Reality Bites Soundtrack

The Reality Bites soundtrack was the accompanying collection of mostly shit songs that provided a musical sound-scape to a mostly shit movie. You remember the one- Ben Stiller is a pussy, Winona Rider is a flaky slut, Janeane Garofalo is an even bigger slut, Ethan Hawke is a greasy douchebag, Steve Zhan makes you wonder how the fuck he even got casted...its painfully obvious now that the word "Reality" was included in the title for a reason. To paraphrase, slacker meets girl, girl meets go-getter, slut has Aids scare, gay friend wrestles with coming out, slacker humps and dumps, go-getter marginalizes and commercializes girl's art, blah, blah, blah. Its has its moments in a Dave Pirner cameo (he was banging Winona at the time, can you believe it?) and David Spade/Andy Dick appearances as well. I think there was this sort of novelty at the time that allowed these really trite caricatures to be manufactured, packaged and sold right back to the people they were meant to resemble. It became especially formulaic for romantic drama's with culturally relevant soundtracks a la "Singles" and such to start popping up. In retrospect, they're complete dreck and only exaggerate the whole "angsty-slacker-grunge-greasy hair-flannel-combat boot-coffee shop-jaded dickhole" mythos.....but I digress.

In Hollywood's great tradition of "only getting it half-right", this soundtrack was no exception. The record runs the gambit from "pretty alright" (Dinosaur Jr and New Order) to plain fucking awful (Big Mountain and Ethan Hawke's laughable performance). Yeah, Yeah, we all know Lisa Loeb's "Stay" and that insufferable "My Sharona" song, but folks, there's a special place in hell for a host of musical villainy that collectively called itself Big Mountain. For those of you that follow this blog (all three of you....I see your names when I sign in, you sad fucking creatures) I reserve an unprecedented amount of hatred and abhorrence for what is known as "dumb white guy reggae". Sublime and 311 are capital offenders, but it doesn't get any whiter or dumber than Big White Dumb Fucking Mountain. You know what, wasting the time to type three pages of analysis on why these drug-rug adorned dong-huffers were worse than the Nazis probably can't come close to the evidence exhibited in the video below. I know I went kinda off the rails here on this one, but take a look for yourself as these buffoons shit all over that bombaclot Peter Frampton. May Jah have mercy on your souls.



Unfortunately, this is all Youtube will let me post. Apparently, The Knack are super concerned about copyright violations....

-Phillip

Tripping Daisy

I first saw this band on Conan O’Brien in ’93. I was ingesting massive quantities of LSD at the time, so the name was initially intriguing to me, but then again, so were carpet fibers.

Looking back, it was most likely an attempt to pander to the insufferable lot who would wear hats that belonged in Dr. Seuss books, Marvin the Martian t-shirts and were just a tad late to the “Grunge” party. . . Muck Sticky, basically. The song was interesting enough and the next day I sought out a copy of their album at the now long defunct skate shop, “The Vine”. I brought the CD to the counter and the guy ringing me up decided he’d give me an unsolicited account of his encounter with Tripping Daisy. It seems they were toting totally undeserved rock star attitudes, and how un-Pearl Jam-like they were, who apparently, despite their fame, were the nicest guys ever, and I should seriously take this into consideration before making this purchase, and blah blah blah. . . I didn’t care and bought what would be the last non-pop punk album I would buy for some years (think Pegboy, not New Found Glory or some other bullshit, dickhead). Anyway, the album was forgettable and I can’t really remember what it sounded like.

However, I do remember this awful fucking song that received mild commercial success. Well, enough to enable the bass player to buy gravy boats full drugs to kill himself with (in true rock star fashion, no less!) and a spot on Beavis and Butthead.

The lead singer for Tripping Daisy went on to form that wretched fucking pop/choir/Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat/tailor-made-for-car-commercial-ad-soundtracks band, The Polyphonic Spree. In hindsight, I probably should have listened to that guy at the skate shop. Nah, fuck that.

-S. Apple Esq.

Alanis Morissette

Yesterday my roommate texted me the lyrics to Alanis' dreadfully un-clever ditty, "Ironic". Shortly after doing this, a bird took a shit on the back of his neck. I sincerely believe this was the universe's way of making him pay for getting that awful piece of shit stuck in my head, thus prompting this post. If you were a sentient being in the 90's, you remember Alanis and her "Jagged Little Pill" record. The appeal of this horse-faced chanteuse was always a bit of an anomaly to me. The whole "pseudo-grunge-looking-angsty-chick" routine seemed to wear thin once it was announced that all of that angst was drummed up by Dave fucking Coulier. Yep. Then there was the video for "Thank You" where she stood there naked with what we all know was a giant muskrat-bush betwixt her legs, blurred out for your consideration and mine. The greatest enigma here is how she managed to land Ryan Reynolds. Even Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett made more sense to me. Its so perplexing, that the only conclusion I can come to is that the dude must have a fetish for chicks who look like they work in the photo-lab at Costco. I'm gonna stop trying to make sense out of a nonsensical world and leave you with the following dreck.

Here's what is available at the moment. I'll torture you with the rest once I find videos that some dick-diddling record company hasn't disabled the embedding for.

Dishwalla

They say all good things must come to an end. In some instances this is particularly evident. None more so than after the decline of the "Gilded Age of Commercially-Viable Yet Still Somewhat Artistically Integral" era that was the early to mid-90's. The latter portion of that decade was plagued by a vapid soullessness that permeated listener's ears and gave way to the rise of (to my great sorrow) the butt-rock dirges we now like to call "modern rock". We have FCC deregulation of radio station ownership to thank for this. As a result, media giants like Clear Channel were able to buy up 90% of the airwaves and push only a small fraction of whatever garbage they deemed fit down our throats. Is any band in particular to blame? Not exactly. The mediocrity that holds sway to this very moment was ushered in by the shifting from what was a promising coalesce of college-rock and pop music which unfortunately quickly devolved into the "Alterna-Bland" of the late 90's. This was propagated by a certain breed of dingleberry....sensitive men with sweaters, scraggly chin hair or soul-patches, butt-cuts, and a never-fail "play the feminist card to get laid" routine.

Speaking of idiots like those, here's Dishwalla. They fucking sucked.



p.s. Pitchfork can eat my shit.

Shudder to Think

After two and a half years of stagnation, we're bringing this bitch back. Its been a long 30 months or so, but fear not.....we'll be here to post for another couple of weeks before we decide to just keep on persisting with our miserable existences and let this blog once again fall into neglect for another couple of years. In the meantime, lets kick it off with some fruity-post-hardcore-come-art-phaggery. Shudder to Think were an early 90's emo-ish (think Rites of Spring and not Fall Out Boy, assholes) band on Dischord that got signed to a major label and went off the deep end with "Pony Express Record". Its amazing that album spawned as many singles as oddball as it is. Shit's pretty awesome, but i thought it to be pretty homo-erotic when I was a tween. The video for Hit Liquor doesn't help their case.

The guitar player was in Swiz and is now married to the chick in the Cardigan's which makes him my role-model and way cooler than any of you