THE NINETIES-IST

In an age where fewer and fewer people are buying new music, it helps to have your record housed in a distinct package.  Everyone can do jewel cases, and frankly, what’s the point of them?  If you’re anything like me, you live in a small apartment in Brooklyn, and if you buy a new compact disc, you disassemble the jewel case and throw it out, first thing.  The jewel case is passe, not to mention horrible for the environment.

And it’s not like one can’t afford to do better these days, either.  When I released my first album, Metal and Wood, in 2003, one thousand compact discs, in shrink-wrapped jewel cases, cost around $1,200.  In 2009, I released my fourth album, A Brighter Light, in shrink-wrapped, full color eco-wallets (they’re the cardboard ones, where the CD slips into it like a record, rather than sit on a plastic tray).  Due to increased economic downturn and ever-waning public interest in CDs, this run of a thousand cost pretty much the same as my first album (basically half what they cost in 2003).  Today, one can release a CD that sounds good, lasts a long time, and looks cool, for a fraction of what it used to cost.

Some examples, throughout the years:

1.  Spiritualized-Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space (12×3″ CD “blister pack” edition)

Spritualized‘s 1997 crowning achievement, the spacey, drone-y Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space, sonically, earns its’ place among the canon of psychedelic music.  The album was available on traditional compact disc and vinyl, but was also released in an ultra-limited form that included each of the album’s twelve songs on a 3″ CD.  The mini-CDs were then packed into a “blister pack”-basically the cellophane and plastic contraption that Claritin comes in.  Though I hadn’t heard the record when I saw it in January 1999-and I have only a passing familiarity with it today-that CD box was the ultimate drool-inducing fetish object for a guy like me.  It sat on the shelf of Radio Kilroy-where I was employed and, because my boss thought I was stealing anyway, could easily have stolen it-until it went out of business a few months later.  The blister pack edition of Ladies and Gentlemen was the coolest record by far in a store full of cool records-so modern and somehow so reminiscent of Huxley’s Brave New World.  The boss wanted $180 for his copy at the time; today, the same album goes on eBay for eight times that.

2.  The Velvet Underground-Peel Slowly and See (5 CD boxed-set)

The Velvets’ four, commercially stillborn but unprecedentedly influential albums were collected (and expanded with dubious bonus tracks) for the first time in 1995.  Having all of their classics, many omissions that ranged in quality from essential to horrid, and a pre-Velvet Underground and Nico CD of Lou Reed, John Cale and Sterling Morrison rehearsing their earliest material was reason enough to shell out forty five bucks for the five CD package.  That the package aped the cover of the group’s debut album-a banana with the words, “Peel Slowly and See” next to the stem-only with a Colorforms-style banana logo that actually peeled away, once again made the package an absolute necessity for nerds.  Nevermind the fact that the CDs don’t begin and end one bit like their source material (and indeed the entire third album is presented in a weird alternate mix), the banana on the cover is cool as shit.  I already had all the groups albums when my girlfriend’s roommate was hard up for cash and offered me the box for thirty bucks.  Maybe not the coolest thirty bucks I ever spent, but certainly in the running.

More on #23: Unorthodox Packaging

THE NINETIES-IST

Welcome to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 2004. For earlier installments, go here.

We’ve spent the last several months trying to figure out what went wrong in the corporate rock world. I’ve blown the whistle from my little corner of the internet on a week-to-week basis, pointing my self-righteous finger at publishers (Jan Wenner), record execs (all of them, really), lame “stars” (Mickey Dolenz, et. al) and even my own heroes (They Might Be Giants, etc.).

I’m. Tired. Of. Pointing. Fingers. I’m tired of going on and on about what’s gone wrong. And I’m also tired of pretending that there’s any feasible solution on the horizon. Best to gut the fish, I say: cut off the best hunks of meat, and throw the carcass back to sea. Had the Old Man in Hemingway’s story done so, he would probably have had food for a month. I don’t want to be the one to keep dragging the industry’s useless body around, trying to find safe passage home, only to arrive and find his kill picked clean by sharks.

I want to start talking about what’s gone right. I want to talk about the crazy bastards who keep finding a way to release good new music in an era where no one gives a shit about good new music anymore.

In June 2004, some friends and I attended the 10 Year Anniversary celebration of Plan-It-X Records, in Bloomington, IN. My introduction to Plan-It-X had come about three years earlier, when I was thrust on a bill with the greatest band ever out of Pensacola, FL, This Bike is a Pipe Bomb. In the weeks leading up to that gig, I’d heard from just about every kid in town that TBIAPB was a hardcore band, known for violent crowd antics at their shows. It didn’t make any sense to me why I’d been asked by the venue staff to play with a violent hardcore band; the music I played then sounded much like the music I play now (folky punk [I hate to use the term folk punk]), albeit the music then was pretty heavily influenced by cheap beer.

More on #21: 2004

THE NINETIES-IST
Welcome to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 2003 and the good old days when kids took the time to ride their bikes to record stores to pick up new albums instead of downloading songs with a simple and thoughtless click. For earlier installments, go here.

If the moment upon which the music industry gave up the ghost for real can indeed be pinpointed to a single date, I would posit that it came with the release of Good News for People Who Love Bad News, the commercial breakthrough from Modest Mouse, long beloved Washington indie rock darlings. And I can’t even blame the death of the industry on Modest Mouse: while Good News is not nearly as good as the albums upon which Modest Mouse’s reputation was built, the album is still quite good. I would posit, though, that the end of the old standard came with Modest Mouse’s crossover because I can’t for the life of me think of one other new album that’s had anywhere near the impact of Good News.

(Before you get started in on me about music over the last seven years, let me just say: Animal Collective, M. Ward, Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes, Bon Iver, !!!, Neko Case, My Morning Jacket, Screaming Females, etc. I know. Shut up.)

But given that I promised to wrap things up in 2003, let’s just go ahead and say that any events dating after December 31, 2003, are epilogue. I would point out that 2003 is the year Radiohead, previously the bastions of adventure and limit-testing in modern rock, first failed to live up to the hype surrounding them. Where moments on each of their previous albums carry unmistakable resonance to this day (discounting 2001′s Amnesiac, which was more of a companion piece than actual album), 2003′s Hail to the Thief was the first more or less unmemorable Radiohead album. Considering that Thom Yorke and Co. are hailed in the media as industry saviors on a more or less daily basis, I would guess that a lot of guys who wear ponytails and $1,000 suits started bucketing water out of the higher floors of the Capitol Records building when Hail to the Thief failed to reinvigorate the industry.

More on #20: 2003

THE NINETIES-IST
Welcome to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 2001, specifically 9/11/2001, and the significance of four albums released on that day. For earlier installments, go here.

So, our exploration of music in the 1990s has come to a close. Things were “bad” for creative rock music at the beginning of the 90s, then they were “good” for a while, then by decade’s end, things were “bad” again. The modern record industry didn’t die entirely on January 1, 2000, though; things crutched along for another couple of years, and so we’re still here, trying to figure out exactly when the industry hit critical mass.

Rather than do a serial exploration of 2001, as we have about other years in this column, I’d like to talk about one specific date: September 11. Many New Yorkers who were living here on the day have insinuated to me over the years that all things New York City can be divided into two categories: “pre”-9/11 and “post”-9/11. I was still living in Kalamazoo, MI, at the time, staring at my watch through my last year of college, obsessing over alt. country, and doing my small part to run one of the nation’s few remaining freeform independent radio stations, 89.1FM WIDR Kalamazoo.

WIDR’s director’s staff, myself included, were booked and all set to attend that fall’s CMJ Music Marathon, four days of music and conference all across Manhattan’s greatest clubs and shitty bars. Sure, it’s corny now, but we’d attended the year previous (my first visit to the city), and I’d gotten to meet some of my heroes (David Lowery, John Flansburgh), see shows that I still talk about to this day (Low, PJ Harvey, Sean Na Na) and left what was supposed to be my last pack of cigarettes on the bar at CBGB (the actual physical sight of the marquee made my breath stop in my throat). I was hooked, and my (then) girlfriend and I swore we’d be living in New York as soon as we could.

More on #18: 2001

THE NINETIES-IST
Welcome to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 1993, the birth of a conscious music listener, and falling in and out of love with They Might Be Giants. For earlier installments, go here.

1993 is a defining year for me, Brook Pridemore, as a musician/music obsessor (one can’t really exist without the other). Aside from Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged premiere in November (the defining live document of the 90s) and Prince changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol, 1993 is the year I became conscious. So, while the year may not be the best for music (certainly ‘95 and ‘97 are go-to years for “the classics”), 1993 will always evoke something of a coming of age nostalgia within me. The historical equivalent of the participant’s trophy in softball you’ve got in a box somewhere, maybe, or the barely-meeting-the-weight-requirement large mouth bass you caught when you were a kid, that ended up stuffed and mounted, a constant reminder of simpler times. 1993 is the year I came of age.

It seems innocuous now, but one February morning in ‘93, I was watching Saturday Morning cartoons with my much-younger sister. An episode of Tiny Toon Adventures that featured animated videos to two songs by quirky Brooklyn group They Might Be Giants crossed my periphery. And that was it. I had no idea what these guys looked like (as TMBG were depicted by Tiny Toons characters, you see), but I could tell just by hearing them that they looked more like me (skinny, pale, gawky) than the hip hop crews or cartoon-y hard rock bands my contemporaries were discovering. Gangbangin’ was in, but it’s hard to be a gangbanger in a lake-dominated suburb thirty miles north of the inner city of Detroit. Being a hesher was in, but I still don’t quite dig on metal, and it’s hard to be a hesher without dirt weed.

They Might Be Giants seemed like they spoke to me, personally. In the last dying days before the Internet diluted the mystery a band could wrap itself in, I went on a quest to find all of their albums to date, and learn all the lyrics. The things I had picked for my career focus to date (funny car designer, video game programmer, etc.) went out the window. I was going to be a singer like They Might Be Giants. Christmas 1993, when I got my first guitar, TMBG’s guitarist, John Flansburgh, served as my first role model. Never known for his flash, Flansburgh held the band’s quirky, percolated rhythms together with his simple, creative strumming. “Birdhouse in Your Soul” is buoyed by Flansburgh’s tic-tac bassline across it’s chorus. You may never have noticed that bouncy little line in there, but it’s an essential element to what gives the song it’s danceable backbone.
More on #10: 1993

HOLY MUSICIAN, BATMAN…
I am writing this article at an unfortunate time. The most recent album by They Might Be Giants, The Else, is their first release not to feature the accordion. This could be the end result of the instrument becoming less and less prominent in their music over the years, or it could be just an aberration in their catalogue. Regardless of the future of the accordion in their work, it is one of the many pieces that made TMBG a musical institution that continues to be important 25 years after the band’s formation.

John Linnell, one of the two Johns (along with Flansburgh) that makes up the band, plays a variety of instruments in the group – saxophone, keyboard, occasionally percussion or a stringed instrument, and the accordion. For much of their career, however, the accordion was Linnell’s thing.
More on They Have a Fight, Accordion Wins

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