Let me set this clip up for you. It's the summer of 1994, I was 19 and, despite Kurt Cobain's head being in several pieces for months already, DGC thought they were sitting on a goldmine of new untapped talent - and who could blame them? The success of bands such as Weezer, Hole, Beck, Counting Crows, et al gave them every reason for a well-deserved pat on the back.
That pat on the back came in the form of the cash-in album DGC Rarities Vol. 1 (SPOILER: Vol. 2 was never released).
I owned this on cassette when it came out. I lost that tape a couple years later and haven't listened to it since - until now, because I found it in the dollar bin at the local used CD/book/DVD/video game megastore.
There are more tracks on it than this, but I want to talk about a few of them (and I'll put this in the Mediafire thread if anyone is interested, because, as you will see as this post progresses, I find it an interesting artifact).
1. Teenage Fanclub - "Mad Dog 20/20". Odd choice to lead off with, but alright, let's run with it. It's a good TF song, but at the time, they were really only known stateside for one fairly terrible single and were (I know this is hard to believe) more critical darlings than fan favorites. Then again, Vampire Weekend are critical darlings and I think we can all agree that TF is significantly better.
2. Nirvana - "Pay to Play". The original version of "Stay Away"; the only actual difference is that he sings "pay to play" instead of "stay away". Seminal, man. Seminal. There wasn't any other Nirvana song lying around? Well, the fact is, the artists themselves got to choose the songs on here (more about that later) so Krist and Dave were probably Sending A Message here.
3. Weezer - "Jamie". This was before Pinkerton, so it was when I still hated Weezer, but even so, I loved this song. LOVED IT. It gets everything right that the blue album got wrong.
5. Hole - "Beautiful Son". This was right after Live Through This so I still liked Hole. This song is the most blatant condensation of Courtney Love's "I am going to make my band sound exactly like my (dead) husband's band" sound, and it's pretty excellent.
6. Beck - "Bogusflow". A fantastic one, a very good balance of his early sound, something that could have been on Mellow Gold OR One Foot In The Grave and been a perfect fit.
7. Sonic Youth - "Compilation Blues". As Thurston sings here, this song was written "for Kato, for his compilation" and "it's very rare, and I'm a mosquito". Backed up by acoustic guitar fuckery and other random noise. I think Sonic Youth may have been Sending A Message here too, but it's a bit subtle for me.
9. Counting Crows - "Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)". Arguably the most famous CC song, the song that told them "Hey guys, you're NOT a one-hit wonder, really!" Like all early Counting Crows songs, it's pretty good, but in retrospect, was it really a good idea to encourage them, setting us up for over a decade of continually pathetic attempted comebacks?
11. Sloan - "Stove/Smother". Sloan cheated. This is actually two songs, both covers of their friends Eric's Trip. As such, it is pretty awesome. This was, obviously, before DGC dumped Sloan like a 17-year-old emo chick.
So, yeah. The 90s, huh?
Author
Topic: Now That's What I Call (Alternative) Music! (feat. SLOAN and more!) (Read 7653 times)