Music

Year: 1990-1998
Place: Everywhere I ever lived between those years (see sidebar)
My age: 11-20

Looking at the age range alone should tell you that this will be an interesting journey through the world of music.

At the beginning of 1990, I was an 11-year-old grade six student living in the small town of Raymond, Alberta. As a rule (one with very few, if any, exceptions) 11-year-olds have terrible taste in music. I owned maybe half a dozen albums, all of them Weird Al Yankovic cassettes. Having four older siblings, I was exposed to more popular mainstream music (and, in my brother's case, some not-so-mainstream music), but I was, for the most part, a fan of Weird Al and little else.

Music in the very early '90s sucked serious ballz. Seriously, just take a look at the state of music in the period between decent '80s music and the grunge revolution. It made me want to puke back then, and it makes me want to puke even more now. '80s butt-rock (which was never good) was coasting along with no changes, not realizing that it was about to die. AC/DC and Guns 'N Rose were on the top of their gag-inducing games. Roxette had a huge hit with "Joy Ride". Tom Cochrane was singing "Life is a Highway" years before Disney/Pixar made it an international hit with the movie Cars. Alanis Morisette was simply Alanis, and she sang bland teenage synth pop. Seriously, how did we make it through those years without mass suicides? If this era of music had been much longer, I think that's exactly what would have happened.

Thank goodness for Nirvana. Their breakthrough album, Nevermind, was released in 1991, and the single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" breathed life back into the music industry. Being a dumb kid, I didn't really become aware of them until 1992, but once I discovered them, I was hooked. Go back in time to 1992 (I recently bought Back To The Future), go to my house (3519 109 St.), look in my bedroom window (it's the one just to the right of the front step) and you'll see me sitting on the floor reading comic books and listening to Nevermind. Or maybe watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on my crappy portable TV.

Later, Weird Al released the album Off The Deep End featuring the parody "Smells Like Nirvana", and I listened to it more than any other album I had. (Those albums being U2 Rattle and Hum and my Weird Al tapes. I didn't actually own Nevermind. It was my sister's.)

There were two more notable early '90s albums that I owned before I developed my real musical taste later on. The first of these albums was Classic Queen, a compilation of Queen songs. This was during the huge success of the movie Wayne's World, which prominently featured the song "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was, in turn, featured on Classic Queen. The other album, one that I'm not ashamed to still own, is Gordon by the Barenaked Ladies. It is, by far, the best of the Barenaked Ladies' albums. I own two others, but Gordon is the only one I still like.

Grunge was good, but the music that followed in the death of the short-lived, yet important, grunge revolution was the best music ever to have seen the light of day. (That's not just my opinion; it's scientific fact.) Music became truly good in 1994. There were two notable albums. Naveed by Our Lady Peace was the first. I first heard the single, "Naveed", while living in Prince George during 1994. I loved the song, but I never went out and got the album until a few years later. The second album deserves a paragraph all to itself.

My sister Sara gave me a present for Christmas in 1994. It was Weezer's first self-titled album, which has come to be known by their fans as "The Blue Album". (Get over it, Beatles fans!) The album had a profound effect on me that no other album has matched. Some have come close, but none have matched it. The Blue Album completely revolutionized my own personal taste in music. I couldn't stand Queen anymore. The Barenaked Ladies seemed silly. Weird Al was juvenile. Weezer never left my CD player for months. It was the only album I listened to. No other album has ever so completely dominated my life.

After a while, I started listening to more music again. I still listened to The Blue Album on a regular basis, but I listened to other stuff, too. The Offspring's Smash came out while I was still living in St. Albert in 1995. It one of my favourites for completely different reasons than Weezer. This was back when The Offspring was still a band that wrote mostly serious songs, before they started depending on silly songs such as "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" and "Original Prankster" for their success. A year or two after the death of Kurt Cobain, former Nirvana drummer picked up a guitar and fronted the Foo Fighters. Their first album had some good songs, but we'd see better outings from them later. Green Day released their breakout album Dookie.

Shortly after I graduated high school in 1996, Weezer released their second album, Pinkerton. At first, I was disappointed with it because it wasn't just an extension of The Blue Album. I wasn't the only one who thought this way. In fact, I think it was Rolling Stone magazine that called Pinkerton the most disappointing album of 1996. However, I grew to love Weezer's sophomore album almost as much as The Blue Album.

Then came 1997. Homer Simpson once said that rock achieved perfection in 1974, but he couldn't have been more wrong. Everybody knows that rock achieved perfection in 1997. Foo Fighter's second album, The Colour and the Shape, featuring one of my all-time favourite non-Weezer songs "Everlong"; Transmission by the Tea Party; Ixnay on the Hombre by The Offspring; Our Lady Peace's second album, Clumsy; the not-very-well-known Clodhopper by Glueleg; Sammy Hagar's Marching to Mars (HAHAHAHAHA!!! Just kidding!); OK Computer, Radiohead's best album; The Devil You Know, Econoline Crush's only good album (but, man, was it good!); Urban Hymns by The Verve; Underdogs by the Matthew Good Band (note: I wasn't a Matt Good fan until after the '90s). I could go on, but I don't want to kill anyone with an overdose of awesome.

This posting is getting out of hand, so I'm just going to wrap it up. See the side bar for a list of great '90s albums, which is not, by any means, comprehensive. 1998 was another great year in music, although not as good as 97. A sour note in all of the good music of '98 was the start of The Offspring's sad decline into a parody of their former selves. I left on my mission in late 1998, so I wasn't musically aware of 1999. All I knew at the time was that they really liked The Venga Boys and Lou Vega in the Philippines.