January 30, 2012

The Top 200 Pop Songs of the ’90s: 60-41

<< Previous: 80-61

For the better part of a decade, if you went to a show at DC’s Black Cat any night of the week, there would be a large homeless gentleman with a booming voice at the door, and as you approached, he’d say, “Black Cat! Black Cat! Spare some change for the homeless.”  Depending on what show you were planning on seeing, he’d throw in a reference for good measure: “Modest Mouse, baby! Spare some change for the homeless.”

I must have seen dozens of bands play at the Black Cat during that era – particularly DC bands like The Make Up, Trans Am, Tuscadero, Circus Lupus, and Dismemberment Plan – as well as a who’s who of indie bands from around the country who made their annual pilgrimage to the legendary venue. The Black Cat has since moved down the street to a larger space, and the homeless dude who announced the shows doesn’t seem to be there anymore, but it’s still one of the best best best places in all of Washington, D.C., and long may it last.

Here are 20 more songs from the list:

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June 12, 2011

The Top 200 Pop Songs of the ’90s: 120-101

<< Previous: 140-121

1993 was a pretty good year for alternative rock. I know, because I watched the whole thing on MTV in my basement, with a remote poised to hit record when a promising video came along that I could document for posterity on my “Great Music” video tape. The tape came in particularly handy as a supplement whenever MTV saw fit to punish one with, say, Bill Bellamy’s MTV Jamz or those awful people in that awful beach house or, God forbid, the dreaded Grind.

Among a number of other hot jams, 1993 yielded “Two Princes”, “Hey Jealousy”, and “Creep”, which were the first three cassette singles I ever bought. Along with those indelible classics, “Great Music” had songs by Soul Asylum, Guns & Roses, Pearl Jam, Snow (“Informer”), Primus, Blind Melon, Arrested Development, Megadeth (“Sweating Bullets”), Genesis, Candlebox, and Faith No More. It was last called into service two years later when R.E.M. surprised everyone by playing an unreleased new song (“Wake Up Bomb”) live at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, which, at the time, was the best song I had ever heard.

“Great Music” might well still exist somewhere in my parents’ basement. It’s probably worth millions by now. Here are 20 more songs:

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May 1, 2011

The Top 200 Pop Songs of the ’90s: 140-121

<< Previous: 160-141

As far as I was concerned, the soundtrack to everyone’s lives in the Washington/Baltimore area between, say, 1992 and 1997, was a collection of tunes lovingly assembled by the venerable Disc Jockeys at 99.1 WHFS, Baltimore’s only alternative rock radio station.

On the way to school, we were tended by the careful ministrations of Zoltar, the Brother From Another Planet; on the way home we were gently serenaded by the beautiful (I assumed) Catherine. And if you happened to be near a radio on a Sunday evening, you would have the spectacular treat of listening to Dave Marsh’s “Now Hear This” in its entirety, where you could discover actual new bands making music you probably actually hadn’t heard before. A rarity in rock radio.

Towards the end of high school I began to think that HFS wasn’t really all that cool anymore, and though that eventually came to be true (to be specific, on a cold day in September, 1997, when the station’s new ownership deliberately and irrevocably played, for the first time, a short musical number by the band Puddle of Mudd), it was probably an ungrateful way for me to treat an institution that for years had given me new music by Sonic Youth and Pavement and Sebadoh in equal doses with the latest from, like, Harvey Danger and Eve 6.

Here are 20 more songs from the countdown:

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April 10, 2011

The Top 200 Pop Songs of the ’90s: 160-141

<< Previous: 180-161

In the summer of 1998 I got a job working at Tower Records, in a perfunctory way fulfilling my lifelong dream of being a snotty, college record store dude. I would have been shocked to learn that a mere dozen years later this particular breed of insufferable teenager would be a dying one. It’s as if a light has gone out of the world.

When I had some free moments away from making people uncomfortable for buying Barenaked Ladies and/or Limp Bizkit albums, I took advantage of the store’s employee discount to fill out my record collection. I bought albums by groups like The Psychedelic Furs, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Replacements, X, and Gang of Four and discovered somewhat newer bands like Mercury Rev, Sleater Kinney, and Girls Against Boys through promotional albums sent to the store.

I came out of the experience with an obsession for arranging my CDs in ever more complex organizational systems and an unhealthy taste for distorted Shoegaze pop that I’ve never really been able to shake. Here are some more songs on the countdown:

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March 22, 2011

The Top 200 Pop Songs of the ’90s: 180-161

<< Previous: 200-181

In the winter of 1996, my friend Anne lent me an LP titled 30˚ Everywhere – the first full-length record by Milwaukee’s The Promise Ring. It was a slightly odd entry point into a world of independent music – especially for someone living in DC during the reign of Fugazi – but the raw, intensely personal sound of the album was like nothing I’d ever heard.

My experience with 30˚ Everywhere opened up a world of bargain bins and indie record stores and out-of-the-way venues that had previously passed me by, and I began to devote large amounts of time attempting to immerse myself in a burgeoning scene that I knew existed but that never seemed to get any attention on the radio.

I made some stunningly bad album purchases during this period, and was forced to make more than one quick retreat from some dismal, unfriendly skate punk showcase (I’m thinking particularly of an ill-advised attempt to see the opening act at a Gameface show at The Black Cat in 1998), but I had successfully discovered a real alternative to the confusingly dubbed “alternative” music that was dominating the airwaves and the reviews sections of my Rolling Stone and Spin subscriptions. I began to feel a personal connection and sense of involvement with the new music I was hearing, and the effect was exhilarating.

Not that I stopped listening to the Counting Crows or anything. I mean, let’s be real here. These are 20 more songs:

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