Day: September 2, 2010

Pitchfork’s Top Track of the 1990s

What? You were expect­ing “Sum­mer Babe?”

I spent the bet­ter part of the day talk­ing about how fun­ny it’d be if the top 20 of their list were just crammed with tracks like this. The mem­o­ries came flood­ing back. Remem­ber Dish­wal­la? Could “Tubthump­ing” make the top 20?

For my mon­ey, it’s a shame that they won’t. If noth­ing else, the ’90s were a won­der­ful­ly eclec­tic decade musi­cal­ly. Sure, every­one remem­bers the boy band tyran­ny that book­end­ed the decade and the post-grunge void in between, but some real­ly nut­ty music cracked the main­stream. Would Crash Test Dum­mies even be pos­si­ble today?

Part of me wish­es this would top the list. The song was freakin’ inescapable! (I’m aware that that’s not a tes­ta­ment to its cul­tur­al val­ue, but it’s unde­ni­ably more a part of Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al mem­o­ry than most of the songs on that list.)

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My First Indie Rock Album

Lest you think I’m a total wee­nie for admit­ting that I liked some maudlin tunes, my first indie rock album was Codeine’s The White Birch. I bought it at Repo Records after run­ning two miles from Haver­ford Col­lege in the mid­dle of a track meet. I ran four miles round trip to buy a Sub Pop album. You don’t know how easy you have it today!

That album led me to write the band. Would you believe they wrote me back and told me to check out Gas­tr del Sol? That’s how my life­long addic­tion to music began.

My first indie rock LP? That’s easy. Bought Jon Spencer Blues Explo­sion’s Orange at Young Ones in Kutz­town. I did­n’t even have a prop­er turntable at the time! Fell in love with this record so much. Still can’t get enough of it.

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A Word on Urban Redevelopment

It’s not a social good in and of itself. 

I also won­der if folks who are all devel­op­ment uber alles still con­cern them­selves with things like “sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” which seems to be a watch­word among the gen­tri­fy­ing classes.

The knee-jerk reac­tion to build things like music venues in blight­ed areas is tan­ta­mount to “drill, baby, drill.” Do you real­ly want to be asso­ci­at­ed with that?

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In Case You Forgot How Bad the ’90s Were

Antho­ny Mic­cio and I have rhap­sodized this song at great length. Heck, I even wrote about Secret Samad­hi once for Sty­lus.

If you grew up any­where in Penn­syl­va­nia in the ’90s, Live were inescapable. Think of it as a post-grunge Dave Matthews Band. You know, the sort of band that believes they are sav­ing the word with each awk­ward rhyme. It was awful.

Worse? I’m guess­ing this post has just made me num­ber one for “Lakini’s Juice” SEO. I guess that feel­ing I’m mis­tak­ing for pride is real­ly just schaden­freude.

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Pitchfork’s Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s

I’d been wait­ing to write how awestruck I’ve been by this, but I can’t con­tain myself any longer. This list has been facemelt­ing­ly per­fect, at least from the per­spec­tive of any­one who’s been read­ing Pitch­fork since the days of dial-up. I can hard­ly be both­ered with the snooty crit­ic’s picks, but what fas­ci­nates me are the entries for the cor­po­rate rock enti­ties that defined a gen­er­a­tion who thought they were rebelling against cor­po­rate entities.

Favorites of the moment include the entry for Oasis’ “Live For­ev­er” and the Verve’s “Bit­ter­sweet Sym­pho­ny,” to say noth­ing of New Order’s “Regret,” the song that intro­duced me to their entire cat­a­logue. Those open­ing strains still stop me in my tracks.

Am I a lit­tle bummed no one has out and out shocked the read­er­ship by includ­ing the Verve Pipe? Am I amazed that nei­ther Live nor Dave Matthews Band have made an appear­ance? Which U2 song will make the list? I hope they pick some­thing from Zooropa. The ’90s weren’t per­fect and nei­ther were we. I hope they acknowl­edge that somehow.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 6