Lately i have been listening to a lot of 94.7 FM "Alternative Radio." I had just assumed that there would be a lot of great stuff on the radio here - incredible stuff on caliper with KEXP or WGSU or WFMU or KCRW - but no.
Instead, I have been enjoying a station that "gets you through your alternative weekday" and plays "the nineties at noon" (despite playing an overwhelming amount of nineties alternative music during all hours of the day).
Anyway, I have still been listening, and thinking about these songs and what they mean. I have listed them in a spectrum - from best to worst - to try to figure out some things about "alternative music." Some bands are listed with actual songs I heard on the air, while some are not.
To prevent this from becoming a cumbersome (lol!) essay, I've left this in the form of notes.
Good:
The dBs "Black and White" By far the best thing I've heard on this station.*
The Cure - anything other than "Friday I'm In Love"
Blur "Charmless Man" and anything other than "Song 2"
Nada Surf "Popular" and "Do It Again" (new one!)
Sublime - yeah love the 'blime
Cake "Frank Sinatra"- anything by them
Primitive Radio Gods "Standing outside a broken phone booth with money in my hand"
Daft Punk - are great! yay!
Hum "Stars" ok this song is great.
Dinosaur Jr. "Feel The Pain"- ok great awesome - Sebadoh too!
The Lemonheads - anything, even "Mrs. Robinson" is well-recieved by me.
The Strokes "12:51" ok this song's guitar used as a synth and great lyrics win me over, no probs
The Smashing Pumpkins - anything by them, even "Perfect" is great.
Weezer "Say it ain't so" (always great especially when DJ announces song as "Say It Isn't So" lol)
Matisyahu - "King without a crown" - this is some reggae dude or something that is a big change at any point and is listenable so I give it the thumbs up!
The Talking Heads, The Clash, Green Day, Radiohead (with an enthusiastic YES!)
Beastie Boys - still fun
The Ocean Blue
The White Stripes - because why not?!
The Verve "Lucky Man" - ok I bought this album back in the day. yeah orchestral britpop i'll take it.
Middle Ground:
Gorillaz "Dare" - I like this but the song doesn't really go anywhere and isn't dynamic enough. The Gorillaz are awesome, though, so I have high standards.
Poe "Angry Johnny"
She Wants Revenge - Who is this band? Sounds like a rip off of Interpol and Interpol is a rip off of Joy Division so i can't hate them for that. anyway i guess this is the middle ground because I don't care either way about this band, but still stomach it as something new.
Everclear "I Will Buy You A New Life"
Blink 182
Sponge "Wax Ecstatic" : woke up with this one in my head and I guess that means it doesn't suck REM "It's the End of the world as we know it (and i feel fine)" please play anything by REM besides this
Bad:
Pearl Jam - anything
Luscious Jackson "With my naked eye" (they played a jungle remix or was this the original. who cares this sux.)
Coldplay - anything except "Yellow" that song is ok.
Beck "Devil's Haircut" - sorry Beck you don't do it for me...
Weezer "Such a pity" (man this song blows even though it's new. It sounds autotuned, even, which is just sad for such a talented group. The lyrics are horrible and sound like they were translated back and forth between english and japanese a handful of times, literally. - see addendum)
Temple of The Dog - I am never hungry for that "i'm going hungry" song
Stone Temple Pilots
Blur "Song 2" aka Blur "Whoo hoo"
Dishwalla "Counting Blue Cars"
The Cure "Friday I'm In Love" played on a day other than Friday
U2 - Bono is cool but I just don't ever feel like listening to U2, sorry dudes.
The Police "Roxanne" not this one again, please
Nirvana
Foo Fighters
Queens of The Stone Age
Jane's Addiction "Jane Says"
Bush "Glycerine"
Soundgarden
Audioslave "Be Yourself"
* - this was heard on a late night sunday broadcast, not an alternative weekday.
--
Addendum:
Lyrics to "This Is Such A Pity" by Weezer
How is your heart, little darling?
I didn't mean to get so made
Let me just hold you closely
How did things get so bad?
I know how to pick on you
You push me over the edge
We cause so much agony
We can't seem to move ahead
This is such a pity
We should give all our love to each other
Not this hate that destroys us
This is such a pity(This is a pity)
What kind of future will we have?
Will we ever find peace?
Everybody thinks we're crazy
They're about to call the police
I don't want to be a chump
You think I'm a fascist pig
Right now everything is black
I don't think we'll ever give
This is such a pity
We should give all our love to each other
Not this hate that destroys us
This is such a pity(This is a pity)
This is such a pity
We should give all our love to each other
Not this hate that destroys us
This is such a pity(This is a pity)
This is such a pity
We should give
We should give our love(Destroys us)Our love...
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5 comments:
Watch the video for "Dare" and then listen to the song three times in a row. It made the whole album better for reals!!!
P.S.
"I'm going hungryyyyyy
(I'M GOING HUNGRAAAAAAAAAYEEEYAAAAAAAY)!!!!!"
You're right that has never been a good song. Don't tell Gustav. Awesome post!!!
Hey Mike,
This post warrants a lot of huge comments from me...I don't have the time to do a big post right now, but I should let you know I saw the Gorillaz last night for free, and it was really fun.
More to come,
Mahoney
ah'm goin' hongraaaaaaaaayeeeeyaaaaaaay
(crunching 90s guitar chords)
I always also hated that song about
"I've got this time on my hands
you are the one to abuse
(the one to abuse)"
Whew, so this is where it totally comes into play that I am a year older than you. Normally it makes no difference, but on pressing issues of the importance of tracks from the 1990s, we might as well be 10 years apart. I'm gonna outline some of our biggest musical differences, and some similarities, where the 90s are concerned. I'm not sure how to format this thing, I'll just start:
Good
Sublime - um, what? do we need to remember that time when we were twelve, and totally high every day, and peeking into duder's stripper mom's changing room before we went to work? Did "the good old times" ever really happen?
Cake - Are you fucking kidding me? These guys had maybe three passable tracks, and they are not on the radio. (Partial exemption: The Distance)
P.R. Gods thru Weezer - totally solid, but I'm not too sure about these Matisyahu songs...is this what our lives need right now? Although, I heard him beatbox with C-Rayz at an awards show, and it was impressive.
Is it ok for me not to give a shit about Radiohead, really at all (excepting Kid A, which seems to have been basically disowned by their fans, which is totally gorgeous all the way through)? Cool.
The rest of your Good is pretty good, yes.
Middle Ground:
Like I said, I saw the Gorillaz last week, and the show was super huge and fun, but...yeah, the music is pretty lacking. That reminds me, though, I still need to go thru the album booklet and figure out who all those guest stars were on stage...
I like a lot of Everclear songs, but this one is definitely where they started their downfall. Stylus made a funny comment this week: "[Single "Gone Away"] ensured that the Offspring would have the market power needed to continue playing cat and mouse with Everclear to see who could come up with a worse novelty single." - I thought that was pretty spot-on.
"What's my age again" was on my top 100 songs list. It's supposed to be really bratty or whatever, so it's like no one in the band noticed how pretty the melodies are, especially right at the end.
And yeah, that Sponge song rules...I actually listened to a 30 second clip lately just to remember how it sounded. Totally out of control production, in a good way.
Bad:
Pearl Jam was the first band I liked that was modern, and not played on pop radio, so I can't diss them like that. Though over the years, I've lost interest, they really aren't a bad band at all. Plus, they took Ticketmaster to the Supreme Court, PLUS, they always take awesome support bands on tour. I saw them with the Buzzcocks.
I miss Luscious Jackson = also awesome. They were on Pete and Pete, for Christ's sake! They played the school dance, attended by Iggy Pop. They were also the hippest Gap commercial, when the Gap was hiring cool bands for their ads.
I think anyone can tell you you are wrong about Beck, at least Odelay-Era Beck, including yourself. Another artist I've lost interest in, but my reasonable side still shows huge props.
Stone Temple Pilots, I don't have much of a case for, but they had some really great melodic moments when it really counted, and they made the most bizarre pop album of that era (Tiny Music).
Don't knock that fucking Blur song. Don't! There was a point where that was the only song in the world I wanted to hear. This point lasted about 2 years.
U2 - I completely agree. Exception: "Lemon"
Nirvana gets short-fucking-changed by the indie rock community these days. Their closest modern-day comparisson is Modest Mouse, really. Imagine you are in 6th grade, and you get to hear Modest Mouse songs everywhere you turn, and see Modest Mouse T-shirts on all the kids at school, without any of the indie possesiveness that would come along with such a thing now at our age, and make that into a bad thing. Life was like a carnival of this band in '92, and their songs are awesome, and their performances were awesome, and Krist, the bass player, threw his bass in the air at the end of a performance on the MTV awards, and it hit him square in the forehead. They did the coolest unplugged of all time with the Meat Puppets and their songs, covered Bowie, borrowed a member of the Germs, did all the funniest interviews, fucked with their identity, fucked with Axl Rose, which was hilarious, and their album had a hidden ten-minute destrukto track on the end...It was honestly so awesome to have this band around, because they made everything else look boring and stupid. Also, they were the only band since the Beatles to have two songwriters in the band who proved so critically and commercially viable (speaking of which, lay off the Foo Fighters; they're ok, and have you SEEN the Everlong video??? Another top 100 entry). Also, Sub Pop would be long out of business without them.
That said, yes, I do hate the rest of the bands on your list. Good. Er, bad!
Yeah man, what in the hell happened to Weezer.
Best,
M
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