The Music Blog of the Infonistacrat!

It’s kind of a shame that when you mention 90’s music, most people immediately think of grunge and the Seattle Scene. It’s a shame because there was a lot of really great alternative music floating about back then.

In 1994, I had just gotten out of college, and had a really crappy job where I drove around Chicago all day doing field service work for a small software developer. The job sucked, and the customers I had were really awful, with the exception of Rose Records, which I will get in to late. On average, I drove 150-200 miles a day throughout the Chicagoland area. Anyone who lives there knows just how bad that can be. Despite how bad it sucked, there were some really great things about the job:

• I got to know Chicago like the back of my hand, and it is a really great city.
• I knew where all the great hog dog stands in the city were located, and Chicago has a LOT of great hot dog stands!
• I got to drive around and listen to Q101 all day

It’s that last item that you should know was the best part. Q101 was, in the mid and late 90’s, about the best radio station you could hope to have. They had an insane number of great deejays there who played what seems like the greatest music ever. There really wasn’t anything alternative that they didn’t play. So todays list is all about those great alternative, none grunge 90’s hits. Yeah, I left some great ones off the list…don’t worry, I’m sure there will be a part two.

The highlights here have to be Urge Overkill covering Neil Diamond’s Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon, off the Pulp Fiction Soundtrack. I was debating on doing a playlist off that soundtrack, but there is some pretty obscure and unusual songs on there. But then again the whole damn movie was like that. You really couldn’t be hip 13 years ago if you hadn’t seen Pulp Fiction. I think the same can be pretty much said today. Liz Phair, who along with Urge Overkill was from Chicago, is also a not to be missed selection.

So back to Rose Records. As I said, I used to do a lot of support for this software place in Chicago. I did a lot of hardware and Unix type stuff, and the job was basically a one year resume builder on my way to bigger things. Rose Records was a very cool account, because I got to meet Jim Rose, the owner of Rose Records. Nice guy, but kind of cheap, if you know what I mean. So we kind of had this thing worked out where I gave his store managers my pager number, and when they had issues, I would go fix em, but not tell my boss. In return, I was paid in CD’s. Not a bad setup at all, if you ask me. I used to love that big downtown store. I was always sure to get the great stuff. They even hooked me up with R.E.M. tickets 11 rows back for the Monster tour. I had to pay face value, but man, what a show!

1. Liz Phair - Supernova
2. Marcy Playground - Sex And Candy
3. Sneaker Pimps - Six Underground
4. Mazzy Star - Fade into You
5. Elastica - Connection
6. Urge Overkill - Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon
7. Jesus Jones - Right Here, Right Now
8. The Presidents Of The Unites States Of America - Lump
9. Cracker - Low
10. Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy
11. Blind Melon - No Rain
12. Republica - Ready To Go
13. Cardigens - Lovefool
14. Sublime - Santeria.mp3
15. Butthole Surfers - Pepper