I figured out what the third song in the “Got You Where I Want You” (The Flys) and “Time Ago” (Black Lab) trinity of obscure songs from Summer of ’98 BestBuy sampler was: “High” by Feeder. Sweet. Of course, Semicsonic and New Radicals were on there, too, but they got way more radio play than The Flys, Black Lab and Feeder did.
Man. That is beautiful late 90’s hair. Before all the the spiky short dos.
And then there’s “Suffocate,” which is awesome and totally different.
Sometimes I mourn the loss of acts like John (I Still Call You Cougar) Mellencamp and Tom (a hell of a lot more so) Petty on Top 40 radio. This post, from June 2009, is about missing acts like Black Lab and The Flys. Remember them? They came out in the summer of 1998 along with bands like Semisonic and Harvey Danger and Days of the New. I worked in the music section of BestBuy that summer, so I remember these things…
…a week or two after I loaded my new dorm-room-employee-discounted-fridge onto my best friend’s Tempo and secured it with 300-odd feet of rope, I was in college discovering mp3s and file sharing. Even if you didn’t use Napster, you probably used your campus network to copy songs from your friends’ computers. It can’t be a coincidence that so many of the bands that came out right before the industry shift this practice created haven’t stayed in the Top 40, which is to say we have only ourselves to blame for forfeiting popular radio and the lost art of music video to the market defined by our allowance-spending, dial-up connecting kid sisters. Hello, Brittney Spears, Backsteet Boys, NSync, et al. Hello and you’re welcome. To all the good bands we killed in the process, I’ll apologize on behalf of all of us. We didn’t do it on purpose. We were just cashless and cheap.
It’s hard to think of a major pop or rock band to emerge circa 1998 that’s still super popular now. You might come up with a few, but they don’t spring to mind like bona fide stars of the mainstream. Go back to 1996 or 97. Where are the Wallflowers? Why didn’t Primitive Radio Gods become the new Peter Gabriel? Come on, Better Than Ezra! Maybe it’s all very zeitgeisty. Remember that “Take a Picture” song by Filter from 1999? That song killed. I know, I know, Coldplay. But they’re so post-2000.
Everyone knows the saccharine pop side of what happened next. There was also the continued hip-hop move to the mainstream that started with The Chronic and Snoop’s early records, continued through Tupac, Biggie, Puff Daddy and Missy Elliot. Streets Is Watching came out when I was at BestBuy and then Eminem came in the fall. Oh, how we laughed at Slim Shady. “Who is this clown? What’s Dr. Dre thinking?” Well, we know better now. But hip-hop and rap records, huge as they were, didn’t kill alternative radio. That was never an either-or kind of thing. Then came the post-grunge, which started okay but became something else.
Somewhere in all of this, people stopped purchasing alternative pop into the Top 40. And I’m not talking about all the high-brow indie stuff. I’m talking about accessible, quirky, well-crafted music with some hooks and a few jangles. I could tie this in to the recent posts about irony, about how our tastes shifted as a way of escaping sincerity blah blah blah. I always liked that “Old Apartment” song by Barenaked Ladies. But “One Week”? Come on.
“So long ago, remember baby….” I would hear this at BestBuy and sort of know I was in the process of losing something. How about that look at 00:28? Video here.
“I think you’re smart, you sweet thing…” This is one of my all-time favorite videos. Do I miss circa 1998 Katie Holmes the way I miss circa 1998 myself? I think so. Or maybe I just hate the 2000s.
“Phonebooth” is one of the smarter songs of the decade, circa 1996.
How about Tonic? (The “You Wanted More” video from 1999 is here). Lemon Parade came out in 1996:
A few days ago I told you about hearing “Chicago” at Friendly’s and being lost in a moment. Today I was visiting a nursing home and the same thing happened. A nursing home. Bizarre. I was gone for a minute.
My grandfather passed away last year. He lived for a few years before that in a nursing home. I found out before my visit to the home today that my dad, my sister, and I all dreamt about him (my grandfather) last night.
People have been finding this post for years because Gary Jules sounds a little like Michael Stipe.
R.E.M. does not sing “Mad World.” Gary Jules does. And it’s a Tears for Fears cover? Those first two sentences are for the good folks finding their way here by searching “REM Mad World.” The third sentence is an admission: if it’s not “Shout” or that other song, I don’t know it. “Everybody Wants to Rule The World.” That’s a great one.
I was listening to WXPN tonight and they were streaming some indie band who said “we promised to learn a song by the beautiful Leonard Cohen for tonight. But then we didn’t.” Just last night a friend emailed me and said “I actually don’t listen to all that much Leonard Cohen (interpretation, I don’t listen to leonard cohen but I don’t want to sound uncool by saying so straight out.”)
This post is originally from July, 2008. As I add these notes, that’s over a decade ago. Everyone who wasn’t already a Leonard Cohen fan then now surely is.
This next part was an update to the original post from a few years ago, from whenever The King is Dead came out:
A few days ago, I heard The Decemberists talking about their new record, The King Is Dead. Colin Meloy was getting into the influences behind the album’s vibe and used the adjective REMy. I thought, well yes, “Down By The Water” is basically “The One I Love” with different words, more accordion, and Gillian Welch. Then David Dye mentioned that Peter Buck played on three tracks and asked Colin Meloy what that was like. Meloy said that Buck was really cool about the influence and put the band at ease by saying he learned everything he knew from the Byrds. Speaking of influences, I’m still waiting for a Wilco/Belle & Sebastian performance of “This Is Just a Modern Rock Song/California Stars.” Come on, team.
Chris Cocca 