I think I am on board with your assessment @ACTUALLYASLEEP
Four reasons:
* stylistic diversity: punk was born and commercialized at one end, hip hop at the other. We take this for granted today but at the time the jaggedness of going from the Clash to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Treacherous Three, and ESG (all of whom they collaborated with at one point) was exhilarating. The sheer confluence of everything was unprecedented.
* MTV as a cultural force: I mean, it was called Music Television š and this was its finest hour. The assumption was that music mattered more than everything else, otherwise why would you watch it?
* legacy icons: Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bruce, Bowie. I could go on. You may not like them all but youāve gotta respect the bodies of work over decades.
* the roots of indie culture were born then: bands like R.E.M., Husker Du, Replacements, the Smiths and a million others were blazing a trail (radio, live DIY tours, etc) that created āCollege Rockā and ultimately indie and here we are today staring in awe at what they made from scratch.
The Reagan era sucked to live through but a lot of great music came out of the struggle.
š
17h ago
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the only thing that gave me pause was that āsongs in the key of lifeā came out in 76 š
@ACTUALLYASLEEP Stevieās imperial phase also coincides with the Stonesā (roughly 68-76) so believe me I am right there with you. youāre on a roll!
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š„²
being young is hard, youāre full of intense and volatile emotions, the world is an overwhelming and scary place, adults often lack patience or compassion for the intense experiences of youth, and music makes people feel less alone.
when i was in middle school/high school, people would make fun of me for listening to āwrist cutter musicā (this was over 10 years ago). emo/alt rock/pop punk was pretty big then and a lot of it was pretty angsty and/or sad.
grunge was huge with young people in the 90s, and that was a pretty angsty/disillusioned movement too.
iām not sure i see this as a new trend? i think the music itself changes but the appetite for art that speaks to these big feelings remains.
Apr 21, 2024
yea maybe the boomers had the beatles but we have charli xcx so like...
Oct 27, 2024
ā³
The year itself sucked ass, of course. but I always argue that 2004 was the year we fully and totally switched over from Gen X to Millennial mass culture and became fully submerged in millennial zeitgeist as the default. Highlights include:
-Mean Girls and Napoleon Dynamite (Mean girls for Boys) come out, forever ousting the Road Trip/American Pie Gen X comedy dynamic
-The Simpsons and South Park fading as Adult Swim style anti-comedy comes into focus
-George Bush reelected, solidifying millennial callousness towards most federal institutions
I guess the "rec" is just paying attention to these kinds of longer-term tidal changes in culture. It makes me feel like a wise man of the mountain when I tell 20 year olds about shit from before they were born
Aug 7, 2024
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Hey tyler hopefully this doesnāt violate some PI.FYI golden rule
But after nearly two years of writing, editing and arguing, my book about the EP is coming out in May and can be preordered here:
https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/
The book is about the origins, history and cultural impact of the EP since these little objects first started coming out in the 50s.
Over 50 of my music biz friends then helped me shape the list and review the top 200 ever released, according to us (ha).
For those of you who are into this kind of geekery/snobbery, I canāt wait to hear what you think. A labor of love, as all books are! ā¤ļø
Mar 27, 2024
āSongs Of a Lost Worldā coming to a goth listening station near you Nov 1 š¤
The fr FW Me Friday the 13th the world was looking for
Sep 14, 2024
I will fail to explain just how much this band meant to me in the 90s.
So I will borrow from AV Club who did a fine job of distilling it:
āUnwound isĀ theĀ best band of the ā90s. Not just because of how prolific, consistent, and uncompromising it was, but because of how perfectly Unwound nested in a unique space between some of the most vital forms of music that decade: punk,Ā post-rock,Ā indie rock,Ā post-hardcore,Ā slow-core, and experimentalĀ noise. That jumble of subgenres doesnāt say much; in fact, it falls far short of what Unwound truly synthesized and stood for. Unwound stood for Unwound. But in a decade where most bands were either stridently earnest or stridently ironic, Unwound wasnāt stridently anything. It was only itself. In one sense Unwound was the quietest band of the ā90s, skulking around like a nerdy terror cell. In another sense it was the loudest, sculpting raw noise into contorted visions of inner turmoil and frustration.ā
R.I.P. Vern Rumsey.
This is their finest song, from their finest album.
I really canāt say enough about the sheer bloody minded genius of this group. š¤
Mar 23, 2024