This week’s mix: an hour-long tribute to one of my five yet-to-be-revealed favorite songs of the nineties! I bet you can’t figure out what it is! Sadly I didn’t have room for any John Barry on here… Added bonus, though: Throw this on at about 11:15 tonight and your new year’s party will be out of control before midnight–you’ll easily be frolicking with someone (or everyone) on a bearskin rug by the time the apple drops.
Filed under: lists, music, the Voices That Care decade | Tags: Chris Isaak, Rivers Cuomo, Thom Yorke
Thanks to my diarrhea of the typing fingers, I’ve broken down the the top 10 into sections, and then I swear after we get to number one I’m not going to do any countdowns for a long time. Anyway, in this round we’ve got someone happy to be in love, someone sad about being in love, someone sad about not being in love, someone who gets breat up for being in love, and one happy adulterer. That about covers the depth of human emotion, I guess.
Okay, we’re up to the top 20. In my typical way I’ve gotten more and more verbose about each song as I’ve gone along, so I’m breaking the top 20 up into segments. That’ll just make it more exciting, right? Right? (more…)
Filed under: lists, music, the Voices That Care decade | Tags: Art Alexakis
The first half of my top 40 pop hits of the 90′s. Watching all these videos by alternative bands from the 90′s is sort of depressing today–they seem so fake, and it’s really morbid how the imagery seems so specifically designed to appeal to angsty teenagers and get them to buy records. I mean, obviously that’s what was happening, but watching lots of videos at once reinforces it in a way I don’t think I’d fully processed before. But back to the countdown–it’s getting sort of exciting, isn’t it? (more…)
This is the third installment of my list of the 101 greatest pop hits of the 90′s. It’s 3 AM and I can’t sleep and I’m drinking beer with a label that has a skiing elephant on it. It’s delicious, but I might start rambling. On with the countdown!
Filed under: music, the Voices That Care decade, Uncategorized | Tags: Uncategorized
Here’s part 2 of my countdown of the 101 greatest hits of the 90′s. I might note that, since I stuck to American top 40 hits, only a small number of my very favorite albums are represented on this list, so I just thought I’d mention that, if the world were fair, this list would also have lots of Blur, Pulp, My Bloody Valentine, Sleater-Kinney and Elastica. That’s all.
Last week VH-1, the Revisionist History Network, decided to point its Magic Cultural Erasers at the prosperous nineties, presenting its (viewer-voted) list of the 100 Greatest Songs of that decade. Well, I’m a total dork for that sort of thing, and the nineties were sort of a big decade for me, being that it’s the only one I’ve lived through in its entirety thusfar. Yes, in 1990 I was a chubby little fourth-grader whose only cares in the world were what was going to be where on the American Top 40. Well that and a deranged teacher who threw heavy objects at us, made us cry and, if we came in to class with new shoes on, demanded that we let her “try them on” while we walked around in her old pumps all day. (Really!) And by the end of 1999 I had a job, a boyfriend, and a big boner for Alec Empire.
I made this list before I looked at the VH-1 one. I know that they had Smells Like Teen Spirit as #1, Liz Phair called Sex and Candy the best song of the decade, and the tubby harmonica guy from Blues Traveler lost a bunch of weight. (I thought he had died, actually, but I guess that was the bass player.)
Nerds: I compiled my list by looking at the Top 100 Billboard lists from every year of the decade, plus a whole bunch of the ARC weekly charts on rockonthenet.com Those aren’t Billboard, but they’re pretty close to the Pop Airplay Chart, plus they’re easier to look up online. Only songs that had an impact on the pop charts count for this list–that means no album tracks and nothing that wasn’t a genuine hit here in these United States of America. That means, sadly, no Common People, no Song 2, no Connection, and (surprisingly) no Oh Carolina. As for other factors–which songs I loved at the time but got tired of, which songs I hated at the time but love now, which songs were totally overshadowed by bigger but less good hits–there’s no math to that. I just went with a feeling. And since I’ve been readjusting the list (and narrowing it down from an initial 235) for about 12 hours now, I don’t want to hear about it. Just kidding, I do–I love comments!!
Also, in case you couldn’t tell, I’m on vacation right now and reeeeeeeeally bored. (more…)
Filed under: starfucking | Tags: guys that could kick the shit out of me, Rich Franklin
(This post was originally going to be the first installment of something I was going to call The Twelve Days of Starfucking, but, um, today’s the third day and I’m just posting the first one. So I doubt I’ve got the follow-through to do this every day for the next week and a half.)
Okay–I have to write this quick. I just left breakfast with my parents, and I’m about to head back for dinner with my parents (even though I’m already full of cake and cookies and about 11 cups of coffee) but I thought I’d just pop on to wish you nice people a Merry Christmas.
(Another time I’ll have to tell you about my views on religion–maybe tonight, after I start festively and solitarily mixing the obscure liquors that I compulsively buy and don’t know what to do with. That’ll be fun.)
Anyway, here’s a Christmas treat for you, a holiday song that I’ve cherished since I was about five. I’m sure you’ve heard Christmas songs up the wazoo lately, but this isn’t one that anybody’s playing on the 24-hour Christmas radio stations and it’s not cool enough for everybody and their baby’s mother to be blogging about it. I have it on a cassette tape and believe that it’s never been issued on CD. Recorded at a young age by everyone’s favorite 80′s teen actress when she was an unkown tonedeaf moppet, before she ever graced our hearts by starring in Pretty In Pink and the delightfully trashy Baja, here is a song that will surely bring a tear to your eye. Or maybe several.
Molly Ringwald – The First Noel
I just made a mix CD for the people at the coffee place I go to, because I’m at work and it’s the most boring day of my whole entire life ever. Plus I went in there for my first cup of the morning and they were listening to Hefner’s The Fidelity Wars, which was my #1 album of 1999. (Although, in retrospect, I kind of overreacted. It’s good, but it’s not THAT good. But I had seen them live about a week before I made my favorite albums of the year list, I hadn’t heard the Magnetic Fields or Fiona Apple CDs yet, and 1999 was kind of a weak year overall for music, if I remember correctly. And, you know, I like supporting any band that makes videos like this one.) (more…)
