Re: [情報] Whatever: The '90s Pop & Culture Box
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Given the success of their box sets celebrating the pop culture and music of
the '70s and '80s, it was inevitable that Rhino would release a set devoted
to the '90s, so it was no great surprise when the label released the
seven-disc set Whatever: The '90s Pop & Culture box in late July 2005. Some
might say that 2005 is a little early to dive into '90s nostalgia, but six
years into the '00s, just past the halfway mark of the W administration and
nearly a decade and a half away from Nevermind, the '90s feel very, very long
ago indeed, so this is as good time as any to start re-packaging the '90s.
The problem is, the '90s aren't quite as easy to pigeonhole as either the
'70s or '80s. Of course, neither of those decades were quite what Rhino
presented on either Have a Nice Decade or Like, Omigod! The '80s Pop Culture
Box (Totally), but both of those provided nice overviews of the sounds,
trends and fads of what was on mainstream radio — or with the '80s, MTV —
during those decades. With the '90s, it's not nearly as easy to pinpoint
what the sound of the mainstream was during those 10 years, because the
mainstream began to break down. Not just because of the changing tastes
ushered in by the alternative rock explosion of late 1991/1992 (a.k.a. The
Year Punk Broke), but because in the aftermath of the alt-rock boom, radio
became more corporate (meaning tighter, stricter playlists) and MTV gradually
shifted away from being a music channel to being a pop culture TV station.
Add to this a pop audience that was becoming progressively niche-driven —
supported by a music industry that was eager to feed the niche and not
cross-pollinate because it was easier to hit your target demographic if they
all stuck together — there wasn't a mainstream pop audience in quite the
same vein as there was in the '70s and '80s.
This, of course, gave the producers of Whatever a problem and they
acknowledge this in Cory Frye's producers note to the set, where he writes
that the compilers decided to "(acknowledge) some of the decade's bigger
mainstream explosions while also hopefully drawing the listener's attention
to...the rumblings below that would eventually surface as the renaissance of
our generation." In other words, all the alt-rock and indie-rock that defined
the rock culture of the first part of the decade and would run out of gas
around 1996. Of course, during the years between Nirvana's 1991 Nevermind,
the album that kicked off the alt-rock era and Radiohead's 1997 OK Computer,
the album that effectively killed it, nearly everything was tagged as
alternative, whether it was the Spin Doctors' hippy-dippy jam band,
Candlebox's lumbering heavy metal, Digable Planet's jazzy hip-hop, Korn's
rap-rock or acid house, punk-pop, neo-swing, or any number of off-shoots and
hybrids that littered the landscape in the early and mid-'90s. The compilers
decide to focus on what was alt-rock between 1992 and 1995 — songs and
sounds that formed the backbone of MTV's weekly Sunday night show, 120
Minutes and the songs that spilled over into their Buzz Bin, plus a handful
of edgier, noisier punk-based American guitar rock bands. These are balanced
by several pop, urban and hip-hop singles that were ubiquitous, but the way
that the box is sequenced, the first disc contains the great majority of
urban and mainstream pop songs, with alt-rock taking hold as the second disc
comes around and then sticking around until the very end of the seventh disc.
The ultimate effect is that the listening effect mirrors the experience of a
white kid that spent the first year or two of the '90s in high school, went
to college and discovered alt-rock, got really involved in music for about
five years, and then slowly stopped paying attention by the end of the decade.
Inevitably, some listeners will complain that Whatever favors alternative
rock too much and gives short shrift to rap and R&B. Well, that may be true,
but they're hardly the only genres given the shaft here: electronica in all
of its forms from acid house to trip-hop barely gets a passing nod, while
Britpop hardly registers. But it's impossible for any seven-disc set to cover
everything that happened in the decade, and at least the emphasis on alt-rock
of 1991-1995 (lasting from disc two to midway through disc six) gives this
box a focus, which helps make the set cohesive and even useful for some
audiences. There are plenty of classic singles and tracks from the heyday of
alt-rock — the Sundays' "Here's Where the Story Ends," My Bloody Valentine's
"Only Shallow," Screaming Trees' "Nearly Lost You," Sugar's "If I Can't
Change Your Mind," Gin Blossoms' "Hey Jealousy," Lemonheads' "It's A Shame
About Ray," Dinosaur Jr's "Start Choppin," Pavement's "Cut Your Hair,"
Weezer's "Buddy Holly," Oasis' "Wonderwall" chief among them — and there are
some fun one-shots like dada's smirky "Dizz Knee Land" and King Missle's
"Detachable Penis" scattered throughout here, too. But even in terms of being
a collection of alt-rock hits, Whatever is on shaky ground, since there are
numerous questionable omissions and inclusions here. Such heavy-hitters as
Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Pixies, Jane's Addiction, Beck, Bjork, Smashing Pumpkins,
Beastie Boys, Green Day, Radiohead, Hole, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails are
naturally missing — that's just a question of licensing and points shouldn't
be deducted for that — but their absence isn't as bothersome as the other
artists and songs from this genre that should have been on here. It's not
even a question of arguing which well-known indie rock favorites — such
names as Superchunk, Sebadoh, Ride, Guided By Voices, and Mercury Rev, for
instance — over the Supersuckers, Gits, Tad and the Muffs (all four included
here, all four fine, but rather generic, certainly not as distinctive as the
aforementioned quintet). It's that such commercial heavy-weights as Stone
Temple Pilots, Bush and Alice In Chains didn't make the cut, nor did such
well-known, critically well-regarded, charting acts as Sonic Youth, Liz Phair
and PJ Harvey. Electronica acts like the Chemical Brothers, Portishead and
Prodigy — who all had hits — aren't here, nor are Happy Mondays and Primal
Scream, or Blur, Suede or Pulp, none of whom are hard to license. This could
be discounted as mere American bias, but there are other great American
alt-rock hits that could have been here, such as Cracker's "Low," Veruca
Salt's "Seether," Everclear's "Santa Monica," Folk Implosion's "Natural One"
or the Presidents Of the United States of America's twin shots of novelty
grunge, "Lump" and "Peaches." Or let's extend into the post-grunge years of
the late '90s — there's a bunch of one-shot wonders like Harvey Danger's
"Flagpole Sitta," Nada Surf's "Popular," Local H's "All the Kids Are Right,"
or the Toadies' "Possum Kingdom" that could have been here, along with the
entire retro-swing genre, represented by such acts as Squirrel Nut Zippers
and Cherry Poppin' Daddies." There aren't such mainstream oddities as OMC's
"How Bizarre," or, to stretch all the way to the end of the decade, the New
Radicals' lone hit "You Get What You Give," one of the very best singles of
the decade, is totally missing.
Such complaints are part and parcel for sets like this, but they're all the
more relevant here because Whatever gets some of the included acts aren't
represented at their best. Why is the Verve Pipe here with "Photograph"
instead of "The Freshmen," which hit number five on the charts? Why is L7
here with "Sh*tlist" instead of "Pretend We're Dead," a bigger hit and better
song? Why is Ween here with "Freedom of '76" instead of "Push Th' Little
Daisies," the song that was featured on Beavis & Butt-Head and helped break
the band to a wider audience? Why are the Barenaked Ladies here with "Brian
Wilson" instead of their chart-topping single "One Week"? Who knows, but in
this context such defensible substitutions as Belly's "Gepetto" over "Feed
the Tree" or Urge Overkill's "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" over "Sister
Havana" (which may not have been as big a hit, but represents the band
better) seem similarly misguided.
Even with all these significant flaws, Whatever is useful in rounding up a
bunch of good singles. After all, it is nice to get Deee-Lite's "Groove is in
the Heart," Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now," Naughty By Nature's "OPP,"
Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend," House of Pain's "Jump Around," Des'Ree's "You
Gotta Be," the Cardigans' "Lovefool," Fountains of Wayne's "Radiation Vibe"
and Len's glorious "Steal My Sunshine" in one place. But in the age of the
iPod, it is a real question of whether it's worth buying a lavish box set or
getting the individual tracks and assembling your own playlist of the Best of
the 90s. That's why Rhino has gone out of their way to make Whatever into a
distinctive package, assembling a book that features amusing essays by Jim
DeRogatis and Joel Stein along with a bunch of pop cultural ephemera from the
decade. But even here the set goes wrong: there's a picture collage of SubPop
singles that contains a single from Beachwood Sparks, who didn't release
anything on the label until 2000; of all the Lollapalooza tour posters to
feature, they pick 1996, when Metallica headlined the tour, which nobody —
not alt-rockers, not metalheads — liked; the Pulp Fiction toys weren't made
in 1994 or 1995, when the movie was a hit, but nearly ten years later. Worst
of all, Rhino has made the unjustifiable decision to use a vacuum-sealed
package of actual coffee beans as the set's cover artwork. Not only is the
package very fragrant (and not necessarily in a pleasant way), after only a
couple of days it's already showing signs of wear, so who knows how it will
hold up after a year or two of use. It may not be a practical package, but it
is distinctive, which makes it appropriate for a box that has its charms, but
doesn't come close to capturing either sound or spirit of the '90s.
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