Drewography – 90s alternative rock stuff

If You Want to Understand Me, Start With the Goo Goo Dolls

I don’t attach the Goo Goo Dolls to one night in my life. They’ve been in the passenger seat since a Musician Magazine compilation handed me “We Are the Normal.”

There are bands I associate with moments.

Jimmy Eat World will always bring me back to 9/11.

Third Eye Blind can drop me into the strange freedom of graduating college.

Big Head Todd & The Monsters?

There was that kidney stone incident.

But the Goo Goo Dolls are different.

I don’t associate them with a moment because they’ve been part of all of them. They have been riding shotgun for more than 30 years.

My passenger.

My ride or die.

If you really want to understand me, you probably have to get to know the Goo Goo Dolls first.

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I Traded Spotify for a 60-Day CD Challenge: Why My “Slow Tech” Experiment Stuck

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

After ghosting Spotify for 60 days to revisit my ’90s-’00s CD collection, I discovered that physical media is more than a nostalgia trip—it’s a necessary “slow tech” tool for reclaiming focus from the algorithm.

It was the fall of 1993.

I was standing in the late, great Tower Records on the southeast corner of East 4th Street—that glorious temple of discovery—holding Porno for Pyros’ debut in one hand and Dinosaur Jr.’s Where You Been in the other. I had exactly seventeen dollars and change in my pocket. As a high school student, I could afford one CD, a slice of Ray’s pizza and $1.25 on my shiny new Metrocard for the F train home.

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An Open Letter to Mike White Regarding the Glacial Pace of The White Lotus Season 3

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

Dear Mr. White,

I’m writing to you as a loyal but increasingly twitchy fan of your hit HBO series, The White Lotus. First, let me congratulate you on creating a show where beautiful people look miserable in beautiful places.

Sunday nights are now when I often feel best about myself.

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’00s Alternative Rock Songs You Forgot

By Drew Rosen 1 Comment

The 2000s, a decade often maligned in the annals of music history, stands in the shadow of its more illustrious predecessors. It didn’t have the seismic cultural shifts of the 60s, the rebellious punk energy of the 70s, or the raw grunge angst of the 90s.

The 00s seemed somewhat adrift on the ocean of musical creativity.

NEW: Check out my 90s and 00s Alt Rock radio station, streaming now!

As a product of the Guns N’ Roses era, who had embraced grunge with arms wide open, I found myself at sea, searching for the next big thing and resenting the tempo of dance music and the din of auto-tune.

The start of the new century was inundated with headlines decrying the death of rock, and seemingly, the world succumbed to the funeral dirges.

Yet, the heart of rock never stopped beating, it was just pulsing quietly (or not so quietly!) in the songs of artists who were still crafting melodies, transmitting to us about love, life, and everything in between.

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Echoes of Emo: A Sunny Day Real Estate Retrospective

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

It was 1995. Or was it 1994?

I surveyed the room, angered by the sea of middle-aged music journalists opting to stand around in their horn-rimmed glasses while Sunny Day Real Estate brought their blend of Midwest emo to a few hundred of us at the Knitting Factory.

My buddy and I had waited what seemed like forever to see our favorite band in the Big Apple, and there was no way in hell that these scruffy and stiff “adults” were going to stop us from dancing our balls off.

So we moshed.

And slammed.

It was a pit of two, nowhere near enough elbows and knees flying in the air to sustain the momentum.

We were asked to stop nicely.

We were asked to stop not so nicely.

We were threatened to stop.

After the show, on the E train back to Queens, we talked about our disappointment in the crowd.

“That will NEVER be me,” the 18-year-old me declared.

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Forgotten 90s Alternative Rock Songs – Part II

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

When I brain-dumped some of my favorite forgotten 90s alternative rock songs, I never expected to receive so much love. But I should have known better: Gen X will never let the tunes that defined us die. In the spirit of keeping page load times in Google’s good graces, I present Forgotten 90s Alternative Rock Songs: PART II. Check out Part I here.

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It was the fall of 1993.

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