Near the end of last year I came across various references to early 90s “alternative” rock. The thing was though, that they all seemed to focus exclusively on the grunge side of things. Now as someone who was in high school from ’89-’93, I listened to my fair share of grunge music, but there was so much more going on at the time that seems to be forgotten. While I typically don’t really do musical nostalgia, I thought it might be fun to put together a mixtape featuring stuff that I remember from back then. The idea was to avoid the obvious stuff (grunge, RATM, Janes, etc) and focus in on exclusively what was coming out in the first half of the 90s.
As I started putting this together it quickly started to get a little unwieldy. To put some structure around this I put some constraints in place. First, I jettisoned any idea of doing something that was definitive. Instead I’d focus on things that I remember listening to back then and that had an impact on me. I also decided to break up to project into multiple volumes. The original idea was one volume for the 120 Mins side of things, another for more heavier stuff, and then a third that focused on the tracks that introduced me to punk and indie rock around 94/95. In the end, the second volume just never really came together so I scrapped it. Below is the first volume and the second will come along in March.
Two other little notes for this mixtape.
- As an added bit of fun, the podcast version of this contains clips of the movie Pump Up The Volume slipped in between songs. I’d love to hear what folks think of this and if they’d like to see more of something like that.
- While the intention was to only use recordings from ’91ish to ’93, I couldn’t find a digital copy of Shonen Knife’s Let Knife and my CD version seems to have gone missing. So I’ve used a live recording here from a later album.
Track List
- Pump Up The Volume clip
- Mrs. Robinson – The Lemonheads – It’s A Shame About Ray
- Buena – Morphine – Cure For Pain
- Joey – Concrete Blonde – Bloodletting
- Planet of Sound – Pixies – Trompe le Monde
- Twist Barbie – Shonen Knife – ALIVE! in Osaka
- Blood Makes Noise – Suzanne Vega – 99.9 F
- Human Behaviour – Bjork – Debut
- Pump Up The Volume clip
- The Dead Part Of You – American Music Club – Everclear
- He’s My Best Friend – Jellyfish – Spilt Milk
- Girlfriend – Matthew Sweet – Girlfiend
- Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead – XTC – Nonsuch
- Friday I’m in Love – The Cure – Wish
- Feed the Tree – Belly – Star
- Birdhouse In Your Soul – They Might Be Giants – Flood
- If I Can’t Change Your Mind – Sugar – Copper Blue
- Cannonball – The Breeders – Last Splash
- Pump Up The Volume clip
- Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now) – Cracker – Cracker
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