'90s Revival Starts Here

If it isn’t already underway, that is.

I was listening to Nine Inch Nails’s Broken EP today in my car. Before that, Dirt by Alice in Chains. Before that, Suede’s first album. Before that, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. I did this totally by accident, but then I realized that all these albums came out around the same time (1991-1993). Interesting.

So I started thinking about what music came out way back then. Lots of good shit, actually.

Such as:

Nirvana Nevermind and In Utero
Matthew Sweet Girlfriend
Soundgarden Badmotorfinger
XTC Nonsuch
Sugar Copper Blue
k.d. lang Ingénue
Ride Going Blank Again
Ministry Psalm 69
The Church Priest=Aura
Lush Spooky
Blur Leisure
St. Etienne Foxbase Alpha
Julian Cope Peggy Suicide
Massive Attack Blue Lines
Fugazi Steady Diet of Nothing
P.J. Harvey Dry and Rid of Me
Dr. Dre The Chronic
Tool Opiate
Morrissey Your Arsenal
Type O Negative Bloody Kisses
Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream
Teenage Fanclub Bandwagonesque
Urge Overkill Saturation

Of course, I imagine I could pick any random year and find 10-20 CDs that were pretty cool, but still.

And this is not to say that 1992 was a musical paradise: that was also the year that Eric Clapton put out that utterly maudlin piece of shit “Tears in Heaven” from his stripped-down Unplugged album (if, by “stripped-down” you mean three guitars, a keyboard player, a bassist, a drummer AND a percussionist plus a trio of backing vocalists – mighty gutsy of you there, Slowhand).

Where was I?

What’s funnier is that from what I recall, I was always unhappy and/or pissed off back then, and yet I’m loving this little musical trip down memory lane.

Stuff Maxim in the Blender

Dennis Publishing may be putting its American titles up for sale.

I gotta give it up for Felix Dennis: He managed to build a successful magazine that catered to a demographic not known for being the most voracious of readers (of course, all the softcore porn didn’t hurt). Still, Maxim is enjoyable, mindless disposable fluff – something to read on airplanes or at the gym. Or at least it was: I haven’t read it since my “research” subscription expired six years ago (thanks, Bashar).

Maxim’s retarded little brother Stuff, on the other hand, is for guys who find the parent periodical too intellectually challenging, while Blender was originally meant to be an American version of the British music magazines I love so much (Q, Uncut) but fell short of the mark, IMHO.

If I had a few million dollars lying around, I might buy Blender. Any investors who want to bankroll my pipe dreams, contact me via this blog.

Reign in Blood

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
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