A child with children & a flannel wardrobe.

I lived through the 90's and I remember it well. My hair was long, like all one length riding below my shoulders long. I rocked some army green cargo shorts. My glasses were uncomfortably big and I probably thought YOU were kinda stupid. Here's why:

• Kim Deal screwed your girlfriend?
• You thought Mark Pickerel was "deep"?
• You had bass tablature for Dishwalla songs?
• Reality Bites changed your life?
• You wore a sleeveless flannel in the summer?
• You understood the lyrics to Jeremy?
• You got pregnant at Lilith Fair?
• You quit community college to follow Phish?

Yeah, you like to look back with rose colored glasses, but you can't hide from the truth!!!

The truth for me is that life was no party back then. By the time I turned 20 in 1994, I was already married with children, and about as insecure as any 20 year old with a wife and a kids could be. I wouldn't trade anything, but I do look back on the 90's with a mixed bag of emotions. Longing for a time of youth. Disdain for the mistakes of a young father. Pride in my ability to see some things through, and regret for some of the things that I didn't.

I was battling uphill pretty hard then and still struggling to find my place in the world. I am a musician and a fan even when I am not playing or paying close attention. That is my curse, and I lost sight of it for a few years. It is easy to lose oneself in the grind anyway, but I was hell bent on holding my fragile situation together, so art took a back seat to bills and work. 

The music was not completely gone. I knew something was happening. I think I was in "absorb" mode, and I absorbed many things. Whether it be the Country vs Classic Rock Radio volume war at work, my friends attending college listening to Dylan, Top 40 Collective Soul, the mighty Pantera, my sister spinning Sophie B Hawkins or MTV shoveling Nirvana down everyone's throat, it was not all lost on me.

My music collection at the time looked pretty silly. I remember having some weird shit in the mix: Dwight Yokum, Beck, Stabbing Westward and Shotgun Messiah. I must have thrown it all out at some point, as I don't own any of those things today.

So I ask myself, what about the HUGE bands at the time?

• Alice in Chains - I respect them, but I still struggle with that band. I like my Metal dark, and my Rock, rocking. Alice in Chains always seemed like the "too cool for you" kids from Seattle. I saw them open the Clash of the Titans, and still there is no connection. I will take Nevermore any day of the week over AIC.
• Rage against the Machine: I was a RATM late bloomer. I love them now, and I am glad I did not play them out back then. Political activism was the last thing on my mind in the mid 90's. I was too busy being a victim of my circumstances. 
• Soundgarden: One of Rocks best voices. Badmotorfinger (side one) is perfect. I remember the day I stopped paying attention to them. A hipster dude with a toe ring (friend of a friend) told me that Black Hole Sun was a great song. Soundgarden was dead to me for a few years after that.
• Pearl Jam: I need to go back and re-listen to everything post 10. I hated it all then. Nothing ever seemed as good as 10. They were on the radio....way....too...much.
• Nirvana: Nothing but love for them then, nothing but love for them now. If you ever write songs like Territorial Pissings and Breed, you will have my love forever also.

At some point in the 90's, I discovered college radio. It had some distortion and it was the only alternative to alternative for me. Through the waves of poor DJ's and random programing, I discovered Bad Religion, 311, Sunny Day Real Estate and a plethora of other artists that re-opened my mind to music.

Sunny Day Real Estate. I still read about them from time to time. These days people claim they were the first EMO band or had a huge influence on that scene, which I don't think is a fair assessment. There is also a Foo Fighters connection with two SDRE members (original Foo drummer William Goldsmith and current Foo bassist Nate Mendel).

I liked them then, and I still do. They were edgy and loose but palatable. Some of their material still holds up for me after all these years, so I think they deserve some love from me on a Blog level:

SEVEN

Roots of EMO? OK maybe that is fair.

Bad Religion. Punkers think I am a Bad Religion poser. From their prospective, I absolutely am. From my viewpoint (and in my defense), I was not exposed to them until 1993, which is the year they "sold out" to Atlantic, and I loved everything about this band. The vocal hooks, the intelligent lyrics, the great songs, the fuck you, all of it....

These days the magic is somewhat gone. It got too repetitive for my liking. But if anyone asks me the "albums on a desert island" question, 1994's Stranger than Fiction is always near the top of my list.

Greg Graffin is still a hero of mine. He has a Ph. D from Cornell, lectures at UCLA, received a Lifetime Achievement award from Harvard, has authored books on evolution and somehow manages to be the singer in Bad Religion. What did you do today?

Selling out or buying in?

 311: Yeah, I know.... These guys were huge. You know what? They deserved it. I thought they were just fresh enough to pull off something big and they did.

Not quite ska, definitely not metal, some rap in there, it's like Sublime, but heavier. That's the best I could describe them. In hindsight I can say they had more in common with New Metal, but like the Deftones, they were around before the term (or the trend) existed.

I actually bought their 1995 self titled CD. I was piss broke and allowed myself that luxury. That means a lot, and for that, I risk my reputation as a nerd to put them up on my blog. This tune is from '94s Music

8:16am

Hit the snooze.....

One last thing and then I am out. There was a ton of music that was brilliant in the 90's. These days the focus is on Grunge and how it killed Hair Metal or some such bullshit. The 90's were so much more than that. From Eminem to Ska-Punk to Radiohead, it was brilliant. I used to think that we would never see a time of creativity like that again, but I was wrong as usual. Today, big record industry is dead, but the Indie Labels have turned up some of the most interesting and left of the dial music I have ever heard. I will get into both of those topics some other time...

All for now. Don't hate 'cause you want to be a nerd like me. 

814-4-Life.