90s alt rock

The Offspring Helped Me Find My Self Esteem

The Offspring’s “Self Esteem” lyrics got me through some rough years.

Damn you, Samantha.

I never trusted you, and I was right.

But logic has zero ability to defend itself against the deluge of hormones that release during your teenage years.

In particular, there’s that remarkable age range where getting fucked over is magnified by knowing you’re getting fucked over. Then you get “rewarded” with the double bonus of beating yourself up for walking right into the torture chamber.

The only song for me while Samantha held me in her web was “Self Esteem” by The Offspring.

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Forgotten 90s Alternative Rock Songs

By Drew Rosen 5 Comments

So much of 90s alternative rock has been forgotten, left behind to die on a pressed CD, or trapped inside an archaic MP3 player that is as worthless as a brick.

This is my running list of 90s alt-rock bands and songs that kick ass; the tunes that helped shape my soul–many of which, still get played in regular rotation all of these years later.

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Spring Break 1995: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones Have the Pictures to Prove It

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

This is the story of four boys from Queens making their way to Cancun, Mexico for Spring Break in the 1990s. With a legal drinking age of 18, going south of the border was the only viable destination.

Thanks to an old school travel agency, the kind where you sit on the other side of a desk from a human being and plan a trip, we were able to make our booking and pay in installments. Without the “layaway” option, that $600 trip would have never been a reality.

Every other week, I would stop by Empress Travel in Bayside to drop off an envelope filled with cash. All told, I probably had to work over 100 hours to pay for the trip. But as we all learn, the sacrifice to make “forever” memories are always worth it.

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Tom Petty’s “Walls” Paved the Way for the 1996 New York Yankees Championship

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

Sports and superstitious rituals go together like baseball and chicken.

Well, that’s true if you ask Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, who correlated his hitting success to chowing down on pre-game chicken.

And that’s not even the strangest sports ritual.

We can pick apart Wayne Gretzky’s baby powdered hockey stick, Jason Giambi’s golden thong, and Moises Alou’s “pee hands.” But today, we are here to talk about how I single-handily helped the New York Yankees win their 23rd world championship after an 18-year dry spell back in 1996.

OK, OK. I didn’t help the Yanks win alone.

My sister helped.

Tom Petty helped, too.

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Kmart Radio Network: The Soundtrack of Minimum Wage

By Drew Rosen 3 Comments

As a Kmart employee back in the 90s, I spent many days and nights having my ears infiltrated by the Kmart Radio Network.

It was never a smooth transition from Bryan Adams, “Everything I Do” to an ad for two-ply paper towels. There was no easy way to shift from the Muzak version of “Always” by Atlantic Starr into “Save with Layway!”

But that was the Kmart way.

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Mother Love Bone’s “Chloe Dancer” Is Always With Me

By Drew Rosen 3 Comments

Almost 30 years later, and the opening piano notes of “Chloe Dancer / Crown of Thorns” still give me chills.

While most songs ebb and flow from the playlist of my life, Mother Love Bone remains a constant. When you find a song that still gives you the feels decades later, whisking you away to another time, another place, you hold on–tightly.

No band better bridges the 80s heavy metal era with the emergence of 90s grunge than Sub Pop rejects Mother Love Bone. MLB’s frontman, Andrew Wood, was a fucking legend, and in life and death, a pioneer.

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90s alt rock

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