LOOSE STANDARDS
My life choices may be highly suspect, but the musical selections are bona fide.
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PROJECT 1: DISS NAY LYND
A coming-of-age playlist and memoir of the “Alternative” era, from one generation to another
This year for the holidays, I wanted to make a playlist as a gift for my niece and nephew (who are just a year or two the other side of 15 from each other) of music from when their dad and I were around their age now (my older brother and I are both early xennials). But not just like a best-of-those-years greatest hits compilation: beyond just being the sounds of an arbitrary period of time, I wanted the vibe to reflect what to me was really a prevailing aesthetic and cultural theme – if not oft-abused concept – of the era: “alternative.”
Before “alternative” became the go-to moniker for a distinct, emergent, identifiable and largely reductive genre of music in the mid- to late- 90s, there was a brief but magical period during which audiences began clamoring for sounds that both defied labels and also felt (almost aggressively) authentic, if not also a little strange. Music critics and radio station managers and DJs began to refer to anything that didn’t fit into the standard programming buckets as “alternative,” because it was just … too different from the known forms of the time to call it anything else? I can imagine the conversations now, “Like, yeah, it’s rock, but it’s not, like, Def Leppard,” or “How did we go from Sugar Hill Gang to Digable Planets?” Listening to Casey Kasem’s Casey’s Top 40 less and less, programs like 120 Minutes on MTV and the 1989 format change of Dallas-area radio station, 94.5 FM KDGE The Edge, from classic to “modern” rock were incredibly pivotal for me during this time.
Somewhere between late-Reagan and early-Clinton, things in music … got weird. And I’m not just talking about grunge, which hit right as I was entering puberty. A smorgasbord of alt-novelty breakouts like “Detachable Penis,” “Pushing Th’ Little Daisies,” “Tom’s Diner,” and “She Don’t Use Jelly” were weird and wild and perfect and frankly, everywhere for a while. Hitting puberty during this time probably played a part in my perception of the change, but the paradigm shift was nonetheless palpable. Somewhere between Warrant and Creed, between Taylor Dayne and Britney Spears, between Public Enemy and Lauryn Hill, between Cathy Dennis and Destiny’s Child, things got really, really wacky. And awesome. And a little experimental. And weirdly retro. And weirdly mashed-up. And overtly political. So many new sounds, styles and attitudes were getting radio and video play that program managers didn’t even know what to call it. It was a period that defied genres, defied categorization. In a time before the internet, a small but ardent fan base could eek an artist over the line from relative unknown to overnight local breakout or darling of the college radio station circuit. Even if an artist couldn’t get their video into MTV’s main rotation, you might still see it on 120 Minutes, if it hit the right edge, just right. Or maybe Beavis and Butthead. More and more artists collaborated across genres, or created acts that melded elements of disparate genres into a weirdly intriguing new blended pastiche. Major pop artists got authentically rebellious, throwing off everything from sexual conventions to major-label recording contracts. Branches of new wave morphed into early dream pop. Playful, articulate geeks reveled in the charm of unabashed awkwardness. Women across genres embraced greater complexity in both form and content, and asserted increasing creative control and autonomy in their careers. Queer artists moved beyond the open secrets, coded references and symbolic winks of previous eras and emerged as out and proud chart-busting powerhouses. Hip hop continued evolving into its newfound establishment status, with rappers and producers growing increasingly eclectic, and artists and audiences alike more receptive to pioneering experimentation in style, form and content. And rock music just kind of got raw as fuck as punk and hair metal gave way to grunge, and audiences not only embraced the artists putting it on the map, but also discovering its underlying influences in greater numbers. There was also a ton going on in the margins, both among and beyond any previously popular styles.
Music also took on pronounced resonance in movies and fashion as well. Studios – both mainstream and independent – were deliberately pushing the ethos of motion picture soundtracks as major features of a movie’s brand more deeply than ever before (Singles, The Bodyguard, Boomerang, Romeo + Juliet, The Crow, Pulp Fiction, Clueless, Friday, Empire Records). It will become clear throughout this series the profound impact movie soundtracks had on me as a major vehicle for discovering new artists and expanding my musical horizons, and I express my tremendous gratitude to the directors and music supervisors responsible for them. Fashion moved center stage as well, as the DIY styles of the 80s pioneered by club, street, and punk artists alike elevated the aesthetics of creative subcultures to the height of couture crossover. The character of the “supermodel” was more powerful than ever as designers and models increasingly gained access to and even dominated the celebrity A-list, inextricably blending into the ethos of the superstar. Artists like George Michael, Chris Isaak, and both Michael and Janet Jackson prominently featured high profile runway models in starring roles for their music videos. The intersection of music and fashion was so powerful during this time that it even supported the rise of a gay black male club kid from the American deep south to realize international acclaim as a catwalk-stomping high-fashion drag queen, pop star and media personality. Alternative, indeed.
When I first started conceiving of this playlist, the first song that popped into my head was “Dizz Knee Land” by Dada, inspiring the name for the project. Then “My Sister” by Juliana Hatfield. And that’s where we’ll kick off, right after the jump.
But first, a few caveats and a loose rule or two:
So what really qualifies as “alternative?” I admit it’s subjective. It’s an aesthetic determination based on taste, more memory than fact, and for the purposes of this list, it’s personal. As RuPaul says, “My show, my rules.”
There was obviously a ton of great mainstream music that came out during this time. I love pop music. Love it. Love dance anthems, love big campy torch ballads, love ‘em. My first secular concert was Paula Abdul, and she put on one hell of a show. But you won’t find the great pop divas of the 90s included here (Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, etc). They were huge contributors to the period, but in a very different way. That’s not the theme here.
Some of the greatest and most revolutionary artists of earlier periods did great work during this time. Artists like Prince, David Bowie, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson and many more continued to be brilliant well into the 90s and beyond. But that’s not the criteria here, either; that’s not the key vibe. With few notable exceptions, most of what I'll write about here will be artists whose most revolutionary, "alternative" contributions took place between approximately '89 and '94.
Plenty of other vibes and super impactful developments were going on in lots of other scenes at this time. As a choir and musical theatre nerd from childhood on, I was very concerned with the relationship between the works of Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Weber; that is to say there was lots going on in the Broadway world. Lounge, big band, swing and ska all had big moments. Hell, even “world” music found both alternative and mainstream success in acts like Dead Can Dance, Madredeus, Enya, Enigma, Riverdance, and the Gregorian chants of the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo. But this list is about what this list is about, and again, it’s not really any of that.
See rule #1: I break any rule I want, at any time, for any reason. It’s my list. Don’t @ me. Just kidding, I’d love to hear from you :)
Finally, while the playlist itself may be for the kids, this written series is mostly for me – maybe think of it as a little coming-of-age memoir through my own nostalgia and discovery. If you as the reader get a little something out of it, too, then wonderful. I certainly hope so.
First up: Dada, "Dizz Knee Land" (1992)
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