Ye Olde Hit Parade: Meet Ze Monsta

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).

1995: PJ Harvey - Meet Ze Monsta

Ah, the mid-'90s. Seems like a lifetime ago now. I was 27 for most of 1995, working at the Beverly Times as a reporter until September, when I finally decided to get out of the newspaper biz after six years. I made the jump to Opus Communications, a small healthcare publisher in Marblehead, to write newsletters. The money and hours were better, but it was a big change that took some getting used to; the biggest adjustment was having to sit at a desk all day instead of going out to cover stories. It was still a booming time for newspapers. The World Wide Web was new, but nobody had any idea what it would do to the news industry in a few years.


There were definitely some big news events in '95. The Oklahoma City bombing. O.J. Simpson's murder trial and shocking acquittal. Christopher Reeve was paralyzed after falling off a horse. And Jerry Garcia died of heart failure.

The indie rock revolution was still going strong, but the product was definitely getting diluted. Bands that had been snapped up by major labels a few years earlier were now getting dropped because they didn't light the world on fire like Nirvana did.

Out of the ashes of that band came an unexpected development: Drummer Dave Grohl, a prominent but quiet member of Nirvana in the early '90s, released his debut album as the singer/guitarist of Foo Fighters. He played everything on the album, but quickly put a band together and went on a tour opening for Mike Watt and serving as Watt's backing band. I saw that show, which took place before the FF album came out, and caught the Foos when they came back through Boston on a headlining tour later in the year. Other shows I saw included the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Tragically Hip, Sebadoh, Jennifer Trynin, Sonic Youth, the Amps and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones at different clubs on the same night, and even Alanis Morissette.


It was a good year for female artists. Including the aforementioned Alanis, Amps (Breeders side project for Kim and Kelley Deal) and Trynin, there were strong releases from Bjork, Elastica, Garbage, Bettie Serveert and Aimee Mann. But my favorite album was from PJ Harvey, who had burst on the scene a few years earlier with a pair of blistering guitar-driven albums.

In '95, she released To Bring You My Love, which was a sweeping departure from her previous work, incorporating elaborate instrumentation like strings and organ and pseudo-religious imagery. I saw her in concert and she had adopted a much more theatrical persona, setting aside her guitar (which she plays quite well) and playing the devilish chanteuse instead. It was a captivating performance, to say the least. "Meet Ze Monsta" wasn't released as a single, but it perfectly captures the dark groove of the record. Harvey has proven quite the chameleon over the years since, shifting sounds and personas but never compromising.

Honorable mentions: PJ Harvey - "Down By the Water"; PJ Harvey - "To Bring You My Love"; Foo Fighters - "I'll Stick Around"; Foo Fighters - "Alone + Easy Target"; Mike Watt - "Against the '70s"; Mike Watt - "Piss Bottle Man"; Pavement - "Rattled by the Rush"; Pavement - "Fight This Generation"; Rocket From the Crypt - "Middle/Born in '69"; Rocket From the Crypt - "Young Livers"; Radiohead - "The Bends"; Bjork - "Army of Me"; Rancid - "Roots Radicals"; Rancid - "Time Bomb"; Jennifer Trynin - "Better Than Nothing"; Mad Season - "River of Deceit"; Elastica - "Line Up"; Matthew Sweet - "Sick of Myself"; Mudhoney - "Execution Style"; White Zombie - "More Human Than Human"; Catherine Wheel - "Waydown"; Fugazi - "Bed for the Scraping"; Neil Young - "Act of Love"; Garbage - "Only Happy When It Rains"; Superchunk - "Hyper Enough"; Urge Overkill - "The Break"; Sonic Youth - "The Diamond Sea"; Smashing Pumpkins - "Zero"; Smashing Pumpkins - "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"; Bettie Serveert - "Ray Ray Rain"; Buffalo Tom - "Summer"; Chris Whitley - "Din"; The Pursuit of Happiness - "Save the Whales"; Helium - "Pat's Trick"; The Amps - "Tipp City"; Pearl Jam and Neil Young - "I Got Id"; Pulp - "Common People"; Montell Jordan - "This Is How We Do It"