Personal Story With A Soundtrack

It was such a warm welcome last week into the #NinetiesFriday. The comments on my post alone made me wanna come back but they did something else as well. Although I think the music helped out a lot as well.

Before I start talking about myself thanks to @geneeverett for starting this #NinetiesFriday event and for by doing so giving me this weird little melancholic vibe, making me think about those seemingly long gone 90s.

Where did those wonderful days go?
What do I actually remember about those days?
Do I remember anything or did the Mariuhana I smoked in the 90s vaporize all recollection?

The 90s in The Netherlands, my goodness crazy AF

We were not allowed to have a beer, but we were shooting pool and smoking weed at 13.
How that happened, there is just one word for that Bad Girlfriends, which is two words but you got the point.

She rolled me a cigarette right before class, and I never enjoyed any class as much as that one. When I asked her afterward what the fluff was in that cigarette she said a bit of nutmeg and well maybe some weed.

Well from that day forward it was goodbye Brain.

So what do I remember after that W-Day?

I recall switching from a Walkman to a battery slurpy called Discman and how I was the only one with a CD player which btw I never paid for.

I ordered a double cassette deck on my mini-deck and when I unboxed it....what the holy smoke is that?

I was the proud owner of a CD player, now that is great, but buying CDs in high school with a weed habit is not the easiest thing to do.

So whatever you bought you needed to love it.

But how did you know what to buy. .....there was no Spotify...no Youtube... we had Radio 3FM and MT, damn I miss those days, V.

Damn those days, it feels like I left them so far behind.

Okay so we could pick up on some hit songs through radio & TV but an average album has 9-12 songs, and if you were lucky an album had two radio hits.

So Approx. 10 songs you never-ever heard before unless you saw them live.

But there was a solution:

The Record Store

You had one chance and one chance only to make up your mind where you were going to spend that hard-earned cash you were not putting into smoke.

You went into that miraculous place, wishing you worked there or in the Coffeeshop of course.

You knew you were in the right place just looking at the covers because even back then there were record stores for different strokes.

The Boomers, looking for that 70s shitshow they loved back in the days and so they wanted to buy the digital version.

The hipsters just looking for the latest Top 40 compilation CDs.

And then there was us, the Musical Gangstas. We went out to buy what we thought was the real deal.

The alternative stuff, we bought Ten & Nevermind before they ever hit the charts.

We knew how to spell grunge, and Radiohead before anyone knew what creeps we were.

This Is How We Did It

As I said we only had one chance.
You went into the store.
You looked around if they were publicly showing some album covers that you knew were awesome.
Then you would sniff through rows of records and later discs.
Looking for the best band at the lowest price.

You would end up holding 3 or 4 albums, and you wanted to bring them all home. But the money in your pocket just allowed you to pick one.

Then you went to the counter and hoped there was no line waiting to listen to their golden picks.
Most of the time there was a queue as they always had way too few players and we had no choice.

Being pimpled by puberty and knowing that you probably would spend less than anyone else in that line you felt slightly uncomfortable waiting and listening.

There was this sense of pressure, a little voice in your head telling you to hurry.

How the hell do you hurry through 4 albums, and then pick the right one?

What the F do you listen for?

My tactics were simple.

Do not listen to the hits
Is there a good balance between fast & slow songs
Did it at least have one song that was no hit but spoke to you right away
Did any of the songs have a hook you kept hearing after putting the headset down

Then once done with all four albums, or even while playing them I would be stacking them in my favorite order. Which could change several times during the musical trip.

That stacking is something I would still do many years later as a DJ. Left and Right I would have a stack perfectly ordered. Ordered exactly in such a way that what would come next would keep the crowd moving. And also as a DJ those stacks got shoveled along the way.

The Hardest Thing

The hardest thing as a teen was getting the right girl, the second hardest thing was (no not that) picking the right Album.

Some things get easier when you get older, picking the right girl does not.

Picking up the right CDs did.
Prices dropped a bit, second-hand CDs became a thing, the money in my pocket slightly went up, and as a DJ I had an excuse to buy too many albums.

Over the years I collected over 3000 CDs but very few were so close to my heart as those first ones.

The Ones

The ones you really had to save up for.
The ones I listened to, thought about, and then decided to buy.
The ones that got stuck in my CD player for months without end.

Let me share a song of each one of those Ones.
The Ones that I still know all the lyrics to, without it ever being on the radio.

Probably the very first Album I bought was Roxxette´s first album but as that was released in 1988 I will not play it even though I know every single word on the album.

The first real 90´s album I bought and listened to for hours was SEAL´s self-titled album. The first one, because this ego maniac released 2.

This next album I can say for sure is the album that made the most hours playing while I was growing up...sort of.

REM - Automatic For The People

I don´t remember if this one was ever a single release, but it was the first song of the Album, and if I hear just that intro and that John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) style I hear the whole album playing in my head.

I was a teenager and therefore also was into a little more obscure music. Of which this one remains a lifetime favorite.

The first time I was exposed to a mix of Celtic, Classic, and Pop.

The October Project

That escalated quickly btw, because in the years that followed I would love to dig into the many roads this album opened me up to.

Now if I have to tell a granddad story one day it will be how I got my hands on Nirvana - Nevermind weeks before everyone was smelling like teen spirit.

I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit only once, late at night on a slightly less mainstream radio show. I did not catch the band name, nor the title but that next Saturday I went to the city and told the guy in the record store what I heard.

I told him the show 3voor12 and then a guy that sings and then screams, the music going from slow to really rockin' out and then back to slow.

Guess what, this guy was so good he pulled out:

Nirvana - Nevermind

And how I still love to hum along with this one:

Another great story would be Radiohead, and how I bought Pablo Honey before Creep was ever a single.

Because the first song I heard from that album was and is my all-time favorite, Anyone Can Play Guitar.

QuoteYorke wrote the line "Grow my hair, I wanna be Jim Morrison", from "Anyone Can Play Guitar", in response to people in the music business who "think they have to act like fucking prats in order to live up to the legend."

Radiohead - Pablo Honey

And isn´t it Ironic that I used to listen to so many guy guitar bands back then, and now prefer female vocalists and synths?

That is all Tori´s fault, but as my brother bought that album I can not change history and say I did. Even though he can no longer call me a liar.

But there is another female artist whose debut album I bought and to which I can still sing along all the way with one hand in my pocket. You ought to know by now who I am talking about, who made an almost perfect debut album.

I did not take her for a joke, I did not take her for a child, but I might have taken that long hard look at her....

Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill

Alrighty, do you have time for one more?

Now you are forgiven if you do not know these guys, they are from a small country where it was legal to smoke weed at any age when I bought this album. All the way back to 1993, I was still in HIGH school and then I saw these guys.

That was 31 years ago and they are still touring and playing small stages, slightly bigger stages, without ever really tasting the toxic sweetness of fame. I bought their Livewire album and I have doubted that investment ever since.

It has three amazing songs, I won't quit now, The Sludge, and this one. But the rest did not do it for me.

SJAKO - Livewire

Where Did Those Days Go?

Man, where did those days go?
Me with a headset on discovering new tunes?
It´s almost impossible!

If the number of average daily new track uploads continues at the same rate of 120,000 per day for the rest of the year, by the end of 2023, over 43 million new tracks will have been uploaded to Spotify and other music streaming services this year.

Seems like everyone is an artist nowadays, and I am there. Still there in the trenches, the frontline of new music discovery every week.

Just to bring you my Friday Special, My Midnight Gems sessions.

Midnight Gems -Your Free Mix-Tape Show - E 62 "Back To The Best a 90s Trip"
Midnight Gems -Your Free Mix-Tape Show - E 61 "Sweden First!"

I can now do that listening without any pressure or prejudice in the tranquility of my own room. Shifting through sometimes more than 100 songs just to pick those 9 that make up this week´s setlist.

After all these years it´s still an amazing feeling to discover that one song that makes your skin crawl, that gives you that discovering "Smells Like Teen Spirit" sound for the first time.

And the best part is, I am not alone in that room.

Internet has given me the ability to share all those little Gems with whoever is interested.

I just blabla a bit and create the playlists and that will be my legacy.

Thank goodness you made it till the end Pees, Love and I am out of here!

#NinetiesFriday was brought to you by

WTF do I do on #NinetiesFriday?

Well, don't do what I do because I just stole the below as it is good enough for copy/pasta!

But some ideas are music, movies, television, sports, or really anything Nineties related.

I assume movie, tv, or music topic reviews or talk will be most common, but you could also talk about a sports memory or something else.

Think the Pop Culture of the times, but it would be great to hear about little known and interesting bands or entertainment items. Don’t forget to use tag #NinetiesFriday

@geneeverett will give 3 basic income units to a winning random post every week who uses the #NinetiesFriday tag. Also @thebighigg has jumped in to match for 6 total weekly prize! If anyone else wants to sponsor with 1 unit let me know or just send if you don’t wanna commit to weekly 👍

You just read the latest chapter in my Personal Story With A Soundtrack series.

Some earlier Personal Stories:

ALL ART by MyI & AI unless watermarked or sourced

Personal Story With A Soundtrack - A Not-So-Old Mans Melancholy -Who´s Missing The Record Store