#3 Modern Rock Hits: The mid-90's heyday

Voted Landslide, but so many good choices here (next in line would've been Molly, Big Me, Perfect, Trippin' on a Hole)

Still ubiquitous, not sure how they didn't hit #1: Santeria, Wrong Way, Flagpole Sitta, Everlong, Brain Stew

Pearl Jam ("I Got Id") or Hole or Harvey Danger.

what a tumble after 1997

1998 is when I stopped caring as much about new music.

1994 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Landslide"
1998 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Ava Adore"
1998 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Perfect"
1999 - Hole, "Malibu"

i wonder if Billy Corgan ever finished a track and thought "man, this is going straight to #3!"

lol

it's possible that no 5 years can seem longer than the years you went from 12 to 17, but this list still carves such a big narrative arc, you can see the whole rise and fall of several mini-epochs of alt-rock.

"Given to Fly."

I'm pretty sure I've heard that Love Spit Love track.

that Love Spit Love track was my first and only exposure to anything Psychedelic Furs-related until i started catching up on Molly Ringwald movies in college

I'm shocked that Tonic only got to #3 - that track was everywhere.

Songs that I like:
1994 - Mazzy Star, "Fade Into You"
1994 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Landslide"
1995 - Green Day, "Geek Stink Breath"
1996 - Stone Temple Pilots, "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart"
1997 - Sarah McLachlan, "Building A Mystery"
1997 - Foo Fighters, "Everlong"
1998 - Offspring, "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)"
1999 - Hole, "Malibu"

Malibu for being a refreshing slice of jangle pop in a horrible year for the MR charts.

i wonder if Billy Corgan ever finished a track and thought "man, this is going straight to #3!"

Funniest thing I've read here in a while.

Look at this amazing Smashing Pumpkins run, with only one #1:
#7 Cherub Rock
#8 Disarm
#4 Today
#3 Landslide
#2 Bullet With Butterfly Wings
#1 1979
#9 Zero
#5 Tonight, Tonight
#8 Muzzle
#2 Thirty-Three
#8 Eye
#4 The End Is The Beginning Is The End
#3 Ava Adore
#3 Perfect
#4 The Everlasting Gaze
#2 Stand Inside Your Love
#2 Tarantula

fade into you

oh shit i could have voted for everlong : ( : ( : (

I've Been the star of many plays.

"Brain Stew" from Green Day was definitely my favorite at the time. Wow, I had forgotten about that Offspring song. Sort of a scary portent of things to come.

"Brain Stew" is an unpleasant slog, exhibit #1 in my 'quality of Green Day songs has direct relationship to the BPM' theory.

xp: Yah, I was thinking about Offspring the other day in regards to today's racism rock.

some dude OTM re: 12 to 17, kind of obvious by my participation in threads like this I guess.

anyway there's lots of great shit here, in fact these are all pretty cool:

1994 - Mazzy Star, "Fade Into You"
1994 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Landslide"
1995 - Pearl Jam, "I Got Id"
1996 - Green Day, "Brain Stew"
1996 - Foo Fighters, "Big Me"
1996 - Stone Temple Pilots, "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart"
1996 - Counting Crows, "Angels Of The Silences"
1997 - Bush, "Greedy Fly"
1997 - Sublime, "Santeria"
1997 - Foo Fighters, "Everlong"
1998 - Pearl Jam, "Given To Fly"
1998 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Ava Adore"
1998 - Harvey Danger, "Flagpole Sitta"
1999 - Hole, "Malibu"

...but it's a pretty quick trim down from those to the actual contenders, I mean when you have "Fade Into You" and "Everlong" then a lot of this starts to look like filler fast. I actually am one of those who will rep for "Brian Stew" as being a kind of cool, unexpected twist move with a good head-nodding buildup, ditto the dissonant aggro "Greedy Fly" and the sort of shapeless but grand "I Got Id."

Another great thing is that #3 modern rock status is apparently enough to attract the attention of karaoke companies, as you'll find many or all of these in lots of otherwise really bland binders full of crap. No one ever sings them.

er, "Brain Stew"

Actually now I feel silly cos I should have voted "Big Me". That music video was so much fun!

Hazy memory of "Kurt & Courtney." Nick Broomfield somehow snuck into the studio where Courtney Love was recording what turned out to be the "Celebrity Skin" album. Before he questions if she had anything to do with Kurt's death, he asks her what she's working on. He says, "I could hear that song you were recording. What's it about -- something with the beach and Southern California?" Turned out to be "Malibu."

I will rep for those Love Spit Love albums! Richard Butler was far more successful jumping on the grunge bandwagon than Ian McCulloch with Electrafixion.

Given To Fly

it's very tempting to vote for either of the Jack Irons-era Pearl Jam tracks or the Counting Crows rocker that was better than it had a right to be, but i can't bring myself to vote for anything other than "Everlong," legit song of the decade contender.

this is so easily "Fade Into You" but want to vote for "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart" as i feel it won't get any love.

oh wait "Flagpole Sitta" is on here.

voted for "Molly", 16 candles down the drain, E-I-E-I-O

sort of a lol vote, sort of not; hey, it's the 90s

I like Weird Al's Nirvana song, but I love "Flagpole Sitta."

i got id over everlong and trippin' on a hole

"Santeria" wasn't #1?! I wish someone had told Southern California that.

i've dropped this factoid here before i'm sure, but i've seen airplay stats for the entire alt-rock format for a couple different 21st century years where "Santeria" is the #1 most played recurrent track from the '90s (and "What I Got" is #2, and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is #3 iirc). that Sublime album has a frighteningly dominant legacy on alternative radio.

clearly, nobody ever told them it's the wrong way

Yes, if there's two albums from this era I see most often at bro-bar jukeboxes it's Sublime and So Much For the Afterglow.

voting for i got id almost seems unfair. they brought in a ringer!

So Much For The Afterglow has some good songs, but "I Will Buy You A New Life" has to be the most annoying, and the one that most clearly proclaimed "hey, this guy really can only write one song," Uh-YEAH (yeah)! Aw (aw)! Whereas, I've always felt like "Father of Mine" had a genuine emotional punch, and "One Hit Wonder" had a cool positive-life-coach singalong ending. "I Will Buy You A New Life" and "Everything To Everyone" both felt like automatic "this is a hit because it's an Everclear song that's on the radio."

"Everything To Everyone" was dope, though

everclear was a horrible band imo

I only got SMFTA last year after ignoring it all this time and was impressed by its hooks.

I didn't know "Wonderful" peaked at #11!

please don't tell me anything about "Wonderful" now

it's not Adam Ant's.

ok this is 'everlong' obv but alot of love for 'malibu' and 'tripping on a hole blah blah blah'

really loathe art alexakis for no particular reason

everclear were a weirdly severely overrated band at the time in some circles (spin, the more popist rolling stone ppl). 'santa monica' is a classic obv and i was 'ok' w/ there other lesser santa monican hits but some of the crit talk at the time is pretty hilarious, lotta ppl thought they'd found some cobain-springsteen hybrid or something. i think alot of rock critics were ecstatic about the alt revolution but by the late 90s reaching for any liferaft they could that the dream wasn't over.

really loathe art alexakis for no particular reason

― mookieproof, Monday, January 6, 2014 11:08 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have reasons! his songs were cynical, calculated, and bloodless.

also smfta is a horrible-sounding record

aw fuck just saw 'fade into you'; woulda voted 'everlong' anyway but it would've been more of a race. crazy that 'given to fly' peaked at 3 - altrock radio had sooooo much staked on that pearl jam album, so many hopes. they're finally giving us what we want! etc. the big altrock station in atlanta (that had just a few years earlier advertised themselves w/ billboards that just said 'PEARL JAM' and then '99x' in smaller letters in the corner) devoted the weekend before yield came out to a strictly pearl jam playlist (the last time i can remember a radio station doing this for a contemporary act). a couple of years prior their listeners would've eaten it up but by 98 alot of those ppl had cut bait and yield wasn't anyone's savior.

yeah from what i recall modern rock radio wasn't quite sure what to do with yield. given to fly is a great song but it faded fast.

man that tonic may have only gotten to #3 but that thing must've lingered on the chart for forever, easily the track that provokes the most dread for me here.

i've heard that song about a billion times and it never gets better.

xp - yeah i remember the first time i heard 'wishlist' thinking 'wait - i thought this was back to the formula hits hits hits, the fuck is this? how is this the second single???', it got airplay on the altrock stations but it was that kinda obligatory airplay, you could tell they weren't enthused about it, similar to the airplay springsteen's 'one step up' or madonna's 'bad girl' got, sheer momentum.

It was kind of funny watching radio jump on each successive single like "oh, THIS one will..." Like, I remember "In Hiding" getting a real buildup. Balls is on the money about that countdown though. The all-Pearl-Jam playlist included such highlights as a live teamup with Young on "Rockin' in the Free World" where the CD started skipping in the guitar solo, playing the same 40-second chunk for about eight or nine minutes before someone noticed. They also played "Pilate" off Yield, spawning an ongoing feud between myself and DJ Axel, who refused to ever play it again.

balls is OTM about Everclear's press hype at the time - the very first line of this article brings up Springsteen!

Tonic song got crossover pop-rock/AC play, that's why it's so ubiquitous. #11 on the Hot 100! We've gone over this relatively recently, but I do think they had better modern-rock songs: "Open Up Your Eyes," "Mean To Me"...

from what i remember pearl jam bailed out the radio by releasing the last kiss cover in '99 and that thing totally got played to death

http://usedwigs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/everclear.jpg

^^^ the "heyday," ladies and gentlemen

and then following up yield's failure you had smashing pumpkins underwhelming later that year. not judging the actual musical merit of the albums here - i could care less about yield tbh and everytime i'm tempted by ilm to finally check out adore i remember that billy corgan sings on it iirc. just that the followup rot that had hit acts like live or counting crows or hootie before this was now kinda hitting the blue chip acts. green day's the only one who ever really shook it - pj and corgan retreated, offspring and kinda counting crows went goofy for cash, live became just another faceless band stuck in the altradio ghetto instead of 'the american u2' or 'the pennsylvanian rem' or whatever that dude was dreaming of.

'98 was def the beginning of the sea change--i think follow the leader coming out that year and getting radio play told me everything i needed to know

btw it's not going to get votes or anything but i feel obligated to point out that turn my head is a nice lil song that i always enjoyed

oh fine twist my arm i'll link my favorite thread again: commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

lol at the everclear headline - 'we're a good rock band, nothing more nothing less' - WHAT MORE DID PPL POSSIBLY BELIEVE EVERCLEAR COULD BE???

96 being the year ALL those bands' sales were cut in half from previous records and the year of Sublime and DMB and Beck's best-selling albums = your sea change right there

What's amazing is that (to the extent that I can recall) none of them self-consciously reinvented themselves to try and stay on the radio in the nu-metal/Creed/pop-punk epochs, which I would not have put past people like Live guy. I guess Creed wasn't a big reach for him anyway, and "The Dolphin's Cry" did okay.

I guess we'll get a better sense of this in the next polls - I feel like third-tier bands actually weathered the changes better. Or look at Citizen King in this poll - no-name act, moderate hit, faceless slacker song with a few contemporary production touches but not a Godsmack song by any stretch of the imagination. Modern rock radio in the late 90s was full of these flash in the pan alt-rock groups and it might have been easy to think that nothing had changed. The Flys! Pushmonkey! Memory Dean!

The great unwritten story of this era is actually that of the 311/Sublime/late RHCP vaguely funky alterna-metal axis.

i will admit i've watched an everclear video in the past five years cuz a young christina hendricks was in it. but only once cuz the sidebar had clips from the late great undressed w/ a young christina hendricks.

in retrospect rhcp kinda almost sitting out a chunk of the 90s was fortuitous, by the time they came back they got to be 'survivors' and the were actually one of the more melodic acts on altrock radio

96 being the year ALL those bands' sales were cut in half from previous records and the year of Sublime and DMB and Beck's best-selling albums = your sea change right there

― some dude, Monday, January 6, 2014 11:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha maybe it's too personal but for me '98 was when alt rock radio started becoming unlistenable so i count it from then

i don't remember Everclear being particularly respected, certainly not by any of the alt kids i ran with, but i can see Art A getting credit from some people for being so much more aggressively topical than any other rock star of the era -- here's the song about having a black girlfriend, here's the song about having a junkie girlfriend, here's the song about being abandoned by my father, lord he was a wizened dad rocker with a dye job

i have friends who were super psyched abt art a solo shows well into the 2000s. i found his topicality to be grunge via jerry springer--so gross.

1998 was when clear channel bought live 105 in San Francisco (I think) and I remember an instant change for the worse -- fewer songs but played more often, no indie/popish bands, Korn-type music nonstop.

o yeah nobody i actually knew irl respected everclear one bit, just some of the crits. i think xhuxk was one of them, maybe they had some puns he ate up.

Everclear seemed tailor-made to headline radio station music festivals in an era when the real heavy hitters were nowhere to be found. balls, have you read this long blog by Sean Demery detailing the rise and fall of 99X from his perspective? He's a little vague in key places but it's got some telling moments.

As stated earlier in this rant, in the mid 90’s, upwards of 50% of the music 99X played was new based. This meant that every other song was new or no older than 3 months old. Recently 99X has been operating with a max of 19% new music. That means that you get 3 new songs an hour, and many of those were ill focused for the 99X music community. In the end, it seems that Cumulus was in fact programming 99X like an AC station with alternative rock hits, in the hopes of securing a 25 – 54 year old add buys. (...)

Looking from a music stand point it seems like Cumulus couldn’t understand the fact that Bush, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and their ilk were the bands of yester year, and were not the building blocks for the current music generation. It felt like that they were trying to recreate the 90’s. The 90’s are gone. They couldn’t understand what bands like the Shins, Silversun Pickups, Band of Horses, Arcade Fire, The Bravery, Interpol, Spoon, Against Me, Rise Against, etc had to do with 99X. These are bands that sell out medium sized venues in Atlanta with little or no airplay; they have massive internet and magazine prominence. These are the same types of building blocks we used in 1992; these are today’s building blocks for this music generation.

As we get close to the end it didn’t really matter. Bert from the Bert show (on Q100) needed to be on a better city grade signal, which 99X had.

sometime maybe three years ago i ran across the most amazing review of an everclear show, author totally genuflecting before his bleached late-40s rock god, but i can't find it now

"look at your bleached rock god now"

http://image.motortrend.com/f/features/consumer/112_1002_everclear_art_alexakis_celebrity_drive/32418657+w799+h499+cr1+ar0/art-alexakis-in-car.jpg

mookieproof, that sounds really familiar, must be on ILX somewhere I think! I'm hearing it in my head like "He has the crowd. The crowd loves him. ART ALEXAKIS IS IN THE HOUSE!"

hmm, did find xhuxk linking to his SPIN review though, which may address balls's speculations above

98 is probably where it's really starting to be evident (i think more 99 though) but seeds are sown w/ that 96 lollapalooza and the huge success of 311 and sublime. really as these charts have kinda shown the pre-nirvana was kinda primary succession species but post-nevermind the more plausibly headbangers ball acts are driving them out and by the late 90s they've established near total dominance, and gotten more suburban metal. the early hard acts had some hard rock in there (generally more so than they had new wave or college rock) but there was still some adherence to some idea of angst and cool - they were actually alternative maaan. this gets kinda worn out or passed over due to certain anti-market tendencies in those acts aesthetics ("cool") and by 2000 you have fred durst as the predominant altrock star, someone no more alt than sebastian bach in persona (not the case even w/ adam duritz, nevermind vedder/corgan/reznor/cobain/stipe).

found it, on this thread: 90s rock bands no one cares about; pick one - - - http://connected-i.com/2011/07/02/art-alexakis-canyon-music-review/

that demery quote is interesting, that the big indie acts haven't been able to really break thru on radio has been kinda interesting to me - modern rock radio format arose cuz acts like the cure and depeche mode (and pre-87 u2 and rem) were selling albums in numbers that couldn't be ignored, there was a market there and a station looking for a niche (at a time when the radio market was more naturally competitive, obligatory shaking of fist at telecommunications act of 1996) could tap into a market that was being ignored and was attractive to advertisers. the gap between arcade fire and justin timberlake's sales is nothing compared to the gap that existed between the cure and michael jackson's sales and yet those acts (that fill much much larger venues and sell more albums than 90s indie acts, nevermind yr husker dus and replacements, did)(one reason i don't really sympathize w/ the nitsuh nymag grizzly bear argument) can't really catch a break on altrock radio (even if arcade fire knockoffs like 'hey ho' can). i've heard arguments also that altradio doesn't go after that market cuz that market doesn't listen to radio they just listen to spotify or mp3s, and lack of promotional muscle is a factor i'm sure - merge ain't got the budget that elektra did in 1987. also frankly i think alot of it is the music, whatever the most radio friendly spoon or arcade fire track is it doesn't approach 'just like heaven'.

omg thank u

When wired Alexakis controls stadiums of people with a simple look.

http://www.glguitars.com/featured_artists/everclear/artguitarmag.jpg

btw have we really never done "Worst Everclear Single" or am I just not searching right?

"The History of Glam -- before Velvet Goldmine"

man I've no trouble with Everclear. Old-ish dude moderates his guitar attack ever so slightly and scores some convincing hits.

It was kind of funny watching radio jump on each successive single like "oh, THIS one will..." Like, I remember "In Hiding" getting a real buildup.

Here it was "Faithfull."

"In Hiding" was actually the last gasp of the "random Pearl Jam album cut that gets so much radio airplay it charts" phenomenon, although i somehow forgot to make it a poll option here: Pearl Jam songs that charted without being officially released as A-sides

That Guitar Magazine cover is one for the 'men who look like old lesbians' thread.

Everclear also noteworthy for their recent records consisting mostly of re-recorded versions of their older, more popular songs.

wikipedia also telling me that Alexakis put together an alt-rock oldies-circuit tour with Sugar Ray, Lit, Marcy Playground, and the Gin Blossoms

I have no use for Everclear after Sparkle & Fade. Everything after that was so repetitive and dull, cynically mining his dysfunctional family life for a buck. It probably was from the start, but "Santa Monica" and "Summerland" were the right songs at the right time for me, and they're too wrapped up in nostalgia for me to look at them critically.

Voted "Malibu" because that was the song Courtney Love was basically born to sing. Well, that and "Celebrity Skin."

this list of songs made me shudder

watch the world die

It was a huge revelation to see Beck doing "New Pollution" on SNL with his Devo/Kraftwerk-aping keyboard player. Everything else was pretty much miserable.

it would be hard for me to defend "wonderful" but i would try

Did I tell you I didn't cry? Well I lied. I lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie lied

''Wonderful'' was just such a dramatic ''well, these guys are straight up out of material'' moment for me. And then they followed up with ''AM Radio,'' which...christ.

lol i forgot about that one

If you squint at the video you can see the other bandmates repeating to themselves that the paycheck is worth it, the paycheck is worth it.

Everclear also noteworthy for their recent records consisting mostly of re-recorded versions of their older, more popular songs.

― intheblanks, Tuesday, January 7, 2014 10:13 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bahahahahahaha

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Xt0QnQ3-L._SY300_.jpg

I wish I could forget "AM Radio."

so much for the afterglow has one of my favorite guitar tones of all time, sounds like fifteen guitars piled on each other all of the time. lots of weird threads of ambition anchored into three-minute three chord songs on that record.

HAHAHA

Track Listing:
1. Santa Monica
2. Wonderful
3. Father Of Mine
4. I Will Buy You A New Life
5. Everything To Everyone
6. I Won t Back Down
7. Unemployed Boyfriend
8. The Joker
9. I Will Follow You Into The Dark
10. Every Breath You Take
11. AM Radio
12. Brown Eyed Girl

well of course i have to listen to this now

also lol/wtf at "Wonderful" actually being their highest-charting Hot 100 single, surely this is just an artifact of "Santa Monica" et al not benefiting from airplay under Billboard rules at the time?

sounds like fifteen guitars piled on each other all of the time.

it's the post-Vig nineties sound. Celebrity Skin too.

surely this is just an artifact of "Santa Monica" et al not benefiting from airplay under Billboard rules at the time?

Non-sales singles couldn't chart on the Hot 100 until 1998 (wow, coincidence??).

Anyone else have a sweet spot for "You Make Me Feel Like a Whore"?

wow, surprise surprise, this album sucks, total contract-filling crap. Was hoping Art would have tried to show his reflective thoughtful side by redoing "Santa Monica" as a slow acoustic ballad, or with a guest rapper or something. They even fake the Jean Knight sample for "AM Radio"!

"Santa Monica" actually did have a physical single though, and it did chart (#29 on the Hot 100)...

oops, wait, my bad - not released in the US, I guess that would kill it, huh?

it's the post-Vig nineties sound. Celebrity Skin too.

yep, but i also like how well it applied to everclear songs. gave it a punchier, brighter feel

Check that Wikipedia footnite:

A ^ "Santa Monica" did not enter the Billboard Hot 100, but peaked at number 29 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart.

ahhhh, got it got it. My bad. Man, what a rip. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but I hate the way it totally distorts band's picture/narrative/legacy. Also, picturing upstart "Wonderful" fans trying to lord its "biggest hit" status over the historical record.

I still think "Awful" is the best thing to come out of Celebrity Skin but it always seems to get overlooked...

"Wonderful" was by far their biggest adult contempo crossover hit, though, so for a lot of people it is their biggest song

I wonder why Capitol approved Alexakis' idea to do a Use Your Illusion-style double record, but with the second entry released four months later.

re: "Wonderful" as the "these guys are straight up out of material" moment, I think most people who liked or kind of liked Everclear probably felt the same way. The second "Songs From an American Movie" record debuted at #66 and has sold 100K, after the first one hit #9 and is platinum.

The Fuddy/Duddy Experience

it was their "New Jersey"

i never even HEARD the single from the 2nd 'American Movie' album, only a 5-second clip in commercials for the movie Antitrust

Yeah, looking at Everclear's wikipedia page, it seems like Capitol said, "Sure, release another record, whatever, but we're only going to promote the one you released a few months ago"

It really does seem baffling in hindsight, given all the failed alt-rock records we've discussed from several years earlier. Could any band just have walked up and gotten two records in one year? Yeah, no promotion, but somebody paid for a video for "When It All Goes Wrong Again." Granted, it has some movie clips, but otherwise it seems to be mostly Art mugging just like the ones before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdQjqY9JDmI

The idea, IIRC, was that this was the "rock" side to the previous "pop" album.

I recall at the time they were supposedly loved by critics and marketed as some kind of modern The Who (intelligent power pop?) but I never really cared for them.

Maybe Capitol thought that this was the one that was really going to break them big, maybe move them from successful double-platinum alternative band to giant rock stars

Like it'd be their Mellon Collie, or something. Still don't understand why they'd approve releasing the albums months apart, though

I got So Much For The Afterglow, Celebrity Skin, and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998 from cdnow for $1 each, new. those were the days

Songs From an American Movie, Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile [Capitol, 2000]

All doubts as to Art Alexakis's punk bona fides are hereby laid to rest--he doesn't have any. Instead he chooses to whup Dave Grohl, the jerk from the Verve Pipe, and if there's any justice Rob Thomas in postgrunge's Bryan Adams sweepstakes. The corn he indulges on this fondly detailed end-of-a-marriage song cycle has nothing to do with abstracted teen agony and everything with classic Garth Brooks, except that Garth never waxed nostalgic for the days he and his honey whiled away watching porn and eating Chinese. Laying on strings, horns, synths, and backup vocals to a fare-thee-well, it makes honest peace with a pop moment when honest pop is the toughest artistic challenge there is. Volume two will supposedly return to the guitar-o-rama of his roots--without any loss of principle, one trusts. A-

*rubs temples*

anyway harvey danger no contest

it's very tempting to vote for either of the Jack Irons-era Pearl Jam tracks or the Counting Crows rocker that was better than it had a right to be, but i can't bring myself to vote for anything other than "Everlong," legit song of the decade contender.

― some dude, Monday, January 6, 2014 9:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

song of the bizarro decade maybe, the mirror universe 90s where the world was so hellish that it could only be represented by a foo fighters song

'98 was def the beginning of the sea change--i think follow the leader coming out that year and getting radio play told me everything i needed to know

― call all destroyer, Monday, January 6, 2014 11:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah, it told u that the dark ages of rock were over and the combination renaissance & enlightenment (99-02) had begun http://i.imgur.com/l65mwLC.gif

balls, have you read this long blog by Sean Demery detailing the rise and fall of 99X from his perspective? He's a little vague in key places but it's got some telling moments.

― Doctor Casino, Monday, January 6, 2014 11:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

thanks for this btw, how'd u find it

i need to not be the only person listening to the weird spoken bits in this everclear cover of "the joker" right now

H4A, found it by accident trying to find a list of all the Big Day Out festivals. Did not find.

I moved to Atlanta in '97 at age 14 and remember thinking 99X was at least a semi-OK replacement for KROQ for about a year. Fits in pretty well with the above. I used to think it was just that my own tastes were changing, but in retrospect it's clear that there was other, bigger stuff going on.

KROQ's Top 20 of the year 1998:

1. Beastie Boys - Intergalactic
2. Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta
3. blink-182 - Dammit
4. Sublime - Bad Fish
5. Green Day - Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
6. Everclear - I Will Buy You a New Life
7. Marcy Playground - Sex and Candy
8. Hole - Celebrity Skin
9. Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
10. Garbage - I Think I'm Paranoid
11. The Smashing Pumpkins - Perfect
12. Save Ferris - Goodbye
13. Everclear - Father of Mine
14. The Offspring - Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)
15. 311 - Beautiful Disaster
16. Fastball - The Way
17. Beastie Boys - Body Movin'
18. Korn - Got the Life
19. Eve 6 - Inside Out
20. Everlast - What It's Like

I still think "Awful" is the best thing to come out of Celebrity Skin but it always seems to get overlooked...

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, January 7, 2014 3:05 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Awful" has always been my favorite song from that album!

4. Sublime - Bad Fish
12. Save Ferris - Goodbye
15. 311 - Beautiful Disaster

^^^ the hell? I heard "Beautiful Disaster" a few times, but there were bigger songs on that album, and I don't think I ever heard those other two. I guess KROQ is kind of its own thing.

Heard "Father of Mine" in the coffee shop yesterday. Still hits pretty hard IMO, I think it's his most successful attempt to do that kind of therapy grunge rock catharsis thing.

Reception

Consequence of Sound commented that "Beautiful Disaster" may be 311's greatest hit and states that it has one of most recognizable intro in any song.[2]

Nah I live on the east coast and hear "Beautiful Disaster" weekly, it's kinda gradually become one of their biggest songs, whereas I haven't heard "Transistor" or "Come Original" or any of their other late 90s singles in years.

I ... hear "Beautiful Disaster" weekly

I feel bad for you...

I got 311 problems

I should clarify, I hear its Most Recognizable Intro and then change the station weekly. I try to be not like that, some songs really suck.

I was a sophomore in high school when "Beautiful Disaster" came out, and IIRC it had a slow-build into its (very relative) success. Granted none of the singles off "Transistor" were anywhere near as successful or ubiquitous as the big two from the previous 311 album. "Beautiful Disaster" was third single, and it just kind of stuck around, got played a lot on 120 Minutes, got covered by at least two high school bands in my hometown in rural Illinois.

Obviously small town Illinois high school cover bands is a pretty crucial litmus test

I got 311 problems

lol

Huh, never really noticed "Beautiful Disaster" having an afterlife. Always thought "Prisoner" should have been a little bigger, but then I also kinda liked "Transistor" which is sort of measurably stupid and lousy.

latter day 311 is lol, real heads step for "Freak Out"

Live 105 in San Francisco (where I grew up) played "Beautiful Disaster" much more than the other Transistor singles. Months and months on end.

There is nothing on this list I like and a lot I actively dislike.

how sad is it that "Beautiful Disaster" may be the closest thing 90s radio rock got to a Thin Lizzy-style twin lead guitar line

OK so this is the first time I hear "Flagpole Sitta." So this is how "A Horse with No Name" was translated for the Fastball era.

no idea how you can go the last 15 years without hearing that song, or what that comparison means

Didn't listen to modern rock radio in '99 or watch the shows in which the song appeared, and the song has an impressive lift from that America song.

*is

Hear the plants and rocks and things
I swear to god it sounds like they're snoring

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee goddamn you

flagpole sitta owns

In the desert, you cannot publish a zine
Cause there ain't no one raging a-gainst machines

I don't get Flagpole Sitta either, but Sad Sweetheart of the Radio is one of my favorite songs of all time.

So what exactly is the distinguishing feature of Modern Rock that makes it 'modern'? Like, what exactly makes Matchbox 20 more modern than the non-modern ('mainstream' in Billboard parlance) rock acts of its era?

Singing that sounds like you are on a toilet having a difficult time.

For better or worse Billboard scrapped the term "modern rock" a few years ago in favor of calling the chart "alternative songs"

My top songs from this selection: "Fade Into You", "Geek Stink Breath", "Brain Stew", "If You Could Only See", "Santeria", "Everlong", and "Flagpole Sitta". Torn between Mazzy or the Foos for my vote.

Looking at the list of modern rock #2 hits for this era I kinda wish they'd also been given their own poll, lots of gems there as well

I think I read somewhere that '97-'98 was right around the time when radio completely changed the rules on how songs became hits and as a result you got these incredibly generic shitsongs like "3 A.M." and that Everclear crap, neither of which would have ever gotten big in the early 90s.

For better or worse Billboard scrapped the term "modern rock" a few years ago in favor of calling the chart "alternative songs"

― some dude, Sunday, January 12, 2014 11:33 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These songs are even less "alternative" than they're "modern"....

Voted for "I Got Id"

Pretty sure it charted higher than #3 on hot 100

it got to #7 on the Hot 100, mainly because the Merkin Ball EP was essentially a surprise non-album single by the biggest band in the world and went gold.

Pearl Jam's biggest Hot 100 hit: "Last Kiss" at #2 in 1999.

and those are their only two top 10 hits. the only Ten single that scraped the Hot 100 was "Jeremy" at #79, which gives you an idea of how little the chart reflected the popularity of rock bands in the '90s.

That's insane.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

iirc "jeremy" charted a few years after Ten when a bunch of the maxisingle imports were reissued stateside... prolly around the same time as Merkin Ball.

I recall getting a little frustrated because I spent $9.99 on the import Jeremy single to hear "Footsteps" ... I didn't know "Yellow Ledbetter" before buying it. And then a year or 2 later it wasn't very difficult to find for $4.99 at Circuit City.

yeah the '90s was a painful time to be obsessed with bands and look for rarities on absurdly overpriced import singles and bootlegs. one of the things i'm most happy that file-sharing killed off.

yeah but it built character

Mazzy Star by a country mile.

"Worst 90s import/rare/ripoff maxi-single buying experience" might be a good thread.

not a one

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/Voodoo_People_02.jpg

not worth it fyi

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

1995 - Sponge, "Molly" 6

six voters down the.........draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain

So someone aside from me also voted for Citizen King.

Yay, I voted for the winner! Much as I love reminiscing about Everclear, it really is the song here with the most staying power. Just lovely. Kind of surprised that "Perfect" and "Wrong Way" could get votes but not "Angels of the Silences" - not that there's anything that special about the latter either.

my Recovering The Satellites fandom is powerful, but not as powerful as my The Colour And The Shape fandom

The most sought after import of my childhood was the Smashing Pumpkins' Rocket -- it had their cover of Depeche Mode's Never Let Me Down.

Wow, lots of love for Flagpole Sitta. That one was just too played out both at the time and then throughout college.

When I first got Limewire I had a ball getting all the stray B-sides and compilation appearances that would have cost a fortune to collect on CD or vinyl - that Smashing Pumpkins cover being one of them.