Rob Harvilla's 60 Songs that Explain the 90s

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).

personal observation: i like that for the Hole / Doll Parts ep that he draws on the 1997 Courtney biography by Billy Martin

mostly because ppl seem to have forgotten it and just, i dunno, there’s a kindness to that choice?

there's a kindness to "Shaft"

Does Lange as in Mutt really rhyme with range?

I love that Courtney bio, sad that I seem to have misplaced/lost/loaned out my copy years ago.

And yeah, I recently was informed of that about Mutt Lange's pronunciation too, after decades of pronouncing it like Jessica Lange.

Courtney Love gave Rob & the pod & Yasi Salek of Bandsplain a huge glowing shoutout on instagram! like how well they reoresented her, how thoughtful, listed a to of episodes she liked

she called him a “stentorian voiced dudely bro” lol <3

linked here https://www.instagram.com/p/CpBOKQ_LP3p

"hey rob, anything incredibly weird happen today"

"courtney love called me a "stentorian voiced dudely bro" pic.twitter.com/SOrqo7BSCL

— rob harvilla (@harvilla) February 23, 2023

lol she's not wrong. glad she heard it, it's a good episode.

now that i’m also listening to LOT of bandsplain i hope in the future maybe rob & yasi do a project together bc they have great chemistry as cohosts

(lmao maybe w Rob’s mom also?)

Is it really unusual for someone to love both Pearl Jam and Hole(?)

not at all

i have been one of those ppl from day 1

perception of pj was/is classic rock earnest macho whatever but there’s still a lot of feels that a teenager could get from their music AND hole
they served diff purposes and said different things but still had a similar cathartic effect at its core bc of their honesty
personally speaking anyway

I think Courtney's just reacting to decades of dismissal by grunge bros. But I'm sure there are lots of people with both Hole and Pearl Jam CDs.

it seems like some beef she has w Cameron Crowe, maybe bc of something in the PJ20 doc or old Singles grudge
who the hell knows

Too bad... imagine Courtney in Elizabethtown.

Per your collective recommendation I listened to a couple of these in the car yesterday, and they were tons of fun. Maybe more fun than informative or anything, but fun>facts. What I did *not* like were either of the guests he had on for further discussion; neither of them brought anything interesting to the table and both of them were more annoying than illuminating. Was kind of a bummer, especially the one who kept getting things really wrong (name of band members, name of albums, etc.), but at least the format of the podcast makes them easy to skip. Going forward I think I'll just listen to the Rob monologue bits and then move on to the next ep.

agreed. the guests can be good and the guests can be bad. it would be nice to have, like, a true superfan of a band as opposed to someone with name recognition ... i can't remember which one it was, but one of these i listened to, the guest was basically like "yeah, this is one of my least favorite songs by this band" ... oh, cool. can't wait to hear you talk about it, then.

I'm not sure I need a superfan or anything like that, just someone who can bring something to the conversation more than just further affirmation of a song that is already the subject of a generally laudatory and positive podcast, even when he's talking about ugly music or music that has been radically reappraised in the wake of the "everything is good" poptimist revolution. The two I listened to, I got a really nice feel for *why* he likes the song (even if I don't), but the two guests I (mostly) listened to failed on that front, or at the least seemed ill-prepared for the discussion.

some of the guests really enrich the song tho! Leslie Streeter on Hootie ep, also on Whitney ep, or Hanif Abdurraquib on Gin Blossoms, Yasi Salek on Hole etc etc are all really great

it can be patchy early on yes but that is not at all the rule in my experience of the series as a whole. skip at your peril imo