Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Rock's Most Essential Albums of the '90s [Episode 235]

Transcript

Rock's Most Essential Albums of the '90s [Episode 235] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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  Speaker 1: We're totally boomed rock and roll. I think I'll leave you.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: You're reading Little Hans says it's time to rock and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: roll roll. I totally booked.
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  Speaker 2: Hey guys, welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: for those about to read and rock for online. At
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  Speaker 2: Booked on Rock dot Com every episode in both audio
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: and video. Exclusive video segments from episodes, the blog, the
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: latest rockbook releases, and check out the all new Booked
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: on rockstore At Booked on Rock dot Com. Gary Graff
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: as a returning guest. He's the author of the new
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  Speaker 2: book five hundred and one Essential Albums of the Nineties,
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  Speaker 2: The Music Fans Definitive Guide. Gary leads a cast of
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  Speaker 2: fellow music journalists in presenting the music of everyone's favorite decade,
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  Speaker 2: the last decade before the proliferation of social media and
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  Speaker 2: digital downloads, With lively descriptions of the releases and over
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  Speaker 2: six hundred images. This hefty four hundred and forty eight
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  Speaker 2: page volume he rates five hundred and one album spanning
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  Speaker 2: genres and subgenres pop, hip hop, R and D, grunge, metal, country,
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  Speaker 2: world music, and features year by year organization, knowledgeable rundowns
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  Speaker 2: of every album. Feature album mark for each selection, artist imagery,
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  Speaker 2: record label, release date, and producers for each. We talk
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  Speaker 2: to Gary about some of the biggest rock albums of
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  Speaker 2: the nineties. You can find a playlist of nineties rock
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  Speaker 2: in this episode show Notes. Great to have you back, Gary.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, thanks for having me back.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It's a Van Helen fan. I just want to say
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: thank you for the great interview with mister Alex van Halen.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Get that out of the way.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you. That was a fun one to do. You
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  Speaker 1: know what an enigma and it was nice to tap
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: into some of that.
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  Speaker 2: Hasn't done very many interviews.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I've done some drum magazines and now that he has
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  Speaker 1: the book out, he's doing that.
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  Speaker 2: Yep. And one Van Helen album does make your book
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety one. That's four on lawful Corona Knowledge.
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  Speaker 2: So let's get to the book. Let's get to it.
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  Speaker 2: The first line reads, quote, this is a book that's
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: designed to start arguments.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, it is.
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  Speaker 2: Then you go on to write, quote the very idea
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  Speaker 2: of choosing five hundred and one essentral albums from the
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  Speaker 2: tens even hundreds of thousands released during a given decade
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  Speaker 2: is preposterous. Yet you were able to do that. How
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  Speaker 2: was the process for you in coming up with the
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  Speaker 2: list of five hundred and one albums?
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  Speaker 1: Fun nerve, wracking, blood letting, you know, including the fact
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  Speaker 1: that I have one of the contributors who I live with.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I got real familiar with the comfortable parts
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of the patio outside when I had there, when I
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: had to sleep outside after the arguments. I mean, it's
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  Speaker 1: funny because the nineties, you know, a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: some people's reaction is, well, how'd you pick five hundred
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  Speaker 1: one albums from the nineties? You know, a lot of
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  Speaker 1: people don't think of it as the great decade it was.
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  Speaker 1: And even I was thinking, you have five hundred and one,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: that's a nice number. That's a large number. And when
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: we compiled the long list of twenty three hundred from
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  Speaker 1: which we had to whittle down the two five hundred
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  Speaker 1: and one, and there was a lot of it was
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of discussion, arguments. There were some nights at
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: concerts here in Detroit where myself and five other contributors
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: we were all there covering the concert and before the
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: show and in between the acts, we were sitting there
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: and getting so worked up to the point where at
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: at least one show. One of the other concert coers
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: went and got the usher, thinking we were going to
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: just erupt into a brawl while we were arguing. So yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it took, you know, it took the time. It took
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  Speaker 1: a better part of it took about a month, I
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: would say, and a lot of bouncing around. I created
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  Speaker 1: a long spreadsheet and everybody kind of made their remarks
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  Speaker 1: and we got to a point where, Okay, we're comfortable
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  Speaker 1: that these are the ones we have to consider. Now
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  Speaker 1: it's my job as the editor to pick the five
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  Speaker 1: hundred and one that are going to be in the book.
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  Speaker 2: Quite a few writers contribute to the book.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, about three dozen. Yeah. That was one of the
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  Speaker 1: best parts of it too, is I had done a
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  Speaker 1: book series, Boy We're going back almost three decades now
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  Speaker 1: called Music, and it wasn't exactly like this, but it
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: did involve a large number of contributors. And that's the
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  Speaker 1: fun is getting to work with your friends and colleagues who,
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  Speaker 1: after they see the book, will and how I edited
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: their entries. We'll see if they're still friends and colleagues.
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  Speaker 1: But you know, just having having that exchange and having
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  Speaker 1: the discussions about some of them are younger than I am,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: so they were teenagers when in Utero came out, or
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  Speaker 1: ten or the Sound Guarden albums, or in some case
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: is the Britney Spears albums. You know I was covering
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  Speaker 1: in at the same time. They were fans. Some are
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  Speaker 1: a little bit older than I am, so they brought
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: their own perspective to it. So that wound up being
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  Speaker 1: a fun part of the book and really helped me
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  Speaker 1: hone in on what we wanted the book to be.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it does give you an idea overall what
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  Speaker 2: the big albums were each year, not just in rock
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  Speaker 2: and roll. I'm going to ask you about those. We're
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  Speaker 2: going to really focus on the rock and roll albums.
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  Speaker 2: But yeah, like you say, Britney Spears, it covers the
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  Speaker 2: whole thing, So it gives you an idea. And actually,
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  Speaker 2: by the time I was finished going through the book,
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  Speaker 2: it gave me a much better idea looking at these
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  Speaker 2: years from afar, noticing the trend with rock and roll
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  Speaker 2: in particular by the end of the nineties, and it's
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  Speaker 2: not good, I don't think, But well, we'll get to that,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: but you see where things were headed. But yeah, you
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: can get into some disagreements and argument. It's like, for me,
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  Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan of those early bands like Blues
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  Speaker 2: Traveler and Spin Doctors had a huge album, They're not
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  Speaker 2: in there, But you can't have them all in there.
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  Speaker 2: So you got to determine which ones you want in
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  Speaker 2: which ones you what? What went into the deciding factor
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  Speaker 2: as to what's going to go in and what's not.
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  Speaker 2: The album sales impact, you.
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  Speaker 1: Know, all of the all of the above and even
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  Speaker 1: the unmentioned the the the word essential was really the
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  Speaker 1: guide point. Was this essential? Did this was? Was this
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  Speaker 1: not only a great album musically and in some cases
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  Speaker 1: for my taste, some of these albums were not. But
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  Speaker 1: did they advance the story of the nineties? Did they
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  Speaker 1: Did they create a new lane for a kind of
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: music in the nineties, And so all of all of
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: those were factored in. One thing I want to point
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  Speaker 1: out too, is is that to me, starting with the
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: nineties was great because that was the last golden decade
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  Speaker 1: of the album. I think there was a decade when
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  Speaker 1: we were still listening to albums as album we were
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  Speaker 1: as music fans or music geeks. We were talking about
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  Speaker 1: the entire album. We were talking about the deep tracks,
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  Speaker 1: the artwork, and everything. The number one album each week
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  Speaker 1: on the Billboard charts was still selling six hundred thousand,
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  Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand a million copies. So we were focused
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  Speaker 1: on consuming albums. And as we got to the end
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: of the decade and we were getting into Napster and
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: file sharing and ptop and basically the beginnings of the
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  Speaker 1: streaming world that are the way we consume music now.
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  Speaker 1: So this was it. This was the lad to me
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  Speaker 1: was this decade was the last to raw.
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  Speaker 2: I think also the last decade of FM rock radio
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  Speaker 2: having an impact.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, That's how I was. I always determined whether I
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  Speaker 2: wanted to get an album or not or CD in
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  Speaker 2: those days early nineties cassettes. How many songs from that
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  Speaker 2: album am I hearing on my local rock station? One? Maybe? Two? Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: I think I might three. Oh yeah, I'm gonna go
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  Speaker 2: get it and let's see what the rest of it
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  Speaker 2: is like. And that changes as we get and I
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  Speaker 2: want to ask that about that. Around nineteen ninety six,
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  Speaker 2: there's a law that's in place that changes the way
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  Speaker 2: things are with radio stations. They go corporate and things change,
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  Speaker 2: and then as you as you said, we go into
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  Speaker 2: the streaming services and it just changes. It seems like
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  Speaker 2: a hundred years ago now. It's crazy it does.
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  Speaker 1: We definitely are very familiar with the streaming world. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: to a fault, But I know I still listen, you know, listen.
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  Speaker 1: I'm older, I'm older than pick your favorite rock out
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  Speaker 1: in your yard. So I'm always going to listen to albums,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm always going to think about things in terms
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  Speaker 1: of albums. But you know, I have kids and now
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: you know, young grandkids, but also neighbors with young children,
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  Speaker 1: and I watch how they're consuming music and they don't
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  Speaker 1: have they don't have a clue about this way of
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  Speaker 1: consuming music.
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  Speaker 2: What upside to it? I would say, though. I actually
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: had on a fellow Detroit native, Brad to Linski on
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  Speaker 2: recently because yeah, Hed and jan Uelski wrote a great
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  Speaker 2: book on MC five, And if there was ever a
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: time to put out a book on a band that
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  Speaker 2: people really need to invest their time in listening to
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  Speaker 2: their music would be now because with streaming services, if
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: you're interested in checking out MC five, it's all there
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  Speaker 2: on Spotify, whereas back in the day it's only going
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: to be what you hear on the radio, and then
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: you have to make that decision. Am I going to
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  Speaker 2: invest a lot of money into buying albums cassette CDs
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  Speaker 2: and you're not going to do that all the time,
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  Speaker 2: whereas now you could just go sample their music, go
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  Speaker 2: to YouTube, go to Spotify. So I think that's the
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  Speaker 2: upside to it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, now that is a very good point. But the
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  Speaker 1: counter not an entirely accounter argument. But you have to
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  Speaker 1: hope people will listen to the albums to understand the
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: band not And now now you can create a playlist,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: you know, on any of the services where you can
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, like with the MC five book,
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  Speaker 1: if they wanted, they could create a play list basically
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  Speaker 1: of the MC five songs. You, as the neophyte listener,
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  Speaker 1: needs to know we with the nineties, we can and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: we are planning to create some playlists out there so
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  Speaker 1: that you can kind of bounce around the nineties and
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  Speaker 1: get a sense of the decade as well. And that
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: is a that is a good thing, but I still
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  Speaker 1: think it detracts and deflects from the album experience.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you don't connect with the music as much
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: the album as much. The album is just like a
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: photo album. It's a it's a place in time for
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the particular artists for band Book on Rock Podcasts. We'll
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: be back after this, be right back with a snack
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: check go go away. So let's go all the way
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  Speaker 2: back to nineteen ninety. It's interesting the first year of
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: every decade in music is always left over from the
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: previous decade. The artists who are huge that year often
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: fall off the charts by the middle of the decade,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: and we have that in the nineties. Albums to make
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: the list for nineteen ninety include MC Hammer Please Hammer,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Don't Hurt Them Extreme Extreme, Two Perna Graffiti, Shnead O'Connor,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: I Do Not Want what I Haven't got. The pop
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: metal bands of the eighties still doing strong numbers, but
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: we know that would and soon. What stands out to
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: you in terms of rock in the year nineteen ninety, Yeah.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Like, as you say, a transitional year. We had some
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: great arrivals. You know, World Party was still a fresh band,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and Goodbye Jumbo is a tremendous album. The Laws, you know,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the one and only album by the Laws that was
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the precursor to Oasis and Blur and everything you had.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: You know, you had Jane's Addiction hitting their stride, sonic
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: youth becoming part of the major label world. So an
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: MTV is still strong and MTV still having a strong
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: rock presence. What you didn't have was those hair metal
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: glam metal bands making essential albums. You know, their best
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: days were behind them, and they were worn out by
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the touring and the you know, the constant demand for
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: new product and the partying. So we very quickly started
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: to see them drop off, drop off. But then we
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: started to get you know, bands like the Texas Tornadoes
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: and this new which is I Will I feel as
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a rock band in spirit, and so we started to
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: get these new flavors into the rock and roll attitude
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: and and a harbinger of what the decade might become.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about Jane's Addiction. One album that
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: stands out for me from nineteen ninety Ritual Dilote, Habitual
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Jane's Addiction. Of course, the band made news this summer
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: for the meltdown Harry Ferrell had on stage during a
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: show in Boston in July. But Jane's Addiction is such
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: an interesting band to talk about. Those early albums like
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Nothing Shocking and Ritual Debitual are so good. Nothing Shocking
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: is ahead of its time and been caught stealing a
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Hue huge hit in nineteen ninety Although they have reformed
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: over the years, it's been with different members. That original
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: lineup of Faro, Dave Navarro on guitar, drummer Stephen Perkins
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and Bassis Eric Avery so special and I would have
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: loved to have seen what that lineup could have done
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: if they hadn't split in nineteen ninety one. What is
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: your opinion of Jane's addiction in terms of their influence
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: on the nineties.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Well, they were definite, and part of that influence comes
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: with Lollapaluza, which they hadlined the first tour. And what
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Perry did They were. They were alternative rock with a
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: capital A and a capital line. They were this harbinger
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: of here's what rock and roll, here's what else rock
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and roll can be, and yeah it can be. We
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: can take from Zeppelin, but we can take from sun Rock,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: and we can mesh this all together into this weird,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: circuitous roadmap of a sound that's different and almost indescribable
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and yet has so many familiar sonic touchstones that it
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: draws everybody in and it excites you as a listener
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: about about these new directions they're going in, so they
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: worry on a lot of ways. They were sending up
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the flair or raising the flag or picking a cliche
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: here of what was to come of what we called
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: the alternative rock.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Much like Paul's Boutique from Beastie Boys. I think of
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: that too, how ahead of time those songs were from
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: that album where they're sampling and yeah, it was a
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: side of what was to come. Nineteen ninety one, that's
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: the year that launched the Grange era Pearl Jam release ten,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Nirvana released Nevermind, Soundgarden released Bad motor Finger. Temple of
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: the Dog self titled album came out that year. As
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: a child of the eighties, for me, took me about
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: a year to really embrace all of that. I was
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: kind of like, naw van Halen, I'm into van Halen, Warrant,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Winger Kiss, you know the metal bands from the eighties.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: But once I embraced it, man, I was all in.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: It took a little while. How did you receive the
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: music and those albums that I just mentioned when they
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: hit the FMR waves and MTV in nineteen ninety one.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Well, you have to remess, so I'm I'm a working
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: music journalist at the time. You know, I'm more than
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: more than a decade into my career, and I loved it,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I really did. It was nice to hear
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I had. I had tired of a lot of the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: eighties rock. I was looking and wanting and hoping for
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: something new, just like as somebody who grew up in
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the seventies, New way, you know, new wave and punk
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: came in just at the right time for me. I
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: was getting tired of the familiar of that decade. So
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I was growing tired of what we were hearing rock
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: do in the in the eighties and was ready for
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: something new. I would almost say that in addition to
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Jane's addiction, in additions to ritual, Ragged Glory, No Young
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: and Crazy Horse, Yeah help set the table for ninety one.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: You know, there are a lot of remembers speaking to
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the guys from Pearl Jam and the guys from Nirvana,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and they were into they had even though they were
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: writing and recording their music at the time, they felt
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: like when Ragged Glory came out, it was really a
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: beacon about what they wanted to do.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Pearl Jam were huge fans of Neil Young, and then
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: they had Neil Young on stage during the MTV Music Awards.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: I remember that very well. Did you sense how big
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Nirvana was going to become with that album?
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Not when I got my advanced cassette of a utero.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I had seen them actually come through or never mind,
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: I think never mind, right, I had seen them, you know,
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: come through before on the first album.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: And they had made you know, just bringing in Dave
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Girl with such a huge change all the way around
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: with his musical sensibilities. But no, nothing told you this
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: was going to be a chart topping hit making. In fact,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: I remember laughing and it might have even written in
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the review of that album that you know, if there
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: was a God or if there was justice, this would
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: be the biggest album of the year or something like that,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: never expecting it was too different and it was too raw,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: you know to really think about, you know, to think
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: about on radio stations that were that were still playing
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Docin and rat yeah, Van and Van Haleen and Zeppelin.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, Zeppelin was the big thing. Yeah, yeah, that Nirvana.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I remember that song came out. Mister Big had the
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: hit single to be with You, ye like it was this.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Of power ballads and stuff like that, So now you
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: never could have predicted what was going to happen. Pearl
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Jams sounded a little more like the mainstream rock and
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: produced a little more like mainstream rock at that time,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and so was Sound Garden on the heavier end.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Pearl Jim wasn't happy about the production, and
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: they re reissued.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Later on right, they did a remix.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Remix the way they wanted it to sound, but at
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: the time, yeah, they want the production was a little
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: more def leopard like, arena rock like than what they
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: had wanted it to sound, and you could hear that
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: in the future. Pearl Jam albums nineteen ninety two another
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: huge year. We have Alice in Chains with Dirt, Soul, Asylum,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Grave Dancers, Union, Eric Claptain's Unplugged was big that year.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes, Pantera, Volga, Display of Power, Annie
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Lennox Diva, that was big. I remember The Cure, one
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: of my favorite bands. Wish loved their new album By
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: the Way, The Beastie Boys Check Your head Stone, Temple
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Pilot's Core, Rim Automatic for the People, Neil Young one
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: of my favorite Neil Young albums, hands down, Harvest Moon
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Rage Against the Machine. There's titled album came out that year,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Peter Gabriel's US, Jim Blossom's New Miserable Experience, the Black Crows,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: the Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. A huge year for rock.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: But I do want to zero in an Rim. They
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: were huge in the nineties and they signed that record
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: breaking deal with Warner Brothers. I think it was that
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: album has Everybody Hurts Drive Man on the Moon. In
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: the book, writer Howard Kramer writes of the band's eighth
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: studio album, quote, the quadruple platinum Automatic for the People
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: represented a musical high point in a career that had
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: only trended up. Perhaps it was the fact that Rim
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: didn't tour behind nineteen ninety one's Out of Time, a
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: massive hit album, and the world was hungry for the band.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: No matter how, It's set the table With Automatic for
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: the People, Rim delivered a clear eyed, full throated masterpiece.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Where do you rank this album on RIM's list of
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: albums their discography? Is it their finest moment. That's a
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: lot to say, because they had some great albums.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know about the finest moment. I put it
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: in the top three or four. Certainly, you know, they
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: had with out of Time, they had kind of smacked
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: everybody upside the head and said, here's what we could be.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: You know, here's what we're not going to be tied
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: to being the jangly alternative pop band that we were
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't say pop and the jangly alternative rock band
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: that we were, you know throughout the eighties and in
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the Green, We've got other areas we want to go in.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: And so with Automatic for the People, they continued to
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: refine that and say, here's how many feels we can
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: take on, here's how many here's how much emotion we
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: have as a band, and it really, you know, it
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: was another master work. And they're one of these bands
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: that we struggled with in the book and even more
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: so in the eighties book That's Coming, because every album
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: was significant in their catalog and they were such a
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: significant band. How do you but there's no room for
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: everyone to be in there? So how do we deal
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: with this? And you know Automatic was of course automatic
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to have in the book, Automatic for the People, and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: it is you know, like I said, I would put
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: it in the top three, you know, I'd bounce that
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: around with a little bit with Murmur and maybe document
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: you know, out of time. Certainly he belongs in the discussion.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: There is that faction of the RAM fan base who
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: loved the old school original days, the college radio r
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: EM days. But to me, I followed them right up
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: until they disbanded. I thought they were still putting out
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: viable music right up until the end. It's kind of
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: disappointed that they pulled the plug on it, and I
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: wish that they would come back and do it again.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: But I totally get why they have as artists. I
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: think they they knew when it was time to walk away.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Think they felt that there was the right time. But
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: I just I just you know, they're all alive and well,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: I just would love to see them come back.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I think they're number one for a rock fan there,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: number one on the reunion list, you know. But they've
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: done it. I listen. We got to give them credit
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: for saying we're not we're not coming back and and
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: really not coming back, right. We can't. We can't say
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the same about how many other bands.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm sure there's been a lot of money
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: put on the table.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, it was nice to see them get you know,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: do what they did with the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction. Yeah,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: this year, you know, and see them do do a
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: little bit together, you know, be interviewed together and do
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: all of that.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Michael Stipe did a rare interview on the podcast
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Broken Record. I heard him talk. I thought it was interesting.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: He was there's one part of his of his of
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: his skills, set of skills, is his voice. He likes
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: his voice. Yeah, thought that was interesting.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Is it very well?
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great lyricist, although we never show what he's talking about.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Well, right, and well he's a poet yeah, and absolutely,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: you know, and a really good singer. And that was
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: That was one of those bands. And you know, we
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: know more than a few of them. We're just all
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the elements coalesced to make you know, one plus one
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: plus one plus one equals more than four.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: And Monsters another one. Monster was a.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Oh that was a great album too. That's the one
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: we left out, and believe me, it was a wrestle.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: But I felt like of their albums in the nineties,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: not the essential one or the least essential one. And
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get New Adventures in Hi Fi in
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: there because I felt like not only was that such
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: a clever and creative album, and not only were the
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: songs really great, but that also helped launch a way
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: of making albums that other bands took on. I mean,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Jackson Brown had done a little bit of it with
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Running on Empty and seventies, but with ram Me Again,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: it was like this beacon to other bands that were
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: around at the time, in bands that were that were
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: on the runway, that hey, here's a way to make
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: an album, here's a way to do something really cool
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and kind of clever.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Booked on rock podcasts, We'll be back after this.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Hold on.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety three Stings Sumner Tails, I remember that so well.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: I had Fields of Gold. If I ever lose my
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: faith in you, Big on the radio, Big album for him,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Sime's Dream from Smashing Pumpkins, Lenny Kravitz, Are You Going
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: to Go My Way? Counting Crows, August and everything after,
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Pearl Jam Versus Nirvana, in Utero, Meatloaf, Bat Out of
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Hell two Back into Hell, Sheryl Crow, Tuesday Night Music Club.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: The Cranberrys were big that year. Everybody else is doing it,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: so why can't we? And we can't forget about Aerosmith,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: who at least Get a Grip four top thirty singles,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Living on the Edge number one on the rock charts
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: for nine weeks. Crazy Amazing Crime are the big singles
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: from that album, their first number one album and their
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: best selling album worldwide, twenty million sales globally. This leads
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: to my question, does chart success equal quality of music?
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Specifically with this album, what do you think of Get
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: a Grip? Because Aerosmith, old school Aerosmith is timeless, it.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Is, and so was new school Erasmith in the nineties.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: They they wrote good songs, they had they had good oversight,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: you know, management, management, at the record company, production, they
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: had people who could steer these guys towards really good
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: commercial rock music. Now, I will say I don't when
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: I put on an Aerosmith record, it's usually going to
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: be Rocks or Get Your Wings, you know, and it's
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: you know, toys in the attic. It's not necessarily going
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: to be Get a Grip or Pump. But those were
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: those are really good albums. They are They showed what
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a really good group of players can do with really
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: good songcraft. Okay, and yeah this was pretty you know
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: down them say for like a Janie's got a guy
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: that's pretty down down the middle of the road songwriting,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: But to have those guys play it and Steven Tyler
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: sing it, it really elevates it above the normal pop act.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: So true and I love Pump.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I would pump? Was I like Pump better than get
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: a Grip?
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: To be honest, exact same here, same here. Yeah. Nineteen
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: ninety four interesting. We had the Page and Plant reunion
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: album No Quarter, The Eagles, Hell Freezes Over. Tom Petty's
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Wildflowers came out that year, another hit for TP. But
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: it's also the year that marked the launch of quite
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: a few big bands and artists that were new to
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: the scene. Weezer released their self titled debut known as
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: The Blue Oasis at least their debut definitely maybe Dave
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Matthews Band their debut album Under the Table and Dreaming
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: came out. Live's third album, Throwing Copper that introduced them
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: to a huge audience. Beck released Mellow Gold, featuring the
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: surprise hit Loser, Bush released sixteen Stone, Green Day, Dookie Offsprings,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Smash Holes, Live Through This, and then you have Hooting
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: the Blowfish Cracked rear View, which was huge. Quite a
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: transitional year in rock? Is this the most shift changing
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: year from the.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Decade one of them? You know, like, think about what
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: we just went through when you listed ninety three. I
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: mean very very shift changing as well. We just as
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: some of this was in what you talked about with
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: radio earlier. You know, we began to see more different
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: radio formats, more narrow casting. You know, they tightened their
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: individual demographics. The silver ish lining to that is it
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: made room for more different kind of musics to be heard.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: You weren't just counting on your ao R station to
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: play you everything. But there was there was hot hot
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: CHR and mellow c CHR and you know, hot rock
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: and pop rock and you know all the I forget
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: all the slogans.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, soft rock, mellow rock.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: But there was a lot of There was a lot
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: of room for stuff, and then a lot of room
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: for crossover. I mean, Hoody and the blow Fish got
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: played on what was called CHR, what we would call
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Top forty. They got played on Adult contemporary, They got
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: played on some alternative alternative radio stations, you know, because
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: they were out there touring with Toad, the Wet Sprocket
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: and Soul Asylum and they were embraced as part of
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: that community too, so they were there was just, you know,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: more room being made for more, more different kinds of
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: music to be exposed. And he saw that, but that
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: that had begun already, and but you were seeing it
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: reflected in what is being released by major labels, and
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: major labels were really still in control.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: That Hoody album broke the record set by Boston for
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: debut album sales.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, debut album it still holds up.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, it is. It is a solid record.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: The record was then broken. I get if I'm not mistaken.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Atlantis Moore set broke the record with Jagged Little Pill
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: a year or two later, which we're gonna get to. Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Nineties was again MTV was still huge in the mid nineties.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: That was coming to an end soon. I remember a
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: TRL would be like, they're playing thirty seconds of the
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: video and that's it. That's when you knew that things
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: were changing with MTV very much. Gary Graff is the
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: author of five hundred and one Essential Albums of the nineties,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: The Music Fans Definitive Guide. So nineteen ninety five we
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: see the post Nirvana era officially underway, since the Unplugged
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: album came out in ninety four after Kurt Cobaine's death.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: This is the year Dave of Role launches Food Fighters
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: and their self titled debut is released. I shouldn't say
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: there because really it was Dave all Dave on that album, right,
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: He played all the internets right. They've gone on to
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: become one of the biggest of the still standing rock bands.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: What was your first impression of that album and did
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: you expect big things from Grole and Food Fighters?
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: That was when I was not at all surprised that
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: it became very successful, very quickly. I mean, he had
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: he had something to jump off from, and you know,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: this was the first thing out of the box from
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the Nirvana camp afterwards, and then you listen to it
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: and you realize, you know, dude's a pop songwriter.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Very radio friendly, not a bad and that's not an insult,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: that's not putting it down. They were just really.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Listen, the Beatles were a pop bitch, sure so, but
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: he just cranks up the guitars and the adrenaline and
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the and the drums. And I heard that album and
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I said, you know, you know something's going to happen here.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: And then of course we got to the color and
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: the shape, and then it was yes, you know, he
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: knows what he's doing. He knows what it's almost like
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: somebody slipped him the secret template of what a great
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: rock band is. But he knew, he knew. He was
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: a student of rock. He was a fan of rock.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: And when I say fan of rock, I mean all rocks.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: This is a guy who listened to the Archies and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: you know, and he listened to the stages and he
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: and all of that was part of what he wrote
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: for Food Fighters.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who knew that quiet guy behind the drum kick
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: and writes songs so well, and so many of them.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Other albums from ninety five Oasis, What's the Story, Morning Glory,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Huge Smashing Pumpkins, Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness. The Beatles
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: anthology that year was Huge Radioheads, The benz Alanis, Morsett,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: jagg a Little Pill, That's the one. Nineteen ninety five
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: came out, Garbage released their self titled debut and No
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Doubt Tragic Kingdom. That was the ska rock research of
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Scott Rock. Looking at the albums from nineteen ninety six
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: in the book, I'm realizing that this maybe the year
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: when the classic rock artists started to decline in the charts.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Hip Hop was huge that year. Well. The standout rock
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: albums were Matchbox Twenties, Yourself or Someone Like You, Ram's
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: New Adventures in High Five, Rage Against the Machines, Evil Empire,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Weezer's Pinkerton, Sublime self titled album, tool Enema, Shell Crows
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: self titled The Wallflowers, Bringing Down the Horse beck Odelay
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Cake Fashion Nugget. So mostly newer bands and artists, but
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: it was also the year Kiss had their huge reunion,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: maybe the first of the big nostalgia tours that would follow.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: We could have had Van Halen with David Lee Roth
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: that could have happened in ninety six, but that fizzled
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: out at the MTV Awards. What do you think of
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: the year nineteen ninety six for rock?
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Another year of just lots of different stuff. I mean, yeah, again,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: you just mentioned this wonderful Ray Rain, and let's not
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: forget about the swing movement that was going on at
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: the time. You had you know, you had Brian Setzer
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: from the Stray Cats going in there, Squirrel ont Zippers.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what about Mighty Muney Bosstones, Right, wasn't.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: That they were. They were in that in that in
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: that range, you know, in the around them too. And
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: then you had then you had Americana coming up as Americana.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Nineties was the decade where we had rock bands that
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: weren't country enough to be called country, So what we
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: were going to call them? And we found this term
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: for Wilco and Sun Vault and and others, even Emmy Lou,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a veteran like Emmy Lou Harris Americana. So the splintering
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: was continuing. The maybe and maybe there's a nicer urn
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: than splintering, but the everybody there, you know, there were
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: more forks in the road to follow. If you wanted
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: to follow the Hooty and the Blowfish trail, you had
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Matchbox twenty if you wanted to if you wanted to
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: follow something heavier, you had Tool to listen to. And
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: then you had like you said, hip hop ed m
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: was starting to become a commercial factor. You know something,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: you know when you had Fat Boy Slim and DJ
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Shadow starting starting to do things that were radio friendly,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: that were mainstream friendly, and it was tough for rock
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: to get a foothold anymore. There was no you know,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: there was harder to get a consensus about anything, so
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: there was it was hard to be a big rock band.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Podcasts We'll be back after this. We mentioned Van Halen
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: and they think about how they started off that decade
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: really strong with Flural Nowful Cardinal Now it's huge. The
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: song right Now I think was so huge in terms
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: of them transitioning over into the new decade. They showed
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: that they could they could still, you know, thrive, not
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: just survive in the nineties, and it really started out
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: so well. They can balance in nineteenninighty five a number
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: one album slight fall off I think from form awful
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: carnor Knowledge, but still solid. But then the band fell apart,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: and I wonder what Van Helen could have been if
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Sammy stayed in the band. Because Humans Being came out
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: in ninety six and I thought, man, this is a
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: badass song of this. I'm really excited about where they're
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: going with this. But it all fell apart. What do
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: you think about Van Helen in the nineties what could
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: have been?
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I agree with you, I think there was you know,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: they were separated by non musical issues within the band,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: which was too bad. I think the music I enjoyed
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: where the music was going, even if it didn't seem
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: to have the same mainstream rock appeal. I didn't think
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: it had to. They mad they made their cases a
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: commercial band. So now let's let's see where, you know,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: kind of where they tried to go on Van Halo three.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: But with Sammy's pop smart songwriting sensibility, you know, what
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: could that have been. Maybe he could have rained, he
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: could arranged some of some of that in to song
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: formatt and even if it wasn't, even if we weren't
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: getting the jumps there right now, is whatever we would
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: have I think we would have gotten some very interesting songs,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: and I say songs that you could listen to, but
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: with with Eddie and you know, and maybe Alex taking
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: it out a little bit more with the playing and
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: the arrangements and what they might have done.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: To give you an example, we mentioned Alex van Hillne.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: You had a chance to interview Alex and this song
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: that he put out called Unfinished, which is companies the
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: audio version of the book that was written back in
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six around the time of the Twister soundtrack,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: and it was called Between Us two and Sammy had
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: put lyrics down on it. They were not happy with
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: the lyrics, so they ditched the song. Now we're hearing
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: that song without the vocals, right, But that gives you
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: an idea of where they were headed. Very They called
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: it kind of led Zeppelin like almost that's their Stairway
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: to Heaven. It's very different. The opening sounds almost David
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Gilmour like. And it's a seven minute, six and a
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: half minute track. Again, that makes me wonder what could
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: have been?
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: You know, Oh you can you know? And I think
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: you could even hear on van Halen three what some
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: of the you know, I mean you hear unfinished well,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: and the hearing unfinished you see, whereas you can hear
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: where his their heads were at when they were going
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: into van Halen three. He just needed a collaborator who
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: was a better fit to pool some of that stuff
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: into song shape. But you know, even I would love
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: to hear a great instrumental ay van Halen Apple.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, have been saying that for years and it never happens.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: It's funny they say that and then and then when
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: it comes out, they're going to say, oh, it doesn't
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: sound like a talking about lot. That's what I want
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: what is this crap in fact, when in fact it
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: would be genius.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Edie was still developing. He was still trying
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: new things, new sounds, new textures, he was trying all
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: this different and of course, as we know, he was
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: still tinkering away at the guitar. You know, he's eventually
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: the EVH model would come out. But uh yeah, just
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: to becas so many years lost from after Van HILLN three,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: which came out in ninety eight. It was just a
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: dark period and it was really a bummer. But that's
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: when I realized I was really a Van Heilen fan,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: because a lot of people were dropping off. I was like, no,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: I'm still I'm still team Van Helen. Here, I'm hoping
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: for something. But he started to lose hope.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: This will not happen. But I would love to see
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Wolfgang get into the vaults with his ear, knowing where
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: his dad was headed and knowing what his dad's intent was.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think Alex knew it too, but I
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: think Wolfgang maybe knows even more what his dad was
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: trying to do, what was getting his dad off, And
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: I would love to see him have some say and
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: do some curation of the music and bring it out
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: for us to hear. Yeah, I think his take would
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: be would be really really interesting and really valid.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Sure, he said in the Q and A recently to
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: promote the book that he does plan on still working
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: on what's in there. But then he also said Wolfgang
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: maybe twenty thirty years from now, Wolfgang will put out
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff too. It just tells you how
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: much is in those vaults you got to go through.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: He was a playing monster, and anybody you talked to
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: who worked with with Eddie it was like he was
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: just playing all the time. And he built fifty one
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: fifty to be able to walk to his studio and
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: pass out there, which yeah, happened a lot too, Very
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: much like Prince.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Prince is all that material. They said that in his
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: vault there the what do they call it? They have
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: a name for it, and I can't remember. You could
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: barely shut the door. There's so much stuff. There's like
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: tapes right up until the the door. You have to
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: push it in just to shut it. So much in there. Yeah,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Dave Girls Food Fighters continued their rise in ninety seven
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: with the color and the shape which you had mentioned.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Rap is still a huge country is growing bigger and
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: bigger now with Shania Twains come on over out That
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: year in sync marks the explosion of boy bands. Some
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: veteran artists mark comebacks. Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: came out in ninety seven. Loved that album and I
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: love the song not dark yet brilliant, along with John
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Fogerty's Blue Moon Swamp and David Bowie put out Earthling too,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: But not a great year for rock. In nineteen ninety seven,
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: You two's return highly anticipated. The album Pop didn't do
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: nearly as well as hoped. I don't think it even
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: made the book, did it? Did? Pop?
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Me? No, old boy. The book is October.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, which is Yeah, which is an amazing.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Seminal album, and Pop just not not even an essential
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: album in U two's catalog, much less for the decade
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: it was released. And there was there was a bit
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: of that in the book. There's no Jackson Brown in here.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: There's no James Taylor, no Joni Mitchell. There are just
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: a number of those artists who and that was that
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: same criteria. Well, these are good and there were some
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: good albums. I thought Pop was a good album, but
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: they're not even essential albums in the artists catalog, much
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: less for the entire decades. So you know it'll be
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: different in the eighties and the seventies when we do those.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: But what did you think of him? I was I
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: am a huge Blind Melon fan, A fellow fellow writer
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: of Greg Prato is a huge van He wrote a
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: couple of great books on Shannon Huon and Blind Melon,
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: and I mentioned Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors. Were you
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: a fan of those bands that era kind of almost
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: they throw back to the hit the Air.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they were. They were commercial what I call
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: commercial jam bands. Yeah, quite fish, not quite fish, but
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: you know, these were because these were bands that tried
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: hard to have songs and did and did have some
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: songs in there. Now they were They were a good
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: group for me. They tended group of bands for me.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: They tended to blur together a little bit, and you know, yeah,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: they all had something that distinguished them from one another.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: But the whole the whole scene felt a little.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Bit, I don't know, not genuine or no.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: It's certainly Jenny, that was the whole horde, what we
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: call the hoard scene was certainly genuine, but maybe a
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: little myopic, maybe just a little, you know, head too
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: far up their own choosure orifice type of type of
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: playing when that was good, but not fish or not
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: or not the Grateful Man.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: And you talk about an example of the sophomore slump.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Spin Doctors first album, Pocketfull Kryptonite was huge in nine
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: and then the follow up album, Turn It Upside Down
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: didn't do much, if anything at.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: All, typical, typical case in point of your whole life
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: to write your first album, yeah, and very little time
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: to do your second.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I never felt it happening in the moment. But
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: taking a step back and looking at it now through
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: your book, this gave me a great chance to kind
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: of step back and look at everything. I think you
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: see the signs of rock declining in this year, particularly
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: late nineties. Did you feel that way putting together the book?
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Did you have any different opinions of the nineties after
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: you put it together being able to look at it
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: from as a whole.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was so much about rock
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: declining as it was in other forms of music ascending.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Rock was maybe in a coasting mode at that point.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: It wasn't producing the masterpieces. It's certainly not at a
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: volume that it it had previously. And then you have
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and you know get getting the ninety seven certainly, you
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: know you had you know, country was just you know,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: it was just ram rotting its way through the decade
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: on West coast, West coast hip hop and then the
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: East coast getting woken up and answering the call to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: you know, to try to combat the West coast. You
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: had those things happening, edm continuing to surface here and
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: here and there. You just had a lot of other
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: kinds of music that I think interested listeners more. They
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: sounded fresher. With rock. You knew you were going to
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: get guys playing guitars, bassed drums, maybe keyboard, the occasional harmonica,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: and you kind of knew what a rock band was
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: going to sound like. One of the things that made
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: a pavement so interesting, or when we talked earlier about
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Jane's addiction at the middle of the decade, was they
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: took rock and turned it on its ear a little
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: better on its head. And that's what that's what hip
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: hop was doing, That's what country was doing. You know,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: by the time we get into ninety seven and so
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: you usurp that position that rockhead, even if it wasn't
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: that hard to find a good rock album, but it
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: was harder to find an essential rock album.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it it started to become less dangerous, less
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: of the music that your parents don't want you to
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: listen to.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we still like the Deftones. Yeah. I
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: thought that came out and really was was the arrival
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: of a new sound and an interesting new sound. So
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: you still have bands like that.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Isn't it crazy that Disney held the Rock and
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies. You're just thinking rock and
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: roll has become that safe. It's now Disney. Ozzy Osbourne
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: is getting inducted into the Rock and Hall of Fame
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: and I'm watching it on Disney Plus. Yep, right, I
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: mean there was a time when parents were like, Ozzy
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Osborne is the devil. You are not going to that
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: concert this weekend.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Way even in the nineties, we were way past that.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: As soon as Corporate America, Corporate International figured out that
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: these the you know that the Aussies and the Marylyn
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Manson's and the so called dangerous bands of the world
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: could make them a lot of money, they were they
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: were welcomed with open arms.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they pushed the envelope so far with
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: the Marilyn Mansons and that kind of thing that it
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: was like, how much more can you do to shock anybody?
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: You really can't.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Anymore but go and wrap and local gangster rapp was Yes,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: you know that was more shocking than real life.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: Booked on rock podcasts. We'll be back after this, I swim.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: I'll make it up tamper.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Speaking of corporate let's get to it. I want to
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: ask you about rock radio in the nineties. This is
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: from a twenty twenty two article I found on the web.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: The website is thirty five thousand watts dot com. This
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: is the article. President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety six, a landmark overhaul of telecommunications law
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: that completely changed the landscape of broadcasting in the United States.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Built as a way to allow any business to compete
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: in the communications sphere, some of the most damaging provisions
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: instead drove many small broadcasters out of the market, while
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: allowing large corporations to scoop up broadcast licenses and reduce
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: the number of independent voices in communities across a country.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Contrary to the stated intentions of allowing more businesses to
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: operate in the communications space. The actual result of the
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Act was a flurry of mergers and acquisitions as a
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: corporate media giants. As corporate media giants bought out small
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: local broadcasters. This occurred because previously there were strict limits
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: to how many broadcast stations both TV and radio, a
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: single entity could own. There were also rules about cross ownership,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: ie owning a radio station and a TV station in
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: the same market. Within five years of the Act, radio
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: station ownership dropped from fifty one hundred donors to thirty
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: eight hundred. This trend has continued to the present, with
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: corporate bohemoth iHeartMedia formerly Clear Channel owning over eight hundred
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: plus stations across the country, and both radio and TV
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: consolidation occurred at a pace never before seen, massively reducing
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: the number of independent broadcasters and communities across the United States. Yeah,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: it goes on to talk about the negative effects of
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: not just the programming, but people in the business were
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: losing jobs. I worked in the radios in the nineties
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: right up and through into the two thousands, and it
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: changed drastically, But from a listener's standpoint, gone were the
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: days of bands emerging out of one market. You get
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: support from an independent station, next thing you know, the
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: band takes off. So a two part question for you, Gary,
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: what do you think of FM rock radio in the
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: nineties and do you feel the changes since nineteen ninety
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: six have had an effect on rock music?
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, with that without question, I mean you had
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: happened was is there are fewer and fewer owners and
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know in twenty twenty four do we have
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: ten or a dozen owners anymore? At this point? You know,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: they just it was easy, easy for them to consolidate
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: and one programmer could program every station that that company owned.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, you brought in consultants, and the consultants
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: were always around, but you brought them in as well,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: and you know, they really homogenized the you know, the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: the landscape, and it made there was less space. Like
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: you just said, you can't It was harder to break
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: and act out of a single market, you know, because
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: you a DJ couldn't pay an air personality, couldn't pick
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: up an album and say I love this, I want
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: to play it for my people. He or she did
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: not have the room in their in their day to day.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: You know, they were presented basically presented with a script
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: for the show. Oh, here's the song you're playing, here's
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: the ad you play. You know, for your entire shift.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: There is no there is no wiggle room.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: I'm getting PTSD.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: No. I mean I was, you know, I was covering
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: radio actually at the time, and was doing some radio
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: adjacent work at the time and writing about the almost
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: instantaneous impact that you saw. I mean, I heard stations
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: that that I went to bed one night and I
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: came on the next day and it wasn't that they
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: had switched formats, but they had definitely switched attitude and mission,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: and you know, it was you know, it shrunk. It
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: shrunk the universe of songs and bands that were being played,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: and it was a great detriment, especially to rock.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I worked at a rock station in Connecticut for
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: a long time, and I remember the program director battling
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: battling with the corporate people that would come in and
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: they would soften up the playlist and they I remember,
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: for some reason this sticks out to me, and I
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: love Genesis, but we were a harder rock station and
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: then they wanted us to play Genesis. Uh, no from
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: that album into Deep, which is a really song. That's
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: that's it's an acy song. And I remember my program
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: directors coming out of the meetings like he just was
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: red face and there was nothing you could do about it.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And so you'd start playing and then the playlist would
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: get shorter and shorter and shorter. We played Creed with
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: arms wide open so many times. We used to just
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: joke about it. We're like, I can't take it anymore.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: I just can't play this song every single night. And
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: it just it was sad because FM radio to me
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: was an art form growing up. I wish I was
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: born earlier, because in the late sixties and seventies it
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: was it was amazing and and yeah, you would hear you.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Would hear more than one song, you know, from an album,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and that that is That is something that actually started
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: changing in the eighties but became more pronounced in the
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: nineties too. Is is the record companies making a plan.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: And you know, it was one single at a time,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: don't don't go on this other song yet, we're not
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: ready for it. Here's here's what we're going to do.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: And then when you combine that with the landscape, you've
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: just described about the you know in the radio world
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: and a consultants and everybody was a lot more complicit
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: in in making making it work that way. See, I remember,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: you know when I was a kid, you heard three
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: four tracks from Toys in the attic, and you heard
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: one track at a time from Get a Grip, and
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you knew spaced apart.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you knew the DJs, you connected with them.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: They all had their own personality, and the stations had
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: their own personality. You just knew. You just knew that
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: you were listening to a particular station.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: And listen to the nineties, we still had air personalities
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: on for just about every air shift. Do you listen
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: now to these stations? Some stations, if they're lucky, they
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: have one.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: I was just about to say.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Who's actually in the market and they're not even live.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: I was just about to say, yeah, voice tracking, right,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: voicetrack when that started, that was in the early two thousands.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: They were showing me how to voicetrack. It was like track,
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: so that meant you could put together. I try to
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: explain it to people who don't know and that it
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: just it blows their mind. But all of the songs
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: in a four hour shift, were already in the computer,
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: and then you could hit the record button, record your opening,
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: and then you could move that opening the audio so
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: it's just so and you could do a whole four
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: hour shift in fifteen minutes. Literally, there were guys that
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: were just blowing through it, not doing any preparation. Just
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: here is that was boom, boom, boom. I'm getting the
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: hell out of here. And they had no interest in
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: the music. And it was so bland and so boring,
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: and it was and I remember thinking to myself, a
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: lot of the jocks are like, this is great, man,
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: I get to pre record so I can head out early.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: I'm like, this is not good.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Right, this is we lost that dialogue about the music
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: that we used to have. It was a real it
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: was a real community, yeah, you know, even though we
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: were all apart, but it was a real community.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: And you know, oh Detroit man, you had all right,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: we have we.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Had WRF, we had w A b X for a while,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: w LLZ, you know, even the and a lot of
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: stations that came and tried to clow their way into
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: the market. And even if they weren't successful, they raised
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: a ruckus trying to do it.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: How long were you in Detroit? Because I asked that
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: because were you there when Stern was in Detroit?
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: I was not not Detroit in eighty two, but they
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: were still talking about them. Yeah, as you'd imagine.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Yep, Yeah, nineteen ninety eight. Let's move on to that
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: year now, whole celebrity skin Beck me too, as Google
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Doll's Dizzy Up the Girl, Kid Rock, Devil without a Cause,
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: Queens of the Stone Age's self titled debut Corn Follow
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: the Leader, Bear Naked Lady's Stunt. I'm not sure what
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: stands out about that you other than I would just
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: say it's the beginning of the rap rock new metal
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: phenomenon that emerged by the end of the decade. You know,
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: olymp Biscuit was about to become a huge slipknot Lincoln.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Park rage rage against the Machine had actually you know,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: kind of kind of started that, and then Deftones to
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: a degree, and then you had, you know, people come
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: along like a kid rock or you know, Beck was
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: kind of perfecting it into that crazy stew he made.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, Beck was really almost taking us back to
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Pepper's and their satanic Majesty's request. It was you know,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: it was really was a psychedelic in that kind of thing.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: But you know, you didn't have you you had a
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff again, I mean, I hate to keep
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: harping on the variety thing, but you had you had
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of rock artists taking very different approach is
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: to rock music at the time and being embraced. I mean,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we had System of a Down emerged that year,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: and you know, which was something something you know, kind
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: of new. I think I just Disturbed was coming out
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: around then. If if I recall, you know, Slipknot was
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: starting to make noise. You know, these early odds fats bands,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: you're almost seeing you're almost seeing more more invention on
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: the extremes. You know, how not the band, but the extremes.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: How soft can we get or how heavy and abrasive
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: can we get? And that's where the real invention was happening,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: you know, rather rather than on the mainstream part of rock.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Rod Stewart by the end of the nineties started
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: to mellow. I think you started to do the standard
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: of the song book.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, so we had some stuff
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: that we get behind Monster Magnet I loved having stone
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: or Rock and you men queens of the Stone Age
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: coming out of Cayas, you know, it was it was
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: good to have that in. But as we were talking
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: about before Rocks, Rock's foothold had slept, and I think,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: you know, I honestly think the record companies didn't care
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: as much. You know, they were looking they were looking
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: for the pop stars, they were looking for the rappers,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: they were looking for the hybrids that would sell records.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: And you know, rock they felt was always going to
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: be there. And if something hit like follow the Leader
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: or system of a down first album, you know, I
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: was well and good. But they really, they weren't behind
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: rock like they were at the beginning of the decade.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: Certainly booked on.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: Rock podcasts, we'll be back after this, which mind I
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: will be longer.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: Maybe the biggest surprise of the nineties comes at the
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: end of the decade. Nineteen ninety nine, Santana released is Supernatural,
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: and you write the entry on this album the book
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: you leave with quote, it's fair to say that the
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: world was not clamoring for a new Santana album in
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine. It's true, released June fifteenth, nineteen ninety
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: nine number one in eleven countries including the US, stayed
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: at the top for twelve non consecutive weeks. Thirty million
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: copies sold worldwide, Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Smooth featuring Rob Thomas of Matchbox twenty number one for
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: twelve weeks, and the track Maria Maria with the product
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: GMB and Why Cleft Jean also number one. Clapton was
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: on there, Lauren Hill, Dave Matthews, among others. He's around
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: fifty two years old when this happens, and by the
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: mid nineties without a label. Four years later, this happens,
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: and you do quote Carlos in the book he literally
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: received a supernatural message telling him this was coming.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Carlos. Whenever you talk to Carlos, I call
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: it a bond hit of an interview.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: Did he tell you this? Is that where this quot came.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, you're going to get you were going
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: to get into the cosmic with him. But this was
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: just perfect packaging with the right person. And you can
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: blame Frank Sinatra DUTs Duets album for this and for
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: the trend that followed, because they put Frank together with
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: a bunch of mostly younger artists to do that and
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: did very well with it. You know, Clive Davis and
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Pete Amberg at Arista Records hit on the notion. You know,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Clive had signed Carlos to Columbia back in nineteen sixty
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: eight and love the guy, you know, bona fide, and
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I was seeing Carlos live at the time, and he
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: hadn't lost a step as a musician, but he didn't
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: care about the commercial world. He wanted to sell records,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: but he's not going to write a Smooth or a
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Maria Maria or any of the hits on that album.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: So Clive put him together with the right person and
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: they were collaborations. At least. Carlos brought his flavor to
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: Smooth and he brought it to Maria Maria and all
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: the songs on the album, but in collaboration with these
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: artists who in turn loved Carlos Santana and understood his
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: value as an artist. So this wasn't as cynical an
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: exercise as some that would come in its wake, like
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: the other two they tried to do with Santana.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the all covers album, I thought it was pretty
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: clear was good now that Yeah, that was one def
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: Leppard photograph. I thought it was great, but I think
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: it ran its course pretty quickly. Yeah.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: But in this case, I mean, you know, you had
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: the timing was right, the artistry was correct, the personalities
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: were right, and the concept was fresh. And it really
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: you know it really you know. Now he can continue
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: to sell out amphitheaters forever, yeah, because people want to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: go here.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: Smooth and good for him, man, because Carlos is one
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: of the all time greats.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Oh and he still plays great. Yeah, he still plays,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: still plays fabulous, So you know, it's nice one that
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: works out when it comes to rock. In ninety nine, though,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: we also had the arrival of the White.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: Strip White Stripes self titled debut.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was going to launch help launch a
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: garage rock whatever we called it, garage rock. It was punk,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: you know, but this was really, you know, the first
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: shot in something that would become the breath of fresh
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: air for Rocky in the in the ats in the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: two thousands. Yeah, I think you know that that was
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: a very very important arrival.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Think one of two Enema of the State came out
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: that year too, Rage Against the Machine, The Battle of
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles, and I really I can't believe we haven't
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: talked about the Redout Chili Peppers, because in the nineties
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: they were huge. California Ation came out in nineteen ninety nine,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: big fan of the Chili Peppers.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: I am, yeah, I thought they I actually so, I
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: met the Chili Peppers when they were recording their second
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: album here in Detroit with George Clinton.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: Oh that's going back, ken So put.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: All those personalities together in a studio and you were
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: guaranteed a good time, yes, but it was it was
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: fun to watch the process and watchfully record his bass
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: parts and Anthony make up lyrics on the spot. And
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: you know, they had their ups and downs, of course,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: so they really hit big at the beginning, you know,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: in the beginning of.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: The decade, Blood Sugar Sex Magic.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: Sugar Sex Magic, and then to come back with Californication
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: and a real retrenchment and you know, the return of
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: John Frucciani to the band, and to be able to
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: put together a two disc.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Set Stadium Arcadium, right, yeah, right.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: And we forget that, you know, we forget that. In
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: the nineties, an album, an individual album, which was a
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: CD was the length of a two record set, an
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: old two record vinyl set when you had Stadium Rcadium
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: or you had you know, Smashing Pumpkins. You know, do
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: that they these were four record sets, and that they
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: were of high quality music, you know, was mind boggling.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: Really read at Chili Peppers, I think, still great band,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: still putting out some great music.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, No, they they have. They have remained fairly consistent.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: You know, just when lightning strikes. Lightning strikes and you're
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: not necessarily going to have it happened like that commercially again,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: but creatively they're they're still there.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't mention there's that interesting time period where
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: Dave Navarro is in the band for one album, One
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: Hot Milt.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: It was literally literally was and it was it was
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: a minute better left forgotten. Yeah, this wasn't it wasn't terrible,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: but it was. It didn't gel.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's that magic with for Chante. Yeah, and think
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: thankfully he's he made it out of that decade because
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: he was in really bad shape. John for Chante. There's
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: a video of him when he was in the throes
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: of addiction that was scary. He's one of the hes.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: He is somebody who cranks out music. Like they were
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: talking one time about all the albums he's he's put
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: out as a solo art to stand with the Chili Peppers.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: It just music comes out of him constantly, constantly.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: No, he was a genius, a genius kind of musician,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: and he's in with the right band there.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: So what's the state of rock as we moved into
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: the new decade? In your opinion? As we ended the nineties.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: It was diminished is a good word for it. It
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: it was in need of it was in need of
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: some tender, loving care. But it was also in need
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: of an audience that wanted it. And I think there
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: was an audience. There was a rock audience, of course,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: but I think the mass audience taste had moved on.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: They wanted the pop stars, they wanted the rappers, they
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: wanted they wanted E. D M. They were they were
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: interested in hybrid. You know if Britney Spears records. I
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: love rock and roll, even some of us may have
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: blanched at that, but it worked for the for the audience. Yeah,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: it was what the audience wanted. So you rock needed
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: to find a special, something special to to get it
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: get its foothold. Back again, and it really hasn't since.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: You know, the White Stripes certainly were We're part of that.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: The Strokes came along, but you know, these were not
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: bands that took over the world the same way Nirvana did,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: or they did, or Van and Van Halen. At some
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: time it just, uh, you know, we had we had
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: really chopped up the market, I think too much for
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: a rock band to really do what those bands did.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't mention pick Floy's division Bell was that
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: in the That is not in the It didn't make
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: the year nineteen eighty four.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, now we thought it was considered, but and I
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: thought a very good album. I should really look because
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: it's not like at my age, it's not like I
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: can remember.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: I'm just thinking of all the albums that were in.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: Their albums, and you know, that was my very that
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: was a favorite of mine, certainly. But yeah, we didn't
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: put it in the book, and I remember the discussion
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: and it did come down to that. You know what,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: it's not even an essential Pink Floyd album, as good
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: as it is. It's an essential non Roger Waters era
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: Pink Floyd album, but it's competition. It's two others yep,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: so no. Now obviously, you know, come eighties book. Spoiler alert,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: the wall might be in it. You think, yeah, well,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: the eighties book is done, so.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, yeah, I'm not going to start any arguments
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: at the end of this interview. I'm thinking of I
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: keep thinking of albums minute. Did you mention that?
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, no, I know. Listen, I think of that.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: It's like I have to go back and sometimes there's
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: that little drop in the pit of your stomach like oh,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: but then there's but then there's also so which one
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: are you going to take?
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we created a book that I
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: can hand to somebody and say this was the nineties.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: You know, listen to all these albums. You will understand
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: what the nineties was in music, and if it takes
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: you other places, we've done our job and we did cheat.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: I mean all the all the all the entries have
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: context about albums that came before, albums that might have
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: come after, so they're mentioned. They're mentioned in one way,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: shape or form, but they are just not singled out
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: as essential.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: Albums before I ask about that eighties book. This book
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: is out nown November fifth, so when this episode airs
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: it's gonna be it's gonna.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Be better on the one. We wanted to put it out
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: on a date, on a date when nothing else was
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: going on.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, what's going on in November? Fifth?
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: Nothing?
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: Nothing?
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Go by, Go buy the book.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: Uh yeah, five hundred and one Essential Albums of the
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: Nineties the Music Fans Definitive Guide number fifth release date.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: You can find it where books are sold and where
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: can people find you online? Gary if they want to reach.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: Out, So graph on Music on x Gary graf on
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: Music on Facebook, Real graph on Music on Instagram.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, now, tell me about the eighties book.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: What eighties book is the you know, much the same
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: same format. When are we going to see it as
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: we're going to see it in May? I believe.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's and.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Then hopefully after that it'll be the seventies and then
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: there will be a discussion about the sixties or is
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: it time to go into the two thousands?
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Nice?
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: I hope we do. Personally hope we would do the
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: sixties first. That was the that was the beginning of
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: the golden era of the album. And you know, who
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: wouldn't who wouldn't want to have to choose between all
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: those Beatles albums about which albums book? Right? And we
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: had that problem in the eighties book. You know you too,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: ri Em, you know Prince, you know, year after year,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: great album after Chris. Oh we uh you know, those
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: those fights were even even, you know, louder than the
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: fights we had for the nineties book.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: Did you leave any Van Hill and albums? I hope
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: they're all in there.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: No, in the eighties, Oh yeah, we didn't. Couldn't have
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: them all, damn you. I feel like it is.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: The argument's already started on the next road.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it will. I feel like it is a well
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: represented selection.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'm very curious. I'm looking forward to it. Gary,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: thanks so much.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Awesome, let's thank you for having me and we'll stay
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: in the spring with you.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: Let's do it in the spring. Thanks so much. Man.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: That's it. It's in the books.