Introduction

Hey buddy. 

Remember the fuckin’ 90s?

~

Eno the cat

  It’s the year two thousand and eleven, and I am hosting a house warming party at my one bedroom apartment in the Museum District of Houston, Texas. I am in the kitchen, holding my cat and talking to 3 or 4 people, ass ends directly to the stove, when I hear my friend Sarah (10 or so feet away) in the living room:

“Joel,” she says, already disgusted. “What the fuck is this?”

The fuck this was, friends, was Spin’s Alternative Record Guide from 1995.

~

Here she comes

 

The Spin Alternative Record Guide from 1995 is / was:

    •    A shade of orange not exactly found in nature, which becomes compounded further by light damage over the last 3 or so decades (there are no new editions of the Spin Alternative Record Guide from 1995)
    •    B’covered by an absolutely wild collection of fonts which graciously chill the fuck out once you crack the thing open
    •    Published two years before OK Computer comes out, which launches a work already centered on an niche time period into the realm of the boutique (90s music to early/mid 90s music)
    •    And most importantly (for me!): one of my personal favorite collections of music writing of all time, and still one of my preferred ways to discover (yes, discover!) new things to check out.

~

“Alternative to What?”

The Spin Alternative Record Guide from 1995’s definition of “Alternative” is rooted firmly in what I would describe as the Same Goody approach to the term: it’s elusive, and can contain many different ostensibly varied genres, but most importantly it’s whatever the hell they decide they want to put in there at any particular time. This particular time was, indeed, the year of our lord 1995, and the book embodies that essence with every fiber of its being. 

look at it

Alternative is not only Rock Music, says Spin, but also both louder and softer varieties of Rock Music. Hip Hop and Jazz? Also Alternative, as long as the jazz is weird enough and the rap is the correct amount of not too popular and D.A.I.S.Y. age, backpack-precursor adjacent. Women are definitely Alternative, as long as they aren’t Joni Mitchell, who is singled out specifically in the introduction, perhaps being seen as too ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ boomer bumper sticker rather than deified in her current spot on the top of the list of 70s singer songwriters. Grunge? You better fucking believe Grunge is Alternative. Tad is unfortunately not covered, but most of the Seattle bands do make an appearance.

Is Grunge the most Alternative of the Alternative sounds? The Spin Alternative Record Guide from 1995 includes it heavily, but it isn’t the boilerplate focus that it often gets defaulted to, and it’s not the 90s sounds that contemporary bands are drawing from these days either (though it’s certainly a part of it). I didn’t listen to much music from the 90s despite living a chunk of my youth through that decade, I went back further at the time: getting into the classic rock through right around to porto-punk and then skipping ahead to aspects of those things I saw reflected in the indie rock of the late 90s and early 00s. 

pictured: flannel

There was a deep dank vein of resin there that boomed out an droned straight into my brain, something like the Velvet Underground’s ’Sister Ray’ was some kind of untouchable out of time royal jelly that I could tap into and bliss out on, fixes like the Strokes or the like were a quick fix and all I thought music was for a while (guitars, played well or poorly but not too well or too poorly, with a bored sounding white guy singing). Anything like that is still extremely my shit! To this day!

‘Alternative’ and that 90s sound has become that rarefied air to a whole generation of new bands, I think! The 90s have been the new 70s for a while now and will for another hot minute or two. What seemed dated about this book 15 or even 10 years ago seems more prescient now, like have the kids discovered Thinking Fellers Union yet? Should they? Maybe, honestly? They might like it! The De La Soul catalog is streaming again, what will that open up for people? 

As much as ‘Alternative’ acts have charted courses around ‘crossing over’ into more popular realms over the years, it’s so interesting how the Alternative label itself also serves as a larger tent acts from all kinds of different stripes and genres can “cross over” into and become a part of. It’s loose enough to be free with the right amount of certain structure to only make it seem more open for play as a weird indirect result.

~

It’s a bit of an impenetrable label! Here’s a completely-removed-from-any-attempt-at-objective-description, personal definition of Alternative music for you. Alternative music is one of those cartoon beehives that are almost perfect standing ovals like little pineapples without the spines. It’s got a cylindrical hole punched through the middle of it, honey is dripping in little beads and you can see bees going apeshit all in, around, over and through it. There’s a LOUD buzz coming from it, and you walk up and stick your dominant hand completely through the hole. The buzz hits your whole body like electricity. You like this! The bees don’t seem to. 

the author, listening to music, apparently

You are listing to the Melvins, or something. These things are the same. Trust me.

~

The book’s introduction ends with an example of the rating system you’ll be seeing deployed throughout the whole enterprise: the album in question is something of a gauntlet toss. The work in question is ‘More a Legend than a Band’, a collection of country tunes recorded in 1972 by songwriters who would get much more famous later on with their solo material. 

Had I heard of it before? I hadn’t (sorry, Flatlanders and Fldtlanderers)! Is it good? It’s good as hell! And Spin gives it the little 45 spindle on the side letting you know it’s one of their Alternative picks, right up there with Nevermind, 3 Feet High and Rising, and Pink Flag. And you know what? Sure! That shit slaps.

~

For the rest of this blog, I’ll be going band entry by band entry in the Spin Alternative Record Guide from 1995. For each, I’ll be writing a bit about Spin’s takes, how I agree or disagree, and a bit about the music and bands in general. I’ll also be sharing songs and playlists by the bands in questions as we go. Little top 10 lists by Spin writers and music artists from the time of publication are also scattered through, each one will get an entry. Finally, if I get to the end, I’ll talk about the list they include of their top 100 Alternative albums of all time, and make a list of my own.

If you’re this far, thanks for joining me on this dumb thing I decided to do!