SPIN Alternative Record Guide (1995) Top 100 Alternative Albums (1-50)

Babes In Toyland (Huston)
Bad Brains (Stovall)
Bad Religion (Jonathan Gold)
Derek Bailey (also in collaborations w Han Bennink, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, and many many others) (Byron Coley)
Afrika Bambaataa (also w James Brown, Shango) (S.H. Fernando Jr.)
Bananarama (Sheffield)
Bangles (Sheffield)
Syd Barrett (Weisbard)
Basehead (Colson Whitehead)
Bats (Sheffield)
Bauhaus (Joy Press)
Beastie Boys (Sheffield)
Beat Happening (incl. w Screaming Trees) (Arnold)
Beck (Weisbard)
Belly (Jen Fleissner)
Bettie Serveert (Evelyn McDonnell)
B-52s (Huston)
Big Black (Ivan Kreilkamp)
Big Star (also: Alex Chilton, Chris Bell) (Weisbard)
Bikini Kill (Powers)
Birthday Party (also: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) (Reynolds)
Black Flag (Weisbard)
Black Sabbath (Rob Michaels)
Blake Babies (also: Juliana Hatfield) (Sheffield)
Blasters (Weisbard)
Blondie (Sheffield)
Bongwater (Fleissner)
Boogie Down Productions (also: KRS-One) (dream hampton)
Borbetomagus (also: collabs w Voice Crack, Dietrich Sauter & Thurston Moore, and others) (Coley)
Boredoms (Mike Rubin)
David Bowie (also: Tin Machine) (Sheffield)
Billy Bragg (Arnold)
Glenn Branca (also: w John Giorno) (Coley)
Bratmobile (Sheffield)
Jeff Buckley (Coley)
Tim Buckley (Peter Margasak)
Kate Bush (Sheffield)
Butthole Surfers (Jason Cohen)
Buzzcocks (Walters)

All the Roxy albums scored rather high iirc

Cabaret Voltaire (Mark Sinker)
Caifanes (Ed Morales)
John Cale (also: w Terry Riley, Brian Eno) (Powers)
Camper Van Beethoven (also: Cracker) (Bill Wyman)
Can (Reynolds)
Cannanes (also: Ashtray Boy) (Fleissner)
Captain Beefheart (Jeff Salamon)
Cars (Sheffield)
Rosanne Cash (Weisbard)
Eugene Chadbourne (also: w Shockabilly, Violent Femmes, Sun City Girls, Camper Van Beethoven, and others) (Coley)
Cheap Trick (Jim Greer)
Neneh Cherry (Charles Aaron)
Chic (Walters)
Chills (Weisbard)
Clash (Sheffield)
Clean (Sheffield)
Cocteau Twins (James Hannaham)
Leonard Cohen (Weisbard)
Ornette Coleman (also: w Pat Metheny) (Williams)
Consolidated (Weisbard)
Elvis Costello (Wyman)
Cowboy Junkies (Will Hermes)
Cramps (Jesse Berrett)
Cranberries (Hannaham)
Crass (Lee Foust)
Marshall Crenshaw (Renee Crist)
Culture Club (Sheffield)
Cure (Sheffield)
Cypress Hill (Chris Norris)

hey now

http://assets.teamrock.com/image/b4accdef-a1aa-4ce7-becd-bdd5dc35106f?w=800

serious q, people who think "the 90s were amazing" (or the 80s, or the 70s, or w/e) - how much "what that time meant to me at the time"/confirmation/experience bias math do you do? some? none? "this is objectively the case"?

I would say the 90s are hardest for me to evaluate because my personal listening experiences of the time are so bound up with it. The 90s were the time when I was buying/listening to the biggest volume of contemporary music in my life (free time + disposable income will do that). Unlike prior decades where there was lots of stuff I would only discover much later, with the 90s it's pretty rare that I go back and find something to like that I missed the first time around, and I don't feel much compulsion to revisit stuff I hated at the time to re-evaluate.

I think the 70s, 80s and 90s were all uniquely amazing, and I lived through the 00s and the 10s which pretty much suck shit from the rooter to the tooter

I think the 70s, 80s and 90s were all uniquely amazing

I agree w this (would also stick the 50s and 60s on there lol - I guess every decade is uniquely amazing! Except for the ones that happened on the internet)

yeah was just gonna type

its messy, but you can pretty much draw a line from Napster to President Trump

I know for me it's pretty subjective, i.e. My love of early 80s R&B postpunk new pop is tied in with middle age nostalgia for my 20s (yuk, ik) while the first half of the 90s was a real mixed bag personally. I'd like to think my musical tastes are at least partly objective but I don't trust myself.

The 90s were so good

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 6:09 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A guy I once worked with once said to me he believed the '90s were the worst decade for music ever. I have no idea what the hell he was basing this opinion on.

No decade had worse jeans than the '90s.

if you think the 00s and the 10s have been shit for music then you should probably not be a music critic, or talk about music, or be on ilx

huh guess I'll be off then

maracas.wav

fwiw I think there's plenty of good stuff from the 00s and 10s, just that the exponential explosion in the overall amount of music produced has resulted in good stuff being outnumbered by garbage. so it's hard, on the whole, to say they measure up to previous decades that had a better hit/miss ratio

Napster ruined music.

are we literally judging musical decades in terms of

good music
-----------
total music

are these our maths

I think the 70s, 80s and 90s were all uniquely amazing, and I lived through the 00s and the 10s which pretty much suck shit from the rooter to the tooter

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 2:50 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the 70s, 80s and 90s were all uniquely amazing

I agree w this (would also stick the 50s and 60s on there lol - I guess every decade is uniquely amazing! Except for the ones that happened on the internet)

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 2:51 PM (one hour ago)

you get old, the joy dies

internet fundamentally changed music, I don't think getting old has anything to do w it. I still love music and listen to it p much all day every day

music was better when there were only seven notes in a major scale. when the internet added notes #8 and #9, that did indeed change and ruin everything

i would probably be ok if the last record ever made was "plastic dreams" or something

music was better when there were only seven notes in a major scale

three chords good, two chords better, one chord best innit

hard to separate from personal circumstances (and personality) but i way preferred the 00s and the early 10s to the 90s, and the internet (= ilx, inc.fites w/shakey) was a lot to do with that

i'm also enjoying writing abt music way more than i did when i did it professionally in the 80s and 90s but that probably also explains itself

(second half of the 10s seems to be sucking but i can't honestly blame music for that)

"internet fundamentally changed music"

this is said often, as if obvious. Why/how is this so?

let's ask the internet

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/044/247/297.png

I thought the '00s was actually a fairly decent decade for music, the '10s hasn't been without its highlights but it has often felt underwhelming.

internet fundamentally changed music, I don't think getting old has anything to do w it. I still love music and listen to it p much all day every day

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 4:10 PM (fifteen minutes ago)

first part is almost certainly true, but not necessarily a bad thing. and while we all love music, just about everybody over 40-sh experiences diminishing returns wr2 contemporary pop. we inevitably get to a point where our wiring is too crowded with old shit to be properly blown away by the new. mistaking this for evidence of some external decline is called "being old".

I agree that the music in the last 10 years hasn't been as exciting as, say, the early 80's. But I assumed that was just because I'm over 40 now, not because the quality has actually dropped off.
The internet did ruin a few things, though: a) the pleasures of having a finite music collection, and b) well-demarcated musical trends that define the sound of a decade.

first part is almost certainly true, but not necessarily a bad thing. and while we all love music, just about everybody over 40-sh experiences diminishing returns wr2 contemporary pop. we inevitably get to a point where our wiring is too crowded with old shit to be properly blown away by the new. mistaking this for evidence of some external decline is called "being old".

― Not raving but drooling (contenderizer), Tuesday, March 14, 2017 11:37 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not that I'm anywhere near this point yet, but what if you're over the age of 40, still listen to and appreciate contemporary music and still manage to be blown away by music that is new to you, but it isn't the new releases that are tending to blow you away? What then?

Yeah that's where I am

OK so these updated happened when I was writing a list of posters I should send to the NSA

but what if you're over the age of 40, still listen to and appreciate contemporary music and still manage to be blown away by music that is new to you, but it isn't the new releases that are tending to blow you away? What then?

― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Tuesday, March 14, 2017 4:48 PM (five minutes ago)

i think that's common. i'm the same, and it makes sense. older undiscovered music is more likely to square with our established tastes, expectations & interests.

I could see why the Melvins not being in the Spin guide, you got to figure this book was being put together in '94 right after Houdini came out. They had the Nirvana connection and had been around a while, but they were still fairly odd and kinda obscure. I think the fact that they kept going and hardrock/metal kinda turned towards what they were doing that their profile rose. This was also true for your Saint Vitus, The Obsessed/Wino and other early odd doomy bands.

It could also be the Melvins like probably Uncle Tupelo (don't remember if they are in the Spin book) and definitely Kyuss were a bit too contemporary to quite yet be in such a guide, yet in a snapshot of American rock music circa '94-95 from now they probably definitely would be.

contenderizer is droppin some knowledge

...you got to figure this book was being put together in '94 right after Houdini came out. ...I think the fact that they kept going and hardrock/metal kinda turned towards what they were doing that their profile rose. This was also true for your Saint Vitus, The Obsessed/Wino and other early odd doomy bands.

― earlnash, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 5:15 PM (one minute ago)

yeah, doom & stoner rock didn't really enter mainstream alt consciousness until the late 90s/early 00s.

I mean, all the other big Cobain-championed bands made it in -- Meat Puppets, Shonen Knife, Vaselines, Raincoats, Flipper, Wipers...

Plus there's the Mudhoney connection!

And the Melvins were even sampled on Beck's 'Mellow Gold!' (in the bottom 50 of the top 100!) They weren't some total obscurity in alternative circles

I for one will continue listneing to Sia albums for the hidden gem

Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains, Screaming Trees all made it in, maybe the Melvins expert didn't make deadline? Anthologies have all kinds of problems. Most surprising absence I've noticed: Miles Davis--- considering that they've got Derek Bailey, Ornette, Sun Ra, Sonny Sharrock, Kip Hanrahan even.

And Albert Ayler!

And John Zorn.

Does anyone else remember a syndicated TV show that aired around the time this Spin book came out--it was a weird political show set in a diner where stock characters like the Waitress and the Blue Collar guy mouthed usually right-leaning positions? Once a week or so Spin editor Eric Weisbard would sit with the host at the diner and talk about issues and stuff. Came on right after the Rush Limbaugh tv show.

always thought it was a little weird that Zappa wasn't included, maybe nobody wanted to wade through that discography.

I mean, and I think this goes into the Squeeze clause, Zappa was really only "alternative" from like 1966 to 1971, and then spent the next 20 years of his life being jazz-prog for Guitar World readers and novelty pop for everyone else. Miles Davis was the vanguard of hard bop and modal jazz and cool jazz – basically "traditional jazz music as we know it" by 1995. His days of an vanguard that would fit the definition of the SPIN guide was maybe 1969 to 1973, four years that are surrounded by a career that goes back nearly 20 years in either direction

Surely you mean 1975? Agharta is p "alternative"

Yeah Miles' electric period 1969-75 was a huge influence on the postpunk NYC scene from Contortions to Material James Blood Ulmer Defunkt and on down to ESG Konk Liquid Liquid and a dozen other forgotten bands.

Ok, yeah, extend Miles through maybe Dark Magus in 1977? Still