THE NINETIES-IST
Welcome to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 1997, the evils of an ironic Goo Goo Dolls cover, Jan Wenner being solely responsible for the downfall of the music industry, and Mr. Pridemore listing his top five 1997 albums. For earlier installments, go here.

So, my interest in music — which, we established a few weeks ago began in 1993 and immediately escalated to zealotry — has kept me interested in the aural side of popular culture long after many of my early peers (folks who got to play in the cool bands in high school, and such) dropped off the radar and stopped taking in new music. Over the last year or so, I’ve even noticed the kind of ironic nostalgia from people younger than me over songs that I (and most other self-respecting people) never wanted to hear again in the day, and certainly don’t want to be reminded of ten or more years after the fact. Younger bands I play shows with have started doing ironic covers of Goo Goo Dolls songs, the same way that the cool bands I knew growing up did ironic covers of Eddie Money songs. Get it? It’s circular.

And I’m befuddled by this kind of ironic nostalgia in the same way that hipsters ten years my senior must have been befuddled by my ironic nostalgia for the 80s at the time. This kind of detachment is thrice problematic:

1. The ironic cover of a passé pop song idea jumped the shark in 2002. It’s true: Dynamite Hack’s (remember them? Me neither)’s white boy acoustic ballad version of the NWA classic “Boyz in the Hood” was the last nail in the coffin.

2. All nostalgia is at least somewhat poisonous. Jan Wenner and David Geffen are still trying to get you to buy repackaged Doors collections, rather than invest emotionally in current artists. This is not because the Doors are a better band than, say, the Smoking Popes. Rather, this is because it is much easier (read: cost-effective) to sell the same old shit to each subsequent generation than spend energy cultivating new artists. Plus, when you get down to it, Jan Wenner couldn’t give a shit less if you like the stuff you consume, just so long as you pay through the nose for it. Keeping overhead low is priority number one for guys like Wenner. Never forget that.

(Folks, I don’t entirely know why Jan Wenner’s my particular scapegoat here. There are a lot of people responsible for the current industry slump. My only guess is that Wenner’s refusal to allow the Monkees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has something to do with it (further, if the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame really had anything to do with Rock and/or Roll, wouldn’t the “and” be shortened to an “‘n”? Just asking.))

Anyway…

3. Ironic nostalgia gets in the way of a lot of the good stuff that happened. I know I personally didn’t discover any of the truly great, groundbreaking bands that came out in the 1980s (Black Flag, the Minutemen, the Replacements, the list goes on) because I was too busy banging my head to Goldfinger’s version of “99 Luftballons.” Would my life have been so much better, so much sooner, had I eschewed the Goldfinger record for, say Black Flag’s blistering semi-cover of “Louie, Louie,” (an afterthought on their seminal The First Four Years) or the Minutemen’s jammy take on CCR’s “Don’t Look Now” (ditto on the band’s magnum opus Double Nickels on the Dime)?

Yes. Jesus Christ. I would probably also have been spared obsession with Mustard Plug’s punk-ska take on The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshman.” Which, to be fair, was actually pretty funny, and not really nostalgia at all: the two versions were released a year apart-than one band paying cheeky tribute to their friends.

I hope I’ve made my point. And if you’re still with me:

Five Records from 1997 for My Children (and my Children’s Children):
More on #14: 1997

ART OF SONG
Lefty Frizzell
“You’re Humbuggin’ Me”
Look What Thoughts Will Do
1997 | Sony

From its starting bell of a sax intro as anxious-sounding as the bracing snort of a racehorse, Lefty Frizzell’s (1928-1975) rendition of “You’re Humbuggin’ Me” breaks to run roughshod over an undutiful, deceptive wife with a weather radar for a heart (“Last week you wrote me a letter, ‘I’ll see ya if it don’t rain”) and a sadistic approach to home-cooking (“You promised me chicken and pork roast/You give me sour milk and burnt toast”).
More on Lefty Frizzell | “You’re Humbuggin’ Me”

HIDDEN GEM
Leonard Cohen
Death of a Ladies’ Man
1997 | Sony

Having only “Everybody Knows” as a reference point to the world of Leonard Cohen, I was quite surprised when I dropped the needle on Death of a Ladies’ Man. A collaboration with Phil Spector, the 1977 album contains none of the Cohen classics that have been covered (and in the case of Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah,” strangled) numerous times over the years. Indeed, the album was hated by Cohen fans and didn’t sell particularly well, either.

The discovery that Leonard Cohen’s body of work exists beyond the guttural, too-many-Pall-Malls voice on “Everybody Knows” is a welcome one. Wrapped tightly in Phil Spector’s massive Wall of Sound, Cohen’s croon is reminiscent of John Wesley Harding-era Bob Dylan (who sings backup on “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On”), and vaguely bored, not unlike the innoculated, adenoidal singing style that typified 80s New Wave bands like Captain Sensible and the Buggles. “Paper Thin Hotel” is a slow, languid ballad about a jilted lover listening to his woman, making love to another man in the next room. When Cohen sings, “You ran your bath and you began to sing/I felt so good I couldn’t feel a thing,” it is apparent that the narrator pines for the woman in the other room, despite the cuckholdry she’s committing. Later, on the devastatingly achy title track, Cohen describes meeting his love: “‘I never even knew how much I wanted you,” she said/His muscles they were numbered and his style was obsolete/‘O baby, I have come too late.’/She knelt beside his feet.” Cohen’s narrator has found his ideal woman, but after too many years of wanting and loss, and he can’t keep her with only the sex games that he’s perfected on others.
More on Leonard Cohen | Death of a Ladies’ Man

HIDDEN GEM
Lincoln
Lincoln
1997 | Polygram Records

The great thing about single-album bands is that you never have to listen to them start to suck. So many of the best first-wave punk bands got in and got out in a single shot of frenetic energy, collapsing either before success had a chance to kick in (The Modern Lovers, Young Marble Giants, The Germs) or after it tore them apart (The Sex Pistols). A single mission statement, sometimes, is all you need. Take the Modern Lovers, for example. That band’s brand of stiff, synth-driven punk rock was great, inspiring stuff – but it was a one trick pony. A second album would have been redundant, repetitive and unnecessary (which Modern Lovers live tapes have proven). Jonathan Richman, David Robinson, Jerry Harrison and Ernie Brooks had their one moment, and then dissolved into legend, each moving on to bigger (in Robinson’s and Harrison’s cases) and better (in Richman’s case) things. So everyone was satisfied and no one got hurt, right?
More on Lincoln | Lincoln

HIDDEN GEM
Lincoln
Lincoln
1997 | Polygram Records

The great thing about single-album bands is that you never have to listen to them start to suck. So many of the best first-wave punk bands got in and got out in a single shot of frenetic energy, collapsing either before success had a chance to kick in (The Modern Lovers, Young Marble Giants, The Germs) or after it tore them apart (The Sex Pistols). A single mission statement, sometimes, is all you need. Take the Modern Lovers, for example. That band’s brand of stiff, synth-driven punk rock was great, inspiring stuff – but it was a one trick pony. A second album would have been redundant, repetitive and unnecessary (which Modern Lovers live tapes have proven). Jonathan Richman, David Robinson, Jerry Harrison and Ernie Brooks had their one moment, and then dissolved into legend, each moving on to bigger (in Robinson’s and Harrison’s cases) and better (in Richman’s case) things. So everyone was satisfied and no one got hurt, right?
More on Lincoln | Lincoln

HIDDEN GEM
The Promise Ring
Nothing Feels Good
1997 | Jade Tree

As the nostalgia wheel keeps turning, swinging inevitably toward the 1990s (when, officially, popular culture started to eat itself: the 90’s were the first years when a healthy interest in the music and media of the 70’s equaled and/or exceeded popular interest in what was going on right then), I wonder if any of the unsung bands of that era will jump on the reunion tour bandwagon, or if anyone will even care. Sure, Pavement will always be the underdog champions to someone. Radiohead will continue to increase the distance between what they’re doing now and what they were doing in 1993, to the orgiastic revelry of their fans. Nirvana and Elliott Smith, both gone before they could tarnish their good names, are mythical creatures now, that will continue to grow in legend as time grows further from their respective expiration dates. Even less-than-household-name acts like Tortoise and Liz Phair  are trotting out their newly minted nostalgia acts; both performing their respective “classic” albums front to back on tour. This is not to say that Millions Now Living Will Never Die isn’t a goddamn gorgeous example of post-rock at its very finest, but in terms of sales (more or less equaling the level of nostalgia around any given act), Tortoise is no Pink Floyd and Millions is no Dark Side of the Moon.
More on The Promise Ring | Nothing Feels Good

HIDDEN GEM
The Promise Ring
Nothing Feels Good
1997 | Jade Tree

As the nostalgia wheel keeps turning, swinging inevitably toward the 1990s (when, officially, popular culture started to eat itself: the 90’s were the first years when a healthy interest in the music and media of the 70’s equaled and/or exceeded popular interest in what was going on right then), I wonder if any of the unsung bands of that era will jump on the reunion tour bandwagon, or if anyone will even care. Sure, Pavement will always be the underdog champions to someone. Radiohead will continue to increase the distance between what they’re doing now and what they were doing in 1993, to the orgiastic revelry of their fans. Nirvana and Elliott Smith, both gone before they could tarnish their good names, are mythical creatures now, that will continue to grow in legend as time grows further from their respective expiration dates. Even less-than-household-name acts like Tortoise and Liz Phair  are trotting out their newly minted nostalgia acts; both performing their respective “classic” albums front to back on tour. This is not to say that Millions Now Living Will Never Die isn’t a goddamn gorgeous example of post-rock at its very finest, but in terms of sales (more or less equaling the level of nostalgia around any given act), Tortoise is no Pink Floyd and Millions is no Dark Side of the Moon.
More on The Promise Ring | Nothing Feels Good

NOT ROCK
Deftones
Around the Fur
1997 | Maverick
A

What does and does not qualify as “rock” music will probably not ever be entirely clear. Most people would agree that Philip Glass, Femi Kuti, Bob Marley, Aphex Twin and the Notorious B.I.G. are not rock. The Rolling Stones are “rock n’ roll,” the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and The Who are “classic rock,” Bob Dylan is “folk rock,” Lynard Skynard is “southern rock,” AC/DC is “hard rock,” Rush is “progressive rock,” Pearl Jam is “alternative rock” and Nirvana is “grunge,” yet they all fit under the same rock. To add to the confusion, any style of music can “rock.”

But what about metal? The Rolling Stones are not metal. Although their styles are in proximity, Nirvana and Rush are not metal. Black Sabbath, frequently and rightfully credited as the “Fathers of metal,” are essentially in the same hard rock category as AC/DC, and neither of them truly metal. Tool sometimes just barely misses the metal mark, teetering between hard and prog rock. However, in very different ways Megadeth, (early) Metallica, Iron Maiden, Sepultura and Cannibal Corpse could qualify as metal. Bands like Korn and Deftones are often labeled as alternative or “nu” metal and thrown into the same category. While these bands have more in common with each other than the Spice Girls, thinking of them similarly is a common and careless error.
More on Not Rock: Around the Fur