Ye Olde Hit Parade: Cannonball

Editor's note: Ye Olde Hit Parade takes a look back at my favorite songs year by year (starting in 1978, when I really started paying attention to music).

1993: The Breeders - Cannonball

It was another eventful year for me, personally and professionally. On the work front, I moved from the reporting ranks to the copy desk in Beverly, which meant a radical change in my work hours. I had to wake up at 3:45 a.m. to get to work by 5 a.m. and when I was 25, I was most definitely NOT a morning person. I was editing stories on deadline and doing layout on the computer as the newspaper had switched over to pagination (as opposed to the old-school method of cutting and literally pasting stories). When I was offered the new position, I took it because I didn't want to look like a good employee, but I didn't realize how much I'd miss the freedom of being a reporter. It was difficult.

Around the same time, I split up with my girlfriend of four years, which was doubly awkward because not only did we live together, we worked together. It took a few months for me to find a new living situation, which ended up being a rented room in a house in Middleton, a town about 15 minutes from the office. The problem was all my friends were in Beverly and I was currently living in the middle of a field...quite literally the boonies. After I moved there, I was still playing softball and going to concerts and stuff like that, but it was a lonely time. And I was finishing work around 1 p.m., going to the gym to work out afterward and then getting home around 4. Not a fun existence. Did I mention I was starting to develop an ulcer by year's end? Oh, yeah.

In world events, there was the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York (you know, the first attack years before the big one), Michael Jordan quit at the peak of his powers to play baseball and the FBI raided the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The Blue Jays won yet another World Series, which was pretty cool for me; I mean, I watched Joe Carter's historic World Series-winning home run while sitting alone in my little room, but hey, it was a great sports moment.

One great thing about '93 was the music. There was so much great stuff from the burgeoning wave of indie rock, it was an embarrassment of riches. New albums from Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, PJ Harvey, the Afghan Whigs, the Posies, Urge Overkill, Buffalo Tom, Dinosaur Jr., Liz Phair, Radiohead, Living Colour, Frank Black, Butthole Surfers, Melvins, Swervedriver, Bad Religion, Fugazi, Redd Kross, The Pursuit of Happiness, Blur, Paw, Superchunk, Quicksand...just ridiculous.


From all that great stuff, it's tough to pick a single favorite song, but I'm going to go with "Cannonball" by the Breeders. After the Pixies split up in January '93, Kim Deal turned her side project the Breeders into her full-time gig. And right off the bat, "Cannonball" stood out, both with a video directed by Kim Gordon and Spike Jonze and with the song itself, which starts with a great bass line and moves into a nice crunchy guitar riff. It's catchy and combined with Deal's slacker chick vocals, it stands above a year full of amazing music.

I ended up seeing the Breeders open for Nirvana in November '93, about a week before the latter's classic MTV Unplugged concert was recorded. And a few months after that, we all know what happened to Kurt Cobain.

So yeah, '93 kinda sucked for me, but there were some bright spots. And things were about to get better.

Honorable mentions: Nirvana - "Serve the Servants"; Nirvana - "Heart-Shaped Box"; The Afghan Whigs - "Debonair"; The Afghan Whigs - "Gentlemen"; PJ Harvey - "Rid of Me"; PJ Harvey - "50-ft. Queenie"; Smashing Pumpkins - "Cherub Rock"; Urge Overkill - "Sister Havana"; Buffalo Tom - "I'm Allowed"; Buffalo Tom - "Sodajerk"; Fugazi - "Last Chance for a Slow Dance"; Matthew Sweet - "The Ugly Truth"; Morphine - "Cure for Pain"; The Pursuit of Happiness - "Cigarette Dangles"; Belly - "Feed the Tree"; Dinosaur Jr. - "Start Choppin'"; Radiohead - "Creep"; Brad - "Buttercup"; Living Colour - "Leave It Alone"; Frank Black - "Los Angeles"; Butthole Surfers - "Who Was In My Room Last Night?"; Sugar - "Tilted"; Paw - "Jessie"; Posies - "Dream All Day"; Posies - "Solar Sister"; Aimee Mann - "I Should've Known"; U2 - "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car"; Pearl Jam - "Animal"; Pearl Jam - "Go"; Snoop Doggy Dogg - "Gin and Juice"; Naughty By Nature - "Hip Hop Hooray"