30 Years, 30 Days: Day 10, 1989

I'll have to figure out a better way to keep writing this thing throughout the month while I go play shows on the weekends. I was on the road in New Jersey all weekend, and was just pressed to find the means and time to write. I'll come up with something.

1989 is truly the year that music starts to make the swing over towards what we would call "alternative rock" in the 90s. Debut releases from Nirvana, The Offspring and growing acclaim for bands like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, The Pixies and the like are starting to turn heads on the major-label scene, and guys in suits start running around figuring out how to make money off it (God forbid we give it to the bands).

But my favorite records released in 1989 are, for the most part, not quite in the "alternative" spectrum yet.

I start with Lou Reed's New York, which is one of the finest solo albums he's ever released (also in the running are Transformer and Berlin, but they were released in the 70s). It's interesting that it came out in 1989 as the tide was starting to turn in music, because it is one of his most straightforward rock records ever. It's also his most cohesive concept records as well (both Berlin and The Raven fall a little short), because his theme is something so large and full of material: New York City. At the time I heard this record, I had never been to NYC (I think I was 13 or so) and everything I new about the city came from people like Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega and the early records of Bob Dylan. Reed not only pegs some topical issues, like the rise of Rudy Giuliani, but gets at the very core of living in New York as it is trying to reinvent itself and shed the dirty, dangerous and crime-ridden images of the 70s. He hearkens back to the New York of the 60s and 70s, but does not dwell in it as the best times ever. He acknowledges its faults in songs like "Dirty Blvd" and "Busload Of Faith", and I've always liked that about this record: it's reflective without being nostalgic. I've always found nostalgia to pretty much be the death of any forward progress, and Reed would definitely progress and make many more records (though none of them quite as good as this one).

To continue in a non-grunge vein, I also have a huge spot in my heart for Chris Isaak's Heart Shaped World album. I came to Chris Isaak in a big way while in college, looking for good country music and things styled after it. Isaak has a voice as big as Roy Orbison, and his guitar

playing is a cross between slick LA studio work and the twangy honky-tonks that inspired it. People always remember "Wicked Game" from this record, as well as the resulting music video. And that's a good place to start, because it's a killer song. But the rest of the album is equally excellent, with songs like "Don't Make Me Dream About You", "Forever Young" and "Wrong To Love You" being some of my particular favorites.

Isaak's record marks to me a sort of changing of the guard in terms of popular music. 1989, and to a point 1990, are the last years where pop music that was inspired by what many consider the core of rock music (country, blues, rockabilly, etc.). From 1991 on, the main inspirations seem to come from hard 70s rock, punk from the UK and America from the late 70s to the 80s, and the heavy electronic club music from the UK in the 80s. There are a lot of statements you can make about this: music isn't as good now because we've "lost out roots", or conversely, music got much better once the blatant ties to the classic era were shed and mainstream music got more experimental and aggressive. I don't really come down on one side or the other, and I think that to do so is extremely limiting. I love classic era rock n' roll, but I came of age during the "alternative" revolution of popular music, so that music will forever be in my psyche as music made for me in particular.

As the "thing that is not the like the others", The Pixies' Doolittle is on the top of the pile as a favorite record made in my lifetime. I must have been in 8th grade the first time I heard The Pixies (I came to them via The Breeders, who were fronted by Pixies' bassist Kim Deal, and whom I would nurture a major crush on for most of my teenage years). From the first track, "Debaser", this was a record that was both intelligent and experimental, while also being loud as

all hell and frantic. Frank Black's screaming vocals mixed with Deal's high monotone are a wonderful match, and Joey Santiago's approach to lead guitar work is a major building block in my playing. This was a record that was different because, among many other things, there were no real guitar solos. Santiago would just kind of riff through heavy distortion and effects, making no attempts at a traditional rock solo. As a fledgling guitar player, this was good: I could learn this, I could do this, I didn't have to study scales for hours and hours. You could let the sonic landscape dictate your sound, and not have to be entirely reliant on your technical skill. I hold this idea to heart to this day.

Doolittle just screamed for your attention. The songs were short and catchy, but not really ties in anything you'd ever heard before. There are elements of Mexican imagery, references to surrealist art, all over a screaming grind of guitars and a steady as a rock rhythm section (someone had to hold the bottom end down). "Here Comes Your Man", "Wave Of Mutilation", "Monkey Gone To Heaven": these are the more accessible tracks. For the lunatic ramblings and out-of-left-field guitar work, you have "No. 13 Baby", "Tame", "Crackity Jones" and "I Bleed". A lot of my peers remember the beginnings of the "alternative" rock movement in terms of Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Alice In Chains. I think it started more accurately with The Pixies.

The entries are gonna get more and more rambling as we move into the 90s, it was my Woodstock, my Altamont, my Isle of Wight, all those classic music moments that the older generations talk about, except for me. I invite all who read to wax reflective about the 90s, and think about the records you heard as a teen and how they shaped you as a listener as well as a person in general. But no nostalgia, please. Things were great in the 90s for music, and things are still pretty great now, with countless bands of extreme talent having arisen in the beginning of the 21st century. Where do you think they heard the music that inspired them?

-Dan