Disasters happen. Here, there and everywhere. Whether it's insane weather events or unimaginable accidents, disasters are lurking around every corner. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about disasters in hour 2. It'll sink your cruise ship!
The playlist won't sink:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Tiberius - Tag/Troubadour
Autocamper - Again/What Do You Do All Day?
Stereolab - Electrified Teenybop!/Instant Holograms on Metal Film
Dead Tooth - Minds Eye/Dead Tooth
Rye Coalition - Wingwalker/Paid in Full
Lifeguard - Like You'll Lose/Ripped and Torn
Jeff Tweedy - Enough/Twilight Override
Kurt Vile and Luke Roberts - Slow Talkers '22/Classic Love EP
Hallelujah the Hills - Too High to Say Hello (7 of Diamonds)/DECK: Diamonds
Ecce Shnak - Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy (live)/Backroom Sessions
Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Out of the Flesh/Trash Classic
Shark? - Skelaeton (Big Opinions)/A Simple Life
Civic - Poison/Chrome Dipped
Wet Leg - Jennifer's Body/Moisturizer
Hotline TNT - Break Right/Raspberry Moon
The Bug Club - The Sound of Communism/Very Human Features
Hour 2: Disasters
The Go Team - T.O.R.N.A.D.O./Rolling Blackouts
Run the Jewels - Holy Calamafuck/RTJ4
Girl Friday - Earthquake/Androgynous Mary
Sebadoh - Fantastic Disaster/Bubble and Scrape
Ben Kweller - Ann Disaster/On My Way
The Von Bondies - Earthquake/Love, Hate and Then There's You
Shudder to Think - Earthquakes Come Home/Pony Express Record
The Besnard Lakes - Disaster/The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
The Tragically Hip - Nautical Disaster/Day For Night
Peter Gabriel - Here Comes the Flood/Live in Athens 1987
Drive-By Truckers - Tornadoes/The Dirty South
The Smile - Open the Floodgates/A Light for Attracting Attention
Kim Gordon - Earthquake/No Home Record
Alvvays - After the Earthquake/Blue Rev
Diet Cig - Flash Flood/Do You Wonder About Me?
The Dirtbombs - Earthquake Heart/Dangerous Magical Noise
Part 3 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about concerts we'd like to go back in time to see. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
Jay: Bowie on the Ziggy Stardust tour in 1973
Never saw Bowie
Phil: Grateful Dead's famous Cornell show 5/8/77
The Holy Grail for Deadheads
Jay: Canadian art rock weirdos Max Webster in southern Ontario 8/9/79
Band split up in 1981 as singer-guitarist Kim Mitchell went solo
Opened for Rush in the U.S. in the mid- to late '70s
Phil: The Stones at the Boston Garden, 1972
Jagger and Richards were arrested in Providence and Boston mayor bailed them out in time for the Garden show
Mick Taylor era was notable
Jay: Van Halen at Oakland Arena in June 1981
A few songs were captured on video; VH fans have hoped for more
Phil: Zeppelin at Berkeley, Calif., September 1971
Touring before their fourth album was released
Playing some of their acoustic songs
Jay: SST legends Husker Du at the Channel in Boston 9/30/84
In the middle of a killer stretch of albums; this one was for Zen Arcade
Two classic albums were released the next year
Phil: Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East in 1971
Original lineup including Duane Allman
Jay and Phil: The Who live at University of Leeds on Valentine's Day 1970
Played a show at Hull the following night
We're going to see the Who at Fenway later this month
Band was at the literal peak of their powers
First release of Live at Leeds was only six songs
Longer versions have come out; full set was 33 songs
No video of this show unfortunately
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
Things were interesting in 1980. Coming out of the '70s, everything seemed so shiny and new and exciting, even if they really weren't. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I've got songs from 1980 in hour 2 (following an hour of new music from Nine Inch Nails, Dead Tooth, Tiberius and Autocamper, among others). It'll make you hear things, if you know what I mean.
Danny isn't here, but the playlist is:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Nine Inch Nails - As Alive As You Need Me to Be/Tron: Ares soundtrack
Dead Tooth - You Never Do Shit/Dead Tooth
Rye Coalition - Bullet Train to Vegas/Paid in Full
Tiberius - Sag/Troubadour
Autocamper - Map Like a Leaf/What Do You Do All Day?
Daniel Romano - Long Mirror of Time/Live in Oslo
Turnstile - Dull/Never Enough
Kurt Vile & Luke Roberts - Hit of the Highlife/Classic Love EP
Sly & the Family Stone - I Ain't Got Nobody/The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967
Mal Blum - Cool Guy/The Villain
Wet Leg - Don't Speak/Moisturizer
Subsonic Eye - My iPhone Screen/Singapore Dreaming
Momma - Ohio All the Time/Welcome to My Blue Sky
(T-T)b - The Kick/Beautiful Extension Cord
The Convenience - Cafe Style/Like Cartoon Vampires
TVOD - Wells Fargo/Party Time
Pretty Rude - Call Me, Ishmael/Ripe
Hour 2: 1980
Mission of Burma - Academy Fight Song/Signals, Calls and Marches
X - The Unheard Music/Los Angeles
The Feelies - Moscow Nights/Crazy Rhythms
Joy Division - Twenty-Four Hours/Closer
David Bowie - When You're Young/Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
The Clash - Somebody Got Murdered/Sandinista!
The Police - Voices Inside My Head/Zenyatta Mondatta
Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers/Melt
XTC - Respectable Street/Black Sea
Adam and the Ants - Antmusic/Kings of the Wild Frontier
The English Beat - Mirror in the Bathroom/I Just Can't Stop It
The Cars - Down Boys/Panorama
AC/DC - Shake a Leg/Back in Black
Motorhead - Shoot You in the Back/Ace of Spades
Van Halen - Tora! Tora!/Women and Children First
Van Halen - Loss of Control/Women and Children First
Celebrating 19 years of podcasting with part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about concerts we'd like to go back in time to see. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
On to our top 10 shows
Phil's are in chronological order, Jay's in no particular order
Phil: Neil Young and Pearl Jam on their short Euro tour, 8/26/95 in Dublin
PJ standing in for Crazy Horse
The Velvet Sundown, lame AI band
Jay: The Clash from June 1980 at Hammersmith Palais
31 songs from throughout their career
The Clash opened for the Who on the Schlitz Rocks America tour
Apparently Schlitz was once a big name in beer
Phil: Stevie Ray Vaughan on 9/21/85 at the Capitol Theatre
Jay: PJ Harvey on the Rid of Me tour in '93
Saw her on the next tour in '95
Phil: Talking Heads on the Speaking in Tongues tour in Oct. 1983 in Billerica, Mass.
Jay: I would've picked the 1980 tour with Adrian Belew on guitar
Jay: Living Colour at TT the Bears in Cambridge, Mass. in the summer of '88
Taped the show off the radio simulcast on WBCN
Killer show before the band blew up the next year
Phil: U2 on the War tour in March 1983
Jay: Prince's Purple Rain tour at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse
Prince was the biggest musician in the world at the time
Phil: The Pretenders at the Paradise in Boston in 1980
The band's original lineup was so good
Jay: Went with a December 1981 Pretenders show in France
To be continued
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
There are legends, and there are LEGENDS. Ozzy Osbourne was one of the latter. For 55 years, the man was an icon, trendsetter and all-around lunatic. On Stuck In Thee Garage this week, I paid tribute to the Ozzman in hour 2, after a set of new music from the likes of Sloan, Laura Jane Grace and Daniel Romano in hour 1. Take a big bite!
You can't kill this playlist:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Sloan - Dream Destroyer/Based on the Best Seller
Laura Jane Grace - Active Trauma/Adventure Club
Daniel Romano - Pride of Queens/Live in Oslo
Mal Blum - Killer/The Villain
Wet Leg - Pillow Talk/Moisturizer
Hallelujah the Hills - Camouflage Band-Aid (3 of Clubs)/DECK: Clubs
The Fall - New Face in Hell/Grotesque (After the Gramme) Live
Hotline TNT - Where U Been?/Raspberry Moon
Pulp - My Sex/More
Queens of the Stone Age - Suture Up Your Future/Alive in the Catacombs
Jeanines - Coaxed a Storm/How Long Can It Last
Lightheaded - The Lindens The Lindens The Lindens!/Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming!
Savak - Child's Play/SQUAWK!
The Bug Club - Blame Me/Very Human Features
Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Conducting Experiments/Trash Classic
Lifeguard - T.L.A./Ripped and Torn
Hour 2: Ozzy
Black Sabbath - Behind the Wall of Sleep/Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath - Electric Funeral/Paranoid
Black Sabbath - After Forever/Master of Reality
Black Sabbath - Changes/Vol. 4
Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Black Sabbath - Killing Yourself to Live/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about concerts we'd like to go back in time to see. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
We're taking advantage of time machine technology
That time Zebra opened for their own Zep cover band
We're listing specific shows
So many great artists to choose from
YouTube makes it easier to see a lot of shows you missed
Honorable mentions
Jay: Surprise show by the Stones at a small Toronto club in '77
Two shows were turned into a live album decades later
Phil: Bob Marley and the Wailers in London, Monterey Pop, Bowie on Diamond Dogs tour, Sleater-Kinney in Berkeley, James Brown at the Boston Garden in '68, Beatles in Hamburg or the rooftop set, Prince on Purple Rain tour, Phish in '98, Steely Dan in '74
Jay: JB at the Soul Train studios in '73, the Police in '79, Iggy and the Stooges in '73, Zeppelin in '70, Mission of Burma's first farewell in '83, Drive Like Jehu in '94, Black Sabbath in '70, Iron Maiden in '81 with their original singer
The Police jumped on the new wave bandwagon and brought energy and skill to it
Sabbath's had interesting line items in their recording budget
Shout out to CompCon intern Lily
To be continued
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
These days, seeing isn't necessarily believing. You can't always trust what you see. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about vision in hour 2 (along with new music from Wet Leg, Geese and Mal Blum in hour 1).
This playlist was made by someone named Abby Normal:
There's a danger in looking backwards too much. That said, it can be fun. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I revisited the reverse chronological order thing that I did back in January. In that episode, I played songs from 2025 to 1994 and this time around, I picked up where I left off and went from 1993 to 1964. It was a blast and there was nary a hot tub time machine in sight.
Come on in, the water's fine:
Hour 1: 1993-1979
Artist - Song/Album
Fugazi - Rend It/In On the Kill Taker
Faith No More - Midlife Crisis/Angel Dust
Teenage Fanclub - Star Sign/Bandwagonesque
Jane's Addiction - No One's Leaving/Ritual de lo Habitual
Big Audio Dynamite - Contact/Megatop Phoenix
Public Enemy - Night of the Living Baseheads/It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Prince - U Got the Look/Sign O' the Times
Peter Gabriel - Big Time/So
R.E.M. - Can't Get There From Here/Fables of the Reconstruction
Husker Du - Pink Turns to Blue/Zen Arcade
The Fixx - The Sign of Fire/Reach the Beach
Bad Brains - Sailin' On/Bad Brains
Van Halen - Mean Street/Fair Warning
The Pretenders - The Wait/Pretenders
Joe Jackson - Friday/I'm the Man
Hour 2: 1978-1964
The Rolling Stones - Respectable/Some Girls
AC/DC - Dog Eat Dog/Let There Be Rock
Rush - Something for Nothing/2112
Parliament - Ride On/Chocolate City
David Bowie - 1984/Diamond Dogs
Alice Cooper - No More Mr. Nice Guy/Billion Dollar Babies
T. Rex - Buick Mackane/Slider
Isaac Hayes - Theme from Shaft/Shaft soundtrack
Black Sabbath - N.I.B./Black Sabbath
MC5 - Come Together/Kick Out the Jams
The Kinks - Do You Remember Walter?/The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
The Who - I Can See for Miles/The Who Sell Out
The Remains - Don't Look Back/The Remains
Bob Dylan - Maggie's Farm/Bringing It All Back Home
Chuck Berry - You Never Can Tell/St. Louis to Liverpool
Part 2 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about our favorite music of 2025 so far. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
Counting down our favorite albums
Breitling's #6: Dan Bejar with another well-done Destroyer album
"Slacker Sinatra" singing about aging
Kumar's #6: Striking solo effort from Tunde Adebimpe
Breitling's #5: Shoegaze goodness from NJ's High
Kumar's #5: Dax Riggs with fuzz-laden goth grunge
Breitling's #4: Digging the Estonian dream pop from mariin k.
Kumar's #3: Impressive 15th solo album from Bob Mould plays to his strengths
Still kicking ass into his mid-60s
Breitling's #3: Boston trio with a dumb name and a great album, (T-T)b
Kumar's #2: Mclusky returns after 21 years with a razor-sharp ripper
Breitling's #2 and Kumar's #4: Surprise return to thunderous form from The Men
Kumar's #1: PUP's fifth album finds them exploring more mature themes while still kicking ass
Breitling's #1 and Kumar's #7: The four-album magnum opus from Hallelujah the Hills exceeds expectations
Many guest appearances among the 54 songs
Looking forward to new releases from the Lemonheads, Sloan, Superchunk, Pile, Wednesday
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
Nothing strikes more fear in the hearts of partygoers than when some jamoke breaks out an acoustic guitar. Nine times out of 10, it's a total cringe-inducing moment. But in the hands of a professional, the acoustic guitar can be used for good, not evil. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new music from Superchunk, Allo Darlin' and the Jeanines in hour 1 and quality acoustic jams in hour 2. They're the bomb!
MacGruber, we've only got 30 seconds left:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Superchunk - Is It Making You Feel Something/Songs in the Key of Yikes
The Bug Club - How to Be a Confidante/Very Human Features
Lifeguard - A Tightwire/Ripped and Torn
Hotline TNT - Julia's War/Raspberry Moon
Hallelujah the Hills - Gimme Midnight (Ace of Diamonds)/DECK: Diamonds
Queens of the Stone Age - Running Joke/Paper Machete /Alive in the Catacombs
Model/Actriz - Poppy/Pirouette
Allo Darlin' - Stars/Bright Nights
Jeanines - You Can't Get It Back/How Long Can It Last
Part 1 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about our favorite music of 2025 so far. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
Drinking some Italian beer
Rock is dead commercially
Billboard album chart contains nearly no rock
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours still riding high for some reason
Festival cancellations: Bonnaroo, Boston Calling next year, Lollapalooza
Too many festivals, high ticket prices
Black Sabbath farewell show
Lots of big rock deaths: Brian Wilson, Sly Stone, David Johansen, Marianne Faithfull, etc.
We saw Hallelujah the Hills recently and it was glorious
Kumar saw some shows: Frank Black, Shannon/Narducy, Gang of Four, Bob Mould
Breitling will see Oasis in Mexico, as one does
Who's the Who's drummer?
Breitling's bubbling under albums: Whirr, Winter, Lunchbox, Pink Floyd reissue, Rough Francis, The Get Quick, Autocamper, Viagra Boys, Thalia Zedek Band
Kumar's list: Kinski, Ty Segall, Civic, Cameron Keiber, Dean Wareham, Pulp, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, The Bug Club, Turnstile, The Tubs, Kestrels, Lifeguard, Hotline TNT
Breitling's #10: An electronic collab between Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke
Kumar's #10: Sophomore release from Horsegirl explores mellower sounds
So much music to listen to these days
Breitling's #9: Ambient situation delivered by William Tyler
Of Bills Frisell and Laswell
Kumar's #9: Post-punk ripper from Charm School
Kurt Loder is still with us
Kumar's #8: Heavy Spoon influence on the new album from The Convenience
Breitling's #7: Dean Wareham is still bringing it
To be continued
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to rock music. Just because your album has a title doesn't mean it needs to have a title track. Still, there are plenty of great title tracks out there and I played some of them this week in hour 2 of Stuck In Thee Garage (in addition to great new stuff from Lifeguard, Hotline TNT and Tropical Fuck Storm in hour 1). Still waiting to find out what the secret word of the day is...
It's the first day of summer, which means the bugs are back in force. I know nature has a purpose for everything, but some bugs are really annoying. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new music from Sloan, Hallelujah the Hills, the Bug Club (appropriately enough) and Subsonic Eye in hour 1 and songs about bugs in hour 2. It makes a great soundtrack to that spider infestation in your basement.
The spraylist:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Sloan - Live Forever/Based on the Best Seller
Hallelujah the Hills - Failure's My Fuel (9 of Clubs)/DECK: CLUBS
Subsonic Eye - Aku Cemas/Singapore Dreaming
The Bug Club - Twirling in the Middle/Very Human Features
Momma - Bottle Blonde/Welcome to My Blue Sky
Shark? - (Livin' On) Borrowed Time/A Simple Life
Turnstile - Never Enough/Never Enough
Frankie and the Witch Fingers - T.V. Baby/Trash Classic
On one hand, 2015 doesn't seem that long ago and on another, it feels like FOREVER ago. So much crazy shit has happened in the last decade. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs from 2015 in hour 2, after first paying tribute to lost icons Brian Wilson and Sly Stone and new hotness from Turnstile, Illuminati Hotties and Frankie and the Witch Fingers in hour 1. It'll hack your mainframe or some shit.
Domo arigoto, Mr. Roboto:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
The Beach Boys - Heroes and Villains/The Smile Sessions
Sly & the Family Stone - Luv N' Haight/There's a Riot Going On
Sly & the Family Stone - Family Affair/There's a Riot Going On
Turnstile - I Care/Never Enough
Illuminati Hotties - Wreck My Life (feat. PUP)/Nickel on the Fountain Floor EP
Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Fucksake/Trash Classic
Pulp - Grown Ups/More
Stereolab - If You Remember I Forgot How to Dream Pt. 1/Instant Holograms on Metal Film
Savak - Casual Cruelty/SQUAWK!
Civic - Trick Pony/Chrome Dipped
TVOD - Alcohol/Party Time
The Tubs - One More Day/Cotton Crown
Ty Segall - Another California Song/Possession
Thalia Zedek Band - Circus/The Boat Outside Your Window
The Convenience - 2022/Like Cartoon Vampires
Hour 2: 2015
METZ - Spit You Out/II
Pile - #2 Hit Single/You're Better Than This
Faith No More - Sunny Side Up/Sol Invictus
Courtney Barnett - Elevator Operator/Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit
Colleen Green - TV/I Want to Grow Up
Speedy Ortiz - Raising the Skate/Foil Deer
Palehound - Molly/Dry Food
Jeff Rosenstock - Nausea/We Cool?
Titus Andronicus - Dimed Out/The Most Lamentable Tragedy
Mikal Cronin - Made My Mind Up/MCIII
Sleater-Kinney - Bury Our Friends/No Cities to Love
Sometimes it's good not to have a plan. Just wing it. Get behind the wheel and drive. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new indie rock from the likes of Civic, The Tubs, Tchotchke and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard in hour 1 and a bunch of cool stuff I've been digging lately in hour 2. But you have nothing to worry about. I'm a professional.
Step on it:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Civic - The Fool/Chrome Dipped
The Tubs - Chain Reaction/Cotton Crown
Savak - Talk to Some People/SQUAWK!
Tchotchke - Did You Hear?/Single
Ty Segall - Shoplifter/Possession
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Deadstick/Phantom Island
Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at the cultural cachet of the band t-shirt.
The t-shirt has been a staple of North American fashion for as long as I can remember. Which is a pretty long time, because I'm old. Growing up in the '70s and '80s, t-shirts were a vital part of my wardrobe and they remain that way, 50+ years later. But a particularly prized subset of my vast collection of t-shirts is the band shirt.
T-shirts have apparently been around since the late '30s, when they were primarily white cotton shirts, they really became popular after the release of 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire, when Marlon Brando wore one. A few years later, Elvis Presley began selling Elvis-branded merch, including t-shirts. When Beatlemania hit the U.S. in 1964, concert t-shirts became a huge seller. In the early '70s, legendary concert promoter Bill Graham formed the first music merchandising company and started selling concert shirts that featured the band's logo on the front and their current touring schedule on the back.
Band became known by their iconic logos: the Rolling Stones with the tongue, Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, AC/DC, Van Halen, Pink Floyd with a number of designs and on and on. While band shirts were ideally purchased at a concert, you could also buy them in stores. My first rock band shirt was a Led Zeppelin one purchased in 1980; I bought it at the local mall. Even though the band was broken up by then, they were my favorite and I was excited to get a shirt. It was a prized item; I didn't wear it too often because I didn't want the decal to fade.
I was still too young to go to concerts at that point, but a few years later, I remember getting an Iron Maiden jersey shirt at a store when I was up in Toronto for a visit after we had moved to the U.S. Then in July 1984, I went to my first concert, which was a festival show at the Kingston, NH, Fairgrounds with Cheap Trick, Ratt, Twisted Sister and Lita Ford. I loved Cheap Trick, but Ratt was on the rise at that time and I picked up a "Ratt 'n Roll" jersey from that show. Concert shirts were still pretty inexpensive at that time, so I would get them at most shows I attended: Rush, Dio, Peter Gabriel, U2, Genesis. Occasionally, I would get a cheap bootleg shirt in the parking lot; I picked up a $5 Van Halen shirt in the lot after a show at the Portland Civic Center in 1986 (Van Hagar era). I remember buying a Black Sabbath Born Again shirt featuring a devil baby, but I don't think I ever wore it because it would have freaked my religious mom out.
As I got into more indie and alternative bands in the '90s, I would see more shows at clubs and the shirts I purchased at those remain some of my prized possessions. I still have shirts purchased at Pavement, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sloan, the Tragically Hip and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion shows in the early '90s. Some shirts have been tossed because of wear and tear, but I have most of them still. One time I wore a Bad Religion shirt to work, only to have an older co-worker (probably in her late 50s or early 60s at the time) ask me which religion was the bad one. I explained it was a band, but I should have told her, "All of them."
As with everything else, shirt prices have gone up over the years, so I don't buy as many shirts. If a shirt costs more than $25, I probably won't buy it. But as other revenue sources for artists dry up, I might get one to support a band. I've also picked up or been gifted shirts in recent years of bands I love but have never seen: the Clash, Joy Division, Zep, Black Sabbath, Bad Brains.
I've been working from home since the COVID pandemic hit in March 2020, so most days I'm wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants or shorts (if I have to be on camera, I might wear a button-down shirt or a sweater). I go to the gym on most days and I've noticed a lot of people work out in band shirts, which I would never do; I wouldn't want to get them all sweaty.
Another trend that's emerged in the last few years is the ubiquity of the Nirvana shirt. I see a lot of young people (and some older ones) wearing shirts and hoodies featuring the Nirvana logo and smiley face with x'd out eyes, including the pre-teen daughter of one of our neighbors. I'm willing to bet most of these folks have no idea who the band is, and indeed, a little research reveals that Nirvana merch has become part of the uniform, another logo shirt like UnderArmour, Nike or Vineyard Vines. Even as rock music has declined in popularity, rock shirts are booming. You can find them in stores like Target, Old Navy or Wal-mart, as well as specialty shops like Newbury Comics.
It may have started with celebrities, as most trends do. A decade ago, Justin Bieber wore a Nirvana shirt to the American Music Awards. And even before that, you could find pop stars like Miley Cyrus or celebs like Kim Kardashian wearing Iron Maiden and other rock shirts ironically. Even if the bands aren't as cool anymore, wearing their merch is. Indeed, vintage rock shirts sell for thousands online.
Of course, this will get rock purists all worked up when they see a 12-year-old girl wearing a Nirvana shirt. "Name three songs!" they will bleat self-righteously. I find it interesting more than anything. I bought my younger daughter a Nirvana shirt a few years ago, but she actually is into the band, along with many others that I like. But for those kids who are clueless about the name on their shirt, what are you going to do? There are many more important things to get outraged about these days. A cool shirt is a cool shirt, man.
This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I'm seeing double with songs about twins in hour 2, in addition to new hotness from the Lemonheads, Pile, the Thalia Zedek Band and Pulp in hour 1. Just like on Breaking Bad, be patient and the job will come to you.
Sharpen your axe:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
The Lemonheads - Deep End/Single
Pile - Born at Night/Sunshine and Balance Beams
Thalia Zedek Band - Disarm/The Boat Outside Your Window
Stereolab - Vermona F Transistor/Instant Holograms on Metal Film
Pulp - Got to Have Love/More
Preoccupations - Panic/Ill at Ease
(T-T_b - Julian/Beautiful Extension Cord
Car Seat Headrest - The Catastrophe (Good Luck with That, Man)/The Scholars
TVOD - Mud/Party Time
Pretty Rude - The Caller/Ripe
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Weird World Awoke/Carpe Diem, Moonman
Momma - Last Kiss/Welcome to My Blue Sky
The Convenience - Never Became a Dancer/Like Cartoon Vampires
Viagra Boys - Dirty Boyz/Viagr Aboys
Hour 2: Twins
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Twins/Perfect Right Now: A Slumberland Collection 2008-2010
The Cure - Siamese Twins/Pornography
Smashing Pumpkins - Geek USA/Siamese Dream
Pinecones - Apocalypse Twin/Sings for You Now
Deerhoof - Twin Killers/The Runners Four
Melkbelly - Twin Lookin Motherfucker/Nothing Valley
Metric - Clone/Synthetica
Faye Webster - Vanishing Twin/Good Music to Avert the Collapse of American Democracy, Vol. 2
Parliament - Children of Production (live)/Tear the Roof Off 1974-1980
The Futureheads - Jekyll/POWERS
Mclusky - Day of Deadringers/Mclusky Do Dallas
Fu Manchu - Clone of the Universe/Clone of the Universe
Elvis Costello - My Science Fiction Twin/Brutal Youth
Wyatt Blair - Alter Ego/Point of No Return
Bread Pilot - Twin Lakes/New to You
Marnie Stern - Clone Cycle/This is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That
Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at the compact disc and its rollercoaster ride from dominant music format to obsolescence.
A few weeks ago, I wrote in this space about the audio cassette and its interesting journey over the decades. Today I'm doing the same with the compact disc, which emerged in the early '80s and by the end of that decade was the dominant music format before MP3s came along.
Vinyl and cassettes were the big formats throughout the '60s and '70s, but in 1970, American inventor James T. Russell was granted a patent for the first system to record digital media on a photosensitive plate. Sony and Philips both developed prototypes in the late '70s for a disc that is read using a laser. The LaserDisc was introduced in 1978 by Philips, Pioneer and movie studio MCA under the amazing name DiscoVision for movies and other video presentations like concert recordings; somehow, DiscoVision didn't stick as a name but LaserDisc did. The discs themselves were the size of 12-inch vinyl records and offered superior video quality, but the VHS, which was introduced two years earlier, was the video format that caught on with consumers. It was less expensive and the videocassette recorder (VCR) made it easy to record TV programs.
Meanwhile, Sony and Phillips designed a new digital audio disc using the LaserDisc technology. The compact disc was introduced in 1982 and was marketed as the height of audio for consumers who wanted a better listening experience than the record or cassette could offer. It was also much smaller than a record and initially touted as resistant to scratches or breaking, although both of those were false claims
It took a few years to catch on. When I got to college in the fall of 1985, most of us were still listening to records and/or cassettes. My RA still had an 8-track player in his room. But my friend Rob was the first person I knew to have a CD player. And he remained the only one all the way through college.
I was hesitant to start buying another format that required another player, so I stuck with buying new vinyl and taping them onto cassettes for the time being.
But CDs were definitely making headway. I remember a lot of noise in 1987 when the Beatles began reissuing their albums on CD with remastered audio. People started to replace albums they already owned with CDs. When I graduated from college in 1989, my dad gave me my first CD player as well as some huge-ass speakers to go with them. The first CDs I bought were appropriately random: Joe Jackson's I'm the Man, The Cult's Sonic Temple and the soundtrack to the Who's The Kids Are Alright.
I was still buying vinyl, but I could see that CDs were starting to take over. I had been using my dad's old turntable to that point, but I decided to get a new one while they were still around and affordable.
CDs were still more expensive than the other formats at that point, so I would look for sales. I had started working in Peabody, Mass., after graduation and there was a little video store that also sold CDs for $8 a pop, so I would pick up stuff there. And the now-defunct department store Lechmere would also have good deals. In 1990, I discovered stores like Rockit Records in Saugus and the Record Exchange in Salem that would sell used CDs for cheaper prices; they were also good places to find hard-to-find promo discs and imports that radio DJs would unload.
Eventually, I just started buying only CDs. Although the cars I drove still only had cassette decks, so I would continue my habit of taping albums for use in the car and in a Walkman. Sony developed a portable CD player called the Discman in 1984, although it didn't really catch on in the U.S. until the '90s; with a cassette converter, you could use the Discman in the car. Another development was the advent of the CD burner, which allowed you to duplicate CDs or make mixes using blank CD-Rs.
The CD had a stronghold on music media sales throughout the '90s until the emergence of MP3 file sharing in 1999, when Napster and other peer-to-peer service sprung up on the internet and allowed music fans to share (or steal, depending on your point of view) vast amounts of music from like-minded folks who had figured out how to rip the songs from their CDs into MP3 files. Sure, the audio quality was often shitty (or at least not as good as CDs) and the files were often mislabeled, but it introduced an entire generation (since a lot of Napster users were often college campuses, where they could take advantage of high-speed internet to enable faster downloading) to the joys of not paying for music. The record labels sued and eventually got Napster and its ilk shut down, but by the time this happened, the digital genie was out of the bottle. Sales of recorded music (mostly CDs) dropped by 50% from 1999 to 2009. Apple introduced the iTunes store and the iPod in the early '00s as a way to get music fans enthused about legal MP3s, but that didn't help CD sales.
But the real death knell for the CD came via audio streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, which allowed users to access to a huge catalog of music using their phone wherever and whenever they wanted, thanks to the prevalence of high-speed internet and Wifi. Vinyl has made a comeback with hipsters and fans of huge artists like Taylor Swift and Adele, who offer special vinyl editions of their albums with bonus tracks. You can still find CDs at music stores, but the selection is much smaller than it used to be.
CD players are also pretty scarce. When I was putting together an old-school component stereo system for my daughter Lily a few years ago, the CD player I bought her was a $30 DVD player that also plays CDs (I had to ask a clerk at Best Buy to find me one; it was located in a tiny corner of the store and barely noticeable). And the CD player I use is an old 5-disc DVD player that we used to have in our living room.
One thing that has diminished since CDs declined in popularity was the album. The CD was the last dominant album format; indeed, there are certain albums that only make sense on CD (see Steven Hyden's great post on this topic). There are more albums released than ever thanks to the ease of the internet, but many music fans rarely listen to albums in their entirety now. Streaming allows them to pick and choose their favorite songs and skip or ignore the ones they don't like or care about. It's so easy to make playlists that you can only hear the songs you want to hear at any given time.
As I mentioned in the cassette post, I primarily listen to music on MP3 because I use them to put together my weekly radio show. I'll still occasionally buy vinyl, but rarely anything new since those tend to be overpriced. It's the same with CDs. I'll usually only get them if I'm in a record store with a good used CD section and I find something I don't have for under $10. I've also revisited something I was doing several years, which is going to my local library to borrow CDs I don't have. You can also find cheap CDs on Amazon.
When we have long road trips in the car, I'll often break out a selection of CDs for the ride. I still have just about all the CDs I've purchased over the years, so it can be fun to revisit things I haven't listened to in a long time. The CD wasn't perfect, but it has gotten a bum rap over the years. There's also something to having physical media that won't disappear at the whim of a record company or studio conglomerate.
There isn't enough time in the day to get everything done. And sometimes that leads to little details getting missed. Case in point: When I was putting this week's Stuck In Thee Garage episode together, I thought I had an extra 1:30 left at the end and added another song. But as I was going through the voiceovers, I realized I left one out and had to go back and redo everything. In my haste to get the episode done, I forgot to remove the song I'd added, which is why there's this gloriously weird mashup of Mudhoney's "Check Out Time" and Beastie Boys' "Time for Livin'" at the very end of the show (in which I played songs about time in hour 2). That's what happens when the Tick Tock Man is getting on your case.
Part 4 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we crown the winner of a March Madness-style tournament featuring our favorite rock artists. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
Round 3 begins
The Smiths vs. Led Zeppelin
James Brown vs. Rush
Rolling Stones vs. The Cure
The Clash vs. The Police
U2 vs. The Replacements
The Who vs. Talking Heads
Tom Petty vs. Neil Young
The Beatles vs. David Bowie
Round 4
The Final Four
The Championship
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
A wise man once said, "Tha streetz is a mutha." That dude wasn't telling lies. Things are getting really crazy out there. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about streets in hour 2, as well as new music from Lawn, Car Seat Headrest, Daniel Romano and The Convenience in hour 1. It'll hit you hard like an old friend in a crosswalk.
This playlist is street legal:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Lawn - Sports Gun/Single
Car Seat Headrest - True/False Lover /The Scholars
Shark? - King of the Chaff/A Simple Life
Viagra Boys - You N33d Me/Viagr Aboys
Mclusky - Cops and Coppers/The World is Still Here and So Are We
PUP - Needed to Hear It/Who Will Look After the Dogs?
Daniel Romano - Sweet Dew of the Kingdom/Even If It's Obscure
The Convenience - I Got Exactly What I Wanted/Like Cartoon Vampires
Momma - Rodeo/Welcome to My Blue Sky
Lambrini Girls - Special Different/Who Let the Dogs Out
Scowl - Cellophane/Are We All Angels
Jeanines - On and On/How Long Can It Last
Daily Worker - Delmar Overload/Field Holler
Preoccupations - Sken/Ill at Ease
Model/Actriz - Audience/Pirouette
Friend of a Friend - Moonlight/Desire!
Lunchbox - Letter from Overend/Evolver (2025 Vinyl Edition)
Tunde Adebimpe - God Knows/Thee Black Boltz
Hour 2: Streetz
METZ - Entwined (Street Light Buzz)/Up On Gravity Hill
Superchunk - Rainy Streets/Here's to Shutting Up
Beeef - Street Signs/Somebody's Favorite
Bloodshot Bill and King Khan - Tandoori Street/Tandoori Knights
Kristin Hersh - Constance Street/Clear Pond Road
The Cure - Fascination Street/Disintegration
Girls Against Boys - Park Avenue/Freak*On*Ica
PUP - Cul-De-Sac/PUP
Lou Reed - Dirty Blvd./New York
Ween - Joppa Road/Chocolate & Cheese
Pavement - Shady Lane/Brighten the Corners
Ted Leo - Lonsdale Road/The Hanged Man
Courtney Barnett - Rae Street/Things Take Time, Take Time
The Pursuit of Happiness - The Downward Road (Revisited)/The Downward Road
Part 3 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we wrap up the second round of a March Madness-style tournament featuring our favorite rock artists. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
Round 2 forced some difficult choices
The Smiths vs. Spoon
Led Zeppelin vs. Prince
James Brown vs. Queens of the Stone Age
Rush vs. Allman Brothers Band
Rolling Stones vs. Beastie Boys
The Cure vs. The Afghan Whigs
The Tragically Hip vs. The Clash
The Police vs. Mark Lanegan
Stevie Wonder vs. U2
Sonic Youth vs. The Replacements
The Who vs. Beck
Talking Heads vs. Dinosaur Jr.
Tom Petty vs. Pixies
Neil Young vs. Steely Dan
Van Halen vs. Beatles
Pearl Jam vs. David Bowie
Next: The final two rounds
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at the rise of the audio cassette and its impact on the music industry.
There have been many audio formats that consumers have used to enjoy music over the years. Digital audio streaming is currently the most popular and convenient format, but vinyl records, 8-track tapes, compact discs and digital audio files like MP3s and WAVs have all had their moments. I mainly use MP3s and streaming these days, but I still have a ton of records, CDs and cassettes that I've acquired since the late '70s. They all hold sentimental value for me, but I have a lot of love for the cassette, which played a huge role in my growth as a music fan.
The Compact Cassette, as it was initially called, was invented the Dutch company Philips and first released in August 1963. The cassettes contain two miniature spools, between which magnetically coated tape is passed and wound; they're enclosed in a small case. The audio cassette as we know it is essentially a miniaturized version of the reel-to-reel audio tape first developed in the 1920s. Engineers improved the audio fidelity in the 1940s and reel-to-reel recorders were used by major recording studios; less expensive recorders were sold for use in homes and schools, as well as for business dictation. My dad actually bought one in the late '60s and would record some audio of us kids goofing. I still have it and one of these days I'll see if it still works.
Anyway, once the compact cassette was released, it became popular with consumers for its portability and ease of use. I highly recommend the book High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape by Marc Masters for an interesting look at how cassettes were developed and how they became popular and in some small pockets, still remain so.
As for me, I was too young to experience the popularity of the 8-track tape, which around from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. It was bulkier than the compact cassette and was mainly used in cars; it could play continuously in an endless loop and did not have to be ejected or flipped to play the full tape, but you couldn't rewind it.
I became aware of cassettes through my dad, who would sometimes play them on a small Panasonic mini-boom box. When disco was getting popular in the late '70s, I remember him bringing home a few mix tapes of disco hits that a work buddy of his had made. Around 1979, I got a clock radio that had a built-in cassette deck, so I would buy cheap 3-packs of blank tapes and make crappy mix tapes of songs I liked off the radio. The audio quality was shit, but I loved those old tapes, especially when we moved a few years later to a city in Washington state that was lacking in quality radio stations. I used to listen to those old tapes all the time.
It was 1982 when I bought my first Sony Walkman, which had been introduced a few years earlier and was revolutionizing the personal audio space. Now people could listen to their music anywhere. I wasn't rollerblading with it or anything like in the commercials, but I definitely brought it to school to drown out everybody else. (Here's a post I did a while back about the different audio devices I'd purchased over the years.)
I didn't typically buy pre-recorded cassettes; I preferred to buy music on vinyl and later CD and then record it on cassette to listen to in a Walkman or the car. I also enjoyed making mix tapes for personal use (as well to give to friends).
Not everybody was thrilled about the advent of cassette recorders. In 1981, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) launched a campaign called Home Taping is Killing Music, which argued that the rise of home taping would eat into record sales. The logo had a Jolly Roger pirate flag in the shape of a cassette with crossbones and the words "And It's Illegal." It turned out to be for naught, as it was parodied by many artists and indeed, record sales continued to rise.
Meanwhile, taping or bootlegging of concerts was more of a trend than taping off the radio or from friends' collections. Bands like the Grateful Dead would create dedicated areas for tapers and it was common to find classified ads for bootleg concert tapes in music magazines; I contacted and received a list of available tapes from a bootlegger who had put an ad in Circus magazine, but I never actually ordered anything from it. A bootlegger used to set up in the student union building at UNH selling cassettes when I was a student there; I bought a version of Prince's then-unreleased Black Album.
If anything, the cassette increased interest in music instead of the BPI's alarmist claims. Similar concerns were raised in the early 1980s by the Motion Picture Association of America about the advent of the videocassette recorder and in the early 2000s by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) about CD burning.
Of course, the audio format that really did major damage to the music industry was the MP3. As Napster and then other peer-to-peer file sharing networks emerged in the late '90s/early '00s, CD sales took a nosedive and sales of recorded music dropped by 50% from 1999 to 2009. Even though the RIAA and the major labels led the charge against Napster, forcing it to shut down in 2001, the damage had been done and the genie was out of the proverbial bottle. Apple launched the iTunes store in 2003 as a way to sell music files and other services followed suit, but the sale of recorded music never returned to previous levels.
As high-speed internet and WiFi became commonplace, Spotify and other streaming audio services made it affordable for users to have access to a huge catalog of music via their cellphones. And that's where things stand today. You can still buy CDs and records of new albums (as well as some cassettes), but it's more of a hipster trend than anything else. I still use MP3s because I put together my radio show with them and I still like to own music, but I think I'm in the minority; I refuse to pay for Spotify but my daughters do and listen to it constantly. I buy vinyl on occasion, but mostly older used stuff. I still love going to a record store and combing through the stacks for cool albums.
As for cassettes, I still have pretty much all the tapes I made in the '80s and '90s, but right now I have nothing to play them on. I bought a used tape deck from someone off Craigslist about 15 years ago but it crapped out after a few years. Plus my old Walkman that I bought around the turn of the millennium doesn't work anymore, either. I want to buy a new deck but they're expensive, so I'm keeping an eye out for a good deal. Also, I was driving an old 1996 Explorer that had a tape deck in it, but that died about seven years ago, so no more tapes in the car.
Those were my favorite times with cassettes, driving around listening to a kick-ass mix I made. I have great memories of bombing around the North Shore in the early '90s, driving to interview someone for an article or going to a party, cranking the tuneage. Not quite like Wayne, Garth and pals, but pretty close. Long live the cassette!
Much is made about the insanity of the world right now, and with good reason. It's good to remember that things have always been crazy, although it's ratcheted up now. It was pretty nuts in the year 2000: post-Y2K, pre-9/11, Napster was blowing up and then blown up. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs from the year 2000 in hour 2 (after playing new hotness from Model/Actriz, Blondshell and Melvins in hour 1). In 2000, the biggest thing these guys were worrying about was the location of their car.
Dude, here's my playlist:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Model/Actriz - Vespers/Pirouette
PUP - No Hope/Who Will Look After the Dogs?
Mclusky - People Person/The World is Still Here and So Are We
Viagra Boys - Uno II/Viagr Aboys
Blondshell - T&A/If You Asked for a Picture
Preoccupations - Ill at Ease/Ill at Ease
Friend of a Friend - Beautiful Ppl/Desire!
Ekko Astral - Pomegranate Tree/Pink Balloons: Popped EP
Lunchbox - Gravity/Evolver (2025 Vinyl Edition)
Melvins - King of Rome/Thunderball
Bob Mould - Breathing Room/Here We Go Crazy
Crime Oblivion - And Again/Chime Oblivion
Rude Television - Emphasis/I Want to Believe
Tunde Adebimpe - Pinstack/Thee Black Boltz
Dean Wareham - New World Julie/That's the Price of Loving Me
Mekons - Surrender/Horror
Cameron Keiber - Never Let Me Go/Nurser
Hour 2: 2000
Outkast - B.O.B./Stankonia
The Hives - Main Offender/Veni Vidi Vicious
Rollins Band - Get Some Go Again/Get Some Go Again
PJ Harvey - Kamikaze/Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Sleater-Kinney - You're No Rock N' Roll Fun/All Hands on the Bad One
Pedro the Lion - A Mind of Her Own/Winners Never Quit
At the Drive-In - Rolodex Propaganda/Relationship of Command
Hot Snakes - Salton City/Automatic Midnight
Queens of the Stone Age - Leg of Lamb/Rated R
The New Pornographers - Execution Day/Mass Romantic
The Tragically Hip - The Bastard/Music@Work
The Twilight Singers - King Only/Twilight as Played by the Twilight Singers
Radiohead - Everything in Its Right Place/Kid A
Modest Mouse - Tiny Cities Made of Ashes/The Moon and Antarctica
Elliott Smith - Son of Sam/Figure 8
Yo La Tengo - Cherry Chapstick/And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I take a look at early '90s Gen X marketing.
Generational marketing strategies have always had a certain amount of bullshit to them. It's kind of ridiculous to think that an entire generation of people would respond to the same themes and calls to action. Advertising really took off in the 1960s, '70s and '80s with the Baby Boomer generation, especially as they had more money to spend.
As a member of so-called Generation X (people born between 1965 and 1980), I grew up watching an inordinate amount of television and seeing an onslaught of commercials. We didn't have ad-free streaming services, so when we watched a show or sporting event, we typically just sat through the commercials. Now it's a lot easier to avoid ads, except when you're watching local stations or live events.
It definitely became noticeable when advertisers started to market to my generation when we became adults in the early '90s, especially as terms like Gen X were adopted, grunge became a thing and Madison Avenue became convinced that we were all slackers who wore flannel shirts and ripped jeans and didn't have a clue about what we wanted to do with our lives. And sure, there were people like that, but some of us were also career-driven professionals who had goals and aspirations.
So it was amusing to see some of the lame attempts to sell shit to us. Here's a few notable commercials that stood out to me.
'This Car is Like Punk Rock!'
Thanks to YouTube, we can go back watch early commercials featuring actors who went on to become familiar faces. Jeremy Davies (whose given name was Jeremy Boring) started out with appearances in the early '90s on General Hospital and The Wonder Years, but in 1993, he starred in a commercial for Subaru, comparing the Impreza to punk rock. He's wearing a baggy jacket and pants and a Cobain-esque striped shirt, pontificating on the inherent punkness of a crappy hatchback: "This car's all about reminding you and me what's great about a car, and moving forward, and making cars better and less disappointing. Just like punk, except it's cars." Sure, pal. I remember seeing the ad a few times and thinking about how dumb and obvious it was. No disrespect to Davies, who went on to appear in Saving Private Ryan and have great roles on LOST and Justified, two of my favorite shows. But I could picture some ad copywriter in his mid-50s thinking he was onto something with this punk rock thing, even though grunge and punk were not the same thing and clearly buying a Subaru was not remotely related to punk. I can only imagine what the guys in Fugazi thought about this bunk. It's fun to look back at, though.
'Things Are Going to be OK'
History is littered with the debris of soft drinks that came and went. In 1993, Coca-Cola tried to appeal to apathetic Gen Xers with a new beverage called OK Soda that was marketed with ironic ads that emphasized its "OK-ness." Trying to be cool by pretending to not give a shit about the product, Coke focused more on the marketing than the drink itself, which its own ads said tasted like "carbonated tree sap." It was supposedly similar to an orange soda mixed with Coke and it didn't sell well. The ads were oh-so-clever and hip, talking about "OK-ness," but they didn't resonate with anyone, let alone with the 20somethings they were going after. The cans had bleak packaging with drawings of glum-looking young people who couldn't care less if you liked the drink, and featured dour slogans like "What's the point of OK Soda? Well, what's the point of anything?" The underlying message of the ads was "Things are going to be OK," but ultimately they weren't for OK Soda, which was test-marketed in nine cities and was a huge flop.
'Obey Your Thirst'
Coca-Cola had better luck in 1994 with its "Obey Your Thirst" campaign for the lemon-lime beverage Sprite. The ads targeted African-American consumers with hip-hop-themed ads featuring NBA stars Grant Hill and Kobe Bryant and cool artists like Nas, LL Cool J and A Tribe Called Quest. One from 1996 featured three street ballers making a soda commercial, who when they screw up a take are revealed to be English thespians, with the lead saying, "Don't talk to me like a child. I played Hamlet at Cambridge." Then "Image is Nothing. Thirst is Everything" flashes on the screen, followed by a voiceover that says, "Trust your gut, not some actor." Sprite continued with the campaign until 2006, and has revived it a few times since.
'Save a Buck or Two'
One of the more '90s developments was the advent of services like 1-800-COLLECT. After AT&T's monopoly on collect calling was broken up in 1993, MCI made a big splash into the collect-calling market by launching 1-800-COLLECT, which would allow users to place collect calls at a cheaper rate than AT&T; of course, the person you were calling was still on the hook for the call. MCI rolled out a huge marketing blitz with commercials featuring celebrities like Phil Hartman, Wayne Knight, Mr. T. and Arsenio Hall, but some of the more memorable ads from 1994 featured SNL star David Spade and the great Larry "Bud" Melman, who rose to fame as a comic foil on David Letterman's late-night shows. Spade was known for his snarky personality and certainly brought that to the fore in the ads, which presented him as an irreverent and sarcastic/annoying Gen Xer (which of course he was). I never used the service and didn't know anyone who did, but the ads were on constantly. Most of the service's users were on pay phones, which were also prominently featured in the ads. But by the early 2000s, the burgeoning popularity of cell phones and declining use of pay phones led to the end of the ads, although the service is still operational, despite the fact that MCI isn't a thing anymore.
'Los Angeles, Start Your VCRs'
Beer commercials have always been a staple of TV advertising, and in the '90s, Bud Light began a regional campaign called Bud Light Spotlight in different markets around the country, focusing on "real" Bud Light drinkers in local bars. I never saw this at the time, but the Los Angeles market got a grunge-themed ad that is so cringeworthy and amazing. It features a long-haired Evan Dando wannabe who's singing "I just want a Bud Light" while one of the women he's with breathily describes how drinking a BL makes her feel good all over. It's something, that's for sure. I'd love to see a follow-up ad in 2025 that catches up with these three, just to see what they look like now.
