August 21, 2011

The Top 200 Pop Songs of the ’90s: 100-81

<< Previous: 120-101

The first real rock concert I ever went to (pace The Beach Boys sans Brian Wilson c. 1987 … with my parents) was Perry Farrell’s third Lollapalooza at Charlestown Racetrack, West Virginia, in 1993.

Rage Against the Machine opened, followed by Front 242, Arrested Development, Fishbone, Dinosaur Jr., and Alice in Chains, with Primus as the headliner. I can’t say that any of those bands really went on to be a big part of my life (except probably Dinosaur Jr.) but the experience was more or less ecstatic. Like, the life-affirming, revelatory, kick-ass good time that I had watching bands play for 8 hours at Charlestown Racetrack on August 3, 1993, with my friends Carlos and Charlie and Peter and Alfonso was in a perfect inverse proportion to the grim, sweaty journey into hell that Alfonso’s mother had on that same day – waiting outside the venue amongst a hundred angry, ticketless alterna-punks with hairdos to make sure we were OK and didn’t do drugs or have heatstroke or just drop dead on the spot from the sheer chaos and strangeness of it all. When we found her after Primus’s set, she was in tears and inexplicably standing on the back of a pickup truck frantically waving her arms in the air.

For a couple of years after that I was obsessed with mosh pits (when you are only four feet tall, the mechanics of this are really weird). And crowd-surfing (we called it “swimming”? I’m certain this is true. Fishbone had a song about it). Here are 20 more songs from the list:

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June 25, 2011

An Afternoon in the Garden

A Photoseries by Sean McCarrick Fagan.

June 18, 2011

Excerpts From My Romance Novel, Part 2

Trixie thought more about James. She was so confused: They had Frenched last night, and it had been very sexy, but she was in love with Xavier, who had a mustache. To think, just one week ago, she was afraid that she would never fall in love again because of how her one true love Andy Alistair had died or something of tuberculosis or being lost at sea, and yet now here she was, in love with two men at the same time – one dangerous and erratic but with a mustache and the other kind and nurturing but a bit boring but also handsome and good at Frenching. What was she to do?

She sank deeper into her bubblebath, the bubbles bubbling around her like the stormy chaos of her newly awakened passion. Why couldn’t love be like it was like in the storybooks? She had always believed that love would be a nice thing, like swimming with dolphins, but this was a darker feeling, more primal somehow, as if the dolphins (in this particular metaphor) were sharks, or, like, still dolphins but with shark teeth: sholphins. Darks. Dolpharks. Playful but sharp. But so anyway, then she fell asleep and she had this dream that Xavier was a vampire and that he tried to bite her but then James saved her and his shirt got ripped so that pecs again, but how maybe she had actually wanted to get bitten by the vampire and part of her – a part of her she never knew existed – was maybe just a little bit angry with James for rescuing her. What was that all about? Was she going crazy? So weird.

<< Excerpts From My Romance Novel, Part 1

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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June 6, 2011

Excerpts From My Romance Novel, Part 1

Suddenly and unexpectedly the rain began to fall. A great torrential downpour to mirror the stormy passion that was muddling around inside Trixie’s supple body. James stood there, calm and stoical, as the incredibly wet rain made his ruffled white pirate shirt seethrough so that pecs and stuff. “Trixie?” he said. “My darling. Let’s make love to each other in (and despite) this rain.” James pulled her towards him and the wet raindrops mingled with her tears of joy and also of being a bit surprised about the unexpected kissing, as she swirled her tongue rhythmically and professionally around the bottoms of his pearly white teeth and the roof of his mouth.

After they were done Frenching, they got back on their horses (as mentioned previously, James was riding a white stallion with a mane that was as white as the snow and Trixie was riding a mare with brown splotches) and rode very quickly through a meadow, each consumed by their own steamy thoughts about what had happened (Frenching). It was still raining.