The 90s According to Scott: SONGS

I never thought I'd make this list, but these are probably my 10 Favorite Songs Of The 90s, or The 10 Greatest Songs Of The 90s, or The 10 Most 90s Songs Of The 90s.
Before I list off, you all should know I (like most people who were alive in the 90s) have biases toward alternative rock and against anything that makes you dance. Also, I understand this list is missing plenty of important things: A catchy  Britpop song, So Cal gangsta rap, "Losing My Religion," any given track from Loveless, etc, etc. Anyways. Here it go.

10:CAR  Built To Spill (94)
Doug Martsch is one of my favorite all-time guitarists. The first half of There Is Nothing Wrong With Love is this boy's introduction to how to play some sick guitar on a low budget. PS- he's from Idaho.
9:UNFINISHED SYMPATHY  Massive Attack (91)
I figured I should add some track that represents all the chill trip-hop music from the 90s. This music seems to be everywhere these days. For the Purists and Everyday Joes alike, there's always Massive Attack.
8:YOU GET WHAT YOU GIVE  The New Radicals (98)
I've seen 3 different lists for best 90s songs, all very different from each other. Yet each list has a spot reserved for this song at around #100. Each one! That's because they're all afraid to rank it higher.
7:BITTERSWEET SYMPHONY  The Verve (97)
Personally, I think being from England in the 90s automatically meant you were futuristic and cool and probably wore sunglasses everywhere. Universally, this is a darn good song.
6:1979  The Smashing Pumpkins (95)
#datriff  #goosebumps  #errtime
5:JUICY  The Notorious B.I.G (94)
My favorite 90s hip-hop album is probably Nas's Illmatic. It had a meek, humble personality. This song has all the "started-from-the-bottom" humility, but Biggy shows 0% meekness. When you're Big, you're big.
4:FAKE PLASTIC TREES and/or PARANOID ANDROID  Radiohead (95/97)
Scott! These are 2 totally different songs here from 2 totally different albums! You can only choose 1! Every depressing song for the last 20 years or every band who pretends to sound weird/cool for the last 20 years! Actually... I'll leave this one up to you guys.
3:GOLD SOUNDZ  Pavement (94)
Why isn't this #1? Pavement is my favorite 90s band. This is my favorite song by them. When I saw Pitchfork ranked it #1, I was like- "Whoa, my actual favorite song by my favorite band!" As far as sounding like the 90s, this song captures all the jangly sunshine guitar nostalgia. And, well, Stephen freaking Malkmus.
2:ALL APOLOGIES  Nirvana (93)
Scott, this Nirvana song is ranked really high... and it's not "Smells Like Teen Spirit"... why? Nirvana or no Nirvana, I've always loved this riff. I also love how the lyrics represent an external reality to pain or care... which is actually the Buddhist definition of the state of Nirvana... and what made the 90s fun.
1:LOSER  Beck (94)
In 1998, the Barenaked Ladies got a #1 song in the U.S strictly because they rapped about Chinese chicken. When Beck made "Loser," he wasn't trying to make money. He was from lazy LA, he had an extremely low budget and his music influences ranged from Sonic Youth to classic blues to Bob Dylan to 80s hip-hop. This song is cheap, random, cool and fun. Aside from any grunge band, this is what the 90s sounded like.

Important Music Stuff My Dad Taught Me

In case you haven't noticed, I think music is pretty darn cool. This is definitely something I carried from the collective members of my family. I don't remember any new music that came out between 2002 and 2003 because I became obsessed with classic rock. My dad has taught me a lot of things that have carried on since then. Here are a few that are very much... uh... most like my dad.

--Jazz music is the real deal.   What does it take to get your 15 year old kid into jazz?  Introduce him to Steely freaking Dan. Still today I wish I had a better appreciation for jazz, and I would still skip past 105.5 The River if I was still searching central California radio stations. But I'm a musician and I know that jazz is the hardest style to play. My dad tried explaining this to me when I was younger, but I guess I didn't fully understand. These days I listen to some occasional Miles Davis, John Coltrane & Ornette Colman, but even as a young teenager I was able to love Aja.

--All rock & roll music originated from the blues.   According to my dad, this is why Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix were great guitarists; they remember their roots. Eric Clapton once said that new music is so bad because too many artists listen to stuff from his era and refuse to go further back.

--Paul Simon is a genius.   Thinking of my dad, the first bands that come to mind are definitely Styx, Boston and Rush. They were like- The Big 3 for me because my dad loved them more than most people. We even went to a Styx show and a Boston show back in the day. But the Paul Simon thing has really stuck. I remember my dad used to read me books as I went to sleep when I was very little. One night once I was asleep, he secretly switched from reading a book to reading the lyrics to "The Boy In The Bubble." I woke up to it eventually, confused.
I'm 23 now and Paul Simon is among my favorite songwriters. Graceland is a favorite. At a young age, I didn't think the guy who sang about feelin' groovy with a white dude an afro could be all that impressive. But my dad knew he was genius. He told me so.

--Everything old is better than everything new.   This is so freaking true. My older brothers and I were junkies for new "faux-ternative" (thank you Pitchfork) music, but we always loved the "greatest hits" tapes we had for the The Beatles and The Beach Boys. I remember wondering at a young age if old music could be good at all. Turns out, I liked old music the whole time.
My dad (and my mom) always said that music just isn't what it used to be. This is true because most everything that could possibly be done in a studio has already happened (one day I'll write a blog about Kid A). New music can't help it if its unoriginal, but my dad pointed out how poorly some new artists tried.

--AC/DC is pretty lame.   "I've never been impressed by AC/DC." -Wes Hall
I listened to a lot of classic rock radio at one point, which meant I was hearing something from Back In Black at least once a day. It's old. It rocks hard. It's on the radio. Aren't I supposed to like these guys? According to my dad, they are a band without a soul. Even if the solos totally shred, they sound thin and heartless next to any given Zeppelin track. All the songs are about sex. All the riffs sound the same. They're a stupid band.
Mind you, I've decided I'm cool with Bon Scott-era AC/DC, and this criticism comes from a man who had Hall & Oates on vinyl, but it's true. I once said that if the music you're writing isn't personal, it isn't really music. Who knew that my own dad was such a rock & roll skeptic himself?

I learned lots of stuff from Grampa Coach. He got me into lots of great classic bands and did a great job at explaining them to me. If a man's music is what makes a man, my dad kinda rocks.

Coming To Terms With Twitter

I hate twitter. The only reason I have an account at all is because my media smarts class in the PR dept made me do it. For months, I was spending an average 0 minutes per day on twitter. As of recently, I've vamped it up 5 minutes a day.

I know what you're thinking: Congratu-freaking-lations.
But really, I feel like I finally found a good use for twitter now.
I believe that each form of social networking is can be related to a real-life social event. Facebook is like walking on campus, or some fun community gathering. Linkedin is like a business meeting. Tumblr = drunkenness. Twitter is like going to a dance.
I hate going to dances. (Usually.) It's crowded. It's full of dudes trying to score make-out sessions (more or less), the lighting is cool yet diseased (thank you Dan Bejar) and I won't say anything about music. I feel like half the dances I go to are spent with me questioning my existence & the meaning of life whilst watching adrenaline-packed kidzzz use all their energy on hormonal ecstasy. Twitter is like this. Just a feed of spat-out comments, unconsciously scattered around.
As for the other half of dances I go to, I turn into James Murphy.

Nothing I say makes sense. But I say a lot. And I say it really loud. 

I spend plenty of time on facebook (too much, honestly) but I try to make it either entertaining or even productive. Now, whenever I have a brief, senseless, clever, goofy thought throughout the day, I get on twitter, tweet it, and get off. (That was a run-on sentence.) I've been posting on twitter multiple times a day with only being on their for about 5 minutes a day. 

They say you should keep a journal. If I have anything spiritual, inspirational or significant to say, I either use my blog or say so (believe it or not) in real life! I am using twitter as a personal journal of things that are far from important. Because I ought to get them off my chest and these thoughts are rarely comprehensible or circumstantially relevant. (Or actually that funny.)

Follow me @scottehall3 ...I over-use the terms "wowza," "sha-booya" and "but on the bright side, I live in America."

I WAS A TEENAGE SPACESHIP

I woke up this morning (talk about an over-used line at the beginning of songs) feeling something I hadn't felt in a few years. Last year I wrote a blog about wearing an old hat that made me feel like it was June 2008. I woke up this morning and it was June 2009.

I felt super out-of-place all day yesterday. I spent most of my day in Ogden for a job training and stayed at a friend's parents' place in Roy. I felt weird the whole time. Went to bed on the verge of vomiting. Woke up at 6AM with a song stuck in my head that hadn't been stuck in there for years. Early as it was, the sun was already out and the window was open so I could hear cars rolling down the highway. I was brought back to a time where I often woke up early and the sun was always shining. I wasn't the music junkie I am today; just kinda stuck with the popular Pitchfork stuff. I never dated because I was secretly scared of it. I was graduating high school. I had a dream that I was with my old friends and we were just goofing around (as usual). Spring and summer of 2009 were some of the happiest days of my life.
After a couple years of mental stress, religious devotion and music scene obsession, I have wondered if I could ever feel that comfortable with myself again. Straight-up, all honesty, it began this morning.

This past year or so has been great, but sometimes we forget that things can get continuously better. When I was 18, I was cool. Maybe not to other people. In fact, probably not. But at least I thought I was. It was a time when I learned that everyone was cool. I was a teenage spaceship. And now I am a 23-year-old spaceship.
There are things I enjoyed then; feelings that I haven't been able to rekindle even though I've tried. This is particularly intertwined with music. (ex: Sound of Silver. Is This It. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.) This morning it all came back to me. I remember the way it felt. I remember the confidence I had in my friends. I remember my personality was 50% shy and 50% boss. I remember how I was actually a really nice dude, but I was one of the best "your mom" joke-sters in Jerome. I was learning about the Romantic poets in English class. I was always doing something with acting. It was fun.
I must balance my current reality with the glory days. These days I have more responsibility. I pay for stuff and fill out papers. I don't like "your mom" jokes (as much). I live in apartments. I go to college. Girls. Yet somehow, I've recently been able to grasp that teenage ecstasy.  I'll try not to think about it too much, but understand that the principle here is both psychologically and prayer-related: Believe in yourself + Be grateful = Everything is cool.

"Flying around the houses at night. Flying alone. A teenage spaceship. I was a teenage spaceship. Landing at night. I was beautiful with all my lights, loomed so large on the horizon. So large, people thought my windows were stars. So large on the horizon, people thought my windows were stars. A teenage spaceship. A teenage spaceship. And I swore I'd never lay like a log, bark like a dog. I was a teenage smog, sewn to the sky."  
(Bill Callahan) 

I WAS A TEENAGE SPACESHIP