CAST YOUR MIND BACK: Episode 5, 1997: The best year of our lives, apparently. And accurately.

***WARNING, NECESSARY SWEARS***

HOLY FUCKING SHIT GUYS. It is definitely an accurate description to call 1997 as the best year of music, possibly ever, definitely in Australian history. If we could bottle this slice of musical history and drink it up it would be the sweetest, most excellent drink in the world. It was RIDICULOUSLY HARD to pick 15 of the most memorable for this year, simply for the fact that nearly EVERY GODDAMN SONG was good and IS STILL good. With the absence of maybe Pauline Pantsdown, the top 20 was consistently decent, every song still standing up today, yes even you Chumbawumba, still getting flogged during sporting events. Music has never been this good since and never will; even the novelty songs and one hit wonders had repeat listenability (except maybe "Cows With Guns" by Dana Lyons).

Bands such as Blink 182, Smash Mouth, Cornershop, the Verve, and Dandy Warhols were coming out with their big time debuts, hitting big before their inevitable roll downhill. Not only was the international scene prime, but the Australian scene was just NAILING IT, with debuts from Jebediah, Living End, The Mavis', Grinspoon, Powderfinger (JC is one of the few songs of theirs I have willingly listened to)  and solid follow ups from Silverchair, Custard, Spiderbait, and of course the number one spotters the Whitlams. Kylie was still in indie girl phase, Nick Cave was breaking hearts with 'The Boatman's Call', and Regurgitator were just about to start killing it with 'Unit'. If a few of those Australian artists had stopped there, they would have achieved legendary status. 

I'm sure there was some crap that year as well, but the fact is also that people were listening to the right stuff too, and it all made it in, even Ween. (Nothing from Björk's 'Homogenic' made it in, but we'll let that one slide.) And every band whether you liked them or not had a good song, Beck, Blur, Marilyn Manson, Metallica. I can't emphasize it enough; during the final Hottest 100 of the last 20 years countdown in June this year, the most entries were from 1997 (with 12 of them), and it makes perfect sense. It was a brilliant year. 

So with that said, I will focus more on the obscurities than the obvious, we-all-loved-it songs, otherwise I'd be here all day, and APPARENTLY MY BLOGS ARE TOO LONG. 

Daft Punk - Da Funk (at #98)

I think the only reason this wasn't higher in the mix was because of there being just so many good songs this year. No one could forget the classic Spike Jonze directed film clip in which dog faced boy Charles with his broken boombox and leg gets around New York. Interestingly, the actor who plays Charles has had his finger in a few Jonze-ish pies since then.

Faithless - Don't Leave (at #95)

Everyone knows Faithless as the whole deep trancey stuff, with Dido thrown in there time to time, but this song was one of their underrated gems before that whole image took over. Such a delicately heartfelt song that very much emulates the tragedy of breaking up. Looks like it was used in 'A Life Less Ordinary', as was the excellent Beck song ''Deadweight'' that year. Great film too!

Brainbug - Nightmare (#85)

One of those one hit wonders I'm talking about, and a bit of silly fun. Brainbug was an Italian electronic dance music producer, who disappeared from the scene after the 90's and whose other songs at a glance sound a lot like this one. The filmclip made it a lot of fun though and was a great watch during a saturday morning Rage session. 

Space - Female of the Species (#75)

Space were a little band out of Liverpool that made it big with this single, then released 'Tin Planet' which I bought from Crazy Clarks for $10, then disappeared and never came back again. A real shame, as their quirky pop rock was extremely good stuff, and this song is a sexy slice of musical cheesecake (just imagine a better looking guy is singing it). 

Front End Loader - Pulse (#72)

This is a perfect rock song. It picks and slows down in the right places, makes you feel like moshing, harmonizes perfectly, indulges in slightly morbid subject matter. I think my whole family loved this song. Also it's fitting that Regurgitator's replacement drummer Pete Kostic was in this band, 'cause those drums! I've listened to it 3 times just now and could go a fourth.

Robyn Loau - Sick With Love (#71)

Remember Girlfriend? You had blocked that out, hadn't you? They were responsible for me wanting to wear flower hats when I was 7. The frontlady of the early 1990's australian girl group (only 90's australian girl group??) grew up and released this (terribly written) single in 1997 and it actually did pretty decently. Nothing really came out of that however, except that years later when re-discovering it, I added Robyn to MySpace and actually had some back and forth comments. 


White Town - Your Woman (#59)

Another slice of musical perfection, don't even tell me you disagree! It was played over and over again for years after it came out, and you can still catch it making a go-around. I loved it soooo much. White Town was greatly a one hit wonder, however the one guy who makes all of the music in White Town is still very much doing music. 

Arkarna - Eat me (#50)

Arkarna was another forgotten band I totally adored. I never got their album "Fresh Meat" but I taped their Live At the Wireless set for it at the time and played it constantly. Such good tunes, and such cute dudes. Fun fact: their song "So Little Time" became the theme song for Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's TV show of the same name. BIG MISTAKE GUYS. 

Filter feat. the Crystal Method - (Can't You) Trip Like I Do (#47)

Before Filter were asking us to take a picture, they collaborated with The Crystal Method to create this brooding speedy track for the purpose of the soundtrack to 'Spawn'. Frontman RIchard Patrick's screeching vocals is a perfect accompaniment to the squeaky electronics and breaking beats. And because of this song, everyone remembers that great movie 'Spawn'.

The Cure - Wrong Number (#45)

Probably the last really popular Cure song they've created, this song was completely flogged on Triple J when it came out. It was totally unavoidable, and way too difficult to get out of your head. It was also pretty excellent, thankfully, reminding the public of why the Cure are so good, even if it is silly to like the Cure.

Pendulum - Coma (#37)

NOT to be confused by another Australian irritating dub-step band, Pendulum were close to giving me nightmares with this song. Opening with a really well picked creepy line from the not-so-creepy Eddie Murphy film 'Coming To America', add that to the cat-miaowy noises and footsteps, equals a song that takes you to all sorts of disturbing mental places. Fantastic. 

Regurgitator - Everyday Formula (#19)

The 'Gurge really sold their electro-punk-pop for me with this song, coupled with their Tron homage film clip. It also really sold Quan Yeoman's face to me as well. This was the year 'Unit' was released, which would go on to become their biggest hit and one of Australia's best albums of like, forever. 'Unit' kept them in the ARIA charts for something like 3 years, as they gradually released super fantastic single after single. I lusted over this album all throughout my childhood (It was R rated), surviving on a recorded tape of singles that I got off a friend. Finally my mum bought me a copy when I was a uni student, which was almost a humour joke after all that.

Cordrazine -  Crazy (#17)

I can still listen to this song for it's brooding, haunting melancholy. It seems to perfectly encapsulate that feeling of being out of control and isolated, with lead singer Hamish Cowan's voice a perfect accompaniment for the mood. This was the big single for Cordrazine, an Australian band that faded away not long after this hit. I remember seeing them on the bill to play at the Zoo in 2010 however so it appears they did reform (as is the thing to do in the twentyteens).  

Quindon Tarver and Lee Perry - Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen) (#16)

Baz Lurhman had a bunch to do with this song which coincided with the excellent Romeo and Juliet soundtrack. Little man Quindon Tarver had won hearts with his gospel voice and ensured the track was not all about some old guy dishing out intriguing advice. The advice was pretty timeless, although very open to parody, achieved somewhat well by John Safran. 

Radiohead - Paranoid Android (#9)

I've done enough tooting of my own horn about Radiohead to fill a blog on its own.. but I have to tell you this song was the beginning of a long, long, long love affair with them. They've never let me down, and this song was worth an album of goodness, it has so much depth and creativity and emotion and layers and multiple playing power. The song, with the clip, takes you into a dark, aggressive place, and at 11 I had no idea how much that place would mean to me in my teenage years. And that's all I'll say.

So yep, done, dusted, 1997: best. I dare you to top it. Won't happen. 
P.S. Special thanks to Mike the Lover for letting me do this on his Mac. Hey did you know that Macs are really good?

CAST YOUR MIND BACK: Episode 4, 1996: The birth of my love for You Am I, Beck, and Ben Folds Five

Apologies, avid readers of this humble blog. I had a pretty good run, didn't I? I was spitting them out quick as a flash, and then all that momentum tumbled into a giant void of emptiness. To be truthful, I actually had one of those periods of life where work/life balance became work/work balance, and I literally had no time to do any recreational activities, such as silly blogging. After a holiday (right now) resulting in me feeling even more anxious instead of more relaxed, needless to say I need a huge career change. Anyway, here I am, who knows when I'll be here again. 

SO! WHAT did you think of the final Hottest 100 of the Last 20 Years countdown, announced about 70 years ago? Did you vomit in disgust or cheer in elation at the songs that made it and didn't make it? Oasis being no. 1 was probably deserved in my opinion, as it was a song that still is hard to escape. On social media there are a lot of opinions, like of course 1.where are the girls, and 2. why was one of the only hip hop songs to make it in (Nosebleed Section by Hilltop Hoods at number 4) by white Australians (never mind being average), and 3. where were these songs. Also it appears a lot of people can't count and are shitty that Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' (released in 1991) didn't top the list. 
No one will ever be completely happy with a music list, otherwise why would there be polls based on opinion!? 

This discussion is completely obsolete of course because all watercooler discussions (if you have colleagues who follow such polls) have already been done and dusted...

Nevertheless, I shall press on with my project, and here is 1996's most memorable for you. This was a pretty good year and I had to make some serious cutbacks, such as Björk's Hyperballad... I don't want to Björk you all out too much, audience. 

Snout- Cromagnon Man (coming in at #89)

Snout! They were such a good band, guys. They had a terrible name which probably held them back and reserved them only for soundtracks to The Secret Life of Us etc. But this song was cracking as and had me rocking the car on the way to Brisbane Arts Theatre rehearsals. Plus they had a stack of great singles that you'd probably remember if you heard them now, I bet. What happened to Snout, you ask? Not a lot musically, apart from frontman Ross McLennan who had his own solo act in 2009. I hope he's still doing stuff. 

Luscious Jackson - Naked Eye (#82)

A catchy addictive song by a bunch of girls with excellent voices. This song made the rounds a lot as it has become firmly embedded in my head since it got airplay. Probably fair to say Luscious Jackson was some of a one hit wonder in Australia with this, but I know they had a few more good songs up their sleeve. 

You Am I - Soldiers (#80) + Good Mornin' (#84)

Too hard to pick one! When each of these songs came out (I can't remember which one was first), I fell in complete love with You Am I and decided they were my new favourite band. I remember watching the ARIA's that year and cursing whoever won over You Am I, who had released 'Hourly Daily' at the time. It ended up winnning Album of the Year AND Best Independent Release, so there was a lot of cheering. They toured Brisbane in June playing that album, plus 'Hi Fi Way' in their entirety, which was abso-fucking-lutely fantastic. 

Frente! - What's Come Over Me (#66)

After their searing success with 'Marvin the Album', Frente! released their second offering, 'Shape', which saw them shape their music into less poppy and slightly deeper territory (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!). I thought they had even dropped their exclamation mark, but I can't confirm this anywhere. 'Shape' wasn't that well received, and they soon disappeared off the radar. But there was some pretty excellent stuff there (or at least, I would assume, it's near impossible to find this album). But I loved this song and also this song, both quite dramatically tragic in tone. 

 Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight Tonight (#55)

Holy shitballs I loved this song. 'Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness' was the only album of the Smashing Pumpkins that anyone in my family have ever owned, and it often ended up in my room at the time, although I skipped most of the grungey hard songs. This filmclip, an ode to "La Voyage Danse La Lune", by Georges Melies, is pretty incredible, and the whole thing solidifies the pumpkins as a truly great band. But Billy had to go ahead and do his own stuff and kind of spoil their legacy a bit.

Geggy Tah - Whoever You Are (#42)

I have a pretty un-fun ironic story of this song. When I was in grade 5, I was made to go on our school camp to Samford, during which we travelled to the Planetarium, which was the best part of the shitty camp (during which my class teacher told us 9 and 10 year old girls that we were a bunch of bitches... anyway). This song was playing on the radio, when a car almost turned into our bus, the driver of which slammed on the breaks and sent us all flying. A couple of kids had their teeth knocked out, a lot of us were bruised, and all of us shaken, so much that I couldn't listen to the song again for weeks. I managed to break on through it though, and it's such a fun little ditty so I'm glad I got over it. 

Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity (#37)

Ah, Jamiroquai stole all our 90's hearts and promised us to never let us down, but all 90's acts with only one schtick do, especially those who can't take off oversized hats. Ok Jamiroquai is the BAND not the GUY but all I can see in this Jonathon Glazer-directed filmclip is moving furniture, not other band members. The clip by the way is great, however just like Jamiroquai, gets a little boring after the concept gets old. Anyway, this is still a great song.  

Primitive Radio Gods - Standing Outside A Broken Telephone Booth (With Money In My Hand) (#36)

This song had a great title to play hangman with. I have used it a few times, and every time it was revealed, it was a complete let down for the other player. I'm a bit of a hangman jerk. Anyway I still really love this one hit wonder and it gives me a fuzzy nostalgic feeling whenever I listen, which is happening right now. 

Beck - Devil's Haircut (#29)

This song came out, my mum loved it, she bought the album from Sunflower Records during a holiday to the Gold Coast, and so my love affair with Beck began. I honestly don't think my mum has ever listened to a Beck album all the way through more than once, because I kept stealing them and storing them in my cd player. I think Beck did a lot for my musical upbringing, including giving me my first enjoyable taste of hip hop. I'm sorry it was a white man who did it, but hey, I was growing up in Caboolture at the time, so cut me some slack. I think our electorate was even lead by a One Nation member at that time. 

Cake - The Distance (#27)

Cake's breakthrough hit was inevitable to get stuck in your head and still holds up today as an earworm of a tune. I remember dancing to this one in my room quite a bit, using actions to describe all the words (including crossing my chest for "hugging the turns"). Cake went on to become a pretty solid band, but are sort of lost in that late 90's glow, never having really progressed from that era. Still, 'Fashion Nugget' is a pretty excellent album.

No Doubt - Just A Girl (#25)

There's room for a splash of girl power in 1996 too! When No Doubt came on to the scene and Gwen Stefani hadn't discovered a swag of Harajuku girls as an entourage just yet, they were pretty rock, and pretty awesome. I was also obsessed with "Spiderwebs" and "Sunday Morning" (which I bought the single of, never being able to afford an entire CD), and was pretty fascinated with Gwen's hair, makeup, abs and voice. Also her last name was kind of my first name! We must be related!

Regurgitator - I Sucked a Lot of Cock To Get Where I Am (#23)

I had NO IDEA what the 'Gurge boys were talking about in this song, I just really liked it. My dad knew very well though, and when the CD came out for this year, he made very sure I didn't read too much into it... 

Of course there was no film clip for this song, and it was so rude I don't think it was played as often as I remember hearing it... but somehow, even though I was one of the naiver girls of my bogan town, this song was my first happy memory of enjoying Regurgitator. It also helped that Quan Yeomans was a total cutie, turning into a pretty major celeb crush. 

Babylon Zoo- Spaceman (#16)

This is the worst song ever made in the entire world. But who didn't love this song at the time and this weird bronzed up guy's haircut? The sped up 'alien'-like intro and outro, the spacey sound effects and vocoder, and disgustingly ridiculous lyrics "I always wanted you to go into space, man... Intergalactic christ..." ERGH, oh my god it's so spookey spacey dark! It's SO BAD that it's SO GOOD. I wish I could have shown you the equally awful filmclip. 

Babybird - You're Gorgeous (#10)

This is another sexually themed song that went right by my head. I thought it was sweet and bright with a very addictive chorus that was easy to sing to younger sisters when they were cute. It is an odd song, with an equally odd filmclip, particularly the weird laughing bit in the bridge. Babybird had some other really excellent songs, such as "Bad Old Man" and "The F Word", but they never really got as popular as this song. Apparently the band reformed in 2009, and in 2012 played a music festival in Suffolk with our friends Wheatus! There you go.

Ben Folds Five - Underground (#3)

Oh boy. When this song got airplay and became a hit, for guitarless dudes Ben Folds and his 'five', that was it for me. As you probably already know, I became a massive, MASSIVE fan of this band, to the point of joining online forums and shit. Oh those were the days where I was a member of an online forum about Ben Folds... *cough*... 

As I was saying recently, now listening to Ben Folds Five in public gives me an awkward feeling... like it's now too personal to do so with other people, because their music was so personalized by me. It sounds weird, but now I feel like Ben is an older cousin or uncle who I used to spend a lot of time with while my parents were away. And whom has since become a bit senile and creepy.

The filmclip for this song is horrible, but if you want to watch it I've linked the title to it. Instead, watch the band do what they do best, their live performance. 

Well that's it for 1996, and I hope to bring you 1997 a lot sooner than later. It appears to be the big year in which the majority of the songs in the final countdown were from. We'll see if it really was all it's cracked up to be!