Best Band of the 90s?

Centerpiece said:
Points for mentioning Bueno Vista Social Club. Saw them in Knoxville at the Tennessee Theater.

I agree about the criteria of “best”. It’s difficult to pick because of genre diversity.

What criteria should be used?

It’s all just a bit like “so and so is the best guitar player of all time”
Click to expand...
Was Ibrahim Ferrer a part of that tour? He was such an incredible talent.

I saw Robert Cray at the Tennessee. It’s a great venue. Might be the best live performance I’ve ever seen.
 
BlooVooDoo said:
Was Ibrahim Ferrer a part of that tour? He was such an incredible talent.

I saw Robert Cray at the Tennessee. It’s a great venue. Might be the best live performance I’ve ever seen.
Click to expand...
YES! We saw Ibrahim! In-cred-eeeeee-blay! The young piano monster was there too. Phenom.
Just saw Robert Cray a couple of months ago in little bitty Morganton. (Saw Keb Mo' there too last year)
The Tenn Theater in K'ville is something else to be sure!
 
superrific said:
REM of the 1980s would be on the list. REM of the 1990s would not. I'm quite surprised that nycfan listed Sonic Youth, who would be my #1 pick, although some of their best work preceded and followed the 1990s.
Click to expand...
Agreed I enjoy d REM but it seems like they weren’t really mainstream anymore in the 90’s. Did they have any 90’s hits. Interesting I liked up their 90’s hits and I remember most of them up until ‘95 and then nothing. I imagine they were getting decreasing mainstream exposure. Or maybe the exposure I had wasn’t on my radar. But even their hits I remember as kind of cool but not anything that had a major impact on the 90’s.
 
superrific said:
REM of the 1980s would be on the list. REM of the 1990s would not. I'm quite surprised that nycfan listed Sonic Youth, who would be my #1 pick, although some of their best work preceded and followed the 1990s.
Click to expand...
Sonic Youth definitely up there for me for that decade. And, yeah, some of their best work came out in the 1980s.
 
nycfan said:
REM had one all time great album in 1991 (Out of Time) and the followup Automatic for the People was not elite but still top notch. Those two albums alone put them on my list, and Monster was solid, if not as good as their best work. I pretend they had no albums after that. And that still puts them on my personal list for the 90s (they are also at or near the top of my 80s list).

I’ve always associated the Pixies and the Breeders, though neither standing alone would make my list and I’m just crediting Doolittle as the 1990s even though it’s an ‘89 album, but I totally get that being an iffy call based entirely on how I’ve listened to their music as if the Pixies were replaced by the Breeders.

Dirty by Sonic Youth alone is good enough to make a 90s list, IMO.
Click to expand...
Goo, Dirty, and A Thousand Leaves were all great 90s Sonic Youth albums. Washing Machine was solid. Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star was mediocre IMO.
 
Icky Mettle said:
For me, based on my own personal preference, I’m going with Archers of Loaf, with The Sea and Cake a close second, and Pavement, PJ Harvey, and getting some strong consideration.

Archers of Loaf put out music that consisted of some of that quintessential 1990s post-punk indie-pop sound but also had a distinctive sound with the way Eric Johnson utilized his lead guitar playing. Frontman Eric Bachmann had (and still has) a commanding voice that grabs your attention. They absolutely rocked and put on a great live show. They put out four full length albums in the 1990s, three of which were fantastic and the last of which was solid, though not on the level of the first three IMO. They also put out a brilliant EP between their first and second albums and a really good collection of b-sides and unreleased tracks.

The Sea and Cake put out great album after great album over the course of 25 years between 1993 and 2018 (not sure if they have more to come), and may be the most under-appreciated band ever. And the four albums they put out in the 90s were great. The Biz, released in 1995, may be my all-time favorite album. They put out some very chill rock with jazz-influenced guitar that I could listen to all the time.

Pavement was sort of the quintessential indie rock band that influenced so much music of the era (and beyond). Though their sound was always recognizable, they evolved from each album to the next, putting out five full-length albums between 1992 and 1999.

PJ Harvey has been constantly reinventing herself with each album and has been doing it for nearly 35 years now. Her output in the 90s was consistently great, while also being dynamic, and after the drastic shift in both sound and image in 1995’s To Bring You My Love, it was exciting to wonder where she would take us next.
Click to expand...

So you're saying you're a lawyer in Asheville with Icky Mettle as your screen name, but you're not Eric Johnson?
 
altmin said:
Do yourself a favor and put this playlist on repeat. It's probably the best recording of BFF at their peak. Sledge is a bass playing god in this concert too.

Click to expand...

The Sessions on West 54th series has outstanding acoustics and soundboard recordings.
 
HandsonFire said:
Agreed I enjoy d REM but it seems like they weren’t really mainstream anymore in the 90’s. Did they have any 90’s hits. Interesting I liked up their 90’s hits and I remember most of them up until ‘95 and then nothing. I imagine they were getting decreasing mainstream exposure. Or maybe the exposure I had wasn’t on my radar. But even their hits I remember as kind of cool but not anything that had a major impact on the 90’s.
Click to expand...
I remember REM reaching a large following via WXYC and Cat’s Cradle long before they achieved a mainstream following. Shiny Happy People kinda turned REM into an old people’s Vegas band.
 
superrific said:
I know there are probably some people here who know the band members. I interviewed them on the air for college radio when they were in town for a show. Holy shit, the bassist was a complete moron. It might just have been his persona. Or maybe they get tired of doing interviews. But it was one of the most painful interviews I ever did. The worst was Hope Sandoval, who interviewed how you'd fucking expect.
Click to expand...
I heard of them because a friend of mine knew Eric Johnson.
Someone on the old ZZL (Icky Mettle?) said the entire band lived at one time in the left-hand side apartment of the purple house on McCauley Street. With the timeline given, it would have meant they moved in right after I moved out of there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top