13 Songs: 1989 Reconsidered

Revised January 2, 2011

Star Maker Machine recently spent a week profiling songs from 1989. I failed to contribute, despite the fact I had a song picked out, and fought for the theme. What can I say? My jackasseritis flared up. In fact, 1989 had a profound impact on me. That was the year I started DJing at KCSC, Chico State's campus radio station (see flyer below), and discovered so much greatness in the vast American rock 'n' roll underground. It was like seeing in color for the first time. Music didn't suck, popular music sucked. Worst. Drum. Sound. Ever. My arch-nemesis, the synthesizer. Always with the synthesizer. And that horribly compressed production style best described as Footloosey. Lies, damnedable lies.

KCSC showed me that living, breathing, cursing, laughing, traveling 400 miles to a gig rock 'n' roll was alive and well and possibly drunk in localized niches throughout the country. Our band could be your life. The unheard music. I got it and lots of other people got it, in lots of other niches, like a web, or perhaps a net of interconnectedness. It was 1989, the calm before the swarm. Life was good.

Joq Blox: A week when DJs spent an hour featuring a single band. Pretty eclectic list of artists. Impressive. (Click to enlarge.)

Chico was an underrated hub in the west coast's network of punk rock venues and college towns. Bands from Seattle and Portland could play to a good crowd in Chico on a Thursday, and then go to the Bay Area and/or Los Angeles for the weekend. We were a much better option than Sacramento (Excremento, ugh), and a half-day's drive from the Bay Area. The Burro Room (aka Hey Juan's, aka Juanita's) was Chico's premier venue ... and by "premier" I mean a pair of conjoined dives. One side served decent Mexican food and cheap beer, the other side had music, and the whole building is in the pantheon with The Chukker and Sam's Town Point. The constant influx of touring bands helped nurture Chico's music scene into a kind of "Athens West," led by bands like 28th Day, Vomit Launch, and The Downsiders.

• Read Chico Rock City: The News & Review's look at 30 years of Chico music, from 1977-2007. Good stuff, accessible even to outsiders.

What follows are the 13 songs that best sum up my 1989. Experiencing a lot of this music at the grassroots level obviously made an impact. These were acts I played on the radio and were among my favorites to see live. If the list seems overwhelmingly young, male, and guitar-driven, I plead guilty. That's how 1989 sounded when I was young, male, and guitar-driven. For the record, the list is unranked and I didn't limit myself to 10. I thought having the songs flow together was more important than the ranking, which could change by day's end. Also, 1989 was too good a year to have only 10 cuts, and this way I get to make a clever segue to my first band.

13 SONGS: 1989 RECONSIDERED
Download 13-song playlist (50 mB)

Fugazi - Waiting Room [buy]

Technically, this first appeared in 1988 on Fugazi's self-titled debut EP. However, I didn't hear it until the following year when 13 Songs was released. Consider it a transition piece between 1988 and '89. The opening sequence is like the Jaws theme, mainly due to Joe Lally's Hall of Fame bassline. Fugazi's first song remained a kind of template for the rest of their career: Lurching, undulating rhythms, intense dynamics, and feather-sledgehammer vocal parts (Ian MacKaye's hammer leading the way here). Fucking epic.

Public Enemy - Fight The Power [buy]

"1989 the number!
Another summer (Get down!)
Sound of the funky drummer!"

Public Enemy and The Bomb Squad at the height of their powers. Brutal, abrasive, cacophonous, and swings with James Brown's hard, late '60s funk. Seriously, does any hip-hop act have a better 4-year peak than PE from 1988-92? Doubtful.

Operation Ivy - Unity [buy]

It might help to be 20 years old, but I still love this. Operation Ivy was one of the few bands to master the perilous ska-punk zone of suck. Jesse Michaels and Tim "Lint" Armstrong (both pictured right) were great singers and their lyrics were clever and brash. But, the real key to Op Ivy was the fact that Armstrong (guitar), Matt Freeman (bass), and Dave Mello (drums) were a killer, hard swinging power trio. Hard to believe they existed for only 24 months (May '87-May '89). Armstrong and Freeman later went on to form Rancid, who, to their credit, built a mini-empire from the ashes of Op Ivy.

Beastie Boys - Johnny Ryall [buy]

Of all the albums released 20 years ago, Paul's Boutique stands tallest. It's a tour de force of sampling, song construction, pop culture deconstruction, rope-a-dope imagination, and having more rhymes than JD's got Salinger. And it couldn't even be made today because of legal knots pulling at the residuals. All I'm saying is, any album that has me considering the $130 "20th Anniversary Commemorative Package" has to be top shelf.

• Read Deconstructing Johnny Ryall, originally posted April 28, 2010

Maria McKee - Drinkin' In My Sunday Dress [buy]

This is the Maria McKee I want cloned and kept in a vault. That Voice, plus her spirited appreciation for classic roots music from Hank Williams to X is/was a potent combination. Unfortunately, the woman who could've been the cowpunk Patsy Cline was knee deep in her Stevie Nicks phase in 1989. Thankfully, "Sunday Dress" escaped the industry's lacy, twirling subterfuge. It pays stylistic homage to the heady early days of Lone Justice and looks ahead to 1993's outstanding You Gotta Sin To Get Saved album.

Elvis Costello - Deep Dark Truthful Mirror [buy]

"I had encountered the Dirty Dozen Brass Band a couple of years before (Spike), and it was the first attempt to use people -- to use horns on a record in other than a quite typical R&B pop way. They were a jazz ensemble that came out of the marching band tradition."
--Elvis Costello, in Jazz Times

The Dirty Dozen backup is inspired as Elvis channels Van Morrison channeling Sam Moore (from Sam & Dave). A soulful gem from an underrated album. If Spike was 11-12 songs instead of 15, it would be a timeless classic.

Flat Duo Jets - My Life, My Love [buy]

God bless the Flat Duo Jets. Guitarist/vocalist Dexter Romweber and drummer Crow furiously combined rockabilly, surf music, punk rock (both the music and DIY philosophy), '50s music, Sun Records, and a thousand strange, primitive, mostly southern singles you've never heard of. The blues-infused, guitar-drums setup clearly anticipates White Stripes and Black Keys and the FDJ are an obvious bridge between The Cramps to The Sadies.

Thelonious Monster - For My Lover [buy]

In Tracy Chapman's hands, "For My Lover" is a haunting, cryptic love song. Under the Monster's supervision, "Lover" becomes a junkie's lament like a stowaway from Neil Young's Tonight's The Night LP. Two weeks in jail, $20,000 bail, metaphorical mountain climbing, psychoanalysis, and the things you won't do for love? I'm looking at you, dope. Bob Forrest and Mike Martt share vocal duties, with Martt coming in at, "Everyday I'm psychoanalyzed." One of my favorite Monster songs.

Nirvana - School [buy]

Great riff, great vocal, great song, great excuse for wanton destruction. Am I crazy or do I hear, "You're in high school again," "You're on acid again," and "You're an addict again"? Nirvana rules.

• Read Barney Ties Me to the Chair: Remembering Nirvana, originally posted February 20, 2010

Pixies - Debaser [buy]

The leadoff track from Doolittle and the album many consider the Pixies' masterpiece. I like Steve Albini's dryer, more abrasive production on Surfer Rosa, but Doolittle is a classic and almost a self-contained Greatest Hits.

fIREHOSE - Some Things [buy]

Archetypal fIREHOSE. Everyone gets time to shine, but the various parts all support Ed Crawford's great anthem. Like many of his best tunes, the song is heavily tinged with nostalgia, and has a unique country-rock feel. Of course, when your rhythm section is Mike Watt and George Hurley, unique is par for the course.

I think the fIREHOSE legacy is undervalued. They were a great band, a step down from The Minutemen, sure, but who can't you say that about??? Flyin' The Flannel (1991) is a desert island disc, Ragin' Full On (1986) and fROMOHIO (1989) are filled with great songs, and the Live Totem Pole EP (1992) is an out-of-left-field treat. Great band, an impressive catalog, and almost uniformly brilliant (and fun) on stage. They deserve more love.

Superchunk - Slack Motherfucker [buy]

Superchunk in the very early days, with Chuck "Chunk" Garrison on drums and Jack McCook on guitar. "Slack Motherfucker" sounds like a young band doing an impression of Soul Asylum doing an impression of MC5. Awesome song from a band still a year or two away from finding its sound and entering its prime.

• Read Superchunk: It Is My Life, It Is My Voice, originally published October 19, 2010

Mudhoney - You Got It (Keep It Outta My Face) [buy]

"You give it away like free samples,
But I don't want what anyone can have."

The forgotten band of the "Puget Sound,"
Mudhoney wrote dozens of anthems, toured seven galaxies, were instrumental in breaking Sub Pop in England (opening the floodgates to world domination), and were the legit heirs to both The Stooges and The Sonics, two pillars in the grunge exoskeleton. Like fIREHOSE, I feel like they're a historical footnote and shouldn't be. Every good boy deserves Mudhoney. Let's make it happen ... for the children.