Maybe I'll win his heart this time.
"Don't run by the poooooooooooooooool. No cut-offs." --Kathleen Hanna, lifeguardin'.
So I've been working my way through the crazy delicious Children Of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The Second Psychedelic Era 1976-1995 and I'm going to provide a track from this box right here:
The Bevis Frond - "Lights Are Changing" (originally on 1988's Triptych)
My first exposure to this song was via Mary Lou Lord's cover version on her self-titled 1995 EP. I flipped through my Jewelsleeves and pulled this thing out for the first time in about a decade. Here's MLL's take:
Mary Lou Lord - "Lights Are Changing" (ft. Juliana Hatfield!)
I spun the entire EP and was jigowatted back to the heart of late '94-early '95 musical nostalgia by this track:
Mary Lou Lord - "His Indie World"
In my mind, this was a bizarre and fun time for the rock, this post-Kurt free-for-all in a pre-Internet world where there was no Pitchfork or Myspace or blogs that featured digital downloads of songs with helpful little RIYL write-ups or $2.99 pulls from Half.com, and a magazine like SPIN (sometimes supplemented with a 'zine like the L.A.-based Flipside with its reportage of Rodney Bingenheimer playlists, cover stories on Kat Bjelland, and scene reports feauring various obscurities) was one of my primary sources for tip-offs.
Ten random memories from this period that popped into my head (I would obviously require several Klosterman-y tomes to fully flesh things out): The Big Four "Grunge" Collective starting to fade out (Nirvana RIP, Pearl Jam's Mackaye-inspired NO VIDEOS/F TICKETMASTER retreat, Alice in Chains sticking around with the Jar of Flies EP, Soundgarden holding things down with Superunknown), Lisa Kennedy Montgomery and Alternative Nation, Billie Joe going all Tom Cruise in the "Longview" video, Pavement having a minor hit with "Cut Your Hair", Kathleen Hanna bouncing around in the "Bull in the Heather" video, Weezer's unraveled sweaters and Happy Days romp, "Seether", Siamese Dream and Pisces Iscariot, listening to Live Through This five times a day for like three months, and x amount chasing Calvin Johnson down Atlanta alleyways.
It was a time (and this probably started in early '93) marked by the weekly ritual of sliding label catalogs (Dischord, Sub Pop, KRS, Matador, Merge, etc.) and CDs (the blurb said it sounds like a cross between Mudhoney's Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and Helium's Pirate Prude EP, so it damn well better deliver!) out of my college mail slot and then returning to my dorm room to assess the loot. Sample dialogue:
Roommate: Anything good today?
Me: Let's see, I got a care package from my grandmother, the new Entertainment Weekly, and Slant 6's Soda Pop Rip-Off, so yeah."
And let's not forget those catalogs (sent away for with a SASE, of course) with all the import Italian Nirvana bootlegs like Outcesticide IX: Barely-Audible Demos and Slightly Different Versions of Songs You Already Have on 17 Other CDs Straight from the Pit of His Burning, Nauseous Stomach. $40? Sounds great! For a couple of years, grief-feuled Cobain completism was a very pricey game to play.
Another landmark event of this time was Pearl Jam's Self-Pollution Radio broadcast on 1/8/95. I took notes during this show. ( I bought the entire The Fastbacks catalog as a result, as well as dipping into pre-Goo Sonic Youth based on EV's snap-krackle-pop-y spin of "Teenage Riot" from a black circle called Daydream Nation.)
EV also played Hanna's message on Mike Watt's answering machine, which eventually appeared on Ball-Hog or Tugboat? It's a 90s classic, perhaps the definitive "Riot Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl" (all those Olympia schoolgirls yelling and rocking sure did maximize my fun) statement -- a denial, a denial, a denial -- given a Scharpling & Wurster-worthy twist in the form of a request for a borrowed Annie soundtrack. Here it is:
Mike Watt/Kathleen Hanna - "Heartbeat" [transcript]
UPDATE: "He never really had my Annie record. I made that whole thing up, I barely even know him. It's just art."
Bonus Tracks:
Mike Watt - "Against the 70's" (ft. EV/Grohl/, Novoselic/ Gary Lee Conner/Carla Bozulich)
Mike Watt - "Piss-Bottle Man" (ft. Dando/Zander Schloss/Anna Waronker/Petra Haden/Rachel Haden, et al)
Mike Watt - "Chinese Firedrill" (ft. Frank Black/Nels Cline/Stephen Perkins, et al)
Mike Watt - "Tuff Gnarl" (ft. Carla Bozulich/J Mascis/Thurston-Lee-Steve/Nels Cline/Epic Soundtracks/Petra Haden)
Mike Watt - "Drove Up From Pedro" (ft. Carla Bozulich/Nels Cline/Joe Baiza/SPOT on mandolin!, et al.)
Comments
"Another landmark event of this time was Pearl Jam's Self-Pollution Radio broadcast..."
It was for me too! I totally found out about a bunch of bands through that, though I was much farther behind the curve--I was like, "Wow, whoever Mudhoney are, they're great!" This unfortunately led to a one-album buying spree that somehow gave my dad the impression that they were my Favorite Band Ever and a series of Mudhoney CDs as presents, which are now sitting in a Rubbermaid container somewhere.
Posted by: Eppy | January 13, 2006 11:39 AM
"This unfortunately led to a one-album buying spree that somehow gave my dad the impression that they were my Favorite Band Ever and a series of Mudhoney CDs as presents, which are now sitting in a Rubbermaid container somewhere." = AWESOME.
At some point, I owned every Mudhoney release, but sold them all over the years and now have all I need in this nice little package.
Posted by: Omar | January 13, 2006 12:23 PM