A safe choice for Mr. Reynolds, but he doesn’t exactly take it to the house.

wait

bring the house down is better.

Safe to say, Ryan Reynolds doesn’t bring the house down. In Safe House.

In the movie Safe House, actor Ryan Reynolds saves the day but he can’t save a hackneyed old concept from boring the audience. House.

Safe House is a safe bet for a night at the movies, but ultimately there’s no one home.

No one is safe. OK, no.

If you want a night out of the house, you’re safe with Safe House, but you’d be better off saving your money and getting housed instead.

No. Christ.

Um.

House it going? Jesus. Fuck. FUCK.

-Inspired by @McCarrick

She sighed sensuously. How did a small-town librarian with nerdy and demure but also secretly kind of sexy glasses who had never left her small town – never even left the library! – end up in such a predicament? Out of nowhere, three men had disrupted her quiet life among the stacks and changed it forever – an architect from the big city; a soft-spoken ranch-hand from some kind of ranch where you have pitchforks or whatever but don’t have to work with manure; and now a helicopter detective?! How she longed to be back inside that helicopter, spinning through the air on the way to a crime scene and Frenching passionately with David as the wind rushed through her hair but not too much.

She sighed languorously. Perhaps life would have been easier if Xavier and James and David hadn’t all accidentally turned up in her small town due to, respectively, an architects’ convention and a dark past that was best left behind, some kind of farm-related thing, and a broken down crime helicopter. At least she had her library and her passion for teaching children about the joy of reading books or magazines or whatever. She sighed obstreperously. And what about S-E-X?

<< Excerpts From My Romance Novel, Part 2
<< Excerpts From My Romance Novel, Part 1

For the better part of a decade, if you went to a show at DC’s Black Cat any night of the week, there would be a large homeless gentleman with a booming voice at the door, and as you approached, he’d say, “Black Cat! Black Cat! Spare some change for the homeless.”  Depending on what show you were planning on seeing, he’d throw in a reference for good measure: “Modest Mouse, baby! Spare some change for the homeless.”

I must have seen dozens of bands play at the Black Cat during that era – particularly DC bands like The Make Up, Trans Am, Tuscadero, Circus Lupus, and Dismemberment Plan – as well as a who’s who of indie bands from around the country who made their annual pilgrimage to the legendary venue. The Black Cat has since moved down the street to a larger space, and the homeless dude who announced the shows doesn’t seem to be there anymore, but it’s still one of the best best best places in all of Washington, D.C., and long may it last.

Here are 20 more songs from the list:

—
60: Nirvana, “Dumb”

When In Utero finally came out, MTV essentially devoted their entire day to talking about it – I remember numerous segments of confused “person on the street” interviews where everyone was like, “What’s the deal with ‘Rape Me’?”

Turns out there’s a whole lot more to In Utero than whatever the deal is with “Rape Me”. The album’s unifying factor is that it’s a document of a band who are extremely uncomfortable (to the point of rage) about the ludicrous expectations that the whole world has suddenly placed on them. And right at the center of the storm that this produces is “Dumb,” which feels like the perfect sentiment for the moment.

—

59: Beck, “Lord Only Knows”

I bought Odelay and Pulp’s Different Class on the same trip to a Virgin Megastore in London in the summer of 1996, which – that was just a really successful trip to the record store. A lot of the songs on this album are the best songs on this album, but “Lord Only Knows” stands out as having some of the finest Beckisms. You’ve only got one finger left, and it’s pointing out the door.

—

58: Dinosaur Jr, “Not the Same”

In, I’m going to say 1993, my next door neighbor and I made frisbees out of all the random terrible CDs that he had accidentally gotten by failing to mail back albums to Columbia House. The idea was to see if we could get them to bounce off the roof of my house and end up in the driveway.

About 6 months later, a more musically enlightened version of myself was digging through that same pile of now-gravel-encrusted rejects to pull out “Where You Been” and hope against hope that it was still at least semi-functional. As a result, my version of this album has always been a bit skippy, but that seems kind of appropriate for a band as raw and punchy as Dinosaur Jr. “Not the Same” is a rare moment of quiet beauty on an album that is otherwise packed with ferocious J. Mascis shredding.

—

57. Elastica, “Connection”

The fact that the opening riff is (according to the legal settlement) actually a Wire riff only adds to how fucking cool this song is.

—

56: Matthew Sweet, “Girlfriend”

The Matthew Sweet rule is, I think, that only every other album is good. Which may just be an unfair dig on 1993′s “Altered Beast”, which has the misfortune of being sandwiched between the equally magnificent Girlfriend and 100% Fun. Regardless, it is fairly clear that Matthew Sweet knows what he’s doing at least 66.6% of the time.

—

55: Pavement, “Range Life”

Pavement first turned up in our lives during high school thanks to the ministrations of a hip drama teacher, and I’ve been through a lot of different phases with them since, but “Range Life” is the song I come back to the most.

I like the whole “Elegant bachelors” thing and that this is on some level a Smashing Pumpkins diss track and that you can almost, for a second, believe Stephen Malkmus when he says that all he wants is to settle down. Except, clearly, that you can’t.

—

54: R.E.M., “E-Bow the Letter”

As an admittedly fanatical fan of this band, I say this advisedly, but “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” has to be the most underrated album of all time. This is one of 14 reasons why.

—

53: Tool, “Sober”

In all honesty, alt-metal was a byway that was probably not worth exploring in the short history of modern music, but it did have quite a promising start before everything all went horribly wrong. Almost anything by Helmet, for instance, and Alice in Chains at their best, and (occasionally) Living Color. But particularly this moody, broody, buildy-as-fuck masterpiece by Tool.

—

52: My Bloody Valentine, “When You Sleep”

If I could create a perfect band, they would sound a hell of a lot like My Bloody Valentine. They would play me the songs they had made for me and I would be like, “More distortion!!” “Layer your vocals, for Christ’s sake!” “Pedals, damn you! I need more pedals!” That is what I would be like.

—

51: Galaxie 500, “Hearing Voices”

I came across This Is Our Music at a record store in DC a few years after Galaxie 500 broke up. That was the day that I learned it was possible for music to be really, really good and really, really slow at the same time.

—

50: Sonic Youth, “Sunday”

Everyone has a different Sonic Youth. Mine is Daydream Nation, Dirty, Experimental Jet Set, Washing Machine, and A Thousand Leaves. Each one of those albums has some amazing moments, but the transition, on A Thousand Leaves, between Kim Gordon frantically yelling about kittens on “Contre Le Sexism” and the opening bars of “Sunday” has a strong case for being the best of the best.

The video is also a keeper. It has Macauley Culkin in it.

—

49: Third Eye Blind, “Semi-Charmed Life”

The first time I did crystal meth this song came on the radio and it surprised the shit out of me. In those days, I thought drug references (and by extension, drugs) were a lot cooler than they probably are, but “Semi-Charmed LIfe” still holds up exceptionally well.

—

48: Oasis, “Don’t Look Back in Anger”

I remember reading a newspaper article claiming that Oasis was the vanguard of a full-on third British Invasion and waiting excitedly for the rest of the troops. Which, I guess, Blur and Pulp and Suede to a small extent, but by the time Morning Glory came out, it was clear that Oasis were doing most of the legwork, as far as the Americans were concerned. This was by far my favorite of their many laudable efforts to win over the Yanks.

—

47: Eels, “Novocaine for the Soul”

Eels secretly went on to make excellent, rich, and engaging albums for years after their one big hit, which shouldn’t be such a big surprise given the promise of this track.

—

46: Blind Melon, “No Rain”

Shall we watch the bee girl again? Let’s watch the bee girl again.

—

45: Belly, “Feed the Tree”

I followed Tanya Donnelly’s lovely airy voice and her quirky sensibility from her early stint with The Breeders through both of Belly’s fantastic albums and well into her solo career (and later, all the way back into the Throwing Muses’ back catalogue) and obviously “Feed the Tree” is a major highlight, but it’s worth pointing out that there is an awful lot more where this came from.

—

44: At the Drive-In, “Napoleon Solo”

In, Casino, Out was released in the summer of 1998 and I was desperate to get my hands on a copy in the U.S. before heading back to school in the wilds of St. Andrews, Scotland, where such a feat was more or less unthinkable.

I ended up having to send my long-suffering father to a dingy indie record store in DC to purchase it and mail it to me a few months later. I have vivid memories of finally getting the album in the fall and listening, particularly to this song, over and over and over until my roommate told me to shut it the fuck down before he throttled me.

—

43: Shudder to Think, “X-French Tee Shirt”

DC natives, Shudder to Think were graduates of the Field school, where I always wished I went because it had girls at it and because it was alternative and cool, unlike my own high school, which was full of monks and which made us wear suit jackets. You can kind of tell that they’re nerdy DC private school kids just by listening to their records, which is probably a big part of why I love them so much.

—

42: They Might Be Giants, “Birdhouse in Your Soul”

I probably listened to TMBG more than almost any other band through the mid ’90s. Once I started listening to louder, shoutier stuff, my mom would beg me to put on a TMBG album instead because she liked the lyrics so much. Pretty much anything on their first four albums is still my favorite song.

—

41: The Posies, “Dream All Day”

If they made a soundtrack to the whole ’90s, this song would be the centerpiece. The Posies were always meant to go on to more great things, but the ’90s was just too jealous of its favorite creation to ever truly let them go. Is how I see it, at any rate. Here they are with all their bittersweet beauty still intact, trapped in amber.

The first record store I ever really loved was an unforgiving shithole in Adams Morgan, DC, called DC CD. They sold independent music, which wasn’t true of most other places in the city, but they almost certainly didn’t have the album you went there looking for, which meant – to avoid walking away empty-handed after a long Metro ride, I ended up spending hundreds of dollars there on totally random shit by bands I’d heard of but never actually listened to like (memorably) Galaxie 500 or Karate or Low or, failing that, anything that had appealing album art or a cool name.

This was in no way a bad thing.

DC CD closed down sometime in the early aughts, partially because it was really not a very good record store, and by that time I had learned to love some other, shinier and better stocked emporiums – notably Rasputin Records in Berkeley and Plan 9 in Richmond, VA – but I still think of DC CD when I think about how much I miss shopping at record stores. The very best ones were the ones that had just the right imperfections.

Let’s do 20 more songs from the list:

—
80: U2, “One”

The thing I want to say about U2 is that (despite, or perhaps because of their being the world’s only remaining supergroup or whatever) they tend to get passed over when it’s time to talk about what was important about the ’90s.

All I knew at the time (1991) was that Achtung Baby was a major, major event. And that they had to do the video for this song (it was the one with the cars with the painted people on them) like 5 times before they got it right, because, like, this was “One” and “One” was possibly already the defining moment of our young decade. Anyway, it’s not like it isn’t a marvelous piece of music, even if U2 is very earnest and monolithic and our modern tastes prefer something with a bit more irony.

—

79: The Cranberries, “Linger”

I like Dolores O’Riordon’s accent. I mean, I really like her accent. And the way she hangs onto those “r”s and draws them out like she doesn’t want to let them go is obviously pretty perfect for this song.

—

78: Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Soul to Squeeze”

From the Coneheads soundtrack, no less, but oddly one of the Peppers’ most affecting songs. Even the obligatory funk breakdown mid-track (not to mention the impromptu Anthony Kiedis scat session) feels somehow necessary and extends rather than interrupting the soulful tone established by John Frusciante’s idiosyncratic opening riff.

If you watch the video closely, there is a Conehead and also Chris Farley in it, which I always found somewhat incongruous for such a dark, mournful song that is apparently about circus people?

—

77: Eve 6, “Inside Out”

Eve 6 did this weird thing where they just kind of elbowed their way in out of nowhere with this song while everyone was listening to Sum 41 and Jimmy Eat World and Lit, and then just as quickly wandered off, never to be heard from again. Rendez vous then I’m through with you.

—

76: Built to Spill, “Carry the Zero”

One disadvantage of going to college in a small town in Scotland essentially prior to the Internet was that it was hard not to occasionally miss stuff – even if you were a borderline obsessive about it. So I kind of missed Keep It Like a Secret at the time, and my metropolitan American friends (who could have let me in on the secret) were busy ignoring Built to Spill because they had signed with a major label a couple of years earlier (back in the olden times, we all thought it was super important that bands not get paid for their work).

Anyway, I’ve since made up for that oversight. This song’s a scorcher.

—

75: Bush, “Glycerine”

All I remember is that there was some argument at the time amongst my friends as to whether including all those violins in this song made it too “maudlin.” Which is so missing the point.

—

74: Faith No More, “Epic”

Faith No More famously went on tour with Metallica and Guns & Roses in 1992 and were booed so relentlessly by asshole G&R fans that they gave up even trying to play the piano part at the end of “Epic” – the part where the fish flops around in the video. Which is a shame, because that part is fucking awesome.

—

73: Live, “Selling the Drama”

I have a vivid memory of hearing this song for the first time on the radio on the way back from school and freaking out because I thought R.E.M. had come out with a new album. R.E.M., it turns out, were very much finished with making songs that sounded anything like this, but Live reeled me right in with that sleight of hand, and Throwing Copper (and, weirdly, Mental Jewelry) ended up on extremely heavy rotation on my shitty little Sony boombox for most of 1994.

—

72: Local H, “Bound for the Floor”

Single-handedly responsible for introducing an entire generation of young people to a five-dollar SAT word.

—

71: Weezer, “Undone (The Sweater song)”

Roughly 3 years earlier, I had worn my very favorite red Bugle Boy(?) sweater to school one day and had it maliciously destroyed by two boys who, literally, held this thread while I walked away. So “Undone” (to this day my favorite Weezer song) has always held a bit of extra poignancy for me.

Fun fact about this (Spike Jonze) video: The band was filmed in one take playing a sped-up version of the song, then the footage was slowed down to make it look like they’re playing in slow motion.

—

70: Wilco, “She’s a Jar”

Summerteeth was another album that just kinda showed up one day in the tiny CD store in Scotland where I bought pretty much every new release I could afford. I brought it home and immediately loved the sad songs (this one, and “How to Fight Loneliness”) and then I loved all the songs, and then I basically loved anything Wilco ever did, just like everybody else.

—

69: Tori Amos, “Cornflake Girl”

It’s difficult to really explain how much Under the Pink meant to me when it came out in January of 1994. As a (bad but dedicated) piano player, I was intermittently fascinated by what Tori was pulling off with the keys on songs like “Yes, Anastasia,” but mostly I was just interested in listening to songs like “Pretty Good Year” and “Past the Mission” and being very, very sad. And amidst all of that, the (extremely unlikely hit single) “Cornflake Girl” is the song that holds it all together.

Relevant fact about this song: Tori Amos was in a Cornflakes commercial in 1985. (!!!)

—

68: Elliott Smith, “Needle in the Hay”

Speaking of being very, very sad ….

—

67: Nirvana, “Sliver”

Incesticide was a lot more raw and noisy than The 13-year-old me expected, but I persevered with it (because, fuck, it was Nirvana), and it paid off in a big way. There’s a run near the beginning of this album that starts with “Sliver” and ends with two Vaselines covers that’s way, way better than any B-sides and Outtakes compilation has any right to be.

—

66: R.E.M., “Nightswimming”

I spent part of a summer in Winterthur, Switzerland when I was 17 and I don’t remember a ton about it except that there wasn’t much to do at nights except sneak a beer or two and climb over the fence of the town’s public pool for some illicit lap-swimming. The whole thing felt pretty dangerous at the time, but I bolstered up my courage with the thought that it had an implicit endorsement from R.E.M.

For what it’s worth, “Nightswimming” is 4 minutes and 18 seconds of pure, industrial-grade nostalgia, so you can probably use it to conjure up a glossy memory polaroid of your own, even if it doesn’t happen to have actual night swimming in it like mine does.

—

65: Everything but the Girl, “Missing”

I’m not sure it’s really quantifiable, but you have to figure that the deserts miss the rain, like, a lot. Also, Everything but the Girl is a really good band name. There’s a story behind it.

—

64: Marcy Playground, “Sex and Candy”

There is some backstory to this song about how the singer actually did smell sex and candy this one time and remarked on it and someone was like, “you should make a song about that,” but none of that explains how they managed to come up with that ridiculously infectious hook.

—

63: Dada, “Dizz Knee Land”

Pitch-perfect execution of a really good idea (despite the distracting spelling). I’ve loved this song since the first day I heard it almost 20 years ago.

—

62: Stone Temple Pilots, “Plush”

The second major rock concert I ever went to was The Flaming Lips, The Butthole Surfers, and STP, touring off of Core. We bummed some Marlboro menthols off of a disapproving grownup and managed to convince another one to buy us a beer from the concessions stand, which would have been enough to make it pretty much the best day ever even if Stone Temple Pilots hadn’t closed their set with this song.

—

61: Sonic Youth, “Bull in the Heather”

When I go to heaven, it’ll probably just be Kim Gordon saying random numbers over and over forever.

>> Next: 60-41

Stopping only to reach for my spectacles, I leave the house in a hurry, my addled morning thoughts beginning to coalesce around a fully formed idea: Tonight, I shall make my mark.

But such a bold endeavor requires careful preparation. Hence, today’s agenda:

1. Deploy whiskey mouthwash (I am honest enough with myself to know that, whence I intend to go tonight, it is unlikely that I will ever return).
2. Obtain professional grooming, with specific attention to my feet. My feet, I say!
3. Hide the shame of my nakedness with every single individual item in my wardrobe – my garments and my finery.
4. Entertain telephonic attentions (amorous) from male suitors. Telephonic.
5. Without concern for my comfort or well-being, expose my person to the cold night air.
6. Fill my ears and feed my mind with the music of my heart.
7. Arrive at social events, one after the other (but remain, always, an outsider).
8. Drink to forget.

Note to self: Keep moving until the friction causes electricity.
Note to the musicians: Play louder! For tonight, we go to war, and we will not rest until the rosy glow of dawn blesses our victory. Time may pass, yes, but what use have we for keeping time when we can keep company? The revels of this night shall never end. Never.

Paradoxically, I have no real obligations or worries, but I do have an abundance of alcoholic beverages on my person, which are themselves both an obligation and a concern. And I am destitute. I am penniless and broken, but I am present in myself.

Now, the men come – compelled no doubt by my (outward) confidence. But unless their faces are wrinkled and drawn – broken in a thousand places by the excesses of reckless youth; carious and worn, with pouting lips and sunken eyes like those of Sir Michael Philip Jagger, lead vocalist of The Rolling Stones – then I have no time for them. They hold no interest for me.

Perhaps I have not made myself clear. Picture this:

A wild, orgiastic beat drives us into a state of ecstasy. Crowds of men reach, acquisitively, for my genitals, but I rebuff them with increasing violence. As we begin to give way to the pounding of the drums and the irresistable allure of darkness and chaos, the authorities arrive without warning and attempt, desperately, to hold back the massive storm of flesh and rage and flesh and music that threatens, no – that promises – to envelop us all forever…

Now, the party don’t start ’til I walk in.

The first real rock concert I ever went to (pace The Beach Boys sans Brian Wilson c. 1987 … with my parents) was Perry Farrell’s third Lollapalooza at Charlestown Racetrack, West Virginia, in 1993.

Rage Against the Machine opened, followed by Front 242, Arrested Development, Fishbone, Dinosaur Jr., and Alice in Chains, with Primus as the headliner. I can’t say that any of those bands really went on to be a big part of my life (except probably Dinosaur Jr.) but the experience was more or less ecstatic. Like, the life-affirming, revelatory, kick-ass good time that I had watching bands play for 8 hours at Charlestown Racetrack on August 3, 1993, with my friends Carlos and Charlie and Peter and Alfonso was in a perfect inverse proportion to the grim, sweaty journey into hell that Alfonso’s mother had on that same day – waiting outside the venue amongst a hundred angry, ticketless alterna-punks with hairdos to make sure we were OK and didn’t do drugs or have heatstroke or just drop dead on the spot from the sheer chaos and strangeness of it all. When we found her after Primus’s set, she was in tears and inexplicably standing on the back of a pickup truck frantically waving her arms in the air.

For a couple of years after that I was obsessed with mosh pits (when you are only four feet tall, the mechanics of this are really weird). And crowd-surfing (we called it “swimming”? I’m certain this is true. Fishbone had a song about it). Here are 20 more songs from the list:

—
100: Social Distortion, “Ball and Chain”

The most upbeat, bouncy song you’ll ever hear about being down and out and drunk and sick of it all. For the longest time I assumed this was about how Mike Ness didn’t get along well with his wife, which is a much less compelling thing for a punk band to be worrying about.

—

99: Jeff Buckley, “Last Goodbye”

There are many things about Jeff Buckley, but the things that I think the most about when I think about Jeff Buckley are his unbelievable vocal range and also how he died in a river at night which is just the most poignant but also horrible but also still poignant way to die. I’ve just googled the thing about his vocal range and it was four motherfucking octaves, which, so, I was right about that.

—

98: Juliana Hatfield Three, “Sister”

I don’t even have a sister, but I hate her because of this song.

—

97: Porno for Pyros, “Pets”

My friend Brett asked his dad to get him the Porno for Pyros album for Christmas in 1993 but his mom made him take it back because it had tracks called “Bad Shit” and “Orgasm” on it. For this, and other reasons, Porno for Pyros seemed exotic and dangerous to me at the time, and the fundamental strangeness of that album notwithstanding (and despite the fact that a weirdo song like “Pets” could only have been a hit single in the ’90s), it’s still a delight to listen to.

—

96: Radiohead, “Black Star”

There is a moment in Black Star where the song begins to fall apart and Thom Yorke brings it back by harmonizing with himself on the line “I keep falling over, I keep passing out” and I honestly think that it is one of the best moments in any song ever.

—

95: Counting Crows, “A Murder of One”

I was probably just about at an age where I was starting to weigh up how cool I thought I was versus how much I really wanted to buy the debut Counting Crows album when August and Everything After came out, but this song (the second single from the album) pushed me over the edge, and I’m glad that the fleeting but briefly dedicated Counting Crows fan part of me won that particular battle.

—

94: Dismemberment Plan, “Ice of Boston”

I saw Dismemberment Plan play in support of Is Terrified at Fort Reno (DC’s awesome awesome awesome Ian MacKaye-organized free summer concert series) and bought the album off them after the show. I kind of have a fierce DC pride about this particular band, and this song really drives that home: like, why would you move to Boston, Travis Morrison? That was dumb.

—

93: Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Scar Tissue”

I was way too distracted by Nirvana to get caught up in the Blood Sugar Sex Magik mania that took over every awkward house party I went to in the 7th grade, so I’ve never been anything more than a casual fan of the Chili Peppers. But “Scar Tissue”, in addition to being a huge surprise from a band that was fraying a bit at the edges, was my clear winner for 1999′s song of the summer. It didn’t hurt that I spent that summer in California, where the Chili Peppers make a whole lot more sense.

—

92: Frente, “Labor of Love”

It’s the accent, I think, that does it. And that jangly, jangly guitar. And the fact that anyone who heard their cover of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” was already kind of in love with this band anyway if they knew what was good for them. The entirety of Marvin the Album is actually really fun and Australian.

—

91: Heavens to Betsy, “Axemen”

Sleater Kinney before they were Sleater Kinney, in case you missed it, and with even more rawness and edge to them, if that’s even possible. “Axemen” builds to a point where you’ll be fully ready to go to the pep rally and murder everyone by the time it’s finished with you.

—

90: Smashing Pumpkins, “Cherub Rock”

I’d never really thought much about this before, but the production on Siamese Dream is just incredible. It all starts with that drum fill to open “Cherub Rock”, and then it’s just like, “Holy shit, it’s the motherfucking Smashing Pumpkins”.

—

89: Spacehog, “Meantime”

We knew some girls in high school who were Spacehog groupies. Like, they hung out with the band on their tour bus and gave them blow jobs or whatever. Which, that’s an odd choice of band to be a hardcore groupie of? Anyway. I like the part where he goes “ooh ooh ooh eee ooh ooh ooh ooh”.

—

88: Screaming Trees, “Nearly Lost You”

I will remind you that this little gem was on the soundtrack to Singles back when movie soundtracks really mattered or something. Eddie Vedder was in that movie? That was pretty neat that they made a whole movie about wearing flannel.

—

87: PJ Harvey, “Rid of Me”

I think I may have been too young to fully appreciate the intense, sexually charged badassery of Rid of Me when that album came out, but I wasn’t dumb enough to miss the fact that something amazing was happening with this song. There’s a tense-and-release thing going on here that nobody really does like PJ Harvey does.

—

86: King Missile, “Detachable Penis”

I went home to DC to visit my parents a couple of months ago and my dad was humming this song. Weirdest thing. He was like, “Yeah, I guess I heard it somewhere, and it’s just a really good story.” King Missile played the HFStival in 1991 with The Violent Femmes, Gang of Four, and The La’s and I really badly wanted to go, but I was 12, which is too young to figure out how you get tickets and/or rides to music festivals.

—

85: Flaming Lips, “Waitin’ for a Superman”

There was always a bit of a disconnect for me that the goofy-ass band I knew as the one-hit-wonders who made “She Don’t Use Jelly” went on to make this rich, lush, beautiful album full of soaring, inspired future music like “Waitin’ for a Superman.”

—

84: Nada Surf, “Popular”

It adds to this song to know that most of the lyrics are excerpts from a teen advice book called Penny’s Guide to Teen-Age Charm and Popularity, and that Nada Surf were actually secretly an awesome band and went on to do great things. And also, the music video. This is pretty much why they invented music videos.

—

83: Jane’s Addiction, “Been Caught Stealing”

Fun fact about Perry Farrell: He is 52 years old now. If this song is biographical, he was “caught stealing” in 1964. Anyway, he makes it sound like a lot of fun.

—

82: Blur, “Best Days”

I’ve always kind of preferred ballady Blur to jaunty Blur, probably because The Great Escape was my entry point into the band. The trio of ballads on that album – “He Thought of Cars”, “The Universal”, and the fantastic “Best Days” – are enough dramatic Blur melancholia to put you in a nostalgia-induced coma if you’re not mentally prepared. Listen with caution.

—

81: Pulp, “Babies”

Like a lot of British teenagers, I had a big poster hanging up in my room during high school of Jarvis Cocker sneering and giving everybody the V sign, as if to say “Fuck you, guv’nor; but also, I am an incredibly insecure person”. Pulp is a band that’s all about attitude, and while the particular poses that they strike on their three major albums (His ‘N’ Hers, Different Class, and This Is Hardcore) each have unique characteristics, they’re always deeply relatable. “Babies”, the centerpiece of “His ‘N’ Hers”, is a perfect example.

>> Next: 80-61

She sank deeper into her bubblebath, the bubbles bubbling around her like the stormy chaos of her newly awakened passion. Why couldn’t love be like it was like in the storybooks? She had always believed that love would be a nice thing, like swimming with dolphins, but this was a darker feeling, more primal somehow, as if the dolphins (in this particular metaphor) were sharks, or, like, still dolphins but with shark teeth: sholphins. Darks. Dolpharks. Playful but sharp. But so anyway, then she fell asleep and she had this dream that Xavier was a vampire and that he tried to bite her but then James saved her and his shirt got ripped so that pecs again, but how maybe she had actually wanted to get bitten by the vampire and part of her – a part of her she never knew existed – was maybe just a little bit angry with James for rescuing her. What was that all about? Was she going crazy? So weird.

<< Excerpts From My Romance Novel, Part 1

1993 was a pretty good year for alternative rock. I know, because I watched the whole thing on MTV in my basement, with a remote poised to hit record when a promising video came along that I could document for posterity on my “Great Music” video tape. The tape came in particularly handy as a supplement whenever MTV saw fit to punish one with, say, Bill Bellamy’s MTV Jamz or those awful people in that awful beach house or, God forbid, the dreaded Grind.

Among a number of other hot jams, 1993 yielded “Two Princes”, “Hey Jealousy”, and “Creep”, which were the first three cassette singles I ever bought. Along with those indelible classics, “Great Music” had songs by Soul Asylum, Guns & Roses, Pearl Jam, Snow (“Informer”), Primus, Blind Melon, Arrested Development, Megadeth (“Sweating Bullets”), Genesis, Candlebox, and Faith No More. It was last called into service two years later when R.E.M. surprised everyone by playing an unreleased new song (“Wake Up Bomb”) live at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, which, at the time, was the best song I had ever heard.

“Great Music” might well still exist somewhere in my parents’ basement. It’s probably worth millions by now. Here are 20 more songs:

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120: Lisa Loeb, “Stay (I Missed You)”

So much going on here – those cat glasses she wears in the video, the video itself (an odd little story about wide-angle shots and quirky long pans in an empty apartment), and then the fact that this song is inextricably linked to Reality Bites, and Winona Ryder, Queen of the ’90s. What’s not to love about Lisa Loeb? She talks so all the time.

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119: Guided by Voices, “I Am a Scientist”

Lo-Fi, Lo-Fi, Lo-Fi, Lo-Fi, Lo-Fi. Also, so many other things about GBV, who quietly towered over everything during the ’90s. But definitely Lo-Fi.

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118: Arab Strap, “Packs of Three”

Arab Strap I discovered in my Sophomore year of college, via their second album, Philophobia. At the time I didn’t realize you were allowed to talk over a song instead of singing if you weren’t Mark E. Smith, so this band was a bit of a novelty at first, and then they were a lasting, varied, and rich pleasure. “Packs of Three” has probably the most memorable opening line of a song that I’ve ever heard.

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117: Bran Van 3000, “Drinking in LA”

I fought tooth and nail to get my hands on our promo copy of Bran Van’s debut (Glee) at the record store where I worked in 1998. It very nearly went to Doug, who had an insufferable habit of coming in early and grabbing all the good CDs off the promo rack. Doug also claimed to be pretty good friends with Thom Yorke, which, I dunno, two strikes; but he was an otherwise decent fellow.

Anyway, I owe my abiding affection for the Bran Van 3000 partially to the fact that I had to fight for this album and partially to the impromptu karaoke sessions I held in my room throughout college, where “Drinking in LA” was a staple. If you’ve had the misfortune to turn older than 26, listen to this one at your peril: it’s a bittersweet pleasure.

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116: Jawbox, “Savory”

Man, DC had the coolest fucking bands for a while. So, hometown favorite here, but I’m also a sucker for acts that can do shouty and angular with the right amount of zeal. “Savory” is a rager.

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115: Pavement, “Shady Lane”

I spent a summer in Berkeley studying Ancient Greek after my Junior year in college, and apart from occasional sanity trips to Berkeley’s amazing record stores (Rasputin Records and Amoeba) to pick up fuel for my mammoth 16-hour study sessions, I spent the whole time locked up in my room with Hansen and Quinn’s (hateful but wonderful but hateful) Greek: An Intensive Course. I listened to a whole fuckload of Pavement that summer. “Shady Lane”, absurdly, makes me think of Berkeley, California, and Aorist Subjunctive Actives.

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114: Soul Asylum, “Runaway Train”

Grave Dancers Union was the first cassette tape I played so much that I wore it out. “Somebody to Shove”, “Black Gold”, and then “Runaway Train” is a pretty compelling way to start an album.

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113: Sonic Youth, “Drunken Butterfly”

By the time I was ready for Sonic Youth, they’d already built up a fairly intimidating discography, so I got to know them through their back catalogue, one record at a time and each one a revelation. This sexy, sexy song is off Dirty.

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112: Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name”

Holy fuck this song made me feel cool and rebellious. It was a less ironic time.

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111: Rainer Maria, “Atlantic”

Rainer Maria songs always feel like they might fall apart at any moment. “Atlantic” (off their overlooked 1999 EP of the same name) is no exception, but it has more ambition and scope than most of their earlier work. Also, it is fucking beautiful.

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110: Placebo, “Pure Morning”

The world was briefly in love with Placebo when this song came out in 1998. In an unpopular move, I kept on loving them for years afterwards, but that’s another story.

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109: Morrissey, “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get”

Morrissey at his histrionic best. Remember this video? It’s the one with all the swinging lamps.

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108: Ladytron, “Playgirl”

Off the 1999 EP, Miss Black and Her Friends, “Playgirl” will light up a mix tape if called upon to do so. I think that’s how I first heard it. Ladytron were incredibly early on that whole New Wave revival that took us through half of the next decade.

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107: Helmet, “In the Meantime”

Man, Helmet were fucking tough. If there was more metal like this I would probably listen to a lot more metal.

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106: Beck, “Nobody’s Fault but My Own”

Mutations is the secret best Beck album, but keep that on the downlow (no point hurting Odelay‘s feelings at this stage). It came out during my second year of college and it’s a great album to chain smoke to, which is what I was mostly into at the time.

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105: Ben Folds Five, “Brick”

I was introduced to Ben Folds Five’s fantastic “Whatever and Ever Amen” by my high school history teacher, of all people. There’s an overwhelming sense of exuberance and joy pervading the album that doesn’t jive at all with how I felt during my senior year in high school, which is when this came out (I was a mopey fucking teenager). Anyway, this was my favorite track at the time, presumably because it’s the only sad one.

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104: Blur, “Coffee and TV”

Weirdly, my copy of 13 is a bootleg that I bought for 100 Rubles at the shadiest record store of all time in St. Petersburg, Russia. I had decided I wasn’t going to pay full price for the album back home because, like, how many Blur albums does a man really need? But I’m glad I stuck with them – “Coffee and TV” is Blur at their Blurriest. They never really lost it.

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103: Smog, “I Was a Stranger”

I never really knew a whole lot about Bill Callahan and Smog except that he did this song and that it’s awesome.

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102: Sponge, “Molly”

There are secretly a few Sponge songs that are really good songs. “Plowed” and “Wax Ecstatic” come to mind. But “Molly” is the classic. Don’t ask why.

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101: Gin Blossoms, “Hey Jealousy”

Why would the best song of all time be only the 101st best song of the ’90s? The world is a confusing and hurtful place. But it is a vastly better place because it has Hey Jealousy in it.

>> Next: 120-101

After they were done Frenching, they got back on their horses (as mentioned previously, James was riding a white stallion with a mane that was as white as the snow and Trixie was riding a mare with brown splotches) and rode very quickly through a meadow, each consumed by their own steamy thoughts about what had happened (Frenching). It was still raining.