90s Rock Nostalgia

nilewise — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:12:07 +0000

I go in music cycles and when I realised I’d listened to Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga for good solid months, I suddenly had the urge to throw up and scrape my ears out with industrial strength detergent (yes, my cycles are that extreme). So I immediately threw out every song in my iTunes playlist and started again.

Typically what happens after such an adversive reaction to listening to too much pop is to dive straight back to my comfort zone of 90s rock, because after all, rock has never been the same since then and not really for the better. 90s rock coincided so perfectly with my teenage years that I can honestly say it helped me through those horrible years. Not having any money for CDs and “armed” with a 56kbps modem in the late 90s made getting my grubby hands on these songs to listen to obsessively on my walkman a labour of love. This would typically consist on my lying in wait next to the radio to hit the “Record” button as soon as a song I wanted to hear came on.

Creating a playlist in iTunes takes about 30 minutes. Creating one on a cassette with the unpredictability of radio? Days. Now that is truly a labour of love!

This is a list of my absolute favourites – and I know sentimentality and memories bias me, who I don’t care . For fairness sake, I won’t include more than one song from a band, just their best. This list will probably be different to yours – but it’s my list .

The Afghan Whigs: Faded
Alanis Morissette: Ironic
Ani DiFranco: Shy
Blur: Song 2
Buffalo Tom: Taillights Fade
Bush: Glycerine
Catatonia: Road Rage
The Cranberries: Zombie
Counting Crows: Angels of the Silences
The Donnas: Fall Behind Me
Eve 6: Inside Out
Everclear: Santa Monica
Foo Fighters: Everlong
Fuel: Shimmer
Garbage: Only Happy When It Rains
Goo Goo Dolls: Iris
Green Day: Basketcase
K’s Choice: Not An Addict
Jars of Clay: Fade to Grey
Lifehouse: Hanging By A Moment
Limp Bizkit: Nookie
Live: Lightning Crashes
Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit
No Doubt: Spiderwebs
Oasis: Wonderwall
Powderfinger: Pick You Up
Radiohead: The Bends
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Under the Bridge
Smashing Pumpkins: 1979
The Tea Party: Heaven Coming Down
Tonic: If You Could Only See
U2: The Fly
Verve Pipe: The Freshman
The Wallflowers: One Headlight

The sad thing for me is that very few of these bands, as high as they flew in the 90s, mostly couldn’t reach those heights ever again. Out of the above, probably only Green Day, U2, The Wallflowers and Red Hot Chili Peppers went on to even greater albums. Oh well, good music will never die so at least I got these .

Nile Gets Even

90s Rock Nostalgia