Rob Harvilla's 60 Songs that Explain the 90s

Rob occasionally drops an oddly sensual "yeah" while the guest is talking.

^lol

yeah that's gonna do it for me and message boards pic.twitter.com/GxI1gKnaf9

— rob harvilla (@harvilla) June 16, 2022

I am a regular listener to the show and enjoy it and how much I enjoy it surprisingly does not correlate with my own enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the song being profiled. Some of my least favorite music has been some of my favorite shows which is not the norm, for me anyway.

lol none stuck out in these last two eps

This is a great podcast. Is there a thread on ilm for music podcast recommendations?

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.

Enjoyed the "What's Up" episode a lot but wow, the excerpts of other songs from that 4 Non Blondes record were just ghastly.

haven't heard the episode, but the first track on the 4 non blondes LP ("Train") is easily the best thing on there

-"pendantic"
-"Zola Neale Hurston"

Sorry, just had to put that somewhere.

being a bit pendantic with that second one

the Zola Neale Hurston thing must be killing him... he just went through an exercise of documenting and atoning for past mispronunciation/misnomers, in the recent book-launch live show ep.

lol right? poor rob

Zola? Jesus.

lol

4 Non Blondes episode going well so far. but the Secret Samadhi shout-out has psyched me out cause I've been editing down a shortlist of wtf lyrics for a poll, and now it'll look like I'm just jumping on the bandwagon.

― not the one who's tryin' to dub your anime (Doctor Casino), Saturday, December 16, 2023 8:08 AM bookmarkflaglink

cleaning out my notes document, figured it was time: Secret Samadhi by Live: its bathetic and grotesque lyrics

the last few episodes have all been really great imo - Lenny Kravitz, Cher, Goo Goo Dolls & especially the George Michael one last week, loved that one

The discussion w Wesley Morris on MJ, Black & White & everything after it is one of the best conversations he’s had recently imo.

Harvilla & Morris both mention the “Think Twice” podcast a few times - I highly recommend it if you are at all curious, it’s really good.

The Jay-Z one was another rare ep where the guest portion outshined the main bit.

(also speaks Jay's catalog that every clip he played had me saying "that's the one you chose?!", when there could have been five other classics from most of the records)

The discussion w Wesley Morris on MJ, Black & White & everything after it is one of the best conversations he’s had recently imo.

Harvilla & Morris both mention the “Think Twice” podcast a few times - I highly recommend it if you are at all curious, it’s really good.

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 9 February 2024 02:41 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks, I binged this last week and agree that it was excellent (except the ads which were truly horrible but that's almost everything these days)

Agreed, the Jay-Z conversation with Wosny Lambre is great, it provides so much context for what it was like to encounter Jay-Z in the overall stream of '90s New York rap. Really enjoyed it.

yeah it was def one of the best conversations of the series, no question

Glory Box intro rant about the whooping crowd is very good.

RIP

I’ve gone back to listen to the ones I hadn’t already heard before I listen to the final ones. Quite odd listening to the earlier episodes that feel more “scripted”, less conversational I guess.

sigh i will miss this show
excited for whatever he does next

he def gets a legit lol or two out of me every episode. like the jay z one where he was reading the ten commandments to funk flex bombs sound fx

'lets go mount sinai'

so funny

i want a playlist of all the songs he played at open mic nights — when he said he did Hallelujah i screamed ROB NO

So Rob’s next project is hosting a BBC podcast series (i think) with Courtney Love! starting in April

https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2024/bbc-radio-6-music-and-bbc-sounds-announce-courtney-loves-women

Oh man - I had to stop halfway through the Smells Like Teen Spirit episode because I couldn't stand Love's ramblings. Rob basically just smiled and nodded while she jumped around all over the place and talked more about herself than Nirvana.

Hopefully he's got something better lined up after this.

i loved that episode so as always, mileage varies!

I'm in favor of this Odd Couple remake, but he strongly implied that he'll be doing another podcast for the same company with the same team, so I assume this is in addition to that.

yeah, my reax to that news was "ugh, that sucks, and it seems like it would be painful for Rob." (i'm sure he doesn't feel that way and is excited.)

his half of that episode is approximately 10 times better than listening to her ramble.

https://preview.redd.it/i-need-a-broom-to-clean-up-all-those-names-courtney-dropped-v0-0yu54zouej9a1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=0606713ad03d45ad5afb3d2323a5c22f7c12bacd

I enjoyed her rambling. Anyway it's not like he has to edit the podcast, that's whose doing the real work here.

I don’t fault anyone for loving the Courtney, but I couldn’t take it — she (who has done WONDERFUL work) didn’t talk about the work at all; it was who wanted to or did fuck whom and who was on what scene at which moment and all that social shit.

Now, this is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to the creation of a scene, probably as important as the music (or more), but her ep was just Not For Me.

omg

this is not directed at hardcore dilettante but to anyone else with something in the hopper re courtney

god forbid i be naive enough think that this would be a good thing to mention for Harvilla’s career bump and that geez might be an interesting series
…
and more fool me for forgettig that the very mention of Courtney’s name is like summoning a flock of winged monkeys who feel it is important to point out how bad & hated & idk insane she is or whatever

i ask you all please absolutely knock it the fuck off

it’s boring, depressing, and lame