I’m Going to See Pavement

I guess the only way for me to stom­ach the Mann Music Cen­ter’s out­ra­geous ser­vice charges is to buy a tick­et from a friend.

I don’t get out to shows much these days, but this should feel like jump­ing into a hot tub time machine back to my Philly music scene hey­day, cir­ca 2003. Expect to see famil­iar faces!

Pitchfork Missed Another ’90s Gem

Not real­ly, but Geg­gy Tah popped into my head while I was on vaca­tion and I had to ask myself if it was real. Post-grunge was­n’t all Nick­el­back and Creed! There was tons of stuff like this.

It was­n’t all gold. I mean, there was this, too.

Yeah, I can remem­ber bit­ing my tongue quite often dur­ing col­lege. Peo­ple real­ly liked stuff like this! What I need to do is get down a few songs that I feel real­ly cap­tured the evolv­ing ’90s Zeit­geist. It was a weird decade!

The Return of Rockism?

Pitch­fork may have done a good job of includ­ing dance music in their top 200 tracks of the 1990s, but a cer­tain some­one was con­spic­u­ous­ly absent. Have you ever heard of a record­ing artist named Garth Brooks? How about Sha­nia Twain? Must I even men­tion Brit­ney Spears?

I real­ly loved their picks, but they struck me as the return of rock­ism. I feel that the “r” word, like Volde­mort, has been whis­pered in cer­tain cir­cles in the past year or so about Pitch­fork. This list con­firmed that sus­pi­cion for me. Is it wrong to like pop­u­lar music again? Should we just pre­tend that we could always live in an indie bub­ble and nev­er be con­cerned with the likes of, say, Sug­ar Ray?

What I’d love to see Pitch­fork come back and do next week is reveal their staff lists, or give us a best of the rest. As I wrote last night, the ’90s in ret­ro­spect were a won­der­ful­ly eclec­tic decade. Garth Brooks, gangs­ta rap, Guns N’ Ros­es, and grunge? Yes, please! I know it’s dif­fi­cult to be per­fect­ly inclu­sive, but you might think it’d be accept­able to at least gen­u­flect to some of the best-sell­ing artists of that decade.

As some­one who went to a junior high and high school dances in the ’90s, it’s hard to imag­ine any­one omit­ting this gem.

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.)

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.