#90's contemporary

[rocknrollflames]

Stay (I Missed You)

- Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories

[zero-zoxx-international]

Besuch in den Kloaken (Visit to the Sewers), 1994 by J.G.Wind

The drawing served as a draft for the oil painting

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Women & Songs 4 2000 Adult Alternative / Singer-Songwriter / Pop / Adult Contemporary / Dance-Pop / R&B / Country-Pop

Me, sitting in a packed boardroom in the Canadian offices of Warner Elektra Atlantic in ~1997:

"OK, OK, hold on, hold on, wait..."

*closes eyes and lightly pinches bridge of nose with thumb and index finger*

"I just got this brilliant fuckin' idea."

*takes an enormous bong rip and then exhales while gathering thoughts*

"OK, so, y'know, like...people...they love women, right? But another thing that they also love is songs too, right? So, like...see if you can follow me here...what if, like, we took women, but then, like, what if we also took songs...and then, like, what if we somehow managed to...put them both together...?!? 🤔🤯"

*The CEO of the company takes the stubby cigar from his mouth and places it in his ashtray. He then removes his glasses, gently places them on the table, and rubs his eyes a few times as he carefully mulls over what I've just said. He then gets up out of his seat while a grin starts to form on his face, and proceeds to clap slowly, with each successive clap coming more quickly than the previous one, which then leads to a universal round of applause and standing ovation from everyone else in the room. The CEO then pulls me aside and says the following into my ear...*

"See, RV, this is why we're paying you the big bucks."

*He shakes my hand vigorously and then proceeds to give me a million dollars 😀*

---

Y'know, I've posted *a lot* about *a lot* of different compilations over the years, but the first installment in Canada's Women & Songs series is one that's probably going to stick with me until the day that I die; not because it presents a terrific encapsulation of the female singer-songwriter boom of the mid-to-late 90s—which it so totally does—but because of the plainly awful and absurdly low effort that went into both naming and packaging it. It's like, you'd think it was being put out by someone who had just decided to invest in a CD burner and then sell their own bootleg releases that'd been comprised of songs that they'd downloaded off of Napster or something; but no—this shit *actually* came from the greenbacked behemoth that was WARNER ELEKTRA ATLANTIC instead! And for whatever reason, the folks there *really* couldn't be bothered to spare a few more bucks or literally thirty seconds to come up with something that was even a little slightly better than Women & Songs and these atrocious album covers. It's really all just so ridiculous when you think about it, and because of that, it's also very unforgettable as well.

But anyhoo, just like its first volume, this fourth one from the series is really nothing short of excellent too, as it provides a fantastic and diverse array of female-led gems that had specifically been lighting up the Canadian charts in some capacity dating back to 1996. We've got superstar divas like Janet Jackson, Toni Braxton, Tina Turner, Madonna, and Whitney Houston; we've got the country-pop stylings of Faith Hill and LeAnn Rimes; we've got summer romcom staple "Breathless" by The Corrs, one of the single-greatest radio pop songs of the 90s in Natalie Imbruglia's version of "Torn"—believe it or not, she was actually, like, the fourth person to record and release that song—we've got Tracy Chapman, Veruca Salt's Nina Gordon on a well-translated adult alternative tip (anyone else remember "Volcano Girls"?), teen poppers All Saints, and we've also got Dido's "Here With Me," which was co-produced by none other than the great Rick Nowels, a guy whose own exploits have somewhat quietly managed to enrich the careers of so many other female pop stars too, from Stevie Nicks, to Belinda Carlisle, to Celine Dion, to Adele, to Alessia Cara, to Dua Lipa, to Lykke Li, to FKA Twigs, to Madonna, and Lana Del Rey 😯.

But because the Canadian music industry itself has a natural inclination to insularly market and promote a lot of the country's very own artists, there's also a showcase of some really talented women on here whose names you probably wouldn't recognize unless you were Canadian yourself; and that's a bit of a shame, because Pickering, Ontario's own Sarah Slean, for instance, really brings it with a beautifully woven and rich tapestry called "High," which first appeared on her independently released debut album, Blue Parade, in 1998. Trust me when I say this: if you really love all those singing-songwriting ladies of the 90s, like Fiona Apple, Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant, Paula Cole, Jewel, Tori Amos, etc., you're gonna wanna hear this Sarah Slean song as well, because while it's definitely in a similar vein to all of those women, it's also pretty uniquely wonderful too 👍.

And speaking of Sarahs, I usually don't go for classical crossover-type fare, but Sarah Brightman's rendition of Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" here is especially lovely. It's a highly effective combination of her own soprano, a lush arrangement of orchestral strings, and an unexpected infusion of a contemporarily cinematic trip hop-type of drum beat that really manages to satisfyingly bring the whole thing together. Awesome, and dare I say, (le) epic, stuff.

And I can't leave here without briefly marveling over Whitney Houston's "My Love Is Your Love" too, which Wyclef Jean and his frequent collaborator Jerry Duplessis lent their own subdued Fugees production style to back in 1999. Such a beautiful collaboration with that one, the likes of which I'm not sure that we've ever really heard anything similar to since. Maybe my favorite song on this entire album 😊.

So, in conclusion, women and songs are both great on their own, but once again, as the wea conglomerate has shown us, when you actually decide to combine 'em, it can really yield something special. And I know it's kind of a wild concept that might be a bit difficult to grasp at first, but I think if you give this thing a shot, you'll be able to hear a lot of the mid-90s-to-y2k greatness that came as a result of this purely abstract, out-of-the-box thinking. A bunch of quality music on here, and with some focus specifically put on Canada too, but just make sure to do yourself a favor and skip over the totally uninspired opening that is Madonna's cover of Don McLean's "American Pie," because that thing is BAD.

Highlights:

Faith Hill - "Breathe" The Corrs - "Breathless" Chantal Kreviazuk - "Before You" Janet Jackson - "Together Again" Natalie Imbruglia - "Torn" Tracy Chapman - "Telling Stories" All Saints - "Pure Shores" Toni Braxton - "You're Making Me High" Dido - "Here With Me" Nina Gordon - "Tonight and the Rest of My Life" LeAnn Rimes - "How Do I Live" Tara MacLean - "If I Fall" Whitney Houston - "My Love Is Your Love" Sarah Slean - "High" Sarah Brightman - "A Whiter Shade of Pale"

[hawfstuff]

some more vortigaunts. Bonus Leopold listening to human music

[sketchonista]

mood

[ladysophiebeckett]

all original shakira fans want is for her to go back to this 

[sivavakkiyar]

great missed opportunity to have Fred Ho show up as a twist on the noir “mysterious Oriental gentlemen” doing the defensive Don bit—-“we will always be foreigners in a land where imported music is called classical!”—-and then he beats the guy with a bamboo that snaps back. But to be honest no matter how well Gann pulled that off Ho would have just thought it was racist (and he’d have been right, possibly)

[dankalbumart]

High Civilization by Bee Gees Warner Bros. / Warner Music 1991 Pop-Rock / Synthpop / Dance-Pop / Adult Contemporary / Dance-Rock / Soft Rock / Pop / Synth Funk

[pink-neon-studios]

My first monoprint - 15 years ago of my Airwalks - c. 1995.

George Stockner - 2008

[stubaby777]

Thursday's 80' & 90's Music: Steve Camp | What Would The Devil Say

Thursday’s 80′ & 90’s Music: Steve Camp | What Would The Devil Say

I’ll let you all in on a secret. Besides the Stryper albums Fire & Ice by Steve Camp is my favorite Christian album of the 80’s. I had the privilege of seeing Steve live at Louisiana College. His honesty on stage touched me. Especially when he said a cuss word on stage and then told the crowd they were more concerned over his one bad word than the sin in a friend’s life. His point hit home…

[vixen-academia]

Free MIT online courses that sound interesting

Arts & Literature

Introduction to World Music

Reading Fiction

Literary Interpretation: Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare

Introduction to Photography

Foundations of Western Culture II: Renaissance to Modernity

Studies in Poetry - Briths Poetry and the Sciences of the Mind

Studies in Literary History: Modernism: From Nietzsche to Fellini

Screen Women: Body Narratives in Popular American Film

Studies in Poetry: "What's the Use of Beauty"

Queer Cinema and Visual Culture

Monteverdi to Mozart: 1600 - 1800

Writing and Experience: Reading and Writing Autobiography

Advanced Topics in Hispanic Literature and Film: The Films of Luis Buñel

Major Authors: Rewriting Genesis: "Paradise Lost" and Twentieth-Century Fantasy

Arthurian Literature and Celtic Colonization

Contemporary Literature: Britsh Novel Now

Studies in Poetry: 20th Century Irish Poetry: The Shadow of W. B. Yeats

Writing About Literature: Writing About Love

Introduction to European and Latin American Fiction: Great Books On The Page and On The Screen

Popular Culture and Narrative: Use and Abuse of the Fairy Tale

Victorian Literature and Culture

Reading Poetry

English Renaissance Drama: Theatre and Society in the Age of Shakespeare

Introduction to Fiction

International Woman's Voice

Major Authors: Oscar Wilde and the "90's"

Prizewinners: Nobelistas

American Authors: American Women Authors

Shakespeare, Film and Media

Japanese Literature and Cinema

Woman's Novels: A Weekly Book Club

Classics of Chinese Literature

Major English Novels

Topics in South Asia Literature and Culture

Introduction to Literary Theory

History & Social Studies

American Classics

The Middle East in the 20th Century

Africa and the Politics of Knowledge

The Rise of Modern Science

European Imperialism in the 19th and 20th Century

Philosophy of Love

Human Rights: At Home and Abroad

The Nature of Creativity

Introduction to Comparative Politics

Riots, Rebellions, Revolutions

Introduction to the History of Technology

Ancient Philosophy

Youth Political Participation

[zero-zoxx-international]

Blumen (Flowers), 1995 by J.G.Wind The watercolor is part of a small series of flower paintings in 1995

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

KissFM Flashback: Best of Love 1998 R&B / Adult Contemporary / Pop / Soul / Arena Rock / Pop-Rock

Funny thing about this pretty anodyne and somewhat random assortment of love songs from the Warner Elektra Atlantic catalogue that span between the late 70s and late 90s is that, had you not recognized the radio station logo that's on this album's cover, you'd probably have no idea that this was actually a Finnish release. And that seems to be because of two intertwined things: one, naming your radio station Kiss FM is like the equivalent of naming your American town Springfield; like, I'm pretty sure it's the most popular name for a radio station in the entire world, which also makes it the most generic. And because it's the most generic name for a radio station, it also then makes sense that its own tracklist would not provide a single clue as to where this particular Kiss FM station itself was actually located.

Which I guess just also goes to show how generic the market was overall for one of those hit European radio stations that played a mix of 'the hits from yesterday and today' in the late 90s, because not a single song on this release is actually Finnish-made itself, which would definitely lead you to think that it's not actually Finnish when it so totally is! 

But all that said, despite there not being anything to actually individualize this comp from any other similarly-scoped Euro comp out there, this thing nevertheless still manages to kick itself off with a pair of my all-time favorite big hits of 1996: the terrific Todd Terry remix of Everything But the Girl's "Missing," which was not just undoubtedly that year's single biggest commercial house hit, but was one of its biggest radio hits, period, too; and British one-hit wonder Donna Lewis' dreamy and ever-so-soft disco-pop-slow-dance smash, "I Love You Always Forever," which subtly built up all this tension with an unwavering bassline chug that smacked of the stuttering opening seconds from Survivor's own "Eye of the Tiger," and then suddenly released it all with a much louder and very catchy bridge that was outfitted with some handclaps and sharp, rich, and powerful keyboard chords. Sounds like a ballad that Cyndi Lauper might've made had she been born a decade later, and to that same end, a really lovely tune.

And another thing you might be interested in is that if you wanna hear iconic Swedish teen pop producer Max Martin's signature mid-to-late 90s sound applied to something before he managed to launch the Backstreet Boys into the stratosphere himself, there's Papa Dee's euro-reggae-pop cover of P.P. Arnold's "The First Cut Is the Deepest," which has that same smack-clappy backbeat sound that would define much of BSB's own output. Not gonna say that I particularly enjoy this song at all, but it's still intriguing to hear the Martin sound on something else prior to BSB.

And lastly, we have Lutricia McNeal's largely forgotten cover of Barbi Benton's "Ain't That Just the Way." If you dig that softly bouncy, hip hop-laced contemporary R&B sound of the mid-to-late 90s that made the careers of people like Mary J. Blige, Brandy, and Monica, this Oklahoma City native who ended up launching her career in Sweden and scoring this hit there is a good one too. After hitting big in Europe, "Ain't That Just the Way" crossed over here into the States and achieved moderate success as well, and while it never ended up earning itself the Grammy-winning plaudits of something like The Fugees' Lauryn Hill-led cover of Roberta Flack's own Grammy-winning "Killing Me Softly with His Song," I happen to think that the two tunes dovetail pretty perfectly with each other as 1996 R&B companions 👍.

So, a pretty lame Finnish comp of love songs with most of a selection that could fool anyone into thinking that it actually came from any one of a number of stations named Kiss FM in America instead, but nevertheless, some great intercontinentally popular hits from 1996 on here anyway 😌.

Highlights:

Everything But the Girl - "Missing (Todd Terry remix)" Donna Lewis - "I Love You Always Forever" Simply Red - "If You Don't Know Me By Now" Lutricia McNeal - "Ain't That Just the Way" Mr. Big - "To Be With You" Damn Yankees - "High Enough"

[franticbindings]

My dream format for a Vorkosigan Saga adaptation, purely from how it would visually/aesthetically look, would be a 1990's anime.

(added later)

This is a pretty bold claim for someone who basically only watched Cowboy Bebop, a little Evangelion and then seen screenshots of stuff like Gundam, etc.

It's partly that figuring out how to cast Miles is tricky, both for his age as well as his appearance. If you can't find someone to embody the role, I think hand drawn animation would look better than some kind of digital compositing approach.

Animation has a specific heightened/exaggerated visual language that I think works with some of the series' storytelling sensibilities. Like... Miles is kind of an exaggerated character, he's bigger than life in a lot of ways and so are a lot of other characters and this could be expressed through animation in a way that I think would be interesting.

It's mostly how they draw technology in those shows; they are imaginings of science fiction that are contemporary with when the novels were released, and being animated they were able to go for it in a way contemporary live action TV couldn't. We've got the technology to do such things these days, but most recent examples I've seen are too slick and shiny and pretty, or conversely too dirty and grungy.

I dunno, if you showed me two versions of the first scene of Shards of Honor; with Cordelia hiking down out of the clouds and looking over an alien landscape as her ship blasts off into orbit without her and one looked like Foundation and one looked top tier 90's animation I'd be way more interested in the second.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Do you have any historical fiction book recs?

I don’t read a lot of historical fiction, so the majority of this list will compromise YA histfic from the late 90s/early 00s.

The early Dear America and Royal Diaries books were pretty foundational for me, and I still go back to reread them. Carolyn Meyer(s?) wrote some great histfic along the lines of Royal Diaries. Jane Yolen’s The Queen’s Own Fool is excellent, and of course, we stan Number the Stars. And none for Philippa Gregory byeeeee.

As for contemporary titles, the Maisie Dobbs books are 💯💯. They take place between the 1920s and 1940s, brilliant lady detective, excellent period detail. Also, the book that’s made like, the biggest impression on me since 2016 is Jerusalem by Alan Moore. It’s kind of hard to even describe what that book is about, but it’s MAGNIFICENT and has several long sections that deal with English class and racial history, and also Oliver Cromwell. I also enjoyed the first three books of the Outlander series.

Oh, and I love The Red Tent, (it gives Mists of Avalon but Genesis instead of Arthurian) tho that might be Hebrew Bible fanfic* as opposed to histfic.

Anyway, there are a lot of folks here who I’m sure will chime in with more current and diverse recs, so don’t forget to check the notes 🙂

ETA: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

*id actually argue that all histfic is fanfic, but im not hating.

[floatingcatacombs]

Go Nagai was insane for this one

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 8

I like to always have manga of dubious quality on tap for when I’m having trouble sleeping. Ideally, reading a few chapters will distract me, but I won’t want to stay up late shotgunning volumes. Devilman Lady was the ideal manga for this, and this is maybe the last time anyone will ever describe Devilman Lady as "ideal".

An extremely brief introduction is in order. If Osamu Tezuka is the godfather of manga, then Go Nagai is manga’s weird horny uncle. He’s arguably just as influential, the two of them just moved in different circles, each reifying entire genres. Nagai is more or less responsible for magical girls, super robot, and ecchi, and also spent a lot of time in the sphere of supernatural and post-apocalyptic manga. These are fundamentally genres of extremity and ridiculousness, and Nagai dials every one of his works up to 11 by the end, one way or another. Devilman is probably his most famous work over here, and it’s a stone-cold classic for a reason. Nagai has kept revisiting it over the years, with side stories, alternate universes, manga cameos, and even entirely new series that function as stealth sequels such as Violence Jack. But his most notable attempt is Devilman Lady, which is far more than a simple gender-swap of the original.

Devilman Lady is about swimming deep in filth. It’s easily the most disgust-provoking manga I’ve read, with pretty much every content warning under the sun applicable. This is a truly rotten and conspiratorial world that Nagai is depicting. Societal decay manifests in countless forms, including rape, child abuse, homophobia, militarism, and hatred towards immigrants. Anything that could be potentially understood as fanservice is placed right next to or directly within the atrocities at hand, and it's genuinely unclear how much Nagai intended that as commentary. His intentions throughout this whole manga are a bit of an enigma, but what's clear that he is firing on all cylinders.

This is an extremely zeitgeisty 90’s work, with intelligent design debates, the mapping of the human genome, new age paranoia, religious zealotry, and anxiety over pollution all playing out on the pages. Where it breaks from many of its contemporaries is a decisive rejection of the end of history. This is the kind of thing you write when you’re still reeling from the subway sarin gas attacks and your country's role in the Gulf War and subsequent militarization. It’s the perfect manga for capturing a time period when ten to twenty percent of Japan’s population were estimated to have belonged to a new religious movement.

The punchline to all of this is that he doesn’t know how to draw women.

By the back half of Devilman Lady, Nagai’s depictions of hellscapes and grotesque monsters reach near-Berserk levels of detail and technical competency. And yet his female protagonists are still drawn in a drastically simpler 70's style, only now with giant spheres grafted to their chests. Either humans and the infernal are two completely different skillsets, or this was a deliberate artistic decision, and both are difficult to swallow. Either way, we just have to accept the juxtapositions.

one of my favorite pages to show people devoid of context

The finale is just nuts. Go Nagai makes textual the homoeroticism and gender deviance of the original Devilman manga, as the world burns in both nuclear warfare and demonic hellfire. The story starts accelerating at an unfathomable pace, the most inscrutable double mobius reacharound yaoiyuri occurs, and the universe resets once or twice. It makes the endings of Jojo Part 6 and 7 look tame by comparison. There is no way to parse this like a normal manga with a plot and narrative. It is raw id.

This has been a year where I’ve tried to deliberately broaden my comfort zone by engaging with more potentially upsetting works if I think they'll have something interesting to say. This was like jumping into the deep end. Devilman Lady may very well be Go Nagai’s magnum opus. It’s not nearly as tight as the original manga, but it’s a glorious mess, just as radical to its own time as Devilman must have been in the 70s. It made for spectacular insomnia reading. And there’s no way in hell I can ever recommend it.

At age 19, Nagai went through a bout of diarrhea so bad that he convinced himself it was colon cancer, and that he was at death's door. He vowed to leave something behind for the world to remember him by, and began laboring away on manga. And for the last 60 years of his career, he’s written and drawn with the fervor of a man who’s about to shit himself to death. Maybe that’s the real secret.