Rob Harvilla's 60 Songs that Explain the 90s

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

"Feed my little baby" will not be topped, but you're right, this isn't a podcast about midwestern catholic guilt.

oh hey there Whiney aka guest on the Coolio Gangsta Paradise episode while i was driving around today! i fully acted out the dicaprio meme pointing at the stereo

the episodes he did on Notorious BIG’s Juicy, Whitneys I Will Always Love You and Sinead’s Nothing compares 2 u —- all incredibly moving & compassionate, i really like when he digs deeper in that way. i fully teared up in the whitney ep.

30 more episodes! I fist-pumped the air.

Oh really? I was wondering if he was truly going to end it at 90.

"Hear me now and believe me later - we will stop at 120 songs." Let's see. Apparently he's taking 2 months off and starting again in May.

It was too soon to end, just when "some call it soup / some call it nuts" from the Green Day episode may have tentatively topped "Feed my little baby".

niiice.

got to the Enjoy the Silence ep a couple nights back. the college radio material was cracking me UP.

I would've liked him to do the 80s or 00s when he was done but I'll take 30 more 90s episodes

I don’t think you could do a marketable ‘00s podcast in this style because the monoculture was dead and gone. 75 minutes about some Clay Aiken or Breaking Benjamin song you don’t remember actually hearing

lets figure out CrazyTown

My wife and I both recently started listening — '90s music is a big bonding thing for us in general, so it's a good couple show for us. It's fun. I can see how his shtick would annoy some people but I think it mostly works, he has actual interesting things to say often enough that the patter is tolerable and sometimes entertaining. Helps that in general I like his taste. Listened to the Hole episode recently, I was amen-ing his adulation of Courtney Love's songwriting.

I've only listened to "Basket Case" and kind of felt like it could have been half as long. He's a bit much so I had to break it into multiple listens.

His guest who said it was the worst single off Dookie OTM

The one thing that bugs me about this podcast is that the individual song snippets usually feel way too short, often so short that they don't give you enough time to digest what's so unique about the point Rob's trying to make. Is it a copyright thing? As a guy who lived through the 90s and listened to a lot of music, I often enough know and understand the song being referenced. But I was trying to think about it from the perspective of someone who wasn't around for that era, or who wasn't attuned to it at the time, and those 4-5 second blips of songs would leave a lot unsaid.

Anyway, happy for more episodes.

I think it has to be a copyright thing. I've checked a few episodes of the podcast Bandsplain, and all its clips are only about five seconds as well.

From what I'm reading the 'under 7 seconds' thing is a myth, but it seems like "fair use" would count here since this is explicitly criticism and commentary on the music. In which case if they're going to use it at all, might as well play longer clips. Maybe he just wants to keep up a fast pace, similar to the pace of the script.

i’m still way in the weeds digging old episodes. having a ball though. goddamn the Celine Dion episode was excellent. every now and then a guest conversation will just take the whole episode to a new level, like Leslie Gray Streeter did with this one. So awesome.

yeah I've been meaning to note that shortly after my "the interviews are mostly bad" post upthread, I hit a run of good-to-great interviews and am now fully converted

but it seems like "fair use" would count here since this is explicitly criticism and commentary on the music

It might but it's probably not worth the effort - the automated copyright systems would flag all of it and then he has to fight each flag/strike on every service/upload.

It's a Spotify original, too, isn't it? Might be them trying to avoid paying anyone $.000001 for a "stream" of a song featured.

It used to be (when he would introduce the full song at the end), but it's not affiliated with Spotify anymore, I don't think.

the automated copyright systems would flag all of it and then he has to fight each flag/strike on every service/upload.

Wouldn't this happen for short clips as well?

Hi Rob!

I haven’t listened to the podcast yet but have always enjoyed his writing (and, like Alfred, have written for him at a few different places).

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