The view from stage

As I wrote somewhere in this blog already, I was in a band, in the 90s, and we existed from 1994 to 2001. Actually, we kept on rehearsing and putting sketches of songs on tape (and on audio file) until 2004, but we basically ceased to be everyone's favourite active indie pop band (only in my dreams, of course) in 2001, when we played live for the last time.
It was the 21st of July. So it's exactly 10 years now.
I remember it was so windy, just like today (in Sardinia).
Ten years... aargh!!
I definitely need something carelessly happy, and pop, and live, to cheer me up a bit.
Here it goes:

Pulp - Disco 2000 (1995)

speaking of elliott smith

this is one of my favorite songs by him, the ballad of big nothing, off of either/or. no video it seems, so here's a live version with pretty good sound. skip the first minute, cos it's all just applause. (although, click here if you want to hear the recorded version.) enjoy.

Oh, yes! Bright Eyes is Nebraskan!

"What about 90s music from Nebraska?"
That's what I was thinking about yesterday morning, while putting the finishing touch to the "Nebraska" panel.
Because I have this artsy-fartsy project going on (one of the many; most of them pointless and indefinite): simply, I cut out Google Earth aerial views, then I combine them together through collage techniques (on PC).
I suppose millions of PC / interent users have done it alreay before.
Anyway... I've completed only one of the 4 (digital) patchworks / panels that will compose the work, so far (work that, when finished, will adorn that sad and white wall of my living-room).
This panel's called "Nebraska", because all the patches pertain to Fred Astaire's, Hillary Swank's and Marlon Brando's home state.
Getting back to the point: a quick search on Wikipedia revealed that Conor Oberst, Bright Eyes deus ex machina, was born in Omaha, Nebraska's biggest city. I've always seen him as something from the 00's on (I came across Bright Eyes only in 2000, when "Fevers and mirrors" came out), but I just finished listening to 1998 "Letting off the happiness" and it's great!
And there's a track on it that smells like 90s. Like Sparklehorse on a shoegaze trip (with intriguing female backing vocals).
Enjoy.

PS: unforgotten Elliott Smith was born in Omaha, too. But he was kind of "adopted" by Portland, Oregon.

Bright eyes - pull my hair (1998)

PJ Harvey, a girl from England

Tomorrow... no, today, early morning, I'm going to take a plane from Sardinia (Italy; it's the large island on the left, for those who have not been taught geography properly) to Ferrara (centre-north of Italy). And in the evening I'll be there, again a few meters from my love of a life time, Polly Jean Harvey.
Since I'm in a hurry (wake up time is within... 3 hours), and since this blog is all about 90s, here's one of the very few songs taken from PJ's 90s albums she's going to play in Ferrara.
I think I'll write and upload something about the concert anyway, next week.

(suggestion: go to Youtube and search PJ Harvey and "Let England shake"; there's no official TV-friendly video at all. But you'll find 12 short documentaries, the size of a song. 12 songs on "Let England shake", 12 videos about England, its colors and shapes and humanscapes, about english people, their eyes and hands, their past and present, hopes and disillusions and memories, the story of a nation through images of daily simple life)

PJ Harvey - The sky lit up (1998) tour 2011

Winona, Winona and Wynona

Undoubtedly, when you think about Winona Ryder your mind can't help focusing on 90s.
Because it's in everything she evokes (evoked): it was in her haircut, in the way she nodded her head, in the position of the camera that made it look like she was less tall than you and she was watching you like a scoutgirl at your front door on a mission to sell as many biscuits as possible (*gasp*, forgot to breathe!..), it's in "Reality bites" as well as in "Edward Scissorhands" (and in her lovestory with Johnny Depp), it's in the way she dressed, it's in her bewildered fawn glance.
(however... er... she always left me unimpressed; my younger sister, instead, was definitely a "winonian")
This clueless post would like to... celebrate Winona Ryder through three classic (to me) 90s videos that simply bear "Winona" in their title or... feature Winona lip-synching.

We start with gross "Wynona's big brown beaver" by Primus* (although leader Les Claypool always denied any reference with the girl from Minnesota).
Second video is "Talk about the Blues" by superb Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Winona sings, Giovanni Ribisi plays guitar, and John C. Reilly is on drums.
Third video is "Winona", by guiltily underrated Drop Nineteens: intense Uk-style shoegaze made in Boston. And that's my favourite by far of the bunch.
Enjoy

(*I hated Primus. It'not (only) their fault. I'll write a post about it)

Primus - Wynona's big brown beaver (1995)


Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Talk about the Blues (1998)


Drop Nineteens - Winona (1992)

It's 90s g(r)eeks!

Slowdive - Souvlaki (1993)

Just came back from a trip to the island of Rhodes, Greece (suffice it to say: you do have to visit that place!).
After strolling along the windy alleys of the Old City for a few minutes, you immediately realize that you've been surrounded by... menus! They are everywhere, trying to enchant the unwary tourist from a restaurant window, or triumphally invading the (narrow) streets in form of a 2x1 metre board, or lasciviously offering their goodies to your hungry eyes from an unsteady lectern.
And all of them promise nothing but one thing: authentic, real, genuine greek food.
And in a whiff you feel comfortable with words like "dolmades", "gyros", "moussaka" (and "tzatziki") and, of course, "souvlaki".
But... could have a 90s geek like me simply eaten that delicious thing without thinking about Slowdive?
This post is for the cold-hearted readers out there who don't know that "Souvlaki" is, also, the 1993 masterpiece by essential Slowdive (and for all the people who thinks that their 90s would have been poorer without that band and that album).

file under: shoegazing, My Bloody Valentine without distortions, music to float to, thank God there had been Creation Records, oh my! Rachel Goswell turned 40 last month.

Slowdive - Alison


Slowdive - Souvlaki Space station


Slowdive - When the sun hits


Slowdive - Machine gun

How to disappear. Not completely

Hello again.
To the millions of (silent, apparently) readers of this blog out there... sorry for disappearing again.
I promise it won't happen any more.
I offer you Lush's "500 (shake baby shake)" as an apology.
There's an alternate video for this song, and it's definitely sooo 90s: a kind of summary of 90s videos mood, something resembling Stone Temple Pilots' "Creep" meets Garbage's "Stupid girl" meets Whale's "Hobo humpin slobo babe" meets Smashing Pumpkins' "Bullet with butterfly wings".
Pretty cool indeed.
But tonight I prefer version #1. An image for "carefree happyness"? Miki (Berenyi) singing and nodding her head in time while driving a 500 (yes, "500" is that tiny car's model, symbol of Italy's history and culture. My family owned two of them when I was a kid!).
Enjoy
(Now go and buy "Lovelife"!)

Lush - 500 (shake baby shake) (1996)