" and stuff like that.
- Eminem. The Slim Shady LP. I hated him at the time as a crusader against rap and as a budding crusader against homophobia. But why him specifically? Not sure.
- Fifteen kind of entered that phase of their career of being super political and more about that than the music with Lucky. But it's heartfelt enough that I still find it somewhat endearing. And at the time I loved it because it was more lessons for me in leftist thought.
- Beck's all super funky and such on Midnite Vultures.
- I only have a couple songs off The Faint's Blank-Wave Arcade but they are pretty great.
- AFI went all goth/dark/whatever on Black Sails in the Sunset, and at the time I dug it. Not super memorable though, 15 years later.
- The Roots were still awesome duh.
- Dr. Dooom killed Dr. Octagon. I like those Dr. Dooom records. No chorus. Really stupid album artwork. And rhymin' like only Keith can do.
- The first Hank Williams III album Risin' Outlaw is a great showcase of his vocals sounding just like his granddad's. Just a small hint of the way he would blow up the whole country music genre in a bit, it's pretty traditional but quite enjoyable.
- ODB! Got Your Money!
- The White Stripes' debut. I'll save my thoughts on them for a couple albums down the line. But it's good stuff.
- I liked a couple songs on the debut Common Rider album Last Wave Rockers. A different side of the OPIV singer, I kind of liked the songs he rapped on and remember thinking "this is the kind of rap I can appreciate." In retrospect, that was very silly of me.
- Sigur Ros, that stuff's pretty dreamy isn't it?
- More hip hop brilliance: Mos Def's debut album Black on Both Sides was quite the manifesto and a great start (not counting the already brilliant Black Star of course) and Handsome Boy Modeling School's debut So...How's Your Girl? was a nice collection of beats by two of the all-stars of hip hop at the time. With some fantastic guest spots from like likes of Del and El-P.
- Gah Les Savy Fav was great too!
- No Division was a Hot Water Music album I never got myself, but I always wanted to because I have two songs off it and they are probably my favorite HWM songs, "Free Radio Gainesville" and "Rooftops."
- And finally, the debut LP by Blackalicious Nia. Who knew that in a couple years I would discover this group and my entire perspective on hip hop would change? I probably would have actually liked this in '99 if I'd heard it. Very apparent skills on the mic, smart lyrics expressing the same thoughts I've always had, it's just a fantastic album.
Next Time: in the year 2000........(insert your favorite Conan joke here)
Aesop Rock, Alkaline Trio, At The Drive-In...and other letters besides A! Common and Cursive put out some of their best work, Deltron is appropriately futuristic, Enon, The Honor System are the flipside of that Broadways breakup, and my favorite Lawrence Arms album by the way, Ludacris, New Pornographers, Nina Nastasia, Reflection Eternal, Shellac, I get betrayed by The Suicide Machines, Weakerthans, other stuff.
