Desert Island Albums (C.M.C. 10th Anniversary Edition)

The World Wide Web has just turned 29 today and Cool Music Central (the Blogger version) is now 10! Being active for almost one-third of the internet’s life on this platform (and actually much longer if you take into consideration that the very first C.M.C. incarnation materialized in 1999, in a now long gone domain) is certainly no mean feat and deserves to be celebrated with a special music list, the kind of which I have never attempted before.

Over the years I have published in Cool Music Central a great number of music lists; you can say that my obsession with list-making is actually one of the main drives for starting this blog in the first place (and this one as well, where you’ll find only lists). All of these lists however are always focused on a particular period of time (the albums of the month, the year, the decade). I have never tried in the past the seemingly impossible task of compiling a list of my all-time favorite records, my desert island album list if you will, and I guess that the time has finally come in this post, our 615th, marking C.M.C.’s 10 year anniversary.

To be able to narrow down the number of albums that make up C.M.C’s Desert Island list to a reasonable Top 50, certain rules had to be put in place:

The first prerequisite to consider an album eligible for inclusion was to have it in physical format, so the starting point for this list was the approximately 3500 albums currently in my record collection. A side effect of this rule is that although there is no specific time limit for the selection, in reality the albums that make up this list are all released between 1976 and today, since my record shopping has always been focused in the period after the punk explosion.

The second rule was to choose only one album from each band or artist for possible inclusion in the Top 50 in order to have a wider variety of voices represented and to avoid making this list another tribute to The Fall and the late, great Mark E. Smith, whose stellar releases could easily occupy about one-fifth of it. With this rule, I was able to narrow down the number of albums that could be in the Top 50 to about 200.

The last rule was to try to have a balance between all the periods represented in this list, although for the punk and indie rock sound that we favor, the years between 1977 and 1988 is the golden period.

With all the above rules in place, our Desert Island Album list has taken the shape of the Top 50 we present today. Of course there are many other albums equally worthy of inclusion, so in order to give a more complete picture of our all-time favorites, you will find below a further 150 selections in chronological order and with the second rule lifted. These are (at least for now) the 200 albums that have created Cool Music Central’s ultimate soundtrack, and the Spotify playlist below is what we are listening to all this week in celebration of our 10th anniversary!

C.M.C.'s Desert Island Top 50

01. Perverted by language - THE FALL (1983)
02. Daydream nation - SONIC YOUTH (1988)
03. Nevermind - NIRVANA (1991)
04. Rid of me - P.J. HARVEY (1993)
05. All mod cons - THE JAM (1978)
06. Entertainment! - GANG OF FOUR (1979)
07. Unknown pleasures - JOY DIVISION (1979)
08. Remain in light - TALKING HEADS (1980)
09. Meat is murder - THE SMITHS (1985)
10. Psychocandy - THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN (1985)
11. Never mind the bollocks here's The Sex Pistols - THE SEX PISTOLS (1977)
12. London calling - THE CLASH (1979)
13. Surfer Rosa - PIXIES (1988)
14. Ramones - RAMONES (1976)
15. Zen arcade - HUSKER DU (1984)
16. Songs about fucking - BIG BLACK (1987)
17. It takes a nation of millions to hold us back - PUBLIC ENEMY (1988)
18. Life’s rich pageant - R.E.M. (1986)
19. From her to eternity - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS (1984)
20. Juju - SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES (1981)
21. Live through this - HOLE (1994)
22. Siamese dream - SMASHING PUMPKINS (1993)
23. Bug - DINOSAUR JR. (1988)
24. Meat Puppets II - MEAT PUPPETS (1984)
25. Throwing Muses - THROWING MUSES (1986)
26. Slanted and enchanted - PAVEMENT (1992)
27. Sweet oblivion - SCREAMING TREES (1992)
28. Gentlemen - THE AFGHAN WHIGS (1993)
29. Is this it - THE STROKES (2001)
30. Turn on the bright lights - INTERPOL (2002)
31. Elephant - THE WHITE STRIPES (2003)
32. Songs for the deaf - QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE (2002)
33. Definitely maybe - OASIS (1994)
34. This Year's Model - ELVIS COSTELLO (1978)
35. XTRMNTR - PRIMAL SCREAM (2000)
36. Sun - CAT POWER (2012)
37. To be kind - SWANS (2014)
38. House of GVSB - GIRLS AGAINST BOYS (1996)
39. The hot rock - SLEATER - KINNEY (1999)
40. The magic city - HELIUM (1997)
41. Bakesale - SEBADOH (1994)
42. Return to cookie mountain - TV ON THE RADIO (2006)
43. Fever to tell - YEAH YEAH YEAHS (2003)
44. Franz Ferdinand - FRANZ FERDINAND (2004)
45. Good news for people who love bad news - MODEST MOUSE (2004)
46. Whatever people say I am, that's what I am not - ARCTIC MONKEYS (2006)
47. Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit - COURTNEY BARNETT (2015)
48. St. Vincent - ST. VINCENT (2014)
49. LCD Soundsystem - LCD SOUNDSYSTEM (2005)
50. High violet - THE NATIONAL (2010)

Further recommended listening:

Pink flag - WIRE (1977)
Marquee moon - TELEVISION (1977)
Suicide - SUICIDE (1978)
The modern dance - PERE UBU (1978)
Real life - MAGAZINE (1978)
Live at the witch trials - THE FALL (1979)
Fear of music - TALKING HEADS (1979)
Setting sons - THE JAM (1979)
Closer - JOY DIVISION (1980)
Sound affects - THE JAM (1980)
Crocodiles - ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN (1980)
Kilimanjaro - THE TEARDROP EXPLODES (1980)
Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables - DEAD KENNEDYS (1980)
Los Angeles - X (1980)
Crazy rhythms - THE FEELIES (1980)
Playing with a different sex - THE AU PAIRS (1981)
The flowers of romance - PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED (1981)
The fire of love - THE GUN CLUB (1981)
The gift - THE JAM (1982)
Hex enduction hour - THE FALL (1982)
A kiss in the dreamhouse - SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES (1982)
The days of wine and roses - THE DREAM SYNDICATE (1982)
Pornography - THE CURE (1982)
Fire dances - KILLING JOKE (1983)
Before Hollywood - THE GO-BETWEENS (1983)
Violent Femmes - VIOLENT FEMMES (1983)
Over the edge - WIPERS (1983)
Mommy’s little monster - SOCIAL DISTORTION (1983)
Burning from the inside - BAUHAUS (1983)
Power, corruption and lies - NEW ORDER (1983)
The wonderful and frightening world of... - THE FALL (1984)
The Smiths - THE SMITHS (1984)
Atom drum bop - THE THREE JOHNS (1984)
Native sons - THE LONG RYDERS (1984)
This nation’s saving grace - THE FALL (1985)
Gas, food, lodging - GREEN ON RED (1985)
Valley of rain - GIANT SAND (1985)
Blood and chocolate - ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE ATTRACTIONS (1986)
Bend sinister - THE FALL (1986)
Sister - SONIC YOUTH (1987)
Warehouse: Songs and stories - HUSKER DU (1987)
Document - R.E.M. (1987)
Mirage - MEAT PUPPETS (1987)
Life’s too good - THE SUGARCUBES (1988)
The House of Love - THE HOUSE OF LOVE (1988)
Bummed - HAPPY MONDAYS (1988)
In the Spanish cave - THIN WHITE ROPE (1988)
Green - R.E.M. (1988)
Isn’t anything - MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1988)
My invisible lantern - SCREAMING TREES (1988)
House tornado - THROWING MUSES (1988)
Frenz experiment - THE FALL (1988)
Tender prey - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS (1988)
Automatic - THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN (1989)
Monsters - MEAT PUPPETS (1989)
The Stone Roses - THE STONE ROSES (1989)
Doolittle - PIXIES (1989)
Extricate - THE FALL (1990)
Goo - SONIC YOUTH (1990)
Every good boy deserves fudge - MUDHONEY (1991)
Swift-work - THE FALL (1991)
Trompe le monde - THE PIXIES (1991)
Uncle Anesthesia - SCREAMING TREES (1991)
The real Ramona - THROWING MUSES (1991)
Fontanelle - BABES IN TOYLAND (1992)
Dirty - SONIC YOUTH (1992)
Dry - P.J. HARVEY (1992)
Code: Selfish - THE FALL (1992)
Henry’s dream - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS (1992)
New west motel - THE WALKABOUTS (1993)
Saturation - URGE OVERKILL (1993)
Independent worm saloon - BUTTHOLE SURFERS (1993)
In utero - NIRVANA (1993)
Too high to die - MEAT PUPPETS (1994)
Let love in - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS (1994)
Cruise yourself - GIRLS AGAINST BOYS (1994)
At action park - SHELLAC (1994)
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 chambers) - WU-TANG CLAN (1994)
Deadsexy - SCARCE (1995)
University - THROWING MUSES (1995)
Scream, Dracula, scream - ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT (1995)
No joke! - MEAT PUPPETS (1995)
Mellon collie and the infinite sadness - THE SMASHING PUMPKINS (1995)
My brother the cow - MUDHONEY (1995)
Garbage - GARBAGE (1995)
To bring you my love - P. J. HARVEY (1995)
In the long still night - GALLON DRUNK (1996)
White light white heat white trash - SOCIAL DISTORTION (1996)
Black love - THE AFGHAN WHIGS (1996)
Dust - SCREAMING TREES (1996)
New adventures in hi-fi - R.E.M. (1996)
Too many days without thinking - SWELL (1997)
Brighten the corners - PAVEMENT (1997)
Dig me out - SLEATER-KINNEY (1997)
I can hear the heart beating as one - YO LA TENGO (1997)
Celebrity skin - HOLE (1998)
1965 - THE AFGHAN WHIGS (1998)
Powertrip - MONSTER MAGNET (1998)
Acme - THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION (1998)
Keep it like a secret - BUILT TO SPILL (1999)
Stories from the city, stories from the sea - P.J. HARVEY (2000)
The unutterable - THE FALL (2000)
R - QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE (2000)
Group sounds - ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT (2001)
White blood cells - THE WHITE STRIPES (2001)
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB (2001)
Stephen Malkmus - STEPHEN MALKMUS (2001)
Source tags and codes - AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD (2002)
Yoshimi battles the pink robots - THE FLAMING LIPS (2002)
One beat - SLEATER-KINNEY (2002)
Coral fang - THE DISTILLERS (2003)
Abattoir blues / The lyre of Orpheus - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS (2004)
Desperate youth, blood thirsty babes - TV ON THE RADIO (2004)
Funeral - THE ARCADE FIRE (2004)
Silent alarm - BLOC PARTY (2005)
Gimme fiction - SPOON (2005)
Let’s stay friends - LES SAVY FAV (2007)
23 - BLONDE REDHEAD (2007)
Icky thump - THE WHITE STRIPES (2007)
We were dead before the ship even sank - MODEST MOUSE (2007)
Favourite worst nightmare - ARCTIC MONKEYS (2007)
Dig, Lazarus, dig!!! - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS (2008)
Antidotes - FOALS (2008)
Dance mother - TELEPATHE (2009)
Exploding head - A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS (2009)
Fantasies - METRIC (2009)
Your future our clutter - THE FALL (2010)
I will be - DUM DUM GIRLS (2010)
Let England shake - P.J. HARVEY (2011)
Wild Flag - WILD FLAG (2011)
Only in dreams - DUM DUM GIRLS (2011)
Visions - GRIMES (2012)
Blues funeral - MARK LANEGAN BAND (2012)
Bloom - BEACH HOUSE (2012)
Factory Floor - FACTORY FLOOR (2013)
Shaking the habitual - THE KNIFE (2013)
Silence yourself - SAVAGES (2013)
Indigo meadow - THE BLACK ANGELS (2013)
Manipulator - TY SEGALL (2014)
Nikki nack - TUNE-YARDS (2014)
Warpaint - WARPAINT (2014)
Have you in my wilderness - JULIA HOLTER (2015)
The agent intellect - PROTOMARTYR (2015)
Currents - TAME IMPALA (2015)
Teens of denial - CAR SEAT HEADREST (2016)
My woman - ANGEL OLSEN (2016)
Human performance - PARQUET COURTS (2016)
American dream - LCD SOUNDSYSTEM (2017)
Masseduction - ST. VINCENT (2017)
The underside of power - ALGIERS (2017)

The 7s, part 4: 1997

Since the beginning of the year, we have been revisiting some of our favorite albums and songs released in previous years ending in 7. So far we’ve listened to the punk sounds of 1977, the UK indie scene of 1987, as represented by the recent Cherry Red compilation C87, and the wonderful guitar noise emanating from the US underground of the same year. 

In the 4th part of this series, we are going twenty years back to 1997, a year that gave us plenty of great albums by the likes of Pavement, Spiritualized, Blur, The Verve, The Dandy Warhols, Cornershop, Wu-Tang Clan, Prodigy, Portishead, Foo Fighters to name just a few of the year’s high profile and critically acclaimed releases.

The seven albums that we have chosen to represent 1997 in this feature, include a few releases that have gained cult status over the years as the prestige of their creators has risen with each subsequent release, along with some more obscure choices which are just as dear to us and we think more people need to discover. In the first category there is Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse and Built To Spill, three of the greatest US rock bands to come from the Pacific Northwest really hitting their stride with their 1997 releases, and in the second there is the last ever albums in the brief but excellent discography of '90s cult heroes Helium and The Geraldine Fibbers, plus a couple of outstanding records by Swell and Prolapse, who were also at their very best around that time. Have a listen to the indie sound of 1997: 

Dig Me Out - SLEATER-KINNEY

 

Turn It On

The Lonesome Crowded West - MODEST MOUSE

Heart Cooks Brain

Perfect From Now On - BUILT TO SPILL

I Would Hurt A Fly

The Magic City - HELIUM

Leon's Space Song

Butch - THE GERALDINE FIBBERS

California Tuffy

Too Many Days Without Thinking - SWELL

(I Know) The Trip

The Italian Flag - PROLAPSE

Autocade

Home Taping the '90s Vol. 2

With Nirvana’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 10th and the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death coming up, 1994’s music is high on the agenda right now. This gives us an excellent opportunity to go once again through the good old tape collection and use the wonderful internet technology of today to try to recreate the playlist of one of the 60-minute cassettes I was taping off the era's radio shows.

Volume 2 of our Home Taping the '90s series brings you an hour of excellent music selected from radio recordings made during March 1994 and mixes tracks from some of the protagonists of '90s indie rock (Hole, Meat Puppets, Sebadoh, Superchunk) along with obscure gems from bands you might never heard before (Done Lying Down, Monsterland, Breed, Aenone) unless you hold a PhD in '90s rock music history. A handful of these songs come from sessions recorded for BBC Radio 1 shows and I’m very pleased that we could find them available for online streaming (Inspiral Carpets covering Black Sabbath, the collaboration between Frank Black and Teenage Fanclub, and Th' Faith Healers track). Press play and enjoy an hour of the finest music that was playing on the radio during March 1994, right before the sad events of April 5th:

Side A
01 Meat Puppets - Backwater 03:42
02 Lotion - Tear 04:17
03 Done Lying Down - Septic 03:36
04 Monsterland - At One with Time 04:11
05 Jale - Promise 04:34
06 Hole - Rock Star 02:42
07 Breed - Wonderful Blade 03:52
08 The Charlatans - I Never Want an Easy Life If Me and He Were Ever to Get There 04:10

Side B
09 Inspiral Carpets - Paranoid 03:20
10 Frank Black & Teenage Fanclub - Sister Isabel 03:59
11 Crowsdell - Sad Eyes 03:31
12 Aenone - Celestia 03:15
13 Cornershop - Born Disco, Died Heavy Metal 03:40
14 Th' Faith Healers - Ooh La La 04:00
15 Archers of Loaf - Ethel Merman 02:42
16 Superchunk - The First Part 04:12
17 Sebadoh - Rebound 02:12

If you liked what you’ve just heard, here are the albums and EPs that you should be looking out for, in order of appearance in our mix-tape:
Side A: Too High To Die, Full Isaac, John Austin Rutledge, Destroy What You Love, Dreamcake, Live Through This, Violent Sentimental, Up to Our Hips 

Side B: Radio 1 Sessions, John Peel Session, Meany 7" and Dreamette LP, Saints & Razors EP, Hold On It Hurts, John Peel Session, Icky Mettle, Foolish, 4 Song CD EP and Bakesale LP.

And here's a little something in honor of Kurt and Nirvana from their historic Reading Festival headlining appearance in August 1992:

Nirvana - Come As You Are (Live at Reading 1992)

Home Taping the '90s Vol. 1

Way before mp3s, the cassette tape was considered to be the major threat to the record industry. Personally, I never understood why recording a song off the radio was supposed to stop me wanting to buy music. If anything else, the more I listened to a song I liked on cassette the more I wanted to find that record and add it to my vinyl collection.

Apart from acting as a gateway to buying even more vinyl, my home taping habits of the '80s and '90s has also left me a valuable archive of the music I was discovering at the time while listening to the radio. Mind you, these are not the kind of songs that got major airplay - it's quite possible that some of them might got played just one or two times on a specialist radio show and if I wasn't standing by with a radio-cassette recorder, I would probably never had the chance to listen to them again.

To put these old tapes to good use, we are starting a new series of posts where from time to time I'll be dusting off one of these cassettes and try to reproduce its playlist here with the help of Spotify and internet videos.

For starters, we're going exactly 20 years back to a tape recorded between January 27 and February 12, 1994. These recordings took place in London and several of these songs were played on John Peel's Radio 1 show, including a session from the mighty Fall which was first aired on February 5 and it was later released on cd on "The Complete Peel Sessions 1978 - 2004".

As I expected, not all the songs on this tape are available on Spotify - the missing entries are from Shellac, Madder Rose, Tiny Lights and Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia. And since the last two of these names are the least known, I've included videos of them from this period just a after the Spotify playlist. So, here's a taste of what good was on the radio twenty years ago:

Side A
01 Sleeper - Swallow 02:41
02 Renegade Soundwave - Renegade Soundwave 03:54
03 Suede - Stay Together 07:26
04 Therapy? - Die Laughing 02:48
05 Smudge - Impractical Joke 02:16
06 Prolapse - Doorstop Rhythmic Bloc 05:22
07 God Is My Co-Pilot - I. Cream 00:39
08 The Nightblooms - Hold On 02:11

Side B

09 Orbital - Sad But True 07:48
10 The Fall - Hey! Student (Peel Session 5/2/94) 04:09
11 Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Glam Rock Cops 03:41
12 Papa Brittle - Status Quo 03:47
13 Inspiral Carpets feat. Mark E Smith - I Want You 03:10
14 Bad Religion - 21st Century 02:47
15 Unsane - Body Bomb 03:41
16 Don Caballero - For Respect 02:43

Tiny Lights - Fishing Season

Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia - Out Now!

1999: Top 50 Singles

Time for the final installment of our '90s Singles project - I hope you had as much fun listening to our playlists as we did compiling them!

Once a month since February we've been revisiting a year from the '90s and choosing our 50 favorite singles of that year, the majority of which you can stream through our Grooveshark playlists . The complete Top 50 lists can be found in Cool Music Database, the central hub for all our year-end lists, while you can easily find all our '90s related Top 10 posts by clicking here.

Our 1999 Top 50 Singles list is actually an updated version of the first ever year-end singles list that we published in the first incarnation of Cool Music Central which was launched in the summer of 1999 as a DIY webpage hosted by Netscape. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, but I still consider Sleater-Kinney's "Get Up" to be not only one of the band's finest moments but also one of the most moving songs I've ever had the pleasure of listening. The fact that the same year The Flaming Lips also released the greatest single of their amazing (and, of course, ongoing) career, while Primal Scream reinvented dance-punk with the venomous "Swastika Eyes" only helps to make 1999 one of the strongest years for music in the second half of the '90s, preparing the ground for an even better 2000.

Here's our Top 10 Singles of 1999 with accompanying videos (official or unofficial) - go here for the complete Top 50:

1.   Get Up - SLEATER-KINNEY
2.   Race For The Prize - THE FLAMING LIPS
3.   Swastika Eyes - PRIMAL SCREAM
4.   Hot Topic - LE TIGRE
5.   Metal Fingers In My Body - ADD N To (X)
6.   Pretty Please - VERBENA
7.   I Can't Wait - BRASSY
8.   Touch Sensitive - THE FALL
9.   6 Track EP - ELASTICA
10. Teenage FBI - GUIDED BY VOICES

1998: Top 50 Singles

Time for our monthly trip back to the '90s, with another killer playlist featuring our favorite singles from 1998.

Despite a recent “gleeful” attempt to ruin it, “Celebrity Skin” retains its captivating glam rock glow after all these years and remains one of the best moments of '90s alternative rock. The lead single from Hole's third album of the same name was co-written by Courtney Love, Eric Erlandson and Billy Corgan and became the band’s most commercially successful release, reaching number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song on the b-side of the single, the gorgeous “Best Sunday Dress” (co-written with Babes In Toyland’s Kat Bjelland and originally recorded by their short-lived band Pagan Babies in 1985) is another reason for naming “Celebrity Skin” our Single of the Year for 1998.

Check out below the Top 10 and click here for the complete Top 50 Singles of 1998 list:

1.   Celebrity Skin - HOLE
2.   Waltz #2 (XO) - ELLIOTT SMITH 
3.   Goddess On A Hiway - MERCURY REV
4.   Somethin' Hot - THE AFGHAN WHIGS
5.   Space Lord - MONSTER MAGNET
6.   Boys Better - THE DANDY WARHOLS
7.   Intergalactic - BEASTIE BOYS
8.   Sunday - SONIC YOUTH
9.   A Perfect Day Elise - PJ HARVEY
10. Talk About The Blues - THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION

The 1998 playlist:

1997: Top 50 Singles

What do I remember from 1997? Well, one of the things that come to mind is that exactly 15 years ago today I bought the cd that became my Album of the Year for 1997, Helium's "The Magic City".

1997 was also the year that you couldn't escape from Blur's "Song 2". Normally, a song that gets such ridiculous amount of airplay is bound to get on your nerves eventually. The fact that this never happened with "Song 2" is all the proof that I need to declare it Single of the Year for 1997. Here's the rest of the year's Top 10 Singles - click here for the complete Top 50:

1.   Song 2 - BLUR
2.   The Trip - SWELL
3.   Autumn Sweater - YO LA TENGO
4.   Stereo - PAVEMENT
5.   Electricity - SPIRITUALIZED
6.   Take A Run At The Sun - DINOSAUR JR.
7.   Bitter Sweet Symphony - THE VERVE
8.   Brimful Of Asha - CORNERSHOP
9.   Autocade - PROLAPSE
10. Cowboys - PORTISHEAD

Click play below to listen to our selections for 1997 (and here's a link for the one that's missing):

And here's the video for Helium's awesome "Leon's Space Song" from "The Magic City" which is not included in our 1997 Singles list since it was actually never released as a single:

Helium - Leon's Space Song

1996: Top 50 Singles

1996 might not have been one of the best years of the '90s but there's always great music to be found if you are willing to look for it.

A few years down the line from "Nevermind"'s commercial triumph, good rock bands were more likely to get dropped from major labels than to get signed, while indie labels suffered from losing their most successful acts. As a result, the output of guitar music suffered in the second half of the '90s, while at the same time there was an increase in the interest for dance floor-oriented synth music.

Our top two selections from 1996, though, could easily claim the title of "Single of the Year" in any year of the '90s, even at the height of alternative rock's gold rush at the start of the decade. Actually, I wish we had more songs like these in 2012, but since music in recent years is more focused on laptops than guitars, it's a good thing that both Sebadoh and Cat Power are making their comeback right now with new material. To hear Sebadoh's first EP of new material in over a decade you can check out their bandcamp page (there's no "Beauty Of The Ride" on the "Secret" EP, but it's still quite a good listen and I can confirm that the band is just as great live now as it was in its '90s heyday), while Cat Power is about to release the excellent "Sun" (streaming here now) next week. And the great news is that the new album has quite a few tracks that can stand their own next to the amazing "Nude as the News" (see also our recent Killer Tracks post here).

Check out below our Top 10 Singles of 1996 and go here for the complete Top 50:

1.   Beauty Of The Ride - SEBADOH
2.   Nude as the News - CAT POWER
3.   Disco Six Six Six - GIRLS AGAINST BOYS
4.   Honky's Ladder - THE AFGHAN WHIGS
5.   Shark - THROWING MUSES
6.   Easy Way Down - SNOWPONY
7.   Teenage Angst - PLACEBO
8.   Two Clear Eyes - GALLON DRUNK
9.   Race - TIGER
10. Plug Myself In - D.O.S.E. featuring MARK E. SMITH

Listen to most of our selections from 1996 in the playlist below:

1995: Top 50 Singles

The monthly series of posts featuring our favorite singles from each year of the '90s is moving on to the second half of the decade, the post-grunge years, with 1995’s Top 50 list.

PJ Harvey, who reinvented herself as a goth diva for her third album "To Bring You My Love", claims another Single of the Year (she was also at the top of our 1992 list) with the stunning, futuristic blues of "Down by the Water", the lead single from the album which was released to great artistic and commercial success in February '95.

Grunge was already history by then, but there are still plenty of kick-ass rock tunes to choose from and several of them by the likes of Hole, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rocket From The Crypt, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the ill-fated but excellent Scarce, have stormed to the top of our list. 1995 was also a landmark year for britpop that culminated with the Blur vs. Oasis chart battle in the summer, but although we do have quite a few of the genre's hits scattered throughout our list, it’s only the post-punk and new wave influenced sounds of Elastica that have what it takes to crack our idiosyncratic Top 10. Check it out below and then click here for the complete Top 50 of 1995:

1.   Down By The Water - P.J. HARVEY
2.   Violet - HOLE
3.   Bullet With Butterfly Wings - THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
4.   Born In '69 - ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT
5.   Bellbottoms - THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION
6.   Vow - GARBAGE
7.   Waking Up - ELASTICA
8.   Born Slippy - UNDERWORLD
9.   Natural One - THE FOLK IMPLOSION
10. Glamourizing Cigarettes - SCARCE

Listen to the majority of our 1995 selections in the playlist below, which combines (as usual) the year's great hits with the hidden gems:

1994: Top 50 Singles

1994... it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The alternative dream slowly collapses but leaves a trail of wonderful music behind. 

One of the finest moments of the year came right at the end, when Throwing Muses released "Bright Yellow Gun", a ray of bright sunshine in the heart of December. The song is one of the catchiest pop moments from the pen of the ever prolific Kristin Hersh and at the same time features some of her wildest guitar playing.

Other equally worthy candidates for Single of the Year of 1994 included Hole's signature tune "Miss World", Veruca Salt's anthemic "Seether", the gleeful heartbreak of Sebadoh's "Rebound" and the astonishing collaboration of the Inspiral Carpets with The Fall's Mark E. Smith for "I Want You", the track that topped John Peel's Festive 50 of 1994.

Here's our Top 10 Singles of 1994 - click here for the complete Top 50:

1.   Bright Yellow Gun - THROWING MUSES

2.   Miss World - HOLE

3.   Seether - VERUCA SALT

4.   Rebound - SEBADOH

5.   I Want You - INSPIRAL CARPETS feat. MARK E. SMITH

6.   Supersonic - OASIS

7.   Sabotage - BEASTIE BOYS

8.   Do You Love Me? - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS

9.   Bull In The Heather - SONIC YOUTH

10. Connection - ELASTICA

Listen to most of our 1994 favourites by pressing play below:

1993: Top 50 Singles

Oops, I almost missed my deadline this month, but even at the last moment I have at last the 50 singles that make up Cool Music Central's "Best Singles of 1993" list, which you can check out here!

As usual, I've gone through, literally, hundreds of single and EP releases from the year at hand before applying the special C.M.C. filters and narrowing the list down to the 50 "best", meaning, of course, my personal faves. In the end the race for Single of the Year for 1993 was won by Girls Against Boys debut release for Touch And Go, the mighty fine "Bulletproof Cupid". I was lucky enough to see GVSB live at London's Garage venue that year and I can honestly say it was one of the most exhilarating rock shows I've ever witnessed. My favorite moment: my head being just inches away from Johnny Temple's bass as the band unleashed "Bulletproof Cupid", the ultimate highlight of a tremendous night!

Other stellar singles from 1993 include The Breeders' smash hit "Cannonball", Elastica's debut "Stutter", P.J. Harvey's fiery "50ft Queenie", one of the many highlights from our 1993 Album of the Year "Rid Of Me", and The Afghan Whigs' "Gentlemen" - actually, as I'm writing these lines I'm watching the Whigs in action, live from Primavera Sound '12 here, while just a couple of days ago I saw them here in Athens in a truly awesome gig which will be the subject of our next post (coming soon)!

Here's our Top 10 Singles of 1993 - click here for the complete Top 50:

1.   Bulletproof Cupid - GIRLS AGAINST BOYS
2.   Cannonball - THE BREEDERS
3.   Stutter - ELASTICA
4.   50ft Queenie - P.J. HARVEY
5.   Gentlemen - THE AFGHAN WHIGS
6.   Today - THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
7.   Sugar Kane - SONIC YOUTH
8.   Uranus - SHELLAC
9.   All Apologies / Rape Me - NIRVANA
10. Beautiful Son - HOLE

Listen to our 1993 selections by pressing play below:

1992: Top 50 Singles

It's the end of the month, which means it's time for another trip down the '90s memory lane for the unveiling of our latest Top 50 Singles list from the last decade of the 20th century.

This time we're going exactly 20 years back to 1992, the year PJ Harvey released her stunning debut album "Dry". A few months earlier, in February, the instant classic "Sheela-Na-Gig" was released as her second single on Too Pure backed by two more songs that would also become part of "Dry", "Joe" and "Hair" (on the 12 inch only). The song was originally written in 1986 when Harvey was just seventeen years old and took its title from the Sheela-na-gig statues - carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva found in old buildings throughout Britain and Ireland for keeping evil spirits away.

Other highlights from 1992 include The Fall's apocalyptic electro of "Free Range" (with the lyric "Europa, every second Third World" sounding very real in the current economic climate), Belly's debut EP "Slow Dust" featuring the amazing "Dusted", Screaming Trees' grunge anthem "Nearly Lost You" and the three further hit singles that were taken from Nirvana's "Nevermind", which, by January 1992, it had replaced Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" at the top of the Billboard charts.

Check out below our Top 10 Singles of 1992 and click here for the complete Top 50 list published in Cool Music Database, the central hub of all our year-end lists from 1980 and onwards:

 
1.   Sheela-Na-Gig - P.J. HARVEY
2.   Free Range - THE FALL
3.   Slow Dust EP - BELLY
4.   Lithium - NIRVANA
5.   Nearly Lost You - SCREAMING TREES
6.   100% - SONIC YOUTH
7.   Reverence - THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN
8.   Bruise Violet - BABES IN TOYLAND
9.   Trigger Cut - PAVEMENT
10. Drive - R.E.M.

P.J. Harvey - Sheela-Na-Gig

You can listen to most of our selections by pressing play below:

1991: Top 50 Singles

To quote Sonic Youth, 1991 was the year that punk broke. Nirvana led the charge with "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the stunning first single off "Nevermind", indisputably the rock album of the decade, but if you take a closer look at our Top 50 Singles of 1991 here, you'll notice an abundance of gloriously noisy guitar music.

Other highlights of the year included "Dress", P.J. Harvey's perfectly formed debut single, "Blindfold", the first of the three amazing EPs that introduced us to Curve, "Counting Backwards", one of Throwing Muses' surprisingly pop-friendly moments, the explosive "Siva" by The Smashing Pumpkins, Hole's vitriolic "Teenage Whore", Pavement's dreamy "Summer Babe", "Bed Of Roses", a rare psychedelic gem by Screaming Trees, Mudhoney's mad, broken-brake ride of "Let it Slide" and Teenage Fanclub's storming yet brightly melodic "Star Sign". And that's just the Top 10. Take into consideration the equally awesome releases found elsewhere in our list by the likes of Pixies, Sonic Youth, Babes In Toyland, The Afghan Whigs, Ride or Lush and you start to realize that 1991 was one of the best years in rock history. They just don't make 'em like that any more...

Here's 1991's Top 10 Singles (for the complete Top 50 click here):

1.   Smell Like Teen Spirit - NIRVANA
2.   Dress - P.J. HARVEY
3.   Blindfold EP - CURVE
4.   Counting Backwards - THROWING MUSES
5.   Siva - THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
6.   Star Sign - TEENAGE FANCLUB
7.   Summer Babe - PAVEMENT
8.   Bed of Roses - SCREAMING TREES
9.   Let It Slide - MUDHONEY
10. Teenage Whore - HOLE

You can listen to most of our selections by pressing play below:

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

1990: Top 50 Singles

Our '90s flashback is about to begin! Last year we revisited our favorite singles of the '80s with a monthly series of posts featuring our Top 50 lists for each year of the decade as well as playlists where you could listen to most of these 500 tracks.

Between now and November 2012 (just in time for the Mayan Apocalypse!) we are going to choose another 500 remarkable singles, this time from the '90s, and create playlists with the music we like to remember from this period.

For the first installment of our '90s Singles project, we have the Top 50 of 1990, the year that the Madchester sound reigned supreme, Shoegazers flooded our ears with sweet noise and the American underground rock scene was revving its engines loudly as it was about to overtake the mainstream. Meanwhile, My Bloody Valentine who were getting closer to the end of the two-year gestation period that gave us "Loveless", released in April of that year the "Glider" EP on Creation Records (Sire for USA), showing us that they were not immune to the charms of the dance-rock crossover. And with "Soon", they proved that they could do it better - and dreamier - than anyone else:

My Bloody Valentine - Soon (Glider EP)

Here's 1990's Top 10 Singles - for the complete Top 50 click here:

1. Glider EP - MY BLOODY VALENTINE
2. Kool Thing - SONIC YOUTH
3. Telephone Thing - THE FALL
4. Heavenly Pop Hit - THE CHILLS
5. Jacket Hangs - THE BLUE AEROPLANES
6. I Am One - THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
7. The Wagon - DINOSAUR JR.
8. Everything Flows - TEENAGE FANCLUB
9. Velouria - PIXIES
10. Sliver - NIRVANA

And here's the (almost complete) 1990 Singles playlist:

The Best Albums of the '90s

Before we take off for a few weeks of much needed vacations, we are going to sign off with the list of our 200 favorite albums of the '90s. At the end of last summer we posted the list of our Top 200 Albums of the '80s at Cool Music Database after completing the presentation of our favorite albums from each year of that decade. Now that the '90s project is also completed, we have compiled the list of the Top 200 Albums of the '90s which you can check out in its entirety here. Below you can see just the best of the best, the crème de la crème of the '90s in our humble opinion, and a few related videos. Turn it up! 

Top 25 Albums of the '90s
 

1. Nevermind - NIRVANA
2. Rid of me - P.J. HARVEY
3. Live through this - HOLE
4. Extricate - THE FALL
5. Goo - SONIC YOUTH
6. Siamese dream - SMASHING PUMPKINS
7. Fear of a black planet - PUBLIC ENEMY
8. The hot rock - SLEATER-KINNEY   
9. House of GVSB - GIRLS AGAINST BOYS
10. Fontanelle - BABES IN TOYLAND
11. Dirty - SONIC YOUTH
12. Swift-work - THE FALL
13. Slanted and enchanted - PAVEMENT
14. Celebrity skin - HOLE
15. 1965 - THE AFGHAN WHIGS
16. Sweet oblivion - SCREAMING TREES
17. Too high to die - MEAT PUPPETS
18. Trompe le monde - PIXIES
19. Every good boy deserves fudge - MUDHONEY
20. The real Ramona - THROWING MUSES
21. Copper blue - SUGAR
22. In utero - NIRVANA
23. Dry - P.J. HARVEY
24. Henry’s dream - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS
25. At Action Park - SHELLAC

Nirvana - Lithium

P.J. Harvey - Man-Size

Hole - Violet

Cool Music Central is now officially on summer vacations. Normal service will resume mid-August, although you never know what you might find here in the meantime...