Sweet, sweet angst.

[mrissa]

I've been generally trying to keep my reading material towards the low-angst and familiar. Ditto with my DVD viewing material. Now is not the time for dark and depressing.

...except.

Except I was a teenager in the '90s. All of my high school years and all of my college years began with 199-. (All of my junior high years, too. Huh. Busy decade.) And so I began thinking that musically, maybe the warm and fuzzy and cuddly thing was...oh, say...Alice in Chains. Nirvana's Unplugged Album. Maybe some early Tori Amos. Ooh, and is that Alanis Morisette I spy there? Haaayayyayayyoow appropriate.

"'Country Death Song' is what this playlist is all about!" I said to timprov. "I thought you didn't like 'Country Death Song,'" he said. "I hate 'Country Death Song'!" I said happily.

So now I have the first playlist I've ever made with no member of the Guthrie family on it. It is lacking in both Simon and Garfunkel. Dar Williams? No. Ella Fitzgerald? No. Buddy Holly? No. So many lovely things, not on this playlist. Boiled in Lead makes it in on a technicality, since I had a single cherished album of theirs ("Old Lead," if you're curious) when I was in high school. And I couldn't resist a few Mountain Goats songs, because nothing says, "I'm not sure the songwriter made it home from the recording session without stopping off to slit a few wrists, some of them his own," like John Darnielle. He has the grunge nature.

I'm not sure how long this is going to be the thing. Next week it may be singer-songwriters of the early 1970s, folk songs against war, or some other segment of my personal musical history. But at the moment, I have a playlist that includes things I haven't heard or wanted to hear in years, and it's making me grin.

Comments

[sraun]

You just reminded me of a statement from the Dessicated Dodo - a number of people said 'Mris should be here to hear that!' when I played the Finlandia roll on fmsv & cowfan's player piano.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Love Finlandia. One of my favorite songs ever; glad people thought of me with it. The Indigo Girls five-part harmony version makes me laugh and cry all at once.

Huh. You'd think Sibelius would be the diametric opposite of this playlist, but he isn't. Finns know from angst. Just not in Finlandia.

[sraun]

Ooh, play The Indigo Girls version for me sometime? [insert sounds of great interest!]

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Next time the opportunity presents itself, gladly.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i find nine inch nails' _pretty hate machine_ to be a lovely and cheering thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"I'D RATHER DIE THAN GIVE YOU CONTROL!!!!!!"

Er. I mean, yes, I see what you mean.

[arkuat]

I love that feeling. My high school days involved a lot of Talking Heads albums on repeat, and I haven't wallowed in early Talking Heads much since then. But I know I'll be doing that again someday.

And I love "Old Lead"

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Arkuat,
My college days involved a lot of Talking Heads albums on repeat, and then I sort of forgot about them for a while...until I had a child. One day when she was about three my husband was at home with her, and he was at loose ends, so he played the Stop Making Sense DVD for her. It became her new favorite movie that we had to play Every. Single. Night. for almost a year. I am not making this up.

Fortunately we like Talking Heads quite a bit (which is why we have the DVD), but even David Byrne and the Big Suit gets old after six months or so.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I only know the radio-played Talking Heads stuff, mostly. Hmmmmm.

[carbonel]

Sounds like Steve Goodman's "Fourteen Days" belongs on the list. I think it's the only song I deliberately omitted when I ripped my CDs.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know it, so I can't tell you whether it has the grunge nature or is merely depressing.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to imagine what a Steve Goodman song that had the grunge nature would be like, and failing miserably.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

is NIN too over the top?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not in the least! But I don't know if we have any; if we do, it's not on timprov's computer.

Heh. Pearl Jam's "Alive" just came on. Which was our Academic Decathlon theme song my senior year. I love shuffle-play.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Probably because I was in high school at about the same time you were, I find it difficult to concoct any playlist that other people will not find horribly depressing. (Yes, I realize this song is about heroin and death, but it's upbeat and I have memories of dancing to it!)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, count me out of "other people," in this case.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Oooh, Mountain Goats! I love John Darnielle and find a lot of his stuff oddly cheerful. Nothing can pull me out of a blue funk quite as effectively as singing along with "This Year" at full volume.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For me, ideally while making bread. Which I'm not doing much of at the moment, but the theory is the same.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Haaayayyayayyoow appropriate.

...That was such an accurate phonetic rendering it made me really grin.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. I figured there would be plenty of people reading this who would go, "Oooooookay then," but that those who know that song ought to be able to tell what it was.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

...and to think, my Mom used to say that my Rickie Lee Jones albums reminded her of cats fighting.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Hee - I suppose I have the opposite problem, being born approximately 10 years earlier. It's hard to brood to "Walking on Sunshine," or "Goody Two Shoes."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I find it ridiculously easy to brood to "Walking on Sunshine." Because I came of age in the '90s. I can brood to the B52s. It's a generational (or perhaps sub-generational? age-cohort?) gift.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Emo is generational? Hmmm...

I have also thought since that New Order and The Smiths were producing some pretty broody music during my teenage years, so maybe I'm just fulluvit.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah, no, you mistake me. I'm not saying, "We're so emo we can brood to 'Walking on Sunshine.'" I'm saying that we can brood to "Walking on Sunshine" and not to "Glycerine" or "Heaven Beside You" or really high-octane grunge angst. Strange but true.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Aha. Interesting indeed.

I'm trying to think of a medical metaphor and coming up short. Supertasters are coming to mind...

[timprov.livejournal.com]

<broody face>
"Some flavors are tooooooooo much."
</broody face>

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I have recently developed a strange case of nostalgia for grunge bands that I'm not quite sure what to do with, considering that I was never a very big fan of grunge at the time (despite going to the 1992 Lollapalooza). I was much more into 80's pop and folk music when grunge was actually happening.

The angstiest album of the early 90's for me, though, is R.E.M.'s Out of Time--I can't listen to it without going into a terribly funk most of the time. Even "Shiny Happy People".

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Shiny Happy People" is, like, the most depressing song of that era. Seriously. It's only on the playlist provisionally. It may get removed.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I never include it on playlists. Usually, if I pick something from that album, I play it safe and go with "Losing My Religion"--which is not my favorite song from that album, but is the least likely to make me burst out crying. My favorite one is "Half A World Away" but I can't listen to it unless in a very particular mood.

[laurel]

I once had someone comment that all I listened to was depressing music and that did not compute for me. I guess because lots of it is in a minor key and/or angsty, he thought it depressing. Really made no sense.

I graduated high school in '89 and have a ton of fondness for '80s music which included some very upbeat goofy silly stuff as well as some angsty stuff. And then there was college in the '90s with the angst and the grunge and all that. And white guys from rural areas trying to dance to hip hop etc. Good times.

And now I'm dismayed because I must've removed my Michael Stipe w/ Space Ghost "Shiny Happy People" LJ icon. Bummer.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My college experience was completely devoid of anyone of any color from anywhere trying to dance to hip hop.

*gloats*