THE NINETIES-IST
Welcome to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 2002,  the melancholy mood of the year, exemplified in the album releases by Beck, Wilco, and the Flaming Lips (with a healthy dose of Brook’s own nostalgia thrown in, as he set off for the Big Apple to pursue his personal musical ambitions). For earlier installments, go here.

On September 1, 2002, I made good on my as-long-as-I-can-remember dream of leaving Michigan for New York City. Like senior year of high school, (and the subsequent summer) those final Midwest summer days crawled by, like sweet tea tectonic plates. I worked something like ninety hours a week, “saving” money—but really spending most of it on crazy record store finds, things only I could care about—like the Meat Purveyors’ “Madonna Trilogy.” A big part of my problem has always been that no one around me can match my enthusiasm for miniscule little records by cheeky, insurgent bluegrass bands (and, in fairness, I’ve come to realize that a bigger part of my problem is that I care less about the music than I do about the acquisition). I have long had a reputation for only caring about music, which until recently felt like a character flaw, something to be pilloried for. Unhealthy obsession with those twelve notes and the multitude of possibilities within has permeated every aspect of my life for as long as I can remember, and acquisition of music (and arcane knowledge of its minutiae) has taken precedence over friendships, food, shelter, education, you name it. The list goes on.

More on #19: 2002

HIDDEN GEMS
Ruby Andrews | Casanova
Late sixties Chicago soul often teeters precariously on the edge of being too clean or overproduced, but Ruby Andrews’ songs were so tightly arranged by the Detroit-based production and writing team, Brothers of Soul, that the instrumentation is rarely overbearing. Yeah, they’ve got those bold horns and strings and even a flute, but both Andrews’ vocals and the basslines pull through with a hell of a lot of muscle. There are a couple of Splenda numbers at the end of Casanova, Andrews’ 1994 compilation, (recently re-released), but songs like “Tit For Tat” and “Everybody Saw You” offer up some real good man-chastising funk; musical stank-eye. That said, my favorite, “You Made A Believer Out Of Me” doesn’t feel especially sweet or funky. It’s just a grown woman love song.
by Erin Sheehy

Cast Album | Melvin Van Peebles’ Don’t Play Us Cheap
Melvin Van Peebles is an offbeat legend best known for making the film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. These days his least-known works are his recordings, from his proto-rap solo albums, like Brer Soul and What the – You Mean I Can’t Sing?!, to the cast albums of his Broadway musicals like this one. The plot of Don’t Play Us Cheap is nearly unintelligible, but it’s really the songs that are the show here. Each track mixes and matches gospel, funk, jazz, and R&B into a delectable treat. Stream the opening track of the album here
by Justin Remer

More on Hidden Gems

DAILY NEWS PICKS

Grizzly Bear Multi-Instrumentalist (Isn’t That How You’d Have To Describe Every Member Of Grizzly Bear?) Chris Taylor Releases First Solo Single As CANT, Called “Ghosts;” Stream It Here – Sounds Like Yellow House [Gorilla vs. Bear]

Pavement Drummer Bob Nastovich Says There Will Be No New Material During Next Year’s Reunion Tour; Somehow, Nastovich Manages To Come Off As Apathetic As a 15 Year Old Pavement Fan Circa 1996 [The Quietus]

Watch Sonic Youth’s Gossip Girl Cameo; My Reaction: “OHGODMYEYES I’VEBEENWATCHINGGOSSIPGIRLFORLIKEAMINUTENOW— Phew, Sonic Youth is On” [Videogum]

Broken Social Scene and Stars To Play 2010 Vancouver Olympics; International Musicians Like Wilco (HA!) and Iron & Wine (HAHA!) Also On the Bill – U.S. and Canada Being Independent Nations Realized For First Time; In Canada, Wilco = Exotic [Stereogum]

Watch Grizzly Bear and Beach House’s Victoria Legrand Perform “Two Weeks” Live on Conan; Legrand, Who Usually Causes Me To Become Temporarily Narcaleptic, Sounds Amazing [Pitchfork]

Tom Waits Announces Live Album Documenting Last Year’s “Glitter and Doom” Tour; First Disc: 16 Tracks. Second Disc: An Hour of Edited Together “Between Song” Banter, Which, Knowing Waits, Will Be Incredibly Unsettling; Released November 24 [NME]

Pete Doherty Hospitalized With Breathing Problems; Cancels Irish tour – Coincidentally, Heroin Causes Physical Damage [Prefix]

So You Already Own Some of Elvis’s Hair, But Want To Complete The “King of…” Collection? Well, Have a Single £1,000 Strand of Michael Jackson’s Hair. Elsewhere, I Stalk “King of Country” George Strait Around With a Pair of Scissors, Hoping to Retire Early [Idolator]

Stream Outkast’s (Better?) Hal Big Boi’s “Shine Blockas;” The Uber-Anticipated Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Song of Chico Dusty To Be Released Sometime This Year (Will Detox Be The Only Uber-Anticpated Rap Album Left Standing By the End of 2009? (Yes)) [Gorilla vs. Bear]

compiled by Max Sebela

THE NINETIES-IST
One Saturday night about six months ago, I was standing outside Academy Records in Williamsburg. It was one of those rare Saturday nights in New York, one where everyone you know decides to go out of town and, just as you get all set to go party, you find yourself in the middle of the perfect stay-at-home-and-catch-up-on-Grisham night. Not one to sit at home on a Saturday night, I found myself hanging around N. 6th Street, trying vainly to stir up a ruckus.

While smoking a cigarette on the street, I happened to overhear a snippet of conversation that set my teeth on edge. Two girls in their early twenties, obviously from money and most likely on vacation from some exclusive private college, walked past Academy. One girl said to the other, “So…do they still make records? And do people still buy…music?” The surprise and disdain in her voice were such that she might as well have been saying, “Remember when people thought the Earth was flat?”

My heart sank at the tone in her voice, because she’d illuminated the problem without even knowing there was one. The mainstream music industry, comically flawed since its inception, has been a creative wasteland for years. While I would posit that the old model for promoting and distributing mainstream music has been showing stress fractures since the fake “vinyl shortage” of the early 70s – in which albums by fringe bands like the Modern Lovers were shelved, the excuse being there wasn’t enough vinyl to meet production demands – it is my astute opinion that the old standard of modern pop music breathed its death rattle in 2003. Sometime after the White Stripes’ Elephant and before Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief (and, in fairness, the industry’s corpse may have kept flopping until Good News For People Who Love Bad News came out in April ’04) the rock-music-as-big-moneymaker model jumped the shark. The last wave of new, compelling rock music (aka the garage rock movement of ’01 – ’03) had failed to ignite: The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and their ilk had all somehow managed to follow up stunning debuts with tepid sophomore efforts. The lifers – bands with no real hits but respectable catalog sales and devoted followers – began jumping ship from their respective labels (either by necessity or design), many realizing the benefits of working with a small organization, many more marginalized by the continued consolidation of the big label infrastructure.
More on #1: A Prologue

FRESH BAKED
Wilco
Wilco (the album)
2009 | Nonesuch
C

Wilco used to seem to me to the be epitome of cool. Jeff Tweedy spun anesthetized tales of despondence and woe, made pretty through the cleverest/most absurd wordplay, and Jay Bennett layered orchestras of sonic dissonance over the top, simultaneously burying and magnifying the dark subject matter of the lyrics. Summerteeth, which eschewed the last remaining threads of Wilco’s (and earlier, Uncle Tupelo’s) country rock roots, sounds like an updated White Album: as if everything down to the tambourine had been so meticulously considered that the album’s mix was truly perfect. Ken Coomer and John Stirratt hold down the rhythm a la Paul and Ringo: simple and tight as fuck. Summerteeth was the closest thing to a perfect album I’d heard yet, and the promise within the hype surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot made me truly believe that the rest of the world was about to get on the bandwagon, and Wilco was about to be elevated to legit household name status.

And Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finally came out, and it did blow its predecessors out of the water, and it did elevate the band to greater fame, and the whole story is documented in the tepid book Learning How to Die and the killer documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. But Wilco wasn’t my Wilco anymore. Ken Coomer and Jay Bennett were ousted from the band, replaced by Glenn Kotche (arguably the most outside-of-the-box drummer since Stewart Copeland) and a series of other ringers, including former Geraldine Fibbers member, Nels Cline. Cline’s idiosyncratic, jazzy approach to electric guitar helped to make 2007’s Sky Blue Sky an improvement upon the boring, self-indulgent A Ghost Is Born, sure. But, for all their idiosyncrasies, Cline, Kotche, Stirratt (the band’s only remaining founding member, Tweedy excepted), et al., are still yes men, and without the turmoil involved in making YHF and Summerteeth, the last few Wilco albums have sounded to me like Jeff Tweedy solo albums, wrapped up in a pretty package.
More on Wilco | Wilco (the album)

DAILY NEWS PICKS

Beastie Boys’ Eighth Studio Album, Hot Sauce, Drops Sept. 15 [Billboard]

Bjork Streams Album of Alternate Live Takes on NPR, Screens Film at SVA Tonight [Tripwire]

Opening Cinematic from “The Beatles: Rock Band” Game Revealed [Rolling Stone]

Black Lips and King Khan & BBQ Show Team Up as Almighty Defenders; Album Out In September [Prefix]

Old Folks Trash Wilco and Praise Yo La Tengo’s “Humpin’ Music” [Pitchfork]

Honey Hush! (And Check Out the Lineup for the Coney Island Rockabilly Festival) [Brooklyn Vegan]

Hey You Record Collectors, Pavement Vinyl Reissue Out Today [Tiny Mix Tapes]

Hey You Digital Collectors, Factory Records Digital Box Set Released on iTunes [Pitchfork]

Who’s The Boss? Ticketmaster or Bruce Springsteen? [Prefix]

Former Wilco Member Jay Bennett Died of Overdose [Rolling Stone]

compiled by Erin Sheehy

Weekly Review
Last week was a moody one for the music world: ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett passed away at the age of 45; eleven attendees of a concert in the capital of Morocco were killed by a fallen fence, bringing the week-long Mawazine music festival to sad close; and though he is expected to be fully recovered in time to start performing again on June 8, Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan underwent a relatively serious surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his bladder. There were some less solemn news stories to be had – Eminem hit the top of the charts, Kanye West authored a book, Lady Gaga graced the cover of Rolling Stone – but nobody seemed to be in a particularly chipper mood. Some major artists staged a rally against the British National Party, Lady Sovereign stormed off the stage in San Fran, and Wavves pretty near did the same in Barcelona.

So, here you go, a little pick-me-up after a less than stellar week.

by Elana Jacobs