B - Boy Bouillabaise - The Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique - 1989

I work right outside the NYC side entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Me and several of my coworkers just spent a solid 10 minutes looking at a traffic accident out our window, that caused traffic to back up for blocks. We couldn't actually see any damage to either car, we didn't hear a crash, yet several people (and one baby)were taken out of the front car in stretchers. Curious...

On another note, here is the last track on the Beastie's breakthrough and (in my opinion) still best album. They seem to be borrowing a trick from The Beatles here by releasing a suite of half completed songs as a single song...unless of course you get the new reissue which separates each segment as an individual song...much the same that the CD version of Abbey Road does to side two. In the interest of simplicity, I've only included the link for the first song in the suite.

At Least For Now - The Posies - Failure - 1989

I've spent a lot of time on this blog writing about nostalgia...both wallowing in my own nostalgia, or waxing philosophical about the way that music can bring a certain time and place to mind in a few short notes...but this song brings up a phenomenon that I don't think I've covered before.

I purchased the Posies 3rd album (Frosting on the Beater) with the money I got for my high school graduation. I had read a favorable review of them and wanted to check it out, despite having never actually heard the band. While I was initially disappointed in the album, I eventually fell in love with it. For a long while it was "my favorite album" (I already have tickets to see them perform it in it's entirity at The Bell House in June)...as such I went out and purchased both of the previous Posies albums during my freshman year in college.

This song, one of the less juvenille tracks from their self-produced first album, is fairly indicative of the band in it's early stages: Annoyingly, self-consciously literate lyrics, Smiths-y instrumentation, Big Star Melodies and pitch perfect harmonies. It's good without being noteworthy...except one thing.

But what I find most interesting is that the nostalgia that this song summons up is NOT for summer of 94, when I purchased this album...but rather for 1989 when the song was actually recorded. Now in 1989, I was still 4 years and all of high school away from ever hearing The Posies...and yet, that is exactly what this song makes me think of...of painfully awkward 8th grade dances, of getting into fights with my Sunday school teachers that would ultimately lead to me quitting the church, of being just mind-bogglingly, blisteringly horny and yet having no idea what to say to girls, of finally being tall of eating so much that my parents nearly went broke...all of those things that are from years before I ever heard that song.

But why? Is there something about this sound...a sound that I wasn't even listening to in 1989 (I was a million times more into GnR than The Smiths)...but do recorded sounds just take a piece of the time that they were recorded in with them? Is it just a mental trick my brain plays, knowing that the song was recorded in 89? Is it something about the specific combination of instruments and recording techniques that label it as an artifact from 1989? As always, I have no answers, only more questions.

Ask for Janice - The Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique - 1989

I don't really have to write a post for "Ask for Janice", do I?

And The Same - Fugazi - Margin Walker - 1989

I was wasted at my BBQ on Sunday and Fugazi came up on my iPod and my friend who is also named Josh and I had a lengthy convo about the Fugazi fans we had known back in the day. Both of us came to the same conclusion that people who really loved the band were always great guys, but also little antagonistic. You're standing there having a conversation with Fugazi fan A and all of the sudden he's driving his finger into your chest, telling you how corporate America is ruining everything and soon we'll be nothing but an oligarchy and slaves to mediocrity...but you don't quite understand why he's treating this like a fight, when you totally agree with him.

And, rather obviously, I think the straight edge thing is pretty lame...but what are you going to do? The world needs cage rattlers too.

After the Goldrush - The Flaming Lips - The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young - 1989

This song is probably a lot less surprising now than it was in 1989. We are now pretty aware of the fact that the Lips can be delicate and melodic, as well as messy with the sonics. Other than some gratuitous drum fills and a little dialed back noise guitar, this is pretty much a faithful cover with Wayne doing justice to the Neil's vocal style.

Achin' to Be - The Replacements - Don't Tell A Soul - 1989

These acoustic ballads filled with adolescent yearning were once the hidden gems on a 'Mats album. Now they are all that Westerburg does. And they aren't half as charming.

About A Girl - Nirvana - Bleach - 1989

I'll save the rant about Nirvana for another time...honestly, I love this song too much to even let the past 14 years of music history ruin it for me.

Plus, that simple little Em - G shuffle was so useful in appearing impressive in high school. As long as you could work through the "I can see you every night" part, you were good to go.

Shame that it's the tepid unplugged version that most people are familiar with. Plug it in, bitches.