Rob Harvilla's 60 Songs that Explain the 90s

The Mary J. Blige episode was one of the best, really outstanding stuff. I immediately emailed a musicologist professor who taught "Women in Music" when I was school, to tell her she ought to give it a listen.

this podcast just illuminated - for me, for the first time - the potential double meaning of the title of Blink-182's second album Dude Ranch

both hilarious and horrifying

as soon as he mentioned the possibility, i was like oh, got it, say no more

yes, that was good insight

whoa

i wonder what internal spotify nonsense caused them to stop appending the song being discussed at the end of the episode. could it really be as dumb as the episodes being original content that they don't have to pay rights for but the songs being stuff they do have to pay for, so it helps their bottom line if not everyone who listens through the episode also plays the song?

i have no idea but it probably won’t be a case of them paying or not paying for the song it will be a victim of some larger agreement between spotify and a rights holder about whether or not “spotify original” podcast content can contain their music (and it might be different per territory)

yeah its weird bc the song was not actually embedded in the episode -- queueing up an ep would add the podcast followed by the song, separately. So that doesn't quite track. But can't really imagine what else the reason would be.

oh i see. hmm dunno.

maybe they just gave up on the "podcast+song" experiment? i've never heard of it outside of the mentions on this show.

I see these are available on non-Spotify feeds, will check it out

In today's episode re "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode, Rob refers to "the great critic Neg Raggett."

I can proudly say I once served the great Ned Raggett a drink at the Pasadena McCormick & Schmick's, nearly 16 years ago now.

I've listened to a ton of these now and it's great. Haven't listened to the last few because the songs weren't enticing (Hootie, Lisa Loeb, etc), but I know he goes way beyond the title artist and I probably should, huh?

xp Pretty sure I called up Ned while he was doing a radio show c. 1999, and we briefly chatted about the Dead C.

Hootie one was good. Makes a good case for the band's strengths and the underappreciated world-weariness or social commentary in their lyrics. It does open with a lot of 80s baseball card material and "my life as a sports fan" material; that didn't do as much for me, but many here might find it very sweet and charming!

i need to dig into this more, i listened to an episode ages ago & really liked it

Hootie and Lisa were both fantastic!

^seconded.

I’m up to episode 58 and there hasn’t been a dud episode so far. I could listen to this guy recite the phone book.

lol at the Enjoy the Silence episode being structured around the "For the Masses" tribute album, a mostly forgotten album I listened to a whole lot in the late-90s and which actually got me back into depeche mode at the time

Ok I'll eventually get around to those eps (even though sports talk is equally unenticing)

I like the way he tells stories and his eye for banal personal details, so even the sports talk wasn't a total deal-breaker for a sports-hater like myself. YMMV of course.

lol at his pronunciation of Basildon

you can find "sports talk" in the works of David Berman as well

Not to take anything away from the great Ned Raggett but I do like his subtle habit of always referring to critics as "the great music writer x" or "the great critic x", just bigging up his colleagues.

I've tried to get both my 90s music-obsessed friend and his 90s music-obsessed 14 year old stepson to listen, without success.

my partner likes 90s music and absolutely hates it.

to the degree I sense my own enjoyment of the podcast is off-putting

Oh yeah I should have mentioned partner can't bear to hear his voice/delivery even for a moment, such that I lunge for the off switch if she's in the same space.

yes, a very relatable scene

His style is very mannered. I love it as long as I get it in reasonable doses. It flips abruptly to unbearable if I try to binge more than a couple episodes. Think I’m upthread saying as much.

All my favorite podcasts in terms of research/writing have terrible, mannered delivery. It's an accepted price of entry at this point

I could listen to him read the Bible or to replace the kind lady on Google Maps, but I totally get that there could a backlash to "Rob Harvilla voice".

I also like his delivery! But I think "small doses" goes for almost any podcast, especially if it's one person talking and they're trying to write jokes, etc. I wouldn't listen to any one comedian for three hours, no matter how funny I find them or how many chores I need to get done.

Apparently Rob Harvilla voice is similar to Brad Listi voice, on the Otherppl podcast (which mostly interviews writers).

ok the Yellow Ledbetter episode has put me deep in my feelings
pvmic i uncritically love this episode
onward i shall continue listening

boop-boop

i was bracing myself for him to be all “and unlike Spin Doctors Pearl Jam’s Ten only had one good song” & he’s like THEY HAD EIGHT GOOD SONGS and I was like MY DUDE

it’s scary how much he really is “my people” in this episode

Harvilla's on our side.

(Full disclosure: he's been my editor at two publications and is a mensch)

i mean in all my listening to the show i get strong "is this guy an ILXor" vibes. would be an excellent poster imho.

There was a part in the Cannonball episode that made me laugh out loud when he mentions Kelley Deal and says THAT'S RIGHT THERE'S TWO OF THEM

the show also has an endearing quality “midnight community radio dj”, just talking reminscences & stray thoughts out to the world to whoevers listening, maybe while you are driving cross country somewhere

yellow ledbetter lyrics = “sage gibberish” made me lol it is very otm

quality midnight DJ comparison is OTM

He has good comic timing for sure. I started this on a break from the Andrew Hickey cast, and it was really hard to go back to that as it's completely humourless (not that he's trying, it's a totally different thing).

I really like this (I'm up to the Whitney "I Will Always" ep), but the funny thing about the voice-haters* is, personally, the first monologue half is nearly always better than the interview half. The Luniz ep was maybe the sole exception so far? Maybe he should interview pairs of friends more often.

Though I thought the "Common People" ep was a rare miss in the monologue dept—that lengthy opening on the use of "she" in britpop was total nonsense, no? in general his political analyses and "I don't want to talk about thats" are a little inconsistent, but I think most music fans with roughly similar politics can relate, so it doesn't really bother me—and I have to admit Lynskey improved it by having a better sense of the context. Sometimes I think Americans lean in to the "the British class system is a byzantine maze no human can comprehend!" idea as a free pass to not think about class at all anywhere, like no rich american ever went slumming or w/e. Anyway, point being that I bail on the interviews somewhat often, but, somewhat to my surprise, have only skipped out on one of his monologues so far (the Selena one; I couldn't square his effusive praise with the actual clips that sounded p bad to me, sorry Selena fans).

*tbc I absolutely understand hating podcast voices

Yeah, often the conversation bit is unnecessary, but most guests are pretty good. I had to bail on David Chang talking about Metallica though, I just could not.

i mean in all my listening to the show i get strong "is this guy an ILXor" vibes. would be an excellent poster imho.

― got it in the blood, the kid's a pelican (Doctor Casino), Friday, January 27, 2023 3:41 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

He has tweeted about this thread...

Rob Harvilla's 60 Songs that Explain the 90s

...and possibly (?) mentioned us on the podcast. Some music podcast has mentioned ilxor in the last six months or so, at any rate. Butchering the pronunciation of course.

i will stop narrating every ep i swear but

“Walk” - Pantera episode…. so good!! when he did the Bootylicious/Destinys child voiceover to Cowboy’s from Hell intro i lost my shit

Vinnie..can you handle this
Phil …can you handle this
Dimebag …can you handle this

i was super into Pantera in high school, never stopped loving Dimebag even when Phil made them unsupportable… so grateful this ep exists bc it is really fun to celebrate how much Dime fucking rules (and to relish the hilarity of their 80’s glam metal years)

Rob if you are still reading this, let me do an episode on the first track from Merzbow's 'Pulse Demon.'

lol he doesn't read, HE TALKS. aren't you paying any attention?

That was a nice block of Filter and REM, if I do say so myself. My name is Shaft.

that detail about rob’s college radio career felt like a punchline the biographical info from the whole series has been leading up to

I keep laughing about 1) clown cars and ii) blurry bigfoot.

One thing that really bugged me was the assertion (I think by Sean Fennessy) that QOTSA is just Josh Homme and whoever he has around. Most of the current members have all been in place for over a decade.

Funny episode. The comedians are classic but what cracked me up this morning was all the Monster Magnet stuff.

yeah the Monster Magnet stuff was great

Kinda groaned like a sensual Shrek when I saw the song choice, but Rob delivered. I cracked up at the late episode Bolton reveal.

I haven't listened to the interview part yet, but I thought this was much better than virtually every ep from the 00s series (that I've tried; I've been a little pickier with these eps) and am glad to hear he might do more bonus 90s eps.

Great episode, but this was logrolling to promote the documentary, right? A nineties track that explains the 00s.

well yeah, bandsplain (also ringer) did buckley this week

enjoyed both!

I wonder if Rob really hasn't listened to the best songs off Sketches.

I sure haven’t

sincerely, why?

speaking for myself, i always struggled w the release itself, so it’s never really been something i ever felt warmly towards. there’s a couple songs i like i guess. it felt more like an estate sale, when you’re wandering through a dead person’s house. tad ghoulish, yknow?

That is understandable. Believe I bought it from a mall Sam Goody as my first Jeff Buckley listen, unaware that it was posthumous (it was also the only thing they had). 'Morning Theft' already had a reputation as one of his best songs among my group of 8th grade friends at the time.

I liked Grace fine, but yeah, I wasn’t going to spend $18 on a posthumous CD of half-finished songs. By the time all music was free I guess I sort of blamed Buckley for all the groany-boy singers who came in his wake.

i was a hardcore fan when i was in university, saw him twice live, etc - sketches felt kinda like a cursed object among my friend group. one of my friends refused to listen to it for years

xp Also fair! I didn't and don't love all of the songs on either album. But I like more now than I did 25 years ago. In particular, Corpus Christi Carol made me feel like I was listening to Pie Jesu off of my mom's Greatest Hits of Andrew Lloyd Webber tape.

And I appreciate your thoughts as well VG, as that was the vibe Rob gave in the episode. I don't think we knew enough to feel that way.

it’s weird to be a fan of his for this long, it’s hard to recognize him now from ppl’s perception of his music

I felt like Rob’s heart wasn’t in the ‘00s series & haven’t listened to all the episodes. Quality has varied a lot more than the original series for sure. Buckley ep (though likely strongarmed by Ringer mgmt) is the best one in a while. Bandsplain on Buckley was really good, I thought.

Altho Rob’s weird overdeliberate pronunciation of “Hall-lay-lou-yah” was a weird needling irritant throughout.

you mean Buckley's? yah absolutely

I felt like Rob’s heart wasn’t in the ‘00s series & haven’t listened to all the episodes.

I didn't want to go on about it, but as mentioned the Buckley ep put the 00s eps in a bad light for me, though I have listened to more of this series than I thought (I've skipped 10 eps). I don't know if it's the decade in general (i.e., 90s>00s), his selections overlooking aspects of what was good about the decade, that the personal angle is less interesting (growing up v. professional life / repetitive NYC stuff), that I have little personal connection to anything he's covered so far (though I enjoyed lots of 90s eps for songs I didn't care about), that yeah Rob is less invested, or a combination of these things. Also, I found the Toby Keith ep borderline offensive and that has cast a slight pall over the rest for me.

If the show keeps going, he should consider doing the 80s maybe? Though switching it up entirely might be better, the format could be part of my fatigue.

In contrast to that post^ I really liked the T-Pain and "Toxic" episodes. The latter definitely went overboard on the cultural significance of Britney Spears but that's okay.

One minor cavil: I believe his squeamishness is sincere, but sometimes it grates that he's taking so long to tell you he's not going to say a word or talk about a subject.

Really enjoyed today’s ep -the lead-in segment about power-ballads and 90’s hair metal was heavily me-coded lol

i got v excited with the Stryper and Saigon Kick (and Jackyl ugh) of it all (plus Whiney & Chuck Eddy mentions yay!)!

has he done a Lonely Island song? i could probably look it up, i guess...

no