Your 90's playlist

[The Curmudgeon]

No, I haven't died. Apologies for the shocking lack of content over the last week, I went away on some horror movie style location which was in the countryside. Big fancy hotel, rolling hills, all that.. and no internet. It was like being in the fucking dark ages.

Anyway, I'm back in civilization now. And on our way to the official Middle of Nowhere, Mrs C was using her Apple Music account to play a selection of her own curated playlists. One of them was all 90's music, and it really showed how deeply spoiled we were when it came to great bands and great songs back then, especially compared with whats out there now.

That's not a knock on the bands that are out there now, but what's so depressing about the 90's playlist isn't how great the music was, but that alternative music was BIG. I know, it doesn't really matter if it sells or whatever, but these were anthems for everyone back then, not just a select hardcore audience. And you just don't get that now.

Anyway, there was such a huge range of bands from the 90's that we probably have different ones that really soundtracked that time for us. And that's what we're here to talk about today. What bands/albums/songs/artists really MADE the 90's for you? It's weird, but in the 90's I was getting obsessed with guys like Bowie and Sly & the Family Stone, so those don't really count. 90's music here only.

Special mention to two bands; I still know every word to pretty much every Nirvana song released (and a lot unreleased) thanks to a friend of mine, and that music still sounds untouchable today. The Manic Street Preachers were a late bloomer for me, a band I actually casually dismissed first time around until that same guy who loved Nirvana played me the Holy Bible. They're one of my all time favourite bands now, but they didn't get too much rotation in the actual 90's. Go figure.

So, in no real order, my 90's albums?



Prince - "Love Symbol"

Prince was obviously my main obsession in the 90's, so this and the Gold Experience and Purple Rain were probably my three most played albums in the 90's. Prince was really the only act where I would try and get as much information as I could in the pre-net days, pouring over album sleeves for any info I could get, which lead to me buying other albums from key influences and anyone he happened to even namedrop in a song (in "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker", he says "my favourite song, she said, and it was Joni singing", which after some research I found was Joni Mitchell, which lead to me buying Joni Mitchell albums. That sort of thing.

Blur - Blur



Blur were a 90's mainstay for me. I first bought their 3rd album, the now iconic Parklife, and that was one of those albums that both me and my friends had, so it was on pretty much all the time. I drifted away from them after the more cartoonish, light "Great Escape" (although in retrospect it does have some great songs on it), but their American alternative influenced "Blur" album had me firmly back in the Blur camp. I still remember my friend, who heard the album in a record store first, playing me "Song 2" saying "you fucking need to hear this." That and Parklife were among my most played albums in the 90's.

Ash - 1977



One of those albums I remember specifically taking a bus ride into town to buy, Ash's debut album has some all time classic Brit-pop singles on there, but it remains a 90's throwback. I can't even remember the last time I played it. The singles live on really only through iTunes through their Greatest Hits album, but this was an album I played to death back in the day but has lay on the shelf for many years.

R.E.M - Monster



I'd always been familiar with R.E.M through constant bombardment of songs like "Shiny Happy People" and "Losing My Religion", but I first heard this at a party, and it blew me away. I always assumed R.E.M were these radio friendly pop guys, not this brooding, edgy fucking COOL band I was hearing. I went out and bought into their back catalogue a bit, and recently collected the lot, but it was Monster that was, and remains, my favourite.



Bis - New Transistor Heroes

Bis were always a fairly niche prospect, which made it all the better that it was the same guy who got me into Nirvana who got me into them as well, so I had someone to share my love of Bis with, because literally no-one else would go near them. This album was a slow burner in the 90's, my friend actually returned it to the store the next day because he hated it so much, only going back to buy it back again a few months later after I eventually won him round on it, and it's quirky, offbeat nature packed with pure pop choruses and stupid shit like Dinosaur Germs and Sweet Shop Avengers never really got old. I still love it now.


That's just a few from me. Like I said, WHAT a time for music, arguably the best ever. What were your jams?

[trashcanman]

Well, I was pretty basic at the time, being a late-blooming teenager from a family who thought rock music was an instrument of Satan and all. But here are the albums that were the most important to me at the time, although in hindsight I could make a much cooler list using my older and wiser pool of underground knowledge. But in the name of being honest, here's what I was actually listening to.


Aerosmith - Get a Grip

This album was an absolute monster when I was in high school. Spawned countless massive hits and some of the most iconic music videos of the era, and pretty much introduced me to real rock and roll. I never got to listen to my own music until I got my own stereo for Christmas and I remember randomly tuning the stations, eventually landing on the local rock station and pretty much never changing the dial again. Aerosmith went straight to the head of the class, largely on the strength of those inescapable hits.



Rage Against the Machine- Self Titled

I remember hearing Freedom on the radio and just not comprhending what I was hearing. It was rap, but not like RAP, and it was heavy as all fuck. I kind of laughed it off at first, but the seed was planted. Eventually Killing in the Name broke them big, but I still had no idea just how great they really were. My friend and I used to plan which albums we were going to buy and traded tapes back and forth. One night he came home with this one and we scurried into his family's RV away from his strict parents and listened to it and our minds were blown. They cut the "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" chant out of the radio version so when that shit hit on the album we about lost it. Just an amazing moment from an amazing album that ended up coloring if not defining my taste for the rest of my life.



Green Day - Dookie

Babby's first punk rock album opened up a whole new world for me. I was into classic rock mostly with occasional forays into heavier stuff, but this: this fucking album (along with The Offspring's "Smash") opened a door I've never closed since. It was fast, it was hard, it was hilarious, and it said the shit I thought about, but nobody actually said. Longview was like a revelation and when Basket Case came out I knew I had to own this album. This actually was the first real rock album I paid for with my own money (having shoplifted mostly Aerosmith tapes at this point) and I definitely got my money's worth.



Guns n Roses - Use Your Illusion

In the late 80's and early 90's there just was not a better band than these guys. Sorry. Nirvana and them may have took what the underground had been doing for a decade and brought it to the mainstream, but GNR were simply on another level. The combined punk's attitude, heavy metal aggressiveness, classic rock swagger, and a insane level of musical artistry into something else entirely. This band wasn't just music, it was an experience. This double album is right up there with the likes of London Calling and Tommy in terms of rock music accomplishments and ambition. It also pretty much spelled the end of classic rock as a commercial entity. After these discs, it had clearly reached its peak and had nowhere left to go. It was time to let alternative music have its day.


Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese

And have its day, it did. I don't know how a thing like Primus happens. There's probably no weirder, less palatable band in the history of music, and yet somehow these guys topped the charts. Claypool's bizarre hillbilly hipster routine (to this day I do not know if that's his real personality or if it's a schtick) and even wilder bass noodlings combined with looney guitar and lyrics about tweakers and he-cats interspersed with interludes featuring bass cello sea shanties and shower songs about "pulling the pud" made for insane listening at best. And I fucking loved it. Tommy the Cat remains one of my most favorite songs ever and Jerry was a Racecar driver is still one of the most original sounding things ever to hit the radio. This may be the only album I've ever bought thrice. My music collection can never be complete without it.

[The Curmudgeon]

Shit, I forgot about Dookie. Yeah, that was a monster album for me too. RATM I liked but never really got into until later, and it was the "Big Ones!" Aerosmith CD with those same hits you mentioned and a whole ton more. Played the hell out of that one, and only recently upgraded to the new double album Best Of.

I think we're kind of alike in that I too was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to music. I didn't really "discover" music until I was about 14, and then it was just an insane tidle wave of stuff from all over the place. Fun fact, I've just bought my two thousandth and 16th CD this week, so I technically have a CD for every year there is. Or something.

[Ben]

2016 CDs? Holy...

There's nothing worth mentioning that I listened to *in* the 90s, since I didn't hit my teens until the 2000s. But I played the damn surface off of Alice in Chains's Dirt in the early 2000s. Stone Temple Pilots's Core and Metallica's Black Album were other favorites of mine from the 90s. And pretty much all of Megadeth's stuff prior to Risk. It's still probably my favorite era of music.

[trashcanman]

Oh god, STP was big for me too. After Purple came out I thought they might be the next Led Zeppelin. Loved that band. So diverse in their approach, but still always recognizable as themselves. It's too bad Weiland was such a fool and wasted most of his career on heroine.