“Somebody to Shove”
by Soul Asylum
from the album Grave Dancers Union
1992
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Soul Asylum is one of those bands that I never normally think about; they don’t really orbit in my 90s universe of music. But occasionally a song of theirs will come up on the local 90s station or Pandora/Spotify/iTunes and I gotta give it up to them. They’ve got some great tunes, and this is definitely one of them. Continue reading November Five-Star Shuffle: “Somebody to Shove”
On Friday night I went to check out the Afghan Whigs in Austin, a band I’ve loved since the early 90s but never got to see live. Greg Dulli’s voice is one of my favorites and I’ve often said if I had the chance to sing like anyone, it would be him. His voice is so raspy and powerful, it’s just killer. I was really excited to check them out at a venue I’d never been to be before. Continue reading I’m Getting Too Old For Concerts
Romeo + Juliet
1996
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I was a big fan of this movie when it came out and (though I still for some reason haven’t seen Strictly Ballroom) it made me an ongoing big fan of Baz Luhrman. It was the coolness and fun and frenetic energy of it, it was Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh from The Basketball Diaries, and the totally cute MSCL-era Claire Danes, and a great cast all around, like Harold Perrineau in drag and John Leguizamo being bad-ass, and it was the music (2 new Radiohead songs!), etc. On a personal level, I also really enjoyed it because in my sophomore year of high school, our theater department put on this play, and I was the Friar, and quite frankly, I didn’t really understand everything that I was saying. Seeing the masterful Pete Postlethwaite at work, it all became totally clear to me.
Kick by INXS
1987
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Kick by Beck’s Record Club
2010
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Lance recently posted a full length cover version of this for #CoverFriday. Courtney Barnett’s version was respectable and a cool effort, but honestly didn’t do much for me. I finally finished listening to most of the rest of it this past weekend, and was watching it on YouTube, and then noticed the Beck’s Record Club full album cover version in the related videos. I liked it enough that I was considering just featuring it, but then decided it may be overkill to still do the real Kick later, so here we are. I also just learned on the Slicing Up Eyeballs Facebook page that the album was released yesterday in 1987, so the timing is fortuitous.
“Feed the Tree”
by Belly
from the album Star
1993
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I didn’t know much about Tanya Donnelly when this song came out. Throwing Muses had been in one Venn circles of the type of music I was mainly into, but I had never been that exposed or into them. I knew her more from being part of the Breeders’ first couple of albums. When this song came out, though, I got hooked, and got really into Belly and a lot of her later solo work (some day I’ll do a proper full album post of Star, which is a great album).
I even tried this once at karaoke because, well, yes I love it, but also because admittedly I really liked our friend Matt’s karaoke version of Lisa Loeb’s Stay, and was wondering if this song could match it. The song might, but my version was fairly horrible. I’m certainly not opposed to singing female songs, but wasn’t a match for this one.
The Doom Generation
1995
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There are entirely too many great soundtracks I’d like to post for this month’s theme. So either I have to start posting with a much higher frequency, or we’re going to need to have this theme another time in the future. Since I can barely handle once a week, I guess it will have to be the latter. Anyhoo, on to this week’s post.
Grosse Pointe Blank: Music From The Film
1997
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I adore absolutely everything about the film Grosse Pointe Blank. Part of it is a timing thing — it came out just a couple of months after I moved to NYC and served as a security blanket when I didn’t have a ton of friends to hang with. I probably watched it 5 or 6 times that spring. It also has a cast that are really at their best, including a great turn by Dan Akroyd as an insane hitman. And the plot is killer — who doesn’t want to return to their high school reunion with the coolest job ever — assassin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9MlIBv6xo
If you haven’t seen it, watch the damn thing. But even if the movie is not your cup of tea, the soundtrack will be. It’s full of 80s-era “alternative” hits as spun in-movie by Minnie Driver’s radio DJ.
“The Box”
by Orbital
from the album In Sides
1996
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Short and sweet today, but time to share what’s probably my favorite music video ever (though that’s a short list – I can’t remember many off the top of my head). I used to live with a friend who was big into MTV’s Amp, which got me a little bit into it (the MTV’s Amp compilation album is a pretty good mix), and I’m pretty sure that’s when I first saw this. It’s just delightfully weird and Tilda Swinton is awesomely quirky and odd as ever. This also came out when i was an animation student, so seeing a cool live action iteration of techniques probably made this stick with me as well.
“Twin Peaks”
by Angelo Badalamenti
from the album Music from Twin Peaks
1990
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“Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me”
by Angelo Badalamenti
from the album Music from Twin Peaks
1992
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Lance mentioned that Monday was craptastic in his last post, and I would upgrade that to the entire week shaping up to being pretty crapperific, However, the best thing I’ve heard all week was the reboot of Twin Peaks. Hell. Yes. That made me so happy. So then made me realize these two albums would make great entries for this month’s theme. Not entirely in the MNP vein (not that that’s ever stopped me) but they came out in the exact same formative time as most the other things we post here.
Continue reading October Soundtracks: Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
“On & On”
by DUM
2014
Buy the single on iTunes
Total hat tip to Sploid who just posted the video for “On & On” which uses footage from a Chrance favorite, The Neverending Story. I was totally going to save it for a weird post later in the week, but the song is so fucking catchy it seems like a perfect pick-me-up for a craptastic Monday.
Check out another excellent DUM song/movie mash-up after the jump.