So back in 2001 the college kids discovered the 80s. Something happened that made new wave hits cool once again, to say nothing of the strange and only partially ironic fascination with power ballads and hair bands. My housemate and I watched as records and cds you couldn't give away five years back were suddenly being snapped up left and right and got progressively more expensive to buy used. And then a profound idea struck us:
Holy shit, it's not the 90s anymore. Let's get on this before all the kids figure it out. We started making lists of 90s hits and misses (mostly the feel-good misses). And then on our days off we'd raid the two used cd stores in Jamaica Plain, list (when remembered) in hand. And there we'd labor for hours, making little piles of cds, prioritizing and reordering and debating the relative merits of our selections until finally we'd decided on a small handful of treasures to buy. The two biggest factors in this process were price v. musical merit, and then also what gaps it filled in our growing collection (which we stored in an empty Budweiser 24-can box). Is the Spin Doctors really worth 49 cents? Do we ever really want to listen to Chumbawumba again? Are they really charging $4.99 for Better than Ezra? Who the hell are The Toadies again? Etc.
We were totally stoked about all of this, and subjected just about every house guest to a selection of tunes they almost certainly wanted to forget. We patted ourselves on the back for our sound judgment and genius idea when we heard later that year that the Post Office would be releasing 1990s stamps. Boy were we ahead of the game on this one.
I still have the 90s box, though it's all digital now because I couldn't see why I would spend all of graduate school lugging around Third Eye Blind and MC Hammer CDs. Today just for a good laugh I shuffled the 90s playlist and here for you, dear reader, are the first five hits. Bon appetit.
1. Cracker - Low
2. L7 - Pretend We're Dead
3. Jesus Jones - Right Here Right Now
4. Naughty by Nature - Feel me Flow
5. Blind Melon - No Rain (side note: that bee costume is someday going to be my Halloween getup)
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i listen to chumbawamba everyday.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to knock you down. But you'll get up again.
ReplyDeleteIn 2001 I had just finished grad school and started teaching. You got to have all the fun.
ReplyDeleteRight before the half marathon I put that Chumbawumba song on my self-flagellation playlist, along with a bunch of other unlikely tunes that I thought might keep me amused during a two hour run. I never took it off, so now I hear it at the gym a few times a week. Also Savage Garden, the one about the deep sea diver who is swimming with the rain coat.
First: I don't think I had all the fun. There was a really shitty job that played a major 60hr/week role in my wasted youth life. And of course there's the fact that I'm still in school now, which is totally a consequence of all this.
ReplyDeleteBut do I have regrets? I don't think so. Not most of the time. Another topic for another time, I suppose ...
Second: I would like the entire self-flagellation playlist, please. Maybe it will help with the dissertation writing.