An Ear For An Era: 1997

Happy 200th post on this log, log and log readers!

I made a mistake of not pre-writing any of this when it was still fresh. Recently I've taken to working on this here written essay portion of my assignment in pieces so fresh stuff will have fresh thoughts and opinions and writings representing it. But not this time. Most of the 1997 stuff is a nostalgia trip though and not really anything too fresh to add other than how I feel now about the old 1997 feelings.

I really just wanted to finish 1997 as quickly as I could so I could listen to this new Spoon album. And The New Pornographers. And some other 2014 hits I've acquired recently.

Okay, where was I? I hadn't started yet? Good. I'll start from the top then.

1997 is an enigma. It was the year when I switched, a huge year personally. Every once in a while I count back to 1997 to see how long I've been entrenched in underground/my-own-thing music. The very brief time I spent in the mid 90s listening to the radio and MTV and more or less identifying with it as "my music" ended and I finally found MY music. So now I've been intimately involved with music in this way for 17 years. This number used to give me pride; now it makes me feel old. But I have this working theory about the '7s being the peaks of the decade and I'm not sure if I can say that about '97 even though it was huge for me. I'll come back to that at the end.
It's also been weird hitting 1997 in this project because as I listen to the stuff I am having a hard time figuring out how music has evolved since then. I'm sure it has but since I've experienced it first hand from here on out it just feels like trends have come and gone but there hasn't been a lot of growth. I mean, where do you go from OK Computer and "Autumn Sweater?" I guess you go to Kid A and "Black Flowers" but even so, it's hard to trace actual evolution over the musical landscape as a whole. I guess we'll just see what we get.

Let's just start with that then, the big one. The one that could make a case for my theory of '7s being tops. OK Computer was world changing music from Radiohead. I don't really have much I can say about it that hasn't been said much more eloquently by the critical consensus. At the time I remember being merely intrigued by the band and its music videos but I actually didn't get OK Computer until Amnesiac came out a few years later. I think Best Buy had some sort of buy-one-get-one deal on Radiohead albums or something so I finally got into it. Talk about an album! Sure, the singles sound good on their own but this is something you just put on track one, do nothing but listen until it's done, and then reluctantly leave to do something else (or just repeat as needed).

Radiohead "Paranoid Android"

On the last day of classes in 1997 before summer vacation I went to a party thing at my friend's house. A boy-girl party and I think some spin-the-bottle happened and I ended up with my first girlfriend (which lasted maybe a week?). But for some reason my strongest memory was after the girls left and the dudes were hanging out watching MTV and this music video came on:

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones "The Impression That I Get"

I remember making declarations to my friends that this music was the best stuff because they used a trombone in such a cool way (I played trombone in concert band). I didn't know what ska was. I think I had heard the song/seen the video before maybe with my brother but watching it at this point switched something in my brain. I made some sort of conscious decision watching this video at this time that I had to have more. I needed more awesome rock music with trombones in it! Now, as previously mentioned, I didn't personally even get this CD. My brother did. So I only heard bits and pieces of it, mostly the singles. I remember VH1 would play the "Rascal King" video every night at midnight on the dot so I would tune in before bed (it was summer vacation!) and watch that video every night. This all led to Reel Big Fish obsession and new friends from band class once we started 9th grade in the fall.

One friend in particular, Paul, was the other trombone player and he seemed to have a head start on this whole ska thing. He introduced me to quite a few bands, most significantly I'd say being Mustard Plug. He had their album Evildoers Beware! which I ended up getting as one of my earliest "underground" purchases. Today it's an album I can't listen to objectively. It's just so damn catchy and it puts me in a good mood. Now I'll try to get through a quick summary of the other albums that do the same thing. Hang-Ups by Goldfinger surprised me because even though I loved it at the time I can admit they aren't the greatest. But the front half is so energetic and ska-centric that I can see why I loved it so much. The Hippos kind of sounded just like Reel Big Fish which was just fine for me. Buck-O-Nine reminds me of some other friends I kind of got into ska...there were some mild nostalgic feelings coming up when 28 Teeth came on. Link 80 was a little more hardcore than I preferred at the time, but 17 Reasons... was still a good transitional record into hardcore sounds. The EP they put out later in the year (and the last Link 80 album with Nick Traina as vocalist) entitled Killing Katie (get it? Kill Link 80?) I preferred because it was more varied and had lighter ska-flavored songs and a cover of "For What It's Worth." Sad story, that of Nick Traina. I read the book his mom (Danielle Steele of all people) wrote about him. Labelmates and still one of my favorite of the ska bunch MU330 started maturing with Crab Rangoon, which involved some very serious topics such as molestation in the Catholic church and cancer, which I didn't particularly like at the time but I would later realize was maybe my favorite album by them.  I dug Bruce Lee Band pretty much immediately because they were Mike Park's band and I loved Skankin' Pickle and Asian Man Records pretty deeply. And he was playing with Less Than Jake as his backing band at the time! And finally, a good band that transitioned me into other things (and was the main remaining "ska" band I listened to after moving on), The Impossibles had a good combo of ska/punk energy and Weezer-esque earnestness. The lyrics were very clever and while the majority of the songs had ska guitar I could almost exclude them from the skapunk category of the rest of these bands. Kind of a growing up kind of band.

When I got more deep into the ska-punk thing I started realizing I should listen to punk too if I could only find a band that stuck with me and didn't have a ska element. Ironically, I had already gotten into something that was sort of punk-related in The Offspring's Ixnay on the Hombre. I must have gotten it right before the ska switch because I liked that song "All I Want" and I just associated the album with the whole "alternative" thing. I actually got quite into this album briefly and then kind of dropped it. Years later I would realize that Jello Biafra does the opening "disclaimer" track. Which gave me a little bit more respect for The Offspring and a little less respect for Jello Biafra.

Beyond the punk rock already covered (apparently I liked old punk from the start!) we sure liked local heroes Pinhead Circus. The songs "Detailed Instructions for the Self Involved" and "Carefree Metal Days" were our anthems. We also saw the band Bigwig opening for someone (or someone opening for them) and liked them mostly on the strength of their cover of the theme from Cheers. My friends may not have particularly gotten into the Mr. T Experience but I sure did. Revenge is Sweet, And So Are You is one of my favorite pop punk albums because of its great wordplay and earnestness in a combination that not many can accomplish. Also I remember watching this music video on Punk TV, a TV show on public access I was obsessed with around this time (mostly because they also played ska but MTX was a good first step into the punk world).

The Mr. T Experience "And I Will Be With You"

I remember being a rebel but still watching MTV (slowly weaning myself off!) and there was a show where a panel of random dumb people rated music videos, giving the winner some sort of heavy rotation on the network. I think it was down to The Toasters' "Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down" and Daft Punk's "Around the World." I had mixed feelings, because I wanted The Toasters to win because they were awesome but the dumb people didn't know anything about ska and I didn't think they deserved it. I was very judgy. Anyway, Daft Punk won (probably) because that "Around the World" video is quite the video and it's quite the song. But at the time I did not care for Daft Punk. I was not there when James Murphy played Daft Punk for the rock kids.

Daft Punk "Around the World"

Techno or whatever you would call it was getting pretty big at the same time as ska. So it was automatically the enemy of course. They don't use real instruments and ska uses MORE instruments! So much more real! I had some friends that weren't so closed minded; I remember listening to a friend's tape that he was somehow involved in (I don't know what he did, some sort of remixing or something?) so he was into it. And now I can appreciate these artists but I still have a hard time differentiating the different genres of electronic music. But Daft Punk was great. And so were The Chemical Brothers. The beats on Dig Your Own Hole are pretty undeniable.

After the punk stuff I got into the melodic almost-emo sounds of bands like Hot Water Music. Fuel for the Hate Game was their first full length and my introduction to them (even though I didn't get it until probably around 2000). There's just so much bearded passion going on, it is a strange experience to listen to Hot Water Music. So rough around the edges, such a bumpy ride with the vocals yet comforting as an overall experience. Similarly, Tuesday just takes me back. The first post-Slapstick band to put out material, their only full length was Freewheelin' and it's all they needed to do to solidify themselves in the cannon of great melodic pop punk bands of the era. Of course, bandleader Dan Andriano would soon join Alkaline Trio. And of course the early Alkaline Trio releases (the "Sundials" 7" and the song "97") just showed the brilliance they would further develop for a few more years before I would disown them once they left Asian Man Records. But those early years, oh man!

But of all the earnest/melodic pop-punk that got lumped in with emo of 1998, The Smoking Popes absolutely nailed it with their final album (before reuniting years later) Destination Failure. Anyone that is ever going through a painful breakup, has ever felt the doubt deep inside needs to listen to this album. Anyone that has held out hope needs to listen to "Megan." Anyone that has lost that hope needs to listen to "I Was Right." Any anyone who is anyone needs to listen to this song to experience the gamut of emotions from loss to betrayal to hope to self doubt to a little bit more hope.

The Smoking Popes "Pretty Pathetic"

I Can Feel The Heart Beating As One is one of those albums of a now-veteran indie rock band settling into its groove. Confidence abounds. At this point they know who they are but still aren't afraid to experiment with different sounds (as they still demonstrate on every new album they put out to this day), vary wildly from track to track without losing a cohesive sound, and just sound like comfort in their longer, jammier songs, building a setting, a place that you just want to hang out in for a while. And then "Autumn Sweater" comes on. That's just one of those songs, you know?

Yo La Tengo "Autumn Sweater"

Another "indie" band that just hit its groove in this time was Built to Spill. Perfect From Now On is a perfect title for the album that saw them confidently move on from the poppier tracks of their previous material and into an artsy, longer-song, "perfect" sound that now really defines the band. It was never my favorite BTS album but that's probably just because I haven't spent more time with it. There's really nothing wrong with this album, it's just slightly more difficult. 

Electro-Shock For President was the last we would ever hear from the brilliant Brainiac. All the ideas going into an EP just concentrated the creativity onto 6 tracks, making it unbelievably brilliant. And all the more tragic that Tim Taylor left us in 1997. I can only imagine where they would have gone from here. 

Brainiac "Fresh New Eyes"

Modest Mouse was on top of the indie world (nearing breakthrough status they'd hit very soon) in 1997. I don't actually own the album The Lonesome Crowded West but the few songs I have from that one are among my favorites. I absolutely need to get that record! Plus the 7" songs from that year from the same compilation I've referenced before are more of my favorites. "Baby Blue Sedan" was one of my ex-girlfriend's favorite songs and "Other People's Lives" spoke to the world of the Internet that we would all soon experience first hand. 

Pavement was still a great band as demonstrated by Brighten The Corners, an album that includes my introduction to the band, a song called "Stereo." I liked the ironic detachment of it all. In around 2000 my brother was getting into this band because he'd just gone off to college and introduced me to them. I was still pretty punk rock but could dig what they were doing. But actually, my actual introduction to Pavement was when they were on a show I loved in 1997 or so, Space Ghost Coast to Coast. I still love that show. The precursor to all the Adult Swim shows of varying quality, SGC2C spoke to me like nothing else. And the fact that years later I discovered that the random band that played on an episode, introduced as The Beatles and played a noisy, somewhat off-putting set turned out to be super hip indie band Pavement, my appreciation for the show just multiplied. Great stuff!

Pavement "Land of the Hot Knives" and the Space Ghost theme

Speaking of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, its spinoff program Cartoon Planet was another thing that defined me in these days. My screen name for many things, skankinwithbrak, says it all. Ska and Brak. Brak from Cartoon Planet. I know it was a more kid friendly version of Space Ghost but as a 14-year-old I just embraced it. The first of two albums, Musical Bar-B-Que was an album I remember singing (particularly the Brak songs of course) with my friends, and that was also an early version of being completely myself without caring what people thought and people embracing that about me. We made friends with some girls for the first time and as much as it would seem to make sense to hide this immaturity we embraced it and they seemed to love that about us. It was a great time in my life. And then my slightly-ironic love of those songs kind of got confused when my family got into it. I think I had hoped they would find it obnoxious and they totally called my bluff by getting into it themselves. When it stopped being rebellious and different it got annoying and I couldn't listen to it with my family anymore. But now it's cool. If I have a child someday I'll probably try to get them into it. Here's a song from the happy times, one that I remember singing for our female friends and them loving it (it didn't get me a girlfriend though, if you can imagine that!)

Cartoon Planet "Crazy Lovesick Fool"

So. Aside from all the silly jokester music and ska and punk, does '97 qualify as one of the "7s" I have a working theory about? The best year of the decade? "Indie" rock may be able to make a case for itself with Radiohead, Built to Spill, Yo La Tengo, Brainiac, Blonde Redhead, and others putting out arguably their best material. Ben Folds Five and Cornershop also broke through with some genius albums as well. Hip hop was following a different trajectory and starting to get crappy but Notorioius B.I.G., Wu-Tang, Del, and Jurassic Five represented a great development in the genre. But aside from a few choice records, it might not be on the level of a '92 in hip hop.

What an odd year.

Other Comments:

• Oddly I didn't even know about Del The Funky Homosapien's album Future Development for quite some time. I thought there was a big gap between No Need for Alarm and Both Sides of the Brain. Eventually I discovered its existence and couldn't find it anywhere. Now I have it and it's as good as I hoped, a good bridge between those two albums.
• Early Beulah is quite good but I'll have more to say about them in upcoming entries.
• Early Cursive is a whole different band. Very emo or something.
• Early Piebald is decent too.
• Other "alternative rock" at the time: The Foo Fighters! There were some great singles off that The Colour and the Shape album, particularly "Everlong."
• Time Out of Mind by Bob Dylan is one of the best late-period albums by someone like that.
• Still dig the Man or Astro-Man with Made From Technetium.
• Les Savy Fav was starting out promisingly.
• Rest in peace Notorious B.I.G.! I dug the album Life After Death but Puffy/Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Diddy/whatever-he-is-now handled it very awkwardly and was a big reason I didn't like rap music at the time. 
• I remember liking the Smashing Pumpkins song "The End is the Beginning is the End" from whatever Batman soundtrack that was. Must have been my waning days of MTV and that stuff.
• Same with The Verve and the song "Bittersweet Symphony." Particularly the video!
• of Montreal had some early music in 1997. They were only 10 years from their masterpiece. I'll see how that evolution moves along with music itself!
• I need to listen to the self-titled album by OOIOO more because that's the kind of weirdness I can get behind.
• I should have more to say about Elliott Smith's Either/Or. It's just a beautiful record that I haven't listened to enough. But "Say Yes" is a song I cannot get enough of.
• Early Jim O'Rourke is great! Bad Timing is an album I got a while ago and couldn't really get behind at first. More or less a bunch of 10 minute acoustic guitar solos, but in the right frame of mind you can hear the innovation happening and the future of his contributions to the musical landscape.
• Samiam might have been my bridge into "melodic punk rock with heart" that I used to confuse with emo. But "She Found You" is still a song I love.
• Stephin Merritt's side projects reigned supreme in 1997. The Gothic Archies and Future Bible Heroes both put out albums. They are decent but not quite on the level of the great Magnetic Fields material.
• I should get that Jurassic 5 EP they put out in 1997 because the three songs I have are stone cold classics.
• Cornershop was gold beyond their big hit "Brimful of Asha." When I Was Born for the 7th Time is a great album up and down.
• That Murder City Devils album (self-titled) is fantastic too!
• And Sleater-Kinney! Dig Me Out might be one of their best.
• Wu-Tang Forever! I agree with ODB, they should have won the Grammy because Wu-Tang is for the children.
• Ben Folds Five! Too much to talk about, right?? "Brick" was the breakout sad song hit and they kept me around with goofier upbeat songs like "Kate" and "Song for the Dumped."
• Self-titled Blur? Woohoo!
• I need to give Blonde Redhead's Fake Can Be Just as Good more spins. A great transitional record from one of my all-time favorites.

Next Time!

Air! Alkaline Trio for real this time! A left turn from the Beastie Boys! Beck, yo! BLACK STAR ONE OF THE GREATEST ALBUMS IN HIP HOP! The Broadways were one of my favorites though! Fatboy Slim! More Fugazi! Jets to Brazil at last! Lauryn Hill! Neutral Milk Hotel! Outkast still rules the world! Pulp! Refused with one of the greatest albums ever! Slow Gherkin! Suicide Machines! And more!

An Ear For An Era: 1989

Another decade gone. I apologize for this entry, I finished the year up almost a week ago so it won't be particularly fresh. Probably lots of vague liking of things in the extras section this time.

Since I neglected the old guard last time, I'll start with them this time.

Bob Dylan is back! He ever left! I hear Oh Mercy is one of his best albums and was his best in a long time upon its release. I believe it. It's quite great. I don't remember too much of it this much later, but I do know that "Most of the Time" holds a personal place in my heart and it's such a great sad song that puts more meaning into the word "most" than I've heard before.

Elvis Costello took things into an interesting direction with Spike. I'm not sure what the title means but that's kind of how I feel about the album: favorites and least favorites. My opinion spikes in either direction when I listen to it. It starts off really strong with some dark clownish songs, lynching songs, and looks at ugliness. In addition to a truly great pop song co-written with Paul McCartney "Veronica," which just breaks my heart. And some great ballads scattered about. Then there are some attempts at funk that I just don't feel at all. They just don't sound natural. And I really don't like "Baby Plays Around," which just seems beneath Costello's considerable lyrical abilities. But when it's on, this album is really on. When Margaret Thatcher died recently of course it brought to mind "Tramp The Dirt Down," a great song about the great pain that she brought to England.

I'll randomly stick Weird Al right here. The UHF Soundtrack And Other Stuff has a lot of stuff on it. I think it might have been the first Weird Al album I got on CD instead of tape, which made it one of the first ones into this digital music collection. It also means I brought it on a lot of car trips with my family and made them listen to it a lot. I know I got my sister to like it because of her love of hamsters and gerbils with "Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters from a Planet Near Mars." I remember my dad wondering about the polka song on this one because it's all Rolling Stones songs. And "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" was an obvious good choice for road trips because it's about a road trip. Everything I've said so far was not from the movie. All "other stuff." I loved that movie though and the bits such as "Spatula City" and "Gandhi II" were classic bits. I actually saw the movie years after getting the album so I didn't know what was going to show up in the actual movie. Sorry Rachel, no radioactive hamsters in the movie.

How about that new wave? We're down to very few artists in the genre but the remaining ones are the ones that are still considered highly influential.

Depeche Mode's Violator is probably their biggest album. I would assume so. Because it has what are probably their biggest hits. "Enjoy The Silence" is great and everyone knows it. "Personal Jesus" has been covered a lot and such. Just the darkness of the whole album is great and proves that new wave still had plenty to say.

Disintigration is the best album ever! So says Kyle from South Park as well as The Impossibles on an EP. It might actually be the best album The Cure put out. Not my personal favorite (I'm unapologetically pro-pop-version-of-The-Cure) but I still find a lot of value in this album, particularly upon repeat listens. "Last Dance" holds another personal spot in my heart, "Pictures of You" is another great pop song contained in a 7 1/2 minute goth jam, and it's just one big embrace of the darkness with lots of extended instrumental breaks. Music!

My only Public Image Ltd album is one I got back in my punk rock days because I'd finally heard about this other band from Johnny Rotten. It's called 9 and it really speaks to how few albums I used to have. I remembered the album fairly well even though I know when I got it I was a bit underwhelmed by it. I appreciate it a bit more now but I bet there are better PIL albums out there. But just remembering it so vividly made me realize that I knew it better than most albums I now profess to like. A piece of me misses limiting my musical scope so much that I'd give everything enough time to marinate and form attachments to me rather than the way too many albums I now own that I could never keep up with.

Of course post punk/punk/college rock/whatever were pushing things forward from the new wave and Fugazi is where I'll awkwardly start this conversation. The second half of 13 Songs, the Margin Walker EP, shows them already expanding to two guitars, keeping the energy high, and just being Fugazi. I also have a recording of a concert from 1989 and they had already developed such a strong cohesiveness together, like a living organism just playing off instinct and working together, it's just natural.

So punk. And pop-punk, before it was a dirty word. The Lookout! brand of pop punk was in full effect as The Mr. T. Experience put out the EP Big Black Bugs Bleed Blue Blood. I first got this album because it was such a good value of so many songs for the regular price of a CD. 31 Songs! But it turns out that was mostly bonus content and originally BBBBBB was just an EP. I got way into the two or three MTX albums I had in high school. Catchy pop music that I could get away with liking because it was punk rock. And you know, better than the actual pop music on the radio!

On the grittier, gutterier side of punk was Crimpshrine, whose Duct Tape Soup also brings me back. Listening to it this time I realized that there is something strangely romantic about this band. Political and dirty sounding and not trying to appease any commercial viability yet some part of them embraced some traditional values, particularly in the field of romance. Particularly "Closed Doors, Closed Minds," which argues that romance and love are giving, not taking away, that they shouldn't be taken as a threat, etc. The more I listen to it the more concern I have about what it's really getting at. There's reasons women would take such actions with offense and they kind of gloss over any concerns. It's weird. And then "Pretty Mess," which used to be one of my favorite songs, I am now realizing that it sounds like a man loves this woman in a way that he wants to help fix/rescue her in some ultimate male fantasy. Weird because Jeff Ott turned out to be one of the most PC personalities in punk rock. But that's Fifteen, not Crimpshrine.

And of course Operation Ivy. Finally I talk about OPIV! Here is my story of first hearing this band. My brother had that early Green Day album where they covered "Knowledge" but I all I knew is that I didn't know nothing about the origin of that song. Then some time passed. I got more into ska punk and whatnot and heard their name dropped all the time as an influence on every damn band I listened to (and I knew of a tribute album as well). I talked about this mythical band with my friends because this was before the Internet made it super easy to hear about a band and hear their music immediately. Finally one day we were at Wherehouse Music (or as we called it because of its unfortunate spelling "whorehouse music") and they had those listening station things and my friend Dustin finally decided to check out this Operation Ivy band and while I was listening to Five Iron Frenzy or some such thing he took a listen to them. And he had a reaction similar to my initial reaction: These are cheap recordings! It sounds like crap! And they don't have horns! What kind of ska band doesn't have horns?? I think he might have gotten it anyway and given it enough time because for whatever reason I ended up getting it as well and became pretty obsessed with it. Mostly for the punk side of the equation probably. Today it makes me laugh that I thought the recording quality sounded crappy because that's what punk is supposed to sound like. In fact, it was probably just a couple years after that that I started complaining about stuff sounding "overproduced." But anyway, the music. The energy is what did it for me. No wonder that's the name of the album. And we liked that Tim from Rancid had this other band. We loved the message of Unity and all that. And it really got me into punk rock and its ethos and this song kind of explained everything to me about why I liked the music that I liked and didn't like the radio stuff:

Operation Ivy "Artificial Life"

Ok speaking of life changing music, Pixies. Doolittle. Need I say more? I'm gonna. Their other truly great album. Maybe my favorite? As it stands, I think I'm ready to call it for Doolittle. The energy is just up there. The screaming is there. "Monkey Gone To Heaven" is one of the weirdest universally loved songs out there. Kim's bass really comes across as well. And "Wave of Mutilation," can't deny that one is a classic. I remember meeting this cool girl in high school and knowing each other was cool because we were the only two in our group of friends that seemed to know the words to "Hey" and we felt the need to go through the whole first verse to show off how bizarre this thing was that we both had memorized. I think Doolittle was my first Pixies album and when I got it I told my buddy what albums I had gotten and we were both impressed at me because it was the first time I had gone to the record store and come home with a couple albums, neither of which could be described as punk or ska. This is the album to branch out to, and it really showed me the possibilities of music beyond my narrow perception. This could therefore be considered the album that set it off for me. Got me exploring the vast world of music. This could be the album that is to blame for me having over 40,000 songs on my hard drive, which is the reason I felt it necessary to do this project in the first place. Doolittle! Oh, and it's also cool because the whole thing kicks off with this song is about Luis Buñuel and surrealism.

Pixies "Debaser"

There were also some B sides from this year that were quite good, most notably Kim song "Into the White" and a sweet "UK Surf" version of "Wave of Mutilation." All very fantastic.

And to show off the influence as much as possible, my iPod decided to follow this up immediately with Bleach by Nirvana. I don't have enough to say about this to justify not putting it down there but I do like that "About A Girl" song but it's not as good as real Pixies songs.

And finally on to hip hop! 1989 was a breath of fresh air after all the politically charged angry hip hop I came across from 1988. Mostly because of De La Soul, whose 3 Feet High And Rising sounds like a game changer. Positivity, the D.A.I.S.Y. age, tons of internal rhymes and intelligence and goofiness and three rappers playing off each other so flawlessly, it just all works. And according to my hip hop head friend, it's one of their lesser albums! (confession: I only had this album for a long time, until the giveaway thing they did).

By comparison, Young MC seemed pretty old school for 1989. His style was pretty similar to the earlier 80s stuff. He could rap really fast (which today is heard all over the place, but in this context it was pretty damn impressive) and of course "Bust A Move" is a jam.

And The Beastie Boys just destroyed on Paul's Boutique. Such a dense album! So much to pick up on that even doing this I made myself listen to it twice. Just to pick up on more of it. And now I already forget what I was going to say about it. It's...good...and the Dust Brothers just like, did such an awesome job and it had rapping that was all good and stuff.

Extras Section:

• Allroy's Revenge seems like a good step up for All. More energetic, kinda starting to develop their own identity outside The Descendents.
• Stone Roses are good ok?
• Lou Reed's New York is another classic.
• Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire." Reminds me of car trips and trying to sing along.
• "Like A Prayer" might be my favorite Madonna song.
• Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 is one hot pop album that reminds me of Justin Timberlake (not because of the super bowl thing but it does seem very appropriate that they were singing together) in its high energy, unapologetically pop music that still has an edge and is meant to be played loud. Yeah!
• Yo La Tengo really hit their signature sound with President Yo La Tengo, which includes a trademark 10+ minute jam.
• Math rock is alive!!! Slint put out Tweez which is not quite Spiderland but it's definitely laying the foundation to one of my favorite obscure genres of hardcore/post rock/whatever.
• The Vandals put out a country album called Slippery When Ill and then years later put out a version of mostly the same songs called The Vandals Sing Really Bad Original Country Tunes. I got it because I like their Christmas album but didn't really care for these country tunes. I thought it'd be funny but a lot of it is just kind of offensive. I just can't tell if these guys are being satirical sometimes. Or at least the level of satire. I can't find the line but they seem to cross it.

Next Time:

Onto the 90s! That "college rock" will give way to grunge which will give way to terrible music which won't be represented here. Stuff will happen. Specifically for 1990 here's what will happen:

The Breeders, Fugazi keeps destroying it, Jawbreaker, lots more Mr T Experience, Pixies try and follow up Doolittle (and don't do too bad a job at it!), Social Distortion, a very popular Sonic Youth album, a very popular They Might Be Giants album, and Treepeople (pre-Built to Spill!). I actually don't have all that much mustic from 1990 but 1991 is going to be nuts.