If you’re buying into my obnoxious stereotype so far – and if you’re part of the distaff sector of the species, I sincerely apologize for it — then you know where this is going. Because if you’re old like me, you sat around with your buddies and called that girl “Janis Ian.” But by the time I got to graduate school in 1990, her name was “Indigo Girl.”
This album is why. And at this point I’ll pull out of the Neanderthal mentality of my opening and state, simply, that Indigo Girls was one of the finest major-label debuts of the ’80s. Its long-term impact is undeniable, not only upon the duo’s career but upon an entire generation of female singer-songwriters who gained a path to popularity on the radio and the concert stage in part because of its success. (more…)
Two years ago, when I was working on this column’s debut, I wrote about Bruce Springsteen’s “Book of Dreams” and what the song means to Julie and me. During the first month of our courtship I created my first mixtape for her, entitled HEY, HEY, JULIE! On that tape was the Springsteen song, one that’s grown to have profound meaning in our relationship.
We began dating in August of 1992, and soon thereafter, I threw this tape together in a flurry of inspiration, wanting to give Julie something that came from my heart. I don’t recall the actual minutes spent in my parents’ basement picking the songs or laying them down on a Maxell cassette (my brand of choice), but looking back on the list of songs, I’m happy to see they still add up to 90 quailty minutes of music.
Before Nick Hornby wonderfully wrote about what makes a good mixtape in High Fidelity, I assembled exactly the right combination of hip, well known and somewhat obscure songs from my small music collection. Combining big hits like “Learning to Fly,” “What I Am,” and “All This Time” with lesser-known songs by popular artists such as “Until the End of the World,” “Shining Star,” and “Getting to Know You,” while tossing in some hard to find (at the time) songs like “Baby Mine” and “Wild Night” made this tape eclectic, but still enjoyable to listen to and quite accessible. (more…)
For this special edition of Bootleg City, I’m spotlighting the top 17 songs of the ’90s, a decade we can all officially start nostalgicizing on January 1, 2010. Until then we’re in limbo, if you’ll pardon the expression — the untimely deaths of Michael Jackson and JohnHughes in the past six weeks have put a damper on the last blast of ’80s nostalgia in this decade. But life goes on, of course, as does pop culture’s never-ending look backward.
If you’ve ever ventured into that thicket of sweetness and stress known as Planning A Wedding, you’ve probably at least considered buying one (or five) of those awful compilations of “wedding music.” They come in all sorts of flavors – classical, country, Contemporary Christian, pop standards, classic R&B – and they’ve got icky titles like A Day to Remember, or Songs That Say “I Love You.” They tend to feature a lot of the same songs, like “Always and Forever,” and “Three Times a Lady,” and “Wonderful Tonight,” and Pachelbel’s Canon, and “The Way You Look Tonight,” and that horrible Boyz II Men song “On Bended Knee.” And, just like the Book of Common Prayer, they’re all diabolically designed to make your nuptials sound just like everybody else’s.
My wife Gwen and I wed 15 years ago today, and to celebrate that occasion – along with the onset of the June wedding season – I thought I’d give Popdose’s loyal readers an anniversary present: a mixtape of wedding songs and stories from some of our columnists, and an opportunity to share your own remembrances and ideas in the comments. These songs aren’t your garden-variety bridal standards; in fact, a few of them are downright bizarre. But even if you don’t find them suitable for your own purposes the next time you get hitched, hopefully they’ll inspire you and your betrothed to follow your own muse, and not some music conglomerate’s. Click here for a compressed file of all the tracks featured here, and read on! (more…)
My bags sat on the floor waiting to be unpacked while I looked around my bedroom — the same bedroom where I’d grown up, the same bedroom I’d escaped when I went off to Bowling Green, and the same bedroom I would now live in as a college graduate trying to save up money to move out west. Nothing had changed in that room for 15years; the wallpaper that my mother had put up herself still hung on the walls, the newspaper clippings and magazine pictures tacked to the corkboard were still there, and the clown portrait that hovered over the bunk beds my brother and I had shared still looked on, unable to manage a smile. As the smell of fresh cut grass filled the air and a breeze came in through the window, I felt lost. Four years spent in pursuit of a dream seemed to have stalled while I waited out the summer. To top things off, a bad hair dye attempt had left my hair orange.
Change was in the air, though. 1992 was an election year, and the youthful governor Clinton from Arkansas had tapped into the mindset of twentysomethings like me, inspiring us all to believe that our voices really could affect the outcome in November and help shape the country for years to come. In the music world, where trends were still being made and program directors had some freedom to play the music they believed in, alternative radio stations began popping up all over, like little buds bursting through the earth. Underground would soon become the mainstream. Exactly what “alternative” meant was up in the air, giving stations the freedom to play anything that didn’t fit the mold of top 40, country or classic rock radio. In Cleveland it was WENZ, whose playlists were a collage of grunge, modern rock, folk, some electronica and several of the great ’80s college bands finally getting their due. The Replacements, Midnight Oil, early Gabriel, Pearl Jam. It was a healthy mix. One group I was pleased to receive wider exposure was the Indigo Girls, who had just released their fourth album, Rites of Passage.(more…)
To a 19-year-old roiling with existential crises, the Indigo Girls’ major label debut was the perfect soundtrack for indulgent hours of delicious angst and sweet inner torment. “Love’s Recovery,” “Kid Fears,” “History of Us”—I can’t hear any of them without recalling long, depressing walks around the small town I lived in at the time, thinking about how depressed I was and how long I’d been walking, and Jesus Christ this town is small. They were the musical rain puddles I could sit in seemingly forever, emerging after repeated plays, shivering and soggy-bottomed, but knowing I had heard in the poetry and harmony and playing a sound and sentiment that perfectly complimented my prematurely bleak outlook on life.
Not much later, I discovered vodka, which more or less took care of my existential crises, but I nevertheless kept up with the Indigo Girls for a number of years and albums, enjoying their triumphs (all of Rites of Passage and most of Swamp Ophelia) and shaking my head at their failures (”Touch Me Fall” the most notable). They fell off my radar, but have reappeared on it with a fine new album, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug. Odd as it seems, 20 years after I discovered them, they have made an album that genuinely speaks to me, whose sentiments I understand without giving into the embarrassingly dour mindset that once plagued me.
Loathe though I am to admit this, as I approach 40, I find myself looking back on good times and unholy humiliations alike with a modicum of nostalgia, in spite of myself. Several of Amy Ray’s tracks take that look back to childhood and adolescence with equal parts wistfulness and regret. “Driver Education” (originally recorded on her solo album Prom) attaches a coming of age romances to a collection of sensory details:
I fell for guys who tried to commit suicide
With soft rock hair and blood shot eyes
He tastes like Marlboro cigarettes, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
A Pepsi in his hand, getting off the school bus
She progresses through lovers of the more recent past (”tattooed girls with a past they can’t remember”) circling back around to growing up:
I ran for miles through the suburbs of the seventies
Pollen dust and Pixie sticks, kissing in the deep end
Of swimming pools before I knew what’s in there
We come into this life waterlogged and tender(more…)
Welcome, everyone, to another installment of Bottom Feeders, your weekly look at the Billboard Hot 100 chart from #41 down during the 1980s. This week we tackle the first half of the letter I, and you should really pay attention this go-round since this might be the first time in all these 42 weeks that I can’t say even one song is bad. We’ve had many weeks stand out as really good, but I’d venture to say this is the top week overall. I guess I’ll find out in the comments if you agree.
Janis Ian
“Under the Covers” — 1981, #71 (download)
Though Janis Ian (”At Seventeen”) had been releasing albums and singles since 1966, “Under the Covers” was only her third song to hit the Hot 100. It was also her last. Ian is an outspoken critic of the RIAA and believes that downloading and enjoying a track for free will actually help album sales in the long run. Rock on, Janis.
Icehouse
“We Can Get Together” — 1981, #62 (download)
“No Promises” — 1986, #79 (download)
“My Obsession” — 1988, #88 (download)
“Touch the Fire” — 1989, #84 (download)
Show of hands — how many of you knew Icehouse had hits other than 1988’s “Electric Blue”? Okay, now keep your hand up if you knew they had a Hot 100 hit way back in 1981. Not too many, huh? Those of you who followed the Australian charts in the ‘80s probably knew, since Icehouse were one of the biggest Aussie acts of the decade. But in the U.S., after “We Can Get Together,” “No Promises” was their next charting single a mere five years later. It’s a shame — Icehouse are a severely underappreciated band here in the States. Their early sound is much more new wave than the slicked-up pop of the later years, but both periods yielded many quality tunes. “My Obsession” should’ve been huge: it was the follow-up to “Electric Blue,” which was cowritten by John Oates and reached #7, yet even with an almost perfect sing-along chorus, it couldn’t muster enough strength to make it into the Top 40.
This album is why. And at this point I’ll pull out of the Neanderthal mentality of my opening and state, simply, that Indigo Girls was one of the finest major-label debuts of the ’80s. Its long-term impact is undeniable, not only upon the duo’s career but upon an entire generation of female singer-songwriters who gained a path to popularity on the radio and the concert stage in part because of its success. (more…)
Two years ago, when I was working on this column’s debut, I wrote about Bruce Springsteen’s 
My bags sat on the floor waiting to be unpacked while I looked around my bedroom — the same bedroom where I’d grown up, the same bedroom I’d escaped when I went off to Bowling Green, and the same bedroom I would now live in as a college graduate trying to save up money to move out west. Nothing had changed in that room for 15years; the wallpaper that my mother had put up herself still hung on the walls, the newspaper clippings and magazine pictures tacked to the corkboard were still there, and the clown portrait that hovered over the bunk beds my brother and I had shared still looked on, unable to manage a smile. As the smell of fresh cut grass filled the air and a breeze came in through the window, I felt lost. Four years spent in pursuit of a dream seemed to have stalled while I waited out the summer. To top things off, a bad hair dye attempt had left my hair orange.
Indigo Girls – Poseidon and the Bitter Bug (2009, Vanguard)
Show of hands — how many of you knew Icehouse had hits other than 1988’s “Electric Blue”? Okay, now keep your hand up if you knew they had a Hot 100 hit way back in 1981. Not too many, huh? Those of you who followed the Australian charts in the ‘80s probably knew, since Icehouse were one of the biggest Aussie acts of the decade. But in the U.S., after “We Can Get Together,” “No Promises” was their next charting single a mere five years later. It’s a shame — Icehouse are a severely underappreciated band here in the States. Their early sound is much more new wave than the slicked-up pop of the later years, but both periods yielded many quality tunes. “My Obsession” should’ve been huge: it was the follow-up to “Electric Blue,” which was cowritten by John Oates and reached #7, yet even with an almost perfect sing-along chorus, it couldn’t muster enough strength to make it into the Top 40.