Tag: CFNY

Categories
Playlists

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

Just over a year ago, I posted a playlist that I didn’t create. I wrote then about how I was doing a bunch of driving, was looking for a good long Spotify playlist to stream in the car, and finally settled on one my friend Tim had made. He created it using a countdown of the “Best 1002 songs of all time” as voted by CFNY (aka EDGE) 102’s alternative rock radio listeners way back in 1999. Then, not long after, well before I managed to get all way through the 900+ songs on the playlist, I switched my streaming service allegiances from Spotify to Apple Music*.

Then, a few months ago, I decided I wanted to finish listening to the playlist and to do so, started building my own version of the playlist on Apple Music. I really got an appreciation for the patience Tim must have had in building the original Spotify playlist because it took me quite a bit of time and searching to find the right versions of all these tunes. Interestingly, Apple Music was only missing 9 of the 1002 songs, whereas Tim’s Spotify version is a good 28 tracks shy, though I am sure Spotify’s catalogue has expanded some in the years since he originally put it together.

Another interesting point: I noticed while compiling this playlist something that didn’t really strike me while listening to the original. This list of the “best songs of all time” really is of its time and place.

The Tragically Hip is the artist with the most songs (22) on the list, outpacing iconic alt rock groups like U2 (19), R.E.M. (16), and Depeche Mode (14). And though The Hip are a pretty great band, pretty much universally loved here in Canada, they are largely unknown everywhere else in the world.

The list is also pretty heavy on the 90s grunge and post-grunge side of alt rock. Bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins all have more songs on the list than The Clash, David Bowie, The Smiths, and New Order.

Nevertheless, it was fun to put this list together and has been fun revisiting it with my earphones over the last month or so. It’s a great selection of alternative/indie rock spanning from the 60s and 70s, through the 80s, and right up to heyday and wane of alternative in the 90s. Plenty of my favourites, as well as songs I don’t get to hear all that often but love, just the same.

If you’re curious, here’s the top 25 songs on the list and the rest can be found here:

ARTIST TITLE
1 Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit
2 The Smiths How Soon Is Now?
3 Pearl Jam Jeremy
4 U2 Pride (In The Name Of Love)
5 Nine Inch Nails Closer
6 The Tragically Hip New Orleans Is Sinking
7 The Cult She Sells Sanctuary
8 Soft Cell Tainted Love
9 R.E.M. Losing My Religion
10 Pearl Jam Alive
11 U2 With Or Without You
12 The Smashing Pumpkins Today
13 The Tragically Hip Blow At High Dough
14 Stone Temple Pilots Plush
15 Live Lightning Crashes
16 Talking Heads Once In A Lifetime
17 Soundgarden Black Hole Sun
18 U2 I Will Follow
19 Pearl Jam Even Flow
20 Peter Gabriel Games Without Frontiers
21 Tears For Fears Shout
22 New Order Bizarre Love Triangle
23 The Tragically Hip Little Bones
24 The Violent Femmes Add It Up
25 The Smashing Pumpkins Disarm

For you Apple Music users, you can link to my version of the playlist here. If you’re still on the Spotify, you can have a sampling at my original post here.

Enjoy.

*I spoke a little bit about the reasons for making this change on one of my other playlist posts from last year.

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.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1993: #12 Blur “Chemical world”

<< #13    |    #11 >>

Back when I was in university, I still listened to commercial radio relatively often, but for me, the only station worth listening to had become Toronto’s CFNY 102.1 (these days called The Edge). I loved the morning show with Humble & Fred, the weekend live-to-air shows by Chris Sheppard and Martin Streek, Alan Cross’s Ongoing history of new music on Sunday nights, and of course, the all request nooner on weekdays. The nooner was music “as chosen” by the listeners. I was a regular listener and tried often enough to put in requests but I think my songs only made the show once or twice.

The one time I can say for absolute certainty that it happened for me was when I requested they play Blur’s “Chemical world” just a few days before the band was due to play The Phoenix in Toronto in September 1994. Back then, requests couldn’t be made by webform, email, or tweets, they had to be called in by landline telephone. The phone lines opened 30 minutes to an hour before the show was due to start and some intern or other answered the calls, and if we’re being serious here, they were the ones that really decided which songs were going to be played. After dialling, getting the busy signal, hanging up, and hitting the redial button a number of times, I actually got through to a live person! The guy asked what I wanted to hear, hesitated briefly at my response, and then said “yeah, I think we can play that for you.” He recorded me giving the song an intro and let me go so he could take the next call. I sat by the radio for the next hour in my basement apartment while I ate my lunch and got ready to head in to the university for an afternoon class. Just at the end of the hour, I heard my groggy voice croak the intro and my request was played.

“Chemical world” was the second single released off of Blur’s sophomore release, “Modern life is rubbish”. It’s one of the songs the band recorded when they were sent back to the studio by their labels after initial recordings for the release did not yield any singles. It definitely fits the definition of single without straying far from their new aesthetic. After their debut couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be baggy or shoegaze and it (and their performances) couldn’t find foothold with the US markets, they decided to record the antithesis of the grunge music that was taking over in North America. “Modern life” would turn out to be one of the initial albums to fly the Britpop banner and in the process, influenced a host of other like-minded bands.

“Chemical world” was the only track from the sophomore album to crack the US charts and it was one of the few songs I would hear by the band on occasion, even on alternative radio, at the time. It’s still one of my favourites by Blur and came in at number three when I counted my five favourites by the group a few years ago*. Dave Rowntree is pounding away at the drums, violent but tame, Graham Coxon is ripping away at his guitar like he’s been hanging with John Squire, Alex James’s bass line is holding it all together tightly in muscular arms, and Damon Albarn is once again bashing out against modern life and modern Britain and how it cannot be escaped, even if it was wanted.

“It’s been a hell of a do
They’ve been putting the holes in, yes, yes
And now she’s right out of view
They’ve been putting the holes in, yes, yes
Well, I don’t know about you
They’ve been putting the holes in, yes, yes

Until you can see right through”

*In that post, I told a shorter version of the story detailed above.

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

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.