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.
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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 MoreStreaming music is broadly bad.
Read MorePulp 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.
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The Client, released July 20 1994
This episode makes me angry, though not for the reasons you might think.
Read MoreWhen I first started buying music, it was on cassette tapes.
Read MoreDespite my longtime devotion to ‘90s Britpop, I was late to Suede.
Read MoreI 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.
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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 MoreEven 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 MoreMy 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 MoreThe Movie
The Pelican Brief, released December 17 1993
Last week’s season premiere was uneven and strange, but it’s possible Dawson’s Creek just had a case of the yips thanks to its new showrunner and some complicated emotional cliffhangers. Maybe the ship would stop capsizing in the second episode now that the cobwebs were shaken off a bit?
No, we are still sinking.
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The Firm, released June 30 1993
Lucy Dacus is in a weird position at the moment.
Read MoreI’m not sure when I heard David Bowie for the first time. I imagine I heard “Space Oddity,” which was one of those songs that was always in the air, floating through radio airspace and embedding itself in the carpet even if you weren’t going out of your way to find it. I also have a clear memory of seeing Tin Machine perform on an old episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Macaulay Culkin. (Like the rest of the universe, I was unimpressed.) I was aware of Bowie and what a towering figure he was, and I had seen him on screen in Labyrinth and The Last Temptation of Christ, but if I’m being perfectly honest the first time I really engaged with David Bowie was when he was interviewed next to Trent Reznor on MTV.
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I’m not entirely sure when everyone became hyper-aware of the term “showrunner,” but it was well after Dawson’s Creek shuffled off the airwaves. In the late ‘90s, TV was not yet considered an auteur’s medium. People knew that shows had groups of writers all working to one goal, but the idea of a singular voice dictating the direction of a whole series wasn’t an accepted concept.
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Disclosure, released December 9 1994