Not From The 90s Playlist

Baked had kind of a 90s shoegaze thing going at Asbury Lanes last week.

When You Have Nothing Else to Post, Make a Playlist

The other day, my friend Allyson from Speak Into My Good Eye forwarded me a video with the message, "Have you seen / heard this band? I feel like they're right up your alley." I watched it and heard fuzzed out, noisy guitars -- kind of that wall of sound noise thing. There were also definitely some pop hooks. Right up my alley. I guess you all know me by now.

Those sounds have been kind of a thing lately, so I decided to make a "Not From The 90s" playlist featuring recent acts working over the sounds of 1990s indie rock. No. There won't be any Mariah Carey-influenced pop stars (I'm looking at you Ariana Grande.). It's mostly stuff that sounds like My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr., Weezer, maybe some Superchunk, maybe some Pavement, maybe some Lemonheads, maybe even some Liz Phair.

Like the "Not From The 80s" playlist, not everything will be a religious reproduction of 1990s indie guitar rock; but everything, for one reason or another, reminds me of that time. Maybe it's the octaves.

Here you go. Have a good weekend.

Scotch LaRock on Rabbit Holes, The 1990s, and Pond

I Can Relate

I've done this before. You hear a song by one of your favorite bands from back in the day, and it takes you down a path of sorts. The Internet has made this painfully easy; and, more than once, I've found myself in the time suck of YouTube videos and old album reviews. I'm looking at you, Cavedogs.

FoCDM Scotch LaRock and I had a conversation about chasing old bands around on the Internet the other night, and he sent me over an account of his most recent experience. It's kind of stream of consciousness, but that's the nature of these things.

I've Gone Down A Rabbit Hole
by Scotch LaRock

Alice - “How curious. I never realized that rabbit holes were so dark . . . and so long . . . and so empty. I believe I have been falling for five minutes, and I still can't see the bottom!”

Rabbit holes, they are everywhere. I get lost. Regularly. Something I read or hear or see triggers it, and I get lost. I might be down a rabbit hole right now.

A few days ago, I was driving and had on my local college radio station. Wedged in between the local acoustic tune and the new Real Estate song was The Posies' “I Can Dream All Day.”



I hadn't thought about The Posies in some time, but there they were calling me. It seems fitting as the jumping off point for this rabbit hole.

Later that night I put The Posies on and started to sink deep into the 90s. One thing led to another and so on. Finally, I find myself wondering how it's four hours later and I'm in the garage trying to find, well, I don't know. I got lost on the way.  Maybe there is something to Inception.

This was a rabbit hole within a rabbit hole. I started in Seattle, moved into Sub Pop, and then traveled down to Portland. Along the way, I went on a few side trips: Hazel, Elliott Smith, and Everclear from their time on Tim/Kerr Records. Then I tripped over Pond. Yes, I thought, Pond and my old friend Chris Brady.

Pond were a three piece from Portland that got swept up into the grunge era and eventually signed a major label deal. I can honestly say that grunge is a bothersome word to describe music; but it references the time, so I'll go with it. Pond's bassist / singer, Chris Brady, did this crazy pick hand slide thing that I haven't seen or heard since. Pond had an early single on Tim/Kerr before they moved over to Sub Pop for their first two LPs.

Ok, I came a little late to the Pond party. I bought their first album shortly before their second album came out, and I only vaguely remember the video for “Agatha."



Mostly, I remember it for the hat that Charlie wore and the image of the bands' heads in the hedges. I remember a lot of press photos of Charlie with hats. I started to get into the band and met Pond during South By Southwest. I struck up a bit of a friendship with Chris. We kept in touch, before the internets!

While rummaging around down in this rabbit hole, I spent some time trying to track down videos from my favorite Pond record The Practice of Joy Before Death. Such a collection of weird pop songs buried in a murky Pacific Northwestness.  It was the kind of record on which my favorite song changed from week to week, and that's the one that made it to the latest mix tape I gave to a friend.

Quirky man, just really, really quirky. Songs about old ladies and snakes and ants. Did I mention that slide bass? YouTube wasn't really cooperating with my desire for a video for “Sundial,”



but then I found this gem, a live version of “Rock Collection.”



Remember, I said there would be hats. What a snapshot of time and place. Hey there 90s, coffee shop!

I saw Pond a few times that tour, once at South By Southwest. If I remember correctly, that included seeing them play in the front window of a bar. I may or may not have met Doug Martsch of Built To Spill sitting on the curb outside. Times and places blend together almost twenty years later.

Now here's where we can get even more Inception. I saw Fugazi with the Pond guys in May of 1997. They were in NYC and played Brownies. I thought they were amazing, but you probably guessed that part. During their stay we went to see Fugazi at the Palladium. Five bucks. Amazing night, except for Branch Manager, who I still do not enjoy. I think it was the last rock show at the Palladium, too. I checked to see if it is part of the Fugazi Live series. Sadly it is not. That would have been cool.

I put on the album Rock Collection. Still weird, lots of dogs and astronauts. There was a fantastic video for “Spokes.”



If you look closely, you'll spot Leslie Hayman (Therese Lisbon from The Virgin Suicides) and Spike Jonze. P.S., I can rabbit hole even deeper on both The Virgin Suicides and Oscar-winner Spike Jonze. Along the way, I found a couple of Pond Peel Sessions that I never heard and some non-album tracks I didn't remember to round out my rock collection. Pond, I miss ya.

Unfortunately, like many bands that you or I cultivate and keep in the underrated / forgotten category, Pond didn't survive that major label move and didn't make another record. Chris Brady and Steve Birch of Sprinkler went on to form Mandarin, later changing their name to Audio Learning Center. They released two records on Vagrant in the early aughts. Sadly Vagrant doesn't have any info, but All Music does. I lost touch with Chris over the years but I find this to be quite a fitting end to this leg of the journey. Audio Learning Center's “Stereo.”



Now why was I in the garage?

What Does Mike V Think Of...

...The 1990s Revival

In this installment of "What Does Mike V Think Of...," I ask The Everymen frontman his opinion on the recent revival of the sounds of the 1990s.

I was in my twenties during the 90s, so they represent an important time in music for me. As a result, I find myself having to be careful in determining whether I like some new sounds because they're good or because they remind me of the past. Mike does have a way of putting things into perspective.

CDM: I think it's safe to say that we're in the midst of a 1990s revival. There's a big movement going on the lo-fi side of things; and at the rockier end, bands are drawing on influences like Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins, and -- especially -- early Weezer. It seems like there is some new, shoegaze, grunge, or sludge (all usually adding "-pop") band popping up every day.

So, what do you think of the 1990s revival? What do you think of nostalgia in music, in general?

MV: In the same way that I'm wary of reunions (Find a new fucking band to like, man. There are so many out there. And they could probably use the money more than Kevin Shields.) I'm always very wary of trend revivalists. It speaks to a certain malaise of its creators, but most importantly the music has no room to evolve. Music evolves because of people thinking outside of the box and people pushing limits and testing boundaries. Elvis becomes The Beatles. The Beatles become Led Zeppelin. Zep becomes Television. Television becomes The Pixies. The Pixies become Nirvana and on and on and on and you get the idea. But if people are out there, creating a style of music that has already lived out its shelf life, then what more could they possibly do to further that genre? Probably not much. We already know exactly where punk rock ends. And that's ok because there are myriad reasons genres come and go. It's the beautiful life cycle of music. It's a living thing and to be kept alive it needs to adapt. So maybe I'm just saying that, in a way, trend revivalists are killing music. Maybe I don't know what the fuck I'm saying. But maybe I do.

I think -- other than that whole disastrous glam revival of the early-aughts (SEE ALSO, but avoid at all costs: The Darkness, Jet, Velvet Revolver) which I wholeheartedly consider the worst thing to happen to music since Otis's plane went down -- that this 90s fuzz nostalgia is fucking lame. It just rings so incredibly false and hollow, and what is most egregious is the complete lack of songcraft in this new fuzzy generation. Pavement could write the fuck out of a song. Dino Jr could write the fuck out of a song. MBV and Eric's Trip could write the fuck out of a song. The fuzz and the lo-fi nature of the recordings was a reflection of where these bands and labels found themselves at the time. Surely you recently saw Nirvana's first contract make the net rounds. $600 from Sub Pop. Six hundred dollars. You can't make In Utero for six hundred dollars. But you can make Bleach. And while those sonics may have been an artistic choice to some extent, they were more a reflection of the environmental constraints that forced bands like Archers Of Loaf to make Icky Mettle sound like Icky Mettle. So this new batch of post-SST slackers are taking their cues from that seminal time in rock history, and dressing up their mediocre tunes in walls of fuzz and scuzz, but most of them are forgetting to take the time to write the goddamned songs.

So, while I do get some kicks from some of those fuzzy revivalists (actually pretty much just Milk Music), I really can't wait for it to be the new 2000s again. The world could use another Interpol. But hopefully not another Darkness.

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Thanks, again, Mike.

To Mike's mention of Milk Music, I'll add California X and Waxahatchee, among others, as some 1990s-influenced acts who are really bringing the songs along with the sounds.

The 2012 album, Hot Cakes, by The Darkness is available now in all the usual places.