The 100: Oasis, MORNING GLORY B-SIDES (BOOTLEG)
I often say I miss record stores, but that’s not entirely true.
Read More25 at 25: The Best Films of 2000
In the year 2000, I both graduated high school and began my freshman year at New York University. One of the most thrilling aspects of moving to Manhattan was the fact that I would now have access to most every movie released to theaters right away. In the past, I had to sometimes wait months for indie flicks to get to Hartford’s one art house theater where it would play for a week. By the end of that year I was living around Washington Square Park and within walking distance of some of the best independent screens around.
Read MoreSong of the Day: The Porkers, "Aporkalypso"
Ska music keeps threatening to come back, but though certain elements of the late ‘90s two-tone revival have wormed their way into contemporary music, there will be no reconsidering the relative legacies of Voodoo Glow Skulls or Reel Big Fish.
That’s fine, by the way.
Read MoreSong of the Day: H.I.M., "Right Here In My Arms"
On my very first day as an editorial assistant at Spin, I didn’t do a whole lot of work. Does anybody do much of anything on their first day? You meet some people, you settle into your space, you get a spiel from IT about your computer, and otherwise you’re just setting up your e-mail signature and waiting for people to ask you to do stuff (which they don’t feel comfortable doing yet because they have known you for all of 22 minutes).
Read MoreThe 100: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, ECHO
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ 1991 album Into the Great Wide Open was the first CD I truly appreciated as a complete thought. I had loved other albums before that, but I thought every song on Into the Great Wide Open was a smash. I loved the art work. I obsessed over the liner notes. I started watching VH1 because they played the video for “Learning to Fly” more often than MTV did. Even though I fell under the spell of Nirvana and discovered punk rock and old Iron Maiden records shortly thereafter, Petty continued to be one of my guys.
Read MoreThe Dawson's Creek Episode Guide: Secrets & Lies
I always think of my high school experience as fairly typical, particularly for when I grew up. But if we had a homecoming court, then I have no memory of it whatsoever. We had a vague homecoming weekend with a football game and a dance, but our football team was always terrible and the dance never felt any different than any other dance.
Read MoreSong of the Day: Scott Weiland, "Barbarella"
For reasons beyond my understanding, there are a handful of recent-ish reviews of my deeply out of print book up on Goodreads. They all basically give the proper assessment: it’s not especially good or even coherent, but the enthusiasm is there. There is one sentiment that popped up that I thought deserved further exploration: that I was too mean to Stone Temple Pilots.
Read MoreThe Dawson's Creek Episode Guide: Indian Summer
One of the first things we learn in the pilot of Dawson’s Creek is that Dawson and Pacey are longtime best friends. But in the dozens of episodes that were subsequently rolled out, we saw very little evidence of that relationship in action.
Read MoreThe 100: Dave Matthews Band, BEFORE THESE CROWDED STREETS
This Week’s Top 10: Best New Songs on Greatest Hits Albums
Streaming music is broadly bad.
Read MoreSong of the Day: Jarvis Cocker, "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time"
Pulp have returned! They’ve actually been back a couple of times since disbanding shortly after the release of their 2001 album We Love Life, but this time they’ve got a new album with a great new single.
I’ll write about it soon, but today I’ve got one of Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker’s solo joints stuck in my head.
Read MoreTrailer Park: The Client
Movie
The Client, released July 20 1994
The Dawson's Creek Episode Guide: Home Movies
This episode makes me angry, though not for the reasons you might think.
Read MoreThe 100: Deftones, AROUND THE FUR
When I first started buying music, it was on cassette tapes.
Read MoreSong of the Day: Suede, "Animal Nitrate"
Despite my longtime devotion to ‘90s Britpop, I was late to Suede.
Read MoreSong of the Day: They Might Be Giants, "Till My Head Falls Off"
I don’t think they were ever my favorite band (none of their albums are in my top 100 list), but there was definitely a period of my life when I was a very intense apologist for They Might Be Giants.
Read MoreThe Dawson's Creek Episode Guide: None of the Above
I will give the third episode of the Eve Era credit: It’s got a nice cold open. Any time this show kicks off in a place that isn’t Dawson’s bedroom (as it did last week and the week before), it just feels wrong and incongruous. So I was relieved when I pressed play and faded into the familiar confines of the Leery house.
Read MoreSong of the Day: Age of Apocalypse, "Mortal Coil"
Even though the way we find, consume, and think about music has been repeatedly upended, it’s mildly comforting that there are still some constants. Chart breakthroughs are still meaningful. Physical sales still count for something. Little trend pockets can still cross over and influence the mainstream. Lots of stuff about the current music world is a drag, like Kate Nash literally showing her ass so she can pay for a tour. But even I, a deeply depressed cynic, find silver linings on a lot of these clouds.
Read MoreThe 100: Nightmares on Wax, SMOKERS DELIGHT
My relationship to electronic music has always been mercurial. My first real experiences with it likely came during the ‘90s Euro-pop boom on mainstream radio—the big tent voice-based house and techno jams like Real McCoy’s “Another Night,” Corona’s “The Rhythm of the Night” and La Bouche’s “Be My Lover,” alongside the rise of Ace of Base. I didn’t like most of that stuff at the time, though I have a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in some of that stuff (I’ll always ride for Gina G’s “Ooh Aah…Just a Little Bit”)
Read MoreTrailer Park: The Pelican Brief
The Movie
The Pelican Brief, released December 17 1993