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

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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

Ornette's in

of the people m coleman mentions only material get an entry (unless contortions are filled somewhere i haven't guessed yet)

this was my jam in the 80s so i was used to it being omitted -- seems odder now than it did then

could be wrong, but miles' electric period might not have been so universally beloved in the 80s-90s as it is now? seems like it took a while to really sink in.

miles' electric period might not have been so universally beloved in the 80s-90s as it is now

it was

Mark S is right, this period was largely forgotten in the alt 90s in fact one of the things that first drew me to ILM ca 2004 was the love for NYC punk funk no wave my jam and personal inspiration/obsession

I reviewed a big CD reissue of 70s Miles in the late 90s and got the idea that people still didn't quite know how to process something like Agharta or He Loved Him Madly. #directionsinmusic

greg tate was writing about it all in the late 80s

(the wire was also but i had sight of our sales figures so i know we were not exactly shifting the scales any)

Think this may be partly a US/UK difference - Soulwax reissued Liquid Liquid in the 1990s, SoulJazz reissued ESG same sort of time, so they def weren't ignored or forgotten groups in Britain (ESG had also been spun a lot at the Hacienda).

Beastie Boys/Luscious Jackson were hyping ESG at the height of the Grand Royal era. LJ used to cover ESG stuff live.

my intro to Miles' electric/funk period was a huge retrospective in Motorbooty, doesn't get any more 90s alt than that

hmm iirc Bitches Brew was the only Jazz album on that Rolling Stone Best 100 Albums of the Past 20 Years list in '87. Maybe Miles was too much of a token artist for SPIN at that point.

Miles was also cited by aural auteurs of the DJ-producer persuasion (mostly in Wire but still) re the cutnpaste flow, never mind the turntables----do we really think his electric music made less of a widespread, sometimes deep impression on musos and other listeners of the 90s than the guys who did get in, than Bailey and Zorn, say? C'mon, it's a gap. But maybe the Miles reviewer didn't make deadline either,

why is the complete on the corner session box like $200 now

I would kill for every back issue of Motorbooty.

Christgau wrote about Dark Magus, Panthalassa, and Black Beauty in the late '90s; it's how I learned about the first album.

xpost Ridiculous box, if it's the one I heard: goes way past anything relevant to the original LP, just because he was recording so much in the same time frame. xxpost It's not like Miles don't and didn't get no respect plenty of elsewheres, but having all those electric albums in the Guide might have been a revelation to some, and handy to more.

Yeah xgau covered Miles pretty well, incl. the comeback.

why is the complete on the corner session box like $200 now

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, March 15, 2017 1:58 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bc it's out of print iirc

Ridiculous box, if it's the one I heard: goes way past anything relevant to the original LP, just because he was recording so much in the same time frame

otm, the material from these sessions got issued across like four albums iirc

Right, and four distinctly different albums!

columbia does all this cool miles stuff that immediately goes out of print

https://www.discogs.com/Miles-Davis-The-Complete-Columbia-Album-Collection/release/2019307

Prob cos Miles heads already have all or as much of that stuff as they can afford, and then some.

Columbia can then backdoor sell the deleted Complete dognose where (Russia, Japan?)

The oligarchs prob already got it all also.

Columbia used to reissue the metal-spine Miles boxes as much cheaper longbox-shaped sets. But the On the Corner set apparently didn't sell well enough to justify a cheaper reissue (and it was prohibitively expensive when it was in print, iirc).

yeah, a few of those sets could be had for very cheap at some point (maybe still) but things like OTC and the cellar door tapes never got a cheaper reissue afaik. which is lame.

I have that miles columbia box, whiney