Tag: 1990s

Categories
Playlists

Playlist: EDGE 102.1’s top 1002 of all time (1999 version)

Happy Friday!

If you’re looking for something to soundtrack your post-work activities this evening, I’ve got just thing. It’s something a little a different for these pages: a playlist that I didn’t make, but was instead put together by one of my friends.

It’s a playlist that I’ve been slowly making my way through since mid-December. I got into it because I was making a few solo trips in the car and I needed some good long playlists to keep me company. I somehow remembered that my friend Tim had put this one together a few years ago on Spotify so I slipped it on and it perfectly fit the bill.

The playlist is based on a feature that Toronto-based alternative rock radio station, EDGE 102.1, did back in December 1999, counting down what they called the “Top 1002 songs of all-time”. They had done a similar one eight years prior, in 1991, back when the station was still going by its original call letters, CFNY, and they were still truly alternative radio. However, at that time, I didn’t know a lot of the music, was just getting into alternative and indie, and so I didn’t appreciate it as much. By 1999, though, I was completely immersed in pretty much all of alternative rock but unfortunately, EDGE 102 had gotten a lot more commercial. Truthfully, I only listened to it because there were no other options.

Even though I may not have necessarily agreed with all the rankings, I still remember this Top 1002 feature fondly and vividly. We always had the radio at my work tuned to this station and those three or four days at the end of December 1999 were the best few days of commercial radio in memory. They were playing songs that would not normally get airtime on the station but definitely should have done. And listening to this mix of alternative rock from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, heavily weighted, of course, to the latter two decades, brings back so many memories from that time and the years prior.

When I mentioned to Tim that I was listening to the playlist and thanked him for taking the time (and it must’ve taken a very long time) to create it, he mentioned that he also did the 1991 list, which he preferred because it didn’t have all the grunge and post-grunge 90s alt-rock. And while I agree, there are some tunes in this playlist that I find myself skipping, there are also a lot of great 90s tunes that are missing in the 1991 version.

Yes, I’m still making my way through the playlist over a month and a half later but plan to forge ahead through to the end. Even though not all 1002 tunes were available on Spotify when he made the playlist, it’s still over 68 hours of classic alternative rock, some of which I’m very familiar with and some of which I’m still just discovering.

If you’re curious as to what was on the 1991 and 1999 lists, both are available on the “Spirit of radio”* fansite for your perusal, here and here. But if you just want to join me on this long road of a playlist, I’ve embedded it below for your listening pleasure.

I’ll thank my friend Tim for you. Enjoy.

If you’re interested in checking out any of the playlists I myself have created and shared on these pages, you can peruse them here.

*”Spirt of radio” was the slogan of CFNY in its early days and this inspired the 1980 Rush song of the same name.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1993: #22 Slowdive “Alison”

<< #23    |    #21 >>

My friend Tim was always a bigger fan of Slowdive than I was, and I suspect that his appreciation of the group was influenced greatly by his crush on one of the principal vocalists of the group, Rachel Goswell. He tried to get me into them and I did my best to give them a shot. I tape-recorded a copy of the “Souvlaki” CD he loaned me. Unfortunately, I would never get very far with it, rarely more than a few songs past the opening track (but more on that in a bit).

Much like the rest of the music world, critics and writers who never appreciated Slowdive until they were gone, I didn’t get into the Reading-based five-piece until much later. I’ve already documented* on these pages that it was long after they had lost a couple members, changed musical directions, and rebranded that I caught up with them again, just after they had released their third album as Mojave 3. When I listen to “Souvlaki” now, though, I can’t help but wonder: “What were we all thinking?”

The album is lush and ambient, the sadness and hurt palpable in every wash and echo. More deliberate and difficult than its predecessor, it is a sophomore album multiplied by a hundred, informed equally by the knowledge that anything they produced would be panned and by the internal strife in the band created by the romantic split of Neil Halstead and the aforementioned Goswell. If it weren’t for the rise of Grunge and Britpop, it may have been just as hailed at the time as it is now. Hands down, it was one of the greatest shoegaze albums ever recorded.

“Alison” is the one track that I can honestly say that I’ve always loved from the album. As an opener, it was a hard one to move past and I rarely did. The guitars jangle and waver, a shimmering of light highlighting millions of tiny specks of dust, lifted and disrupted ever so gently by a passing breeze, the same that caused flutters in the gossamer curtains of sound. Drums are far off in the distance and deep down in the mix, like a harrowing memory. The reverb is like a third person in the room, pushing together the lilting voices of Halstead and Goswell, even as it as ripping them apart. “Alison” could be anyone who’s ever broken your heart, a smoker’s cough and an ashtray overflowing with butts, a hangover and a dozen empty merlot bottles.

“Alison, I’m lost
Alison, I’ll drink your wine
And wear your clothes when we’re both high
Alison, I said we’re sinking
But she laughs and tells me it’s just fine
I guess she’s out there somewhere”

Sigh.

*And likely will do so again…

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1993 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1993: #23 The Cranberries “Dreams”

<< #24    |    #22 >>

As I mentioned in the preamble to this list, I started working at our small town’s 7-Eleven store in the spring of 1993 and due to this job and some of the people I met working there, I often consider the summer of that year one of my most memorable ever. Specifically, in terms of this post, there was a trio of young ladies that were hired at the same time and shortly after my own start date at the store. I worked many overnight shifts with either Tori, Michelle, or Heather and got to know them over late night and early morning conversations. They were all only in my life for a short while and though I don’t even remember any of their last names and couldn’t tell you what any of them are doing now, they all left their mark.

Heather, for instance, was hilarious, had a big smile, and was always jokingly threatening to poke my eyes out. But most importantly for this post, she and I shared similar tastes in music. She was the one that loaned me a cassette copy of the album that to this day is my favourite of 1991: Lowest of the Low’s “Shakespeare my butt”. That summer, though, she was obsessed with this new band out of Ireland called The Cranberries. She described them as jangly, like early R.E.M., but with tinges of celtic mysticism, and with a female front woman that smacked softly of Sinéad O’Connor.

Heather offered to lend me a copy of the band’s debut CD, “Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?”, but for various reasons, this never came to pass. However, after we both headed off to our separate universities in the fall, the name stuck with me, especially after I started hearing the song “Linger” and seeing its video all over the place. I ended up ordering a copy of that debut CD as one of my 10 for a penny BMG introductory offer orders and it was here that I first heard our song for today.

“Dreams” was actually issued as an advance single to the debut album in late 1992 but then, was reissued again in 1994 to lap up all the popularity garnered them by “Linger”. It did manage a bit more sales the second go-around but nowhere near that of the lofty second single, which I consider tragic, given that it is a far more superior track. It is a crashing, flailing, and driving number. It embodies the flutter rush of new and young love, all full of hope and happiness.

“I know I felt like this before
But now I’m feeling it even more
Because it came from you”

It is the one song on the album that I could listen to all day long. It begs loud volumes and full attention. And though I never knew this song at the time, it always manages to transport me back to that summer and brings a smile.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1993 list, click here.