1998 was a pretty great year. I got my first car (a seafoam green ’93 Pontiac LeMans), I had stopped going through “the change” and I performed with the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra for the first time. Looking back on it, it was a great year in music as well – rocking out to intergalactic on the way to parties; smoking herb with a little Marcy Playground in the background…
My First Car - I added the KOSS CD player myself
Below are my most-listened to songs that year – a veritable trip down memory lane. Please share any seminal years in your life and the music associated in the comments!
Marcy Playground – Sex and Candy: The one-hit wonder of 1998. A Minneapolis band, I lived next to Marcy Playground in College
Eve 6 – Inside Out: Not much to say about this one, I just couldn’t get away from it.
Semisonic – Closing Time: Another Minnesota band – how many times did you hear this at the bar at 2 am?
Liz Phair – Polyester Bride: The theme song for our AP US History class – I’m not quite sure why. I think we all thought we were cool and indie by listening to Liz Phair. Many of my friends that liked this song later moved into the McKibbin Lofts in Williamsburg, go figure.
Natalie Imbruglia – Torn: I washed dishes on Sundays at a restaurant and this was always on Casey Kasem’s top 40 countdown
Air – Sexy Boy:We listened to this in French IV all the time because it’s a French band and we didn’t want to do any actual schoolwork
Madonna – Ray of Light: Bitchin’ song, bitchin’ video – showed everyone that Madge still had it goin’ on after Britney and all the other sluts starting to make the rounds
Massive Attack – Angel:I heard it BEFORE it was in The Matrix – which by the way was the first DVD I ever watched
Garbage – Paranoid: My uncle went to high school with Butch Vig, so I got to go backstage at the “Zone for the holidays” concert with Garbage, Beck, Semisonic, Soul Coughing, and Goo Goo Dolls. Pretty sweet!
The Smashing Pumpkins – Ava Adore: Billy Corgan as a young Uncle Fester
Hole – Celebrity Skin: Courtney is a train-wreck, but this album was the tits – maybe because Billy Corgan wrote it?
Soul Coughing – Circles: Wasn’t this in a VW ad?
Cake – Never There: My parents were pretty “with it” (I stole my first Beck album from them) but they never quite got the appeal of Cake
Fatboy Slim – Praise You: This song wore out its welcome after about 3 weeks
New Radicals – You Get What You Give: I had this album – I thought the guy on the cover with the big floppy hat looked pretty cool
Alanis Morissette – Thank You: No – Thank You, Alanis!
Beastie Boys – Intergalactic: The manager at the restaurant I worked at got me this album for my 16th birthday. Thanks, Theresa!
Third Eye Blind – Jumper: One of many great songs on this album
There you have it – my life in music for the year 1998.
If you’re a serious music fan, you likely have a few — or more than a few — bands or artists where you’d love to see them receive more attention beyond the small hive of fans. While listening to some music last night, I thought about some of my favorite bands that fit in this category.
Now, my definition of “bigger” doesn’t necessarily mean a band gets so huge they can only play arenas. Instead, it’s more along the lines of “here are some bands that I really love where it would have been great to have at least one other person know who they were…” Of course, some of you may know all of these bands, but if you don’t, consider it an opportunity to check them out and toss a few bucks their way by purchasing their music.
Last, but not least, you’ll probably notice my picks are pretty much a rock music sausage fest. Simple reason for this: I love boys with guitars.
Failure
Just about everyone in this band has gone on to be in a band you probably have heard of — Queens of the Stone Age, Guns ‘N’ Roses, or starting side projects with members of TOOL — yet Failure didn’t really receive a lot of attention. Perhaps it’s a matter of a band being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but their shoegazey sound with sweeping melodies should have been heard by many more people. (Song Recommendation: “Stuck on You“)
The Afghan Whigs
Of course, I have to include my all-time favorite band on this list. Despite being around for over a decade and touring like madmen, The Afghan Whigs’ music — part old-school R&B, part rock, and all swagger — seemed to remain on the perimeter of getting a bigger audience and moving beyond the “critically-acclaimed” label. (Song Recommendation: “Going to Town“)
Superdrag
Chances are you may have heard “Sucked Out” in the 90s on MTV, but there is so much more power-pop goodness from this Knoxville, Tennessee-based band. After a hiatus that included lead singer John Davis finding Jesus, the band has returned to play a few shows here and there in recent years. Still, some of their best music has not been heard by enough people. In the Valley of Dying Stars is a classic album. (Song Recommendation: “Keep It Close to Me“)
The Sheila Divine
Though their roots are in the Northeastern U.S. (particularly Buffalo and Boston), this band was pretty big in Belgium, yet virtually unknown in the States. Initially signed to the hard rock/metal label Roadrunner Records, this decidedly not metal band had quite a following, but didn’t really break it big. Their last EP, Secret Society, saw them on Arena Rock Records, which was also home to Superdrag for a spell. Unfortunately, people change, the music scene changed, and the band called it a day in the early 2000s. Lead singer Aaron Perrino’s voice has to be heard to be believed. (Song Recommendation: “Sideways“)
Whiskeytown
Yes, you’ve probably heard of their lead singer. He’s a favorite of mine, too. Still, the band that would lead to Ryan Adams’ successful solo career should have been bigger. When I was starting to get into the alt-country scene, this was one of the bands introduced to me and I’ve been a fan since. The vocal harmonies between Adams and Caitlin Cary are sublime. (Song Recommendation: “16 Days“)
Grandaddy
I was introduced to this band thanks to Pete Yorn. The Modesto, California-based band opened for him during a 2003 tour, where I got to see them perform several times. Grandaddy’s music is unique, which is probably why their tech-spacey sounds didn’t catch on, but there’s an audience for all kinds of music and I wish theirs would have grown more. (Song Recommendation: “AM 180“)
I know most of you are nursing your St. Patrick’s Day hangover so why not make it better with a little Gin and Juice, laaaaaaaaid back. Yo! MTV Raps was a groundbreaking show where real rap aired on MTV for 2 hours a day. Meaning, that was the only time MTV aired rap videos. Weird, right? Doctor Dre (not that one) and Ed Lover hosted, with Fab Five Freddy taking over the mic on the weekends (thanks, Death_by_SnuSnu). Let’s all do the Ed Lover dance:
We lost a hip hop star this week (not to East Coast, West Coast beef). Nate Dogg was part if the West Coast crew under Dr. Dre (that one) and known for his collaborations. Here’s a nice write-up about him. RIP Nate Dogg. Pour some out for him, homies.
*This is also posted on my personal blog, which was quiet this week due to school obligations.*
I listen to music constantly, and I’m constantly acquiring new things. So much, in fact, that serious evaluation on an album-by-album basis is impossible. To ensure my musical hoarding doesn’t amount to too much waste, I’ve elected to begin picking out choice tracks from my catch and reviewing them, here. I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, every Thursday or FridaySaturday night, mods willin’.
*** This week is all-digital. We’ve got a track from Wagon Christ (aka Luke Vibert), Angel Eyes, and Baths.***
Wagon Christ – Mr. Mukatsuku (from Toomorrow on Ninja Tune)
It was sort of a shame that attention towards the 90’s IDM boom so often focused on Warp’s Big Three – Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Squarepusher – resulted in a lot of other, equally interesting producers (Jega, u-Ziq) falling by the wayside. In terms of recognition, Luke Vibert probably falls in that second category, but it hasn’t really stopped him from continuing music well into the present. Vibert is so ultra-prolific that he adopted numerous aliases that were all about as productive as your average mono-moniker’d producer, and each one filled a different stylistic niche. Harder junglist impulses were sated via the Plug alias, acid house / techno tracks went to a whole host of aliases including Ace of Clubs, disco went to Kerrier District, and drum and bass went to Wagon Christ. In all cases, Vibert’s signature silliness and love of old funk drum break samples remained constant.
But somewhere around the middle of the 00’s it seemed like Vibert had tired of all his pseudonyms. The last seven years or so have seen Vibert releasing music almost exclusively under his own name, all displaying a greater focus on the acid house influences that act as a sort of great unifier for all first-wave IDM artists. So it’s sort of odd that he’s decided to dust off the Wagon Christ moniker after 7 years of dormancy.
While much of the Toomorrow album is hard to distinguish from more recent music released under the Vibert name, “Mr. Mukatsuku” manages to recapture the weirdly melancholy feel much of Wagon Christ’s earlier music had (which often contrasted nicely with the Looney Toons-indebted madcap goofiness of the persona), most of which is attributable to the iconic sound of the Rhodes electric piano, used to great effect here, and the swooning brass samples applied in all the right places. The languid pace of the drum machine boom-bap (with just a bit of swing, for a jazz feel) gives the proceedings a sort of “lounge music for robots” feel, which is entirely appropriate, and the quivering acid synthline leaves no real doubt as to the song’s author. It could have seamlessly fit into Musipal, which is about as high of praise as you can give a Wagon Christ album. If only the rest of Toomorrow was as focused as this.
(The physical versions of “Toomorrow” are due next week, but you can acquire the digital version presently over atBleep.)
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Angel Eyes – Dire Dish (from Dire Dish on Not Not Fun)
Gotta feel for Andrew Cowie – the Australian lo-fi recording artist who releases music as Angel Eyes and who, if he had come around just a year earlier, would have been enjoying all the critical acclaim that Forest Swords is at the moment. At first listen, the two sound extremely similar, but patient listeners will find ways to distinguish the two in ways that serve Angel Eyes.
The production is what will fool you – both artists use a lot of reverb and lo-fi recording techniques, giving the sound a hollow, dubby feel. But the actual style of the music itself is different enough – the guitar work of FS and Cowie are both clearly indebted to Ennio Morricone, but Cowie often goes for expansive, ambient-ish meditation where FS aims for a curious sort of muddy bombast. Ultimately it’s the instrumentation that really does it – The pounding drums of Dagger Paths is entirely absent on Dire Dish, while Cowie utilizes synthesizers in an intriguing way that’s absent in his contemporary’s work – the low fidelity recording takes the keening tone of the synth and strips it of a few layers, resulting in a harsher, but also warmer, sound that gives “Dire Dish” much of its character. Now, if Angel Eyes ends upcovering an Aaliyah song, at that point we’ll start having a real problem.
Baths – Nightly, Daily (from The Nothing / Nightly, Daily on Anticon)
Whither Anticon? The venerable Californian “backpack” (read: white) rap label seems to have largely lost interest in the sorts of music that it helped to pioneer, ostensibly at least. In part this might be due to some latent desire to “transcend” hip hop, and while a lot of their artists definitely fit the bill as rappers, some of their more famous acts display a (foolish?) musical ambition that seems to belie a dissatisfaction with the genre. Just read any interview with Adam “Doseone” Drucker and in his own colorful way he’ll outline for you what is either disappointment or resentment or a good old-fashioned chip on his shoulder with regard to rap music.
It’s been happening for a few years now. It started out with WHY?, who started off as a hip hop band and turned into a sort of indie sing-spoken poetry thing (they put on a truly abysmal live show in my town and since then I haven’t given them the time of day), and continued with the patronage of perpetually stoned electro-bro Tobacco, who’s taken to collaborating with a tired-sounding Beck lately. The latest acquisition for Anticon’s diversified portfolio is Will Wiesenfeld aka Baths, a young guy with muttonchops from Chatsworth, California who’s operated under a few different names, notably Post-Foetus (unfortunately it does not sound anything like Foetus).
Baths’ music is markedly different from the aggressively weird acts that make up the rest of Anticon’s new school – a lot of critics have lumped him in with LA’s Low End Theory scene, America’s pre-eminent electronic music movement at the moment, but Baths (usually) dispenses with thudding bass in favor of more delicate pop harmonies. “Nightly, Daily” furthers the trend, with a lovely indie-folk sensibility that meshes impressively with the usual scraping, hissing drum programming. It reminds me a lot of the sorts of little dalliances that Hrvatski would venture on 6 or 7 years ago, but this is really the core of Baths’ aesthetic – sunny, sweet music for gentler people than you’ll find out in the clubs on any given night. It’s pleasant and a little bit light in comparison to some of his album cuts, but that might be why it’s on this short EP. Given another album or two of music this consistent, Baths could end up as the best thing on Anticon’s roster.
Queen. Pat Benatar. AC/DC. Def Leppard. They rocked us so hard we strained our necks hand-banging along AND our vocal chords trying to hit those high notes while screaming at the top of our lungs.
I have a distinct memory of singing “Cum on feel the noize” while swinging as high as I could on the swingset at school. I did not know how the name of the song was spelled (and neither did my mom).
Then of course, there’s badass Joan Jett. I used to roller skate my ass off to this song.
Break out the black concert tee, your ripped jeans and let’s rock it out!
Upcoming FBF themes:
Boy bands
Hip Hop
Hair bands
Lady R&B supergroups
Grunge
Party music…Stay tuned!
After skewering a sacred cow with my first ever salvo for Crasstalk, I thought I’d change tack and praise Caesar instead of bury him. Music makes me happy, and I’d love to share what I consider lost, under-appreciated or misunderstood works from great bands. Hopefully, if y’all like it, I could make this a semi-regular thing. With that in mind, the goal of Lost Wax will be to introduce or re-introduce you to songs and albums that time has forgotten. So here are the prerequisites:
It has to be:
a song or an album
panned at the time of its release or critically ignored
Cocaine is a terrible drug for musicians. It is possible to work through a healthy heroin addiction and still make an album like, say, Transformer. LSD can lead to some beautiful experimentation, and some truly awful, terrible album covers (Tarkus, Emerson, Lake & Palmer), but cocaine just turns people into assholes and songs into overproduced covers of Bang a Gong.
Tarkus! Ahhh!!! What the fuck is that thing?!?!
When two of the three Taylors in Duran Duran (Andy and John) left to join Robert Palmer, Tony Thompson and a mountain of coke and hookers (not really) to form Power Station in 1985, this left remaining members Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes with a critical shortage of Taylors. But instead of panicking, grabbing Chuck and Meshach Taylor and soldiering on as Duran Duran 2.0, messrs. Rhodes, Le Bon and Roger Taylor felt free to indulge in whatever atmospheric flight of fancy their frosted little hearts desired. That flight of fancy turned out to be a band called Arcadia, whose sole output was 1985’s beautiful, strange So Red The Rose.
I know what you’re thinking, it’s a bit of a cheat to choose this album for Lost Wax. It wasn’t a bomb (it went platinum), it wasn’t panned, it put 2 songs in the US top 40 and it contained 3/5th of what was arguably one of the biggest acts in the world at that time. And yet, the album has been largely cast off as just another indulgence from members of a band that had already peaked and was still years away from reinventing itself as the ‘Come Undone’ Duran of the 90’s.
On the face of it, ‘overindulgent’ would seem to fit. The album is as heavily overproduced as Duran Duran’s previous album, Seven And The Ragged Tiger (both were produced by Alex Sadkin), complete with the requisite electric drum kits, keyboards and Cor Anglaisone would expect of the mid-80s, and there are more guest appearances on this album than a disaster telethon. Sting, Grace Jones, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Alomar, Andy Mackay and David Gilmour all have a hand in this work. The album art is a lurid mix of Anime, Flamenco and S&M. The songs have titles like ‘El Diablo’, ‘Goodbye Is Forever’ and ‘Lady Ice’. Yes, all the pieces are there for this album to be a train wreck and the apex of mid-80s pretentious excess.
What we get instead is a twisted, dark, mysterious fairy tale, more a musical than album. Listened front to back, a story emerges, something akin to a farm boy coming to the big sinful, corrupt city only to become involved with good women, bad women and the Devil. It’s pretty clear someone wants to screw him, kill him, steal his soul or do all three.
So Red The Rose opens with perhaps the album’s most famous song (and also its only bona fide hit, reaching #6 in the US singles chart), Election Day. With its driving mechanical beat and moody lyrics about ‘shadows and subways’ and entire cities being slaves to a mistress (not to mention Grace Jones sounding like she is ready to raise welts), it delivers an opening number that Sweeney Todd would be proud of.
The next few tracks modulate between the sweet, bouncy, and upbeat sound of Keep Me In The Dark and the bombastic, black humor of The Flame. The real winner of the album, though, is Missing, the ‘A’ side closer (remember when Albums had such a thing?) which is full of a melancholy and grief that boy bands aren’t supposed to possess.
The B side opens with The Promise, probably the only real clunker on the album, what with its over the top lyrics like ‘The hungry make their stand when they’ll stand for no more’ and Sting’s breathy backup singing, but then everything returns to form with El Diablo, which has far better lyrics (‘only the brightest shine, but not forever’). It’s a fun take on your typical Faustian deal with the Devil, and it ends with the protagonist ruing his fate while Nick Rhodes’ keyboards make a sound similar to a fun house ride spinning out of control.
No Faustian bargain here: Time makes Shatners of us all, Mr. LeBon
The album ends with Lady Ice, not the best track on the album, but a song that is courteous enough to leave the ending to the story ambiguous.
So there you have it. So Red The Rose owes more to the Duran Duran of The Chauffeur than of The Reflex, but this is a good thing. Darker, meaner and more melancholy than anything else Duran Duran (under any name) ever did, this album could really be considered their Blood And Chocolate, if that conceit weren’t the most pretentious fucking thing ever.
And now, here’s a bonus for you all for getting to the bottom: The Russell Mulcahy directed video for The Flame.
*This is also posted on my personal blog, which features pictures of a hairy, mostly naked man this week.*
I listen to music constantly, and I’m constantly acquiring new things. So much, in fact, that serious evaluation on an album-by-album basis is impossible. To ensure my musical hoarding doesn’t amount to too much waste, I’ve elected to begin picking out choice tracks from my catch and reviewing them, here. I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, every Thursday or FridaySaturday night, mods willin’.
*** This week saw the arrival of a few packages from Mimaroglu and Boomkat that I’d been expecting for some time, as well as the usual bumper crop of digital music. I’ve got an old track from 13 & God, new stuff from NWG (aka Niggas With Guitars), and a new compilation entry from Subeena.***
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13 & God – Von Gradleute (Hrvatski Remix) (from Men of Station / Soft Atlas on Anticon)
While researching a Keith Fullerton Whitman / Hrvatski split casette I invested in a few weeks ago, I came upon a happy discovery – a set of remixes that Whitman’s “breakcore” guise Hrvatski had created for the great Anticon supergroup 13 & God (a collaboration between “art rappers” Themselves and German art pop group The Notwist) – and I just had to have it. 13 & God was centrally important to my entry into indie music 6 or 7 years ago, when a friend of mine included their perfect pop song “Men Of Station” on a mixtape he sent me, and I fell in love. The prospect of Whitman (my favorite experimental composer) having his way with that song and others was too much to resist.
As a general rule, remixes (and album-length compendiums of them in particular) are a grab bag, as you’ll usually have so many different artists pulling the music in so many idiosyncratic directions that at best you’ll get a few remarkable edits among a number of inessential curiosities. The single format that the Men of Station / Soft Atlas release takes is a lot easier to handle, and it helps that it’s backloaded with the two Hrvatski remixes, one for each song. “Men of Station” was my favorite 13 & God effort, and much to my relief Whitman’s edit does not disappoint. The song’s central melodic motifs are wisely kept intact, and even augmented by swirling harp samples, as well as reverb and delay that are sorely lacking in the original, and Whitman’s frenetic jungle drum programming fits in better than it has any right to. I’m sort of perplexed it took me this long to figure out that this remix was out there – I can only imagine how ecstatic I would have been hearing this when I was first listening to 13 & God and Hrvatski.
(I acquired “Men Of Station / Soft Atlas” on vinyl because I’m dumb like that, and if you’re dumb too KFW probably has a few more copies over at Mimaroglu, but normal people can find it on iTunes, along with the 13 & God full length. Their follow-up LP is due in the next few months, so that’s exciting.)
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Niggas With Guitars – Milky White (from Ethnic Frenzy on Digitalis Vinyl)
This was the other half of my 13 & God Mimaroglu shipment, one that I picked up on a whim based on chatter that I had heard from associate tape collectors I respected. I have no idea who these people are or why they felt like “Niggas With Guitars” would be a good name for their outfit, but their music is definitely interesting. The vinyl was so new when I got it that there was no indication of which side was which, so my naming convention might be way off.
“Milky White” (if that is indeed the name of the song) is either the second or fifth track on the 6-track album, and like all of NWG’s music that I’ve heard, it is quite disarming. It could, one imagines, fit nicely into some odder corner of the “chillwave” scene, steeped as it is in a certain sort of nostalgia – the lilting, gentle synth melodies and horn-like drones call to mind old nature film soundtracks or meditation music ripped from casette (fittingly, NWG kicked around the fringe music casette scene before landing this endorsement from the sterling Digitalis label). But more than anything else, it’s strongly reminiscent of the interlude music that Boards of Canada would insert between its more propulsive songs on their old albums. Lovely, if slight, music. Now if they could just do something about that name…
(I purchased “Ethnic Frenzy” as soon as it hit Mimaroglu, and your best bet might be finding it there [it’s up there at the top] – if Discogs is to be believed, there are only 200 copies for the world, with the first run of 75 sold out at source. Better hurry!)
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Subeena – Miscalculate (from Super Volume 1 on Super Recordings)
I’ve waited for Italian producer Subeena to go “next level” popularity-wise for awhile now and it hasn’t happened, much to my chagrin. Of all the dubstep(ish) techno-leaning freshman producers to come out of the UK in the last few years, Subeena was by far my favorite, as her love of early Warp records sounds was something that I shared, and she spent some time in the Planet Mu roster, which I’ve always looked to for more forward-thinking trends in electronic music. Popularity’s kind of a relative thing in electronic circles but I’ve always felt like she didn’t get the sort of recognition her talent called for.
“Miscalculate”, which just popped up on her friend Raffertie’s Super Recordings compilation, doesn’t sound like it’s going to break that trend. Overall it takes after some of the more recent work she’s done for her own Opit label, which finds Subeena contributing vocals, and bringing a more rave-ish sensibility to the music. But I feel like this track in particular is a little too reminiscent of “Spectrum”, the b-side from her “Picture” single. Perhaps it’s just the fact that the track feels in general a little too much like a b-side (not that anyone should expect A-material to show up on label compilations, necessarily). The track is still fun enough, but in comparison to Subeena’s best work it doesn’t quite measure.
It’s time to go back in time and bring out those sexy memories. Was there a song that made you want to crawl across the bed like a tiger even if you were only 15? What was playing on the car radio when you lost your V-card in the backseat? Did you blush when a certain video came on and your parents were in the room? Remember, we’re not talking about songs from last year, but those of yester-year.
George Michael’s iconic video for Freedom is so impossibly and undeniably sexy given that it featured the original supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, Cindy Crawford, and hot menz, John Pearson, Mario Sorrenti, and Peter Formby all half-naked and slinky. I wanted/want to lick the screen.
Chris Isaac’s Wicked Game featured another uber model of her time, Helena Christensen. Smart guy – I bet he had a fun afternoon. She probably single-handedly (heh) started the boy-shorts trend. He’s kinda hot, too.
*Keep it safe for work and remember the rules – no lady nip (PATRIARCHY!), ding-a-lings or vagine!
With the recent success of the PLAY! concert series and a Grammy win for Civilization IV’s theme song “Baba Yetu“, it would seem that video game soundtracks are finally beginning to be taken seriously as music. But whether this heralds an era where video games themselves are considered a legitimate artistic medium on par with film remains to be seen. After all, the pieces of video game music that have received the most attention so far have been the classical and New Age-style compositions of Civilization and Final Fantasy rather than the iconic looping synthesized tracks that have long been admired by video game nerds, spawnedcountlessremixes, and influencedandinspiredvariousmusicsubgenres.
It is the firm belief that these are just as deserving of recognition that inspired me to create this list. And while it would be pretty easy to throw together a list of the most well-known and acclaimed pieces, I wanted to highlight some amazing tracks you may not have heard from some rather obscure games, lesser-known sequels to classics, and Japan-only exclusives. In the spirit of my own generational prejudices, I’ve also attempted to limit the list to games from the nineties. Some of these games are great, others are laughable, but all of them are rockin’.
*****
10. Captain Commando: Enemy Spaceship
Conceived as a brilliantly cheesy homage to classic pulp sci-fi and B-movies, this Capcom beat-em-up featured a mummy, a ninja, a mecha-piloting baby, and the titular Captain fighting hordes of scuba divers, aliens, cross-dressing samurai, mad scientists, and fire-breathing homeless people. This invigorating track follows the common trend at the time of video game composers mimicking the sounds of progressive rock and 80’s metal, which is a pretty good fit for walking down the city streets and beating the crap out of everything you see.
9. Skyblazer: Storm Fortress of Kh’lar
Aside from being one of the best games on the Super NES that no one played, this criminally overlooked action-RPG was one of the few games of the time to utilize a Middle-Eastern motif, which made for some amazing boss monsters and a uniquely beautiful score, particularly here and in the end credits.
8. Alisia Dragoon: Stage 1
This beautifully designed game was animated by a little studio called Gainax, later responsible for a little series called Neon Genesis Evangelion. Although the repetitive and limited arcade-style gameplay didn’t quite live up to the quality of the art, ethereal fantasy-themed tracks such as this one did wonders for the game’s atmosphere.
7. The King of Dragons: Cave of Hydra
The music in this completely cliched and thoroughly enjoyable fantasy hack-and-slash is exactly what you’d expect, which is to say it’s awesome medieval-style fanfare that will make you want to draw your sword and charge forth into battle.
6. Gourmet Sentai Bara Yarou: EXBunny
In this bizarre game that only the Japanese could make, an odd assortment of flamboyant villains has taken over the world’s food supply, and you must defeat their hordes of walking light bulbs and giant heads that sneeze on you in order to obtain ingredients that you will then give to your robot cook to turn into delicious meals. Here I am fighting a playboy bunny that turns into a power ranger that turns into a giant tanuki, complete with giant testicles, all set to a keyboard-laden speed metal soundtrack. There isn’t much more I can say about this.
5. Eternal Champions: Character Bios
Some of you may recognize this track as the one sampled by a certain Bone Thugs-n-Harmony in their song “Eternal“. In fact, they loved this game so much that they sampled another track from it for the more well-known “Crossroads“. Not only was Eternal Champions chock full of great tunes, but it boasted a great storyline, unique characters, a complex fighting system, and a Sega CD remake with gruesome fatalities that made Mortal Kombat look like Sesame Street.
4. Streets of Rage 3: Yamato
While the first two Streets of Rage games are considered Sega classics, few cared for this final installment, released late in the 16-bit era and lacking the stylish spark of its predecessors despite having superior graphics and a wider variety of moves. One of the main targets of criticism was acclaimed composer Yuzo Koshiro’s decision to shift to a more aggressive electronic industrial sound rather than the upbeat and melodic club disco tracks that had made the first two games so memorable. Nevertheless, there are a few gems in here, such as this killer Japanese-flavored techno track that serves as the theme for one of the game’s most annoying bosses.
3. Segagaga: Final Battle, Part 2
If you so much as think about making a Lady Gaga joke, I will end this article right now. I’m not kidding.
A strangely prophetic game released in Japan shortly before the Sega Dreamcast’s unfortunate demise, this simulation RPG has the player attempt to guide a failing Sega Corporation back to market dominance, though I’m not sure why that would involve blasting your own company’s gaming systems. Anyway, this sweeping neoclassical metal track was originally written for the cancelled Dreamcast release of Thunderforce VI, later released on the PS2. Listen to this every morning when getting out of bed and be inspired by the notion that even if you fail in your endeavors, you probably won’t fail as badly as Sega’s last two consoles.
2. Guardians/Denjin Makai 2: Stages 1 and 2
Both the best and most obscure game on the list, this stylish mid-nineties arcade beat-em-up boasted seven selectable characters and more combos and special moves than any fighting game of the time. The stage 1 and stage 2 BGMs at 0:14 and 3:35, respectively, perfectly complement the insanely fast-paced futuristic anime-style gameplay with dueling guitar harmonies and wailing crescendos.
1. Golden Axe 2: Boss Theme
Though this console-only sequel failed to attain the classic status of its predecessor, it was an improvement in almost every sense, including the soundtrack. This hair-raising boss music will immediately make you dread the coming battle. The only drawback is that they will probably never make a boss epic enough to deserve this dramatic an introduction.
*****
Well, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed reading this list as much as I enjoyed making it. Just remember – no matter how good these tracks are on their own, they are almost always better combined with the sounds of you kicking the enemy’s ass.
The first two cassettes that I owned, having paid for them with my paltry allowance money, were singles: Tom Cochrane’s 1991 one hit wonder Life Is A Highway and U2’s Mysterious Ways. Coupled with my first CD–Jagged Little Pill, which still holds up as a chick-rock masterpiece–the “alt rock” genre holds a sentimental, un-ironic place in my heart. Listening to “the best of the 80s, 90s, and today” over the loudspeaker while swimming at the local water park; watching and re-watching early-morning broadcasts of VH1’s Top 20 video countdown; noodling with an acoustic guitar of my own, determined to give Toad The Wet Sprocket a run for their money and failing giddily–alternative rock music of the adult-contemporary variety may be a maligned genre, but it’s an important genre to me all the same.
Here then are a few of my favorites to which I apply the label of “guilty pleasure” somewhat reluctantly, but I’d rather we all have a good laugh about them than attempt to introduce them into any serious musical discourse. But no, I’m not ashamed to like any of these.
Fastball – “The Way” (1998)
The changing-the-dial intro is appropriate, as this song was a massive radio hit. Its ubiquity was a bit unexpected; after all, this is an ode to parental abandonment and “eternal summer slacking” with none of the commercialized sentimentality of, say, Everclear’s “Father Of Mine.” Nope, this is a jaunty, piano-driven tune that’s more than happy to rhyme “day” with “the way” several times. Maybe it’s the spaghetti-western-meets-Dirty–Harry guitar outro that made this such a pleasure to listen to in the car, hoping to cruise down the freeway but actually just getting stuck in rush-hour traffic, crawling past the second McDonald’s in ten minutes while wondering if there’s anything more to life than Best Buys and Top 40 radio, secretly fantasizing about giving it all up and running off to some unidentified tropical paradise where the women are well-endowed and the drinks are always strong. My dad loved this song, and while I’m hesitant to pin a failed marriage on a throwaway pop-rock 90s track, sometimes it simply “is what it is,” and all we can do is drink up the wine and ponder the necessity of getting a larger suitcase into which we may stuff our wares on that fateful cloudy afternoon we decide that we need to start over. Oh Fastball, I wasn’t planning on waxing philosophical but you couldn’t resist, could you?
Smash Mouth – “Walkin’ On The Sun” (1997)
That’s “walkin'” with an n-and-apostrophe, thank you very much. The grammar is crucial; it explains so much. The unabashed go-go organs, the Austin Powers guitar, the fifties-commercial jingle-jangle chorus, Steve Harwell’s generous (and Coke-aping) offer to “buy the world a toke,” the follow-along-with-the-Monkees bass line: these things don’t waste their time walking. There’s walkin’. With an apostrophe. You can keep your “All Star” and your fucking Shrek soundtrack; I’ll take this delicious slice of late-90s alternative pie with a side of NBA Jam-sanctioned “boom-shaka-laka,” thank you very much. In a twist of synesthetic serendipity, hearing this song evokes within me the smell of new furniture. We’d just moved into a new house when this song got popular; leather couches and ficus not yet damaged by the hands (and juice spills) of curious children, I’ll forever associate Smash Mouth with the sight of perfectly arranged throw pillows and sparkling-white kitchen counters. Walkin’ through Jennifer Convertibles, buyin’ stuff for our family’s new abode; some of my most vivid childhood memories feature me helpin’ my parents with new-house-decoratin’. I hope there’s a Smash Mouth equivalent when I go furniture shoppin’ with my kids in twenty or thirty years.
Matchbox 20 – “3AM” (1997)
WellIcan’thelpbutbescaredof itallllllsometimes. Yes, that’s all one word, LyricsFreak be damned. Within this breathless admission of quarterlife ennui (Rob Thomas was 25 when this song was released) lies the secret to the magic of 90s alt rock: the world–specifically, Kosovo and Cuba and the Middle East and Oklahoma City–was sincerely fucked up, so all we could do was strap on our guitars like musical shields and make love to the mic until we forgot where we were and why we felt so anxious about the imminent new millennium. Matchbox 20 was one of the last great dependable bands; you knew what you were getting when you bought one of their albums, and you could count on their style to happily refrain from evolving, because hey, why fix it if it ain’t broke, right? Some bands can explore many genres with equal aplomb, while others only did one sound but did it well. Matchbox 20 did this particular, indelible strain of post-grunge rock music exceedingly well, so much so that two years later Thomas would paste this inoffensively rockabilly style onto Carlos Santana’s smooth guitar pickings, to massive commercial success. Convincing a guitar legend to adopt your musical style? If that’s not a sign of cultural influence, I don’t know what is.
Tracy Bonham – “Mother Mother” (1996)
“Yeah, I’m working, making money / I’m just starting to build a name,” Bonham spits, voicing the post-collegiate frustrations of a generation of slackers who constantly claimed they were “really trying, man, but it’s tough” as they headed to Western Union to get their parents’ latest money wiring. The screaming chorus might suggest some kind of emocore, but really, this song transcends that Hot Topic genre; this ain’t the sort of single you listen to at the mall. No, this was the song your older sister would play on her shitty sedan’s cassette deck as she dropped you off at soccer practice before her weekly poetry session (or whatever it was that she did on Tuesday afternoons). Yes, Tracy, you’re “freezing,” “starving,” “bleeding to death,” but tell us how you really feel. If brevity is the soul of wit, then it’s also the soul of twenty-something angst, a rallying cry against the placating soma of Mad About You and Miller Lite. During the second verse, the video for this song shows Tracy playing a violin, but I always thought it was an oboe. I don’t know, there’s just something quirky and fascinating about reed instruments in rock songs; a violin just seems so easy, doesn’t it? Come on, Tracy, what would your creative writing teacher say about turning to such a cliched melodramatic instrument? Give us our oboe, and everything will indeed be “fiiiiiiiiiine.”
Alanis Morissette – “Thank U” (1998)
Yes, yes, the nude video. I couldn’t find a version of the official video that allowed embedding, so you’ll just have to recall the sight of Alanis’s digitally censored vagina hangin’ out in the supermarket in your head. Or Google it, whatever.
So yes, as I mentioned earlier, I will stand by Jagged Little Pill as one of the nineties’ crowning artistic achievements. But the followup album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie? Eh, not so much. Even the title is pretentious, the kind of thing you might expect to see scrawled atop a high school drama nerd’s marble notebook in neon pink highlighter. And were it not for the crunchy guitars and angry guitars during the song’s climax, I’d be hard-pressed to call this a “rock song” at all. But here it is, and in weaker moments it makes me cry, and I’ll be happy to keep on crying for Alanis’s musical dangling carrots as long as she keeps on writing melodies this irresistible. New age schlock? Hardly. This is the stuff of real teenage dreams, and it’s cheesy but also tragically beautiful, like a porcelain angel figurine with one wing broken off.
, if that conceit weren’t the most pretentious fucking thing ever.
