Paste Magazine ranks its 50 best albums of 1994. The music of our youth is truly the best music; there are some bands on here I’ve never heard of, which is why these stupid lists are sometimes valuable.
Well, I suppose this was inevitable. Then She Did… was the song they were playing the other day when the show blew up, and I was thinking to myself as I watched the footage, “damn, that sounds good.” And then it got stuck in my head. Long ago, when the album first came out, I used to play along to the second side under the influence and this was one of my favorite grooves.
This is a reasonably good live recording from 1990 when the full band was still together and playing tight. What I would give to have seen them at their peak.
By all accounts, the recent Jane’s Addiction tour has been canceled after Perry Farrell attacked Dave Navarro in the middle of a song, and had to be dragged off the stage. Reading some first-hand accounts from fans who posted video of that show, the consensus is that the band sounded fantastic but he sounded like shit, was drinking heavily through the whole show, and was dropping verses in the middle of songs. His wife immediately went on social media to attack the band, and today they announced the tour was dead.
Having read about him and his treatment of the rest of the band I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m bummed out for them. I would love nothing more than (and would, frankly, be more interested in) the three musicians touring together with a guest vocalist, just to hear them play live together.
They sound awesome, but good goddamn, we’re getting old.
I’ve had the groove to How to Handle a Rope going through my head for the last four days. It’s a great groove—tons of low-end bass matched with a filthy guitar sound that’s perfect for driving a car very fast down a lonely stretch of highway. This tune was on my “Driving” playlist across multiple long-dead iPods back when we ripped our own CDs and made playlists. I miss this era of QotSA very much: guitar, drums and bass in a room thick with bong smoke and few fucks to give.
If you’re going to have something stuck in your head, make it a good something. Earlier in life, Bowie was always a complete mystery to me; I love his music, but high school Bill had no entry into what he was singing about or what any of it meant; all I knew was that 70’s Bowie was scary and there was still something strange and mysterious about Let’s Dance-era Bowie. A good song is still a good song, and this one is a banger. Fun fact: Luther Vandross is one of the backing vocalists.
Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. Oasis are reuniting for a tour after splitting up and throwing chainsaws at each other for fifteen years. I think I’ve always been Team Noel but I haven’t followed all of the drama that closely. This would be a great show to see live, I think; I just can’t rationalize $200 in Ticketmaster surcharges and battling for a 5% chance to actually be able to buy a ticket.
To my incredulous surprise, I read this morning in the Madrid airport that Soul Coughing, the excellent 90’s era band who wrote a song this website is named after, has reunited after 25 years of acrimonious bickering. They are planning a US tour and I’ve signed up for the ticket sale even though I’ll be in Portugal and have zero chance of winning one.
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Somehow this one popped up in my brain today and hasn’t left: Eurotrash Girl, by Cracker. A good band who never really followed up with another record as good as Kerosene Hat, unfortunately; this album was on solid rotation the year I graduated college, and Low was the soundtrack to a summer painting houses. I’ve always loved the mixture of rock and country stirred together in this band—just enough twang to make things work.
This is an old one but still a good one. Blonde Redhead, Spring and By Summer Fall. I picked this album up years ago at the library and had it on solid repeat for weeks, and it never gets old. For some reason it crept back into my head the other day and hasn’t left.