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Post by kds on Jul 28, 2021 12:30:19 GMT
Ok, this is what I was after. This is some great reading! In the 90's music seemed to get into a more stripped down mode, after the synth-drenched Euro-rock 80s (not a bad thing for a teen-aged me). This worked for me because I was relatively settled down at that time, married and raising a family. There was a certain rawness to much of the music, and there was something inviting about that. It seemed a little more intimate, and appeared more soulful. At least that's what I got out of it. Lenny Kravitz put out a few tunes that caught my attention (although he butchered Guess Who's "American Woman"). And what about the one-offs? Fastball with "The Way". Toad the Wet Sprocket, anyone? I liked some of Kravitz's early material, but I kind of checked out on him around 1998 when he released the album that included Fly, which also included his terrible version of American Woman. I like Fastball's The Way for nostalgic purposes as that song was big when I graduated HS in 1998, and went to Ocean City, Maryland for "Senior Week." I still don't think it's a terribly good song though, and it sort of copped the melody from Besame Mucho. Toad the Wet Sprocket had a couple of songs I liked, like many of the bands that were often labelled "college rock" in the 1990s. These were kind of more stripped down, poppy rock groups like Toad, The Gin Blossoms, The Spin Doctors, Counting Crows, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Barenaked Ladies. I really didn't like these groups back then, but I've come around on them a little bit. Except for Mrs. Jones, that song can still bugger off. And I never could stand the Barenaked Ladies. But, the others all had a couple decent songs. I even saw Gin Blossoms in concert a few years ago, and it was decent.
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Post by kds on Jul 28, 2021 12:31:49 GMT
I could say I hated 90's music, but that's not true. My taste has always leaned towards softer music; never been a metalhead, always preferred melody and clearly sung vocals. All I remember about the 90's is my brother trying to turn me on to all the new bands, and it was all loud, thrashing guitars, pounding drums, and somebody yelling or screaming. There was stuff I liked, but it wasn't the stuff everybody was raving about. The older acts I liked were breaking up or putting out garbage. Last Kinks album was 1993; I loved it, bought it the day it was released, in fact I listened to it at the record store with the clerk who loved the Kinks as much as I did. That was probably the last time I was that excited about a new release. That year sucked, too - the Kinks were supposed to play Seattle Labor Day weekend, but they cancelled. Terrible time to be a Beach Boys fan, when all we got was garbage like Summer in Stripes and Stars and Paradise. It fell to Brian to give us some worthwhile music. There's probably more good music out in the last 30 years than I'm aware of; that era where everyone listened to mainstream radio, and heard a wide variety of good stuff is long gone. I've spent the last three decades trying to catch up on a lot of stuff from before my time, or stuff I missed the first time around. That's more or less what I've been doing over the last ten years. I've found this exercise immensely more rewarding than trying to hunt down newer bands like I did for much of the 2000s.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 28, 2021 12:43:02 GMT
A lot of those "college rock" or "alternative" (but not grunge) bands were what I always thought of as good-enough music. Many of the hits, even, weren't things I'd have gone out of my way for ... but I wouldn't turn the channel or walk out of a bar because of. I appreciated the straightforward approach, and especially the melodic angle, the almost power pop of some of them.
These were the years of an indie (and major label I suppose) resurgence of power pop to some extent. First, you had the Britpop stuff like Oasis that was obviously huge. (I was never a fan! Just because I'm a contrarian? I don't know. But there you have it.) But also around this time you have Greenberry Woods/Splitsville, Cotton Mather, Fountains of Wayne, Apples in Stereo, Jellyfish, Teenage Fanclub, etc.
Less power pop but certainly melodic rock were a local band that had one massive hit, Semisonic. They evolved out of Trip Shakespeare, and they weren't long-lived: frontman Dan Wilson became an in-demand songwriter (too many acts to name, but Adele and Dixie Chicks were some of the most famous results). But that one hit was EVERYWHERE for a year or two in the late '90s. It was of course "Closing Time."
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Post by kds on Jul 28, 2021 12:48:58 GMT
A lot of those "college rock" or "alternative" (but not grunge) bands were what I always thought of as good-enough music. Many of the hits, even, weren't things I'd have gone out of my way for ... but I wouldn't turn the channel or walk out of a bar because of. I appreciated the straightforward approach, and especially the melodic angle, the almost power pop of some of them.
These were the years of an indie (and major label I suppose) resurgence of power pop to some extent. First, you had the Britpop stuff like Oasis that was obviously huge. (I was never a fan! Just because I'm a contrarian? I don't know. But there you have it.) But also around this time you have Greenberry Woods/Splitsville, Cotton Mather, Fountains of Wayne, Apples in Stereo, Jellyfish, Teenage Fanclub, etc.
Less power pop but certainly melodic rock were a local band that had one massive hit, Semisonic. They evolved out of Trip Shakespeare, and they weren't long-lived: frontman Dan Wilson became an in-demand songwriter (too many acts to name, but Adele and Dixie Chicks were some of the most famous results). But that one hit was EVERYWHERE for a year or two in the late '90s. It was of course "Closing Time." "Good enough" music is a perfect description of those bands. They were better than the grunge groups (IMO anyway), and far better than what happened in the late 1990s, but still sort of "meh." Other than Oasis (who I couldn't, and still can't, stand), I was pretty unaware of the Brit Pop / Indie stuff that was happening in the 1990s. It wasn't until around 2002, when I met a coworker who was really into that stuff. He kept saying that as a classic rock fan, I'd really enjoy it. While I appreciated the approach, I just never thought the songs were all that great. And, like Fastball's The Way, Closing Time is another song that I always associate with being down in Ocean City for Senior Week. I mentioned in the Shout Box that it's rare for me to associate songs with great times of my life in real time, especially once we get past 1995 or so, but these two songs and big time examples because I didn't have the luxury of being able to control the radio that week. Oh, another was Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies (boy, there's a name that couldn't fly today). Remember when swing come back? Swing music? Damn, the late 90s were weird.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 28, 2021 12:59:19 GMT
Swing and ska both were oddball temporary detours in the mid-late 90s that never did it for me. And it was in that era that I had been a jazz guitar major (briefly) and big jazz fan. People would be so confused: "if you like jazz, why wouldn't you love !?"
Yet another Minnesota connection on the former. (I can't help myself.) Brian Setzer (formerly of the Stray Cats) became a Minnesotan when he and his wife moved to Minneapolis to be near her family. I did appreciate his music in those years, but I can't say I went out of my way for it. Mostly I just love his guitar playing. The other big bands of the era, I can do without entirely.
The ska derived stuff, I never liked at all. Not one bit.
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Post by kds on Jul 28, 2021 13:11:08 GMT
Swing and ska both were oddball temporary detours in the mid-late 90s that never did it for me. And it was in that era that I had been a jazz guitar major (briefly) and big jazz fan. People would be so confused: "if you like jazz, why wouldn't you love !?"
Yet another Minnesota connection on the former. (I can't help myself.) Brian Setzer (formerly of the Stray Cats) became a Minnesotan when he and his wife moved to Minneapolis to be near her family. I did appreciate his music in those years, but I can't say I went out of my way for it. Mostly I just love his guitar playing. The other big bands of the era, I can do without entirely.
The ska derived stuff, I never liked at all. Not one bit. I never got the ska thing either. Then, you had the bands like 311 and Sublime, who had a little bit of ska, reggae, and rap in their sound. I have a good friend who was super into Sublime. If I ever hear Santeria again in my life, it'll be too soon.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 28, 2021 13:12:33 GMT
The closest I came to liking any of the ska-related music of that era was finding Gwen Stefani ridiculously attractive. So if that makes me a ska fan, well...
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Post by kds on Jul 28, 2021 13:16:00 GMT
The closest I came to liking any of the ska-related music of that era was finding Gwen Stefani ridiculously attractive. So if that makes me a ska fan, well...
As a teenage male when No Doubt got big, I can't fault anyone for that. I will say that, as much as I don't like ska, No Doubt's earlier material was far, far better than the stuff they did in the 00s, and especially the stuff she did when she became a solo artist.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 28, 2021 13:23:54 GMT
I can't say I minded No Doubt all that much. But her solo career in particular took her music into areas that didn't interest me at all. In fact it felt pretty odd for a woman in her mid-30s moving into music that sounded like nothing so much as teen pop. For me--just to my mindset--that seemed like a step backward, an intentional regression. But I suppose it was fiscally rewarding if nothing else.
So I guess chalk up another one for the '90s: with No Doubt, it was Gwen Stefani's heyday. In fact some of those songs still stand up as being memorable, at least.
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Post by kds on Jul 28, 2021 13:30:48 GMT
I can't say I minded No Doubt all that much. But her solo career in particular took her music into areas that didn't interest me at all. In fact it felt pretty odd for a woman in her mid-30s moving into music that sounded like nothing so much as teen pop. For me--just to my mindset--that seemed like a step backward, an intentional regression. But I suppose it was fiscally rewarding if nothing else.
So I guess chalk up another one for the '90s: with No Doubt, it was Gwen Stefani's heyday. In fact some of those songs still stand up as being memorable, at least.
Maybe she always wanted to be a pop star, and her No Doubt bandmates were the ones who wanted to be a ska group. I remember back in 2005, thinking that there's no way pop music could get worse than Holla Back Girl....how incredibly wrong I was. I'd agree that No Doubt were memorable, though I wouldn't say it was always for the right reasons. That said, Don't Speak wasn't a bad song. Speaking of women in the mid 90s, was anyone bigger than Alanis Morrissette? I remember in the summer of 1995 when You Oughta Know broke, thinking that rock music had a new queen. I thought, and still think, it's a very solid straight forward rock song. Lucky for me, a good friend of mine bought a cassette of Jagged Little Pill while we were at the beach that summer. We listened to it, just to be instantly disappointed. He gave the tape to his sister when we got back to Baltimore.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 28, 2021 14:11:02 GMT
The default thought when discussing the music of the '90s is the rise of grunge, or maybe alternative more generally. But there was more to it, and you have hit on another of the big themes of the '90s: increasing prominence of women in music. There were the alternative rock bands such as Hole, Babes in Toyland, the Breeders; the rock-pop singer songwriters like Alanis Morissette, Natalie Merchant, Lisa Loeb, Sheryl Crow, and Liz Phair; the folkie popsters like the Indigo Girls, Jewel, or Sarah McLachlan; the more experimental (and confessional) musicians like Tori Amos and Fiona Apple; soul and R 'n' B singers like Erykah Badu, India Arie and Lauryn Hill; modern R 'n' B vocal pop acts like TLC, Destiny's Child, and En Vogue; and on and on.
Across genres, women were more prominent not just as background singers or as eye-candy frontwomen. They increasingly asserted themselves as musicians, as artists, as instrumentalists, as narrative voices (not just singing some guy's songs). By the end of the '90s, we had the anti-Woodstock '99, Lilith Fair.
In fact, it became annoying to me to some degree. My personal experience of this time was that people were so quick to jump in on the "women in music" narrative that (in my opinion) they actually became more sexist, lumping all women in music together as "women in music" or some "Lilith Fair crowd" as opposed to evaluating them or appreciating them separately on their merits. I didn't, and don't, care about how "women in music" are perceived any more than I do how "men in music" are; I care about celebrating artists who make great music. (I think people do this all the time. I think we see it now in other ways. That's for another thread, another time.)
Sometime circa 1995 I recall buying a young woman I was interested in a bootleg of Tori Amos, whom she adored. In fact, every woman I knew in those first years of college was in love with Amos and Morissette. It seemed to be a prerequisite for college women aged 18-22 in the mid-90s, or at least those in whose social circles I ran (music and theater geek types, mostly; I don't know what the cool-kid sorority girls were like). So I just kept my Zeppelin and Queen worship in check publicly, to say nothing of Zappa...
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Post by kds on Jul 28, 2021 14:30:46 GMT
Wow, I'd actually forgotten about Lilith Fair.
Speaking of music festivals. I've said that the 1990s were really not kind to heavy metal and hard rock, but the 1990s saw the rise of the metal festival - Ozzfest. When Ozzy came out of retirement in the mid 1990s, Sharon Osbourne tried to get him in Lollapolooza, but was shot down. It's amusing that the "hipper than hip" alterna-fest of the 90s has Journey as one of their headliners for the 2021 version.
But, in response to being shot down, Sharon Osbourne founded a festive for heavy metal fans in Ozzfest. The only downside to Ozzfest was that the late 90s metal scene, at least in the States, was pretty bad. Up and coming acts like Limp Bizkit (Holy mother of God), Incubus, System of a Down, Godsmack (a band I actually liked at first, but tired of pretty quickly), Deftones, Static X, and Slipknot populated the late 90s Ozzfest lineups. This was mostly part of the "Nu metal" movement, a music movement that was equally as annoying as the spelling of nu. Generally lacking in melody and solid guitar and vocal work, these bands relied on detuned guitar, more raw vocals, and rap influence (a lot of these bands had record scratching DJs in their lineups).
Legacy metal acts like Megadeth, Slayer, Motorhead, and Pantera rounded out the early lineups with either Ozzy Osbourne or the reunited Black Sabbath as headliners.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2021 22:51:10 GMT
A lot of those "college rock" or "alternative" (but not grunge) bands were what I always thought of as good-enough music. Many of the hits, even, weren't things I'd have gone out of my way for ... but I wouldn't turn the channel or walk out of a bar because of. I appreciated the straightforward approach, and especially the melodic angle, the almost power pop of some of them.
These were the years of an indie (and major label I suppose) resurgence of power pop to some extent. First, you had the Britpop stuff like Oasis that was obviously huge. (I was never a fan! Just because I'm a contrarian? I don't know. But there you have it.) But also around this time you have Greenberry Woods/Splitsville, Cotton Mather, Fountains of Wayne, Apples in Stereo, Jellyfish, Teenage Fanclub, etc.
Less power pop but certainly melodic rock were a local band that had one massive hit, Semisonic. They evolved out of Trip Shakespeare, and they weren't long-lived: frontman Dan Wilson became an in-demand songwriter (too many acts to name, but Adele and Dixie Chicks were some of the most famous results). But that one hit was EVERYWHERE for a year or two in the late '90s. It was of course "Closing Time." Oh, another was Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies (boy, there's a name that couldn't fly today). Remember when swing come back? Swing music? Damn, the late 90s were weird. Oh right, thanks for reminding me about Cherry Poppin' Daddies! Would you believe they originated in my former home town? Everybody I knew, knew someone in the band. The only redeeming thing about "Zoot Suit Riot" was Weird Al Yankovic's parody "Grapefruit Diet". And thanks for reminding me about that swing craze. All I can think about now are those freakin' annoying Gap commercials!
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Post by kds on Jul 29, 2021 13:02:59 GMT
Oh, another was Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies (boy, there's a name that couldn't fly today). Remember when swing come back? Swing music? Damn, the late 90s were weird. Oh right, thanks for reminding me about Cherry Poppin' Daddies! Would you believe they originated in my former home town? Everybody I knew, knew someone in the band. The only redeeming thing about "Zoot Suit Riot" was Weird Al Yankovic's parody "Grapefruit Diet". And thanks for reminding me about that swing craze. All I can think about now are those freakin' annoying Gap commercials! Of course everybody in town knew someone in the band, there had to be 30 members. (Kidding) I imagine one day we'll look back on the 2010's faux Americana craze the same way we do with late 90s swing.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 29, 2021 14:33:34 GMT
I imagine one day we'll look back on the 2010's faux Americana craze the same way we do with late 90s swing. That's an interesting thought/question: which trends do we just look at as the way it was versus the ones we look at with embarrassment, and why the difference?
My initial guess is, it's more about each individual act than the trend overall. It's easier to look back with respect at the acts that seemed to love that style, who were good at it, and who approached it with a kind of zeal. Whereas you can often see which artists were just doing the popular style because that was the popular style, or which acts were label-created entities "scientifically designed" to fill a market niche, and those are the ones it's hard not to mock.
A generous interpretation of the 90s swing and ska trends might be that some musicians were looking for ways to inject some fun into a somewhat dark and dour music scene.
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