One of the few normal people who lived on our street in the student ghetto liked to have his revenge for Saturday night disturbances by blasting that entire album on Sunday mornings about 9 a.m.

I always compared those lyrics to Cobain's, with the Nirvana ones coming off a lot better because they seemed less serious. Machine Head, Comedown, Swallowed, Glycerine and Everything Zen certainly have fine riffs, but I'm not really the guy to be able to tell musically pedestrian from not.

Do The Standing Still by The Dismemberment Plan is the classic in that genre.

Too be fair to that line, the Gallaghers would probably smash a pint in your face for telling them they were better than any band in the world if you caught them in the right mood.

One thing I remember from the 90s was that I had CBC on my cable and their Olympics coverage featured much less feature package piano music Bob Costas pre-taped vomit about the athletes and more just showing the damn events.

I'd rate them about even with Candlebox, actually. Far Behind is a fine enough minor ballad. Bush was the kings of cringinly bad meaningless gibberish lyrics, but they certainly had some catchy singles.

I have a soft spot for their post-fame commercial failure Rock Crown. It's looser and more jangly and throws in a bunch of pedal steel guitars and just generally doesn't seem to be trying very hard to rewrite Cumbersome.

The format actually was pretty elastic, as I recall. Around 2000 or so, the AV Club pointed out that "alt rock" stations were basically anything played by white people, regardless of genre. (With the unthankful exception of late period Lenny Kravitz) At least in Lansing, Michigan you would hear not just the Beasties,…

I remember those whose names were mentioned getting jazzed about it and yelling when it played at the bar or party.

I don't particularly want to kill you over it, but I'd argue you're incorrect about this.

There's a bunch of good, umtempo power pop on A Boy Named Goo and even Name isn't as bellowing and dire as the later hits.

Maybe they took a listen and said "Shit, this is worse than our Christian rock and without any excuse."

I know what you mean. I grew up near a far north town of 1200 and graduated from high school in 1996. Cultural trends were pretty slow to arrive, if at all. (I tried to date this by when we were pegging our pants once, but I don't remember the result) It was possible pre-internet to dodge a lot of the grunge stuff,…

A buddy and I who'd liked some of the Brit stuff like Blur, the Verve and Pulp became the two biggest Manic Street Preachers fans in Michigan when we heard This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours in 1999 and then started going through their back catalog.

I don't know how much we realistically missed out on. Gish, Siamese Dream, Melon Collie, assorted pre-1998 B-sides and the first album as Zwan is a pretty good career for anyone.

Mustard Plug was fine, but the Parka Kings were Michigan's unknown ska jewel.

There's three versions of that song floating around Youtube as we speak.

If wikipedia is too be believed, he was trying to make an action movie version of Paradise Lost with Bradley Cooper, but it was canceled by the studio. Which sounds at least like an interestingly bad idea.

Black No. 1 was a minor hit, I think. I was at a super-sketchy strip club in the early 00s and a vaguely goth-y lady came out and performed to it. She was obviously either a big fan of the song or a real professional.

Opposite for me. At the time and now, I thought it blew the previous two (I never tracked down any of their glam rock pre-Anselmo records that people used to tease them about.) out of the water. Becoming is the best Pantera song and that album really maintains a consistent heavy, thundering vibe.