Best Album of the 90’s. Case Closed

Let’s all go back into our caves and listen to Guided by Voices b-sides.

I don’t even listen to Guided by Voices.

I respect Nirvana, even listen to them sometimes, definitely prefer them over the music in Greg’s car, but I think their (read: Kurt Cobain’s) lack of anything resembling technical ability and Kurt’s culturally ubiquitous “tortured artist” persona hold them back. It’s not his fault. Blame the social forces that created and later crushed his “genius.”

I mean, whatever.

Wodicka told me to post that, I I believe it also.

It’s better to be overrated than underrated. Besides, it’s not the musicians’ fault Nevermind is overrated - it’s the public’s, or the critics’. But you don’t find yourself ever longing to listen to it, because there were - still are, in fact - so many mediocre bands that sound like it, that you’re constantly experiencing it. I never get out Nevermind and think: what great production, what great songs. Nevermind had a poisonous, pernicious influence. It legitimised suffering. The sainthood of Kurt Cobain overshadows the album: Kurt’s lyrics, his attitudinising and navel-gazing, were hard to separate from the band’s image. You can never just hear the record. For me, Bleach and In Utero are superior. Even the album cover seems cheap: that stupid dollar bill just seems to have been airbrushed in there. If Alice in Chains had done it, we’d have thought it was a joke, but because it was Nirvana we thought it was oh-so-clever. If you think you’re going to hear an utterly original, powerful and freaky record when you put on Nevermind, as a young kid might, Christ you’re going to be disappointed. You’re going to think, “Who is this band that sounds just like Nickelback? What are these drug addicts going on about?

The Spin Doctors were the first real rock music experience I ever had. Pocket Full of Kryptonite was the first album I ever owned and the Spin Doctors/Gin Blossoms was the first concert I ever went to. So, for myself I think they deserved it.

Everyone knows that I love Weezer, but I really do believe that Pinkerton deserves to be on the list. Pinkerton was the first mainstream “EMO” album. I am not saying they created the genre, but they did impart it on the mass public for the first time. It was also the first time that you saw a band with previous success writing songs that weren’t designed to be popular.

Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler should NOT be on that list. Nor should a 2nd Weezer album.

HAVE to put OK Computer on the list. Rage? Achtung Baby?

Also, I would put Sublime on it, that album has legs.

Nirvana is a safe pick, and I’d have that in my top five. A Weezer album would be near the bottom of my top ten.