90s alternative rock stuff
The Nelson twins . Too hard to be soft and too soft to be hard.
Their manufactured fashion sense and pretty boy looks made it hard for anyone to take them seriously.
But I did.
From the moment I hit record on my Fisher VCR to tape the “Love and Affection” video on Saturday Morning Videos, I was enamored.
[Read more…] about The Nelson Twins Asked: “Will you love me, like you loved me yesterday?” And the answer is, “YES!”
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.
[Read more…] about Mother Love Bone’s “Chloe Dancer” Is Always With Me
It wasn’t exactly a tsunami of pain, more like incessant ripples of water washing over me, eroding my sense of control, one small wave at a time.
It was a kidney stone attack.
If you’ve had one before, you’re feeling a great deal of pity for your humble author. If you’re fortunate to have never experienced the excruciating hell of a foreign substance rattling against an organ, I hope you never do.
I was standing at the console of one of our on-air studios at 1633 Broadway, prepping another 90s-heavy VH1 music block to beam up to a satellite and back down to the car radios of people willing to pay a monthly charge.
It was a regular Friday afternoon…until it wasn’t.
My stomach roiled. My chest heaved.
There was an uncontrollable force within me, contorting my body, contracting muscles I never knew I had. How could I be feeling hot and cold at once? Is this what a cloud feels like during a thunderstorm?
[Read more…] about Big Head Todd and the Kidney Stone Attack
It all has to start somewhere.
I’m not talking about the Big Bang or Creationism. I am referencing how we uncover the music that we love, the tunes that shape our souls.
When you’re younger, you never want to admit the source of where you discovered new music. Perhaps we didn’t want our older siblings to get the credit. Or maybe it wasn’t cool to say, ‘I heard that song in a department store’; ‘I read about it in the magazine.’; ‘It came on the radio.’ And so on.
[Read more…] about Ode to the 90s Alternative Compilation CD
It was an experiment rooted in greed that was destined not to end well.
As my teenage life became centered around live music, it was clear I needed additional income to support my concert addition. At an average price of $13 a ticket, plus that patented 35% Ticketmaster surcharge, how was this high school kid supposed to get by?
The formula I devised was straightforward: Buy a few extra tickets to a show I was planning to attend anyway, and sell them for enough profit to cover the expense of my ticket.
It was a win-win, making the mass-transit travel and early-morning West Coast Video trips (they were a Ticketmaster outlet and ill-fated VHS rental chain) a bit more tolerable.
[Read more…] about Confessions of a 90s Alt-Rock Ticket Scalper
I hate clichés. I go out of my way not to use them and not to be one. But clichés are ubiquitous for a reason. Sometimes they can’t be avoided, and sometimes, it can be enjoyable to become one.
So when I turned the volume to high in my forest green 1997 Saturn SC2 coupe and cued up Third Eye Blind’s Graduate, literally minutes after I actually graduated college, I knew exactly what the fuck I was doing.
Cliché Central.
I waited a long time to escape the halls of academia. And while I did enjoy college supremely more than my other educational endeavors, I had no problem waving goodbye and leaving higher ed in the rearview mirror. Not just on that day, but for the rest of my life.
So when Stephan Jenkins posed the question, “Can I graduate?!,” it sounded more like a demand than a quiz, and I could relate. I did the work, now let me the fuck out.
[Read more…] about Third Eye Blind “Graduate”