Shedding Light on John Mireles

Alternate title: Unjustly Forgotten Albums.

In compiling the creepily self-indulgent and onanistic blog series known as “This Used To Be My Playground” (Alternate title suggested by the ex-wife: “How Dare They Not Like Me”), I have been listening to a lot of old favorites from the one decade that seems doomed to inspire almost no nostalgia at all. According to the annoyingly still-prevalent Baby Boomers, the 60’s were the pinnacle of Western Civilization (can we unplug their feeding tubes, soon, please?), the 70’s garner a certain shameful, shaggy-dog affection for their hideous aesthetics in all things, the 80’s are now the super-cool decade for the new generation too young to really remember them, but the 90’s are passed over with a few grunge-flannel-Monica Lewinsky references. Maybe not enough time has passed for true nostalgia to really set in, but since VH1 has already trotted out their series a couple of years ago, it seems they’re fair game for a little “remember when” encapsulation.

Music buying has come full circle since the 1950’s and early 60’s. Once again, thanks to iTunes, “singles” are the dominant format. Only instead of a flat ring of vinyl that spun at 45 revolutions per minute on a record player, we have audio files that can be downloaded at a buck or two a pop. Budget-friendly and hook-heavy, the single was – and now is again – the go-to. But for at least two generations, beginning in the mid-60’s, the album was primary format of music consumption. Which places the 1990’s in the final quarter or so of the “Album Era.”

Some albums are immortal. The Beatles’ . Led Zeppelin’s . Michael Jackson’s . U2’s . And they’re immortal as albums — that is, entire collections of songs, even if certain individual songs from the albums may not be up to scratch (anyone waxing rhapsodic over Thriller’s “The Lady in My Life” or Joshua Tree’s “Trip Through Your Wires”? Didn’t think so.) But as recently as ten or twelve years ago, the album was still the thing, and if you were interested in an artist, by God, you bought their album. Vinyl was (temporarily) dead, so singles existed in the form of which were for twelve-year-old Latinas with lots of jelly bracelets, or “CD-singles” which were for no one. If a song or an artist interested you enough to want to own it, you tended to go with full commitment – shelling out fifteen bucks for a dozen or more songs. (Usually more than a dozen. Albums got longer in the CD era. Value for dollar aside, this was not always a good artistic decision.)

As someone who loved the antiquated ritual of going to a store, buying a CD, and racing home with it, I bought albums far more often than I should have without being too discriminating, so I am thus the owner of hundreds of CDs of 1990’s vintage. They currently fill a half-dozen apple boxes wedged deep in the back of my storage unit. (See pic at right.)

Some of them were not worth the polycarbonate plastic on which they were pressed and are not worthy of further attention (Hum’s or Jawbreaker’s , anyone? Anyone?), some of them entered the pantheon of Classic Albums (Nirvana’s , Radiohead’s ), and others became the lost middle ground – and that’s the topic of our little visit today. These are albums that came out big, sold well, were reviewed well, and then…forgotten. I own a lot of these.

From the informal feedback I’ve received, it seems my loyal readership skews either a little older or a little younger than myself, so hopefully this will prove informative. Those of you who are pretty much my age will know what it’s like to be rooked for fifteen bucks for the album (what a piece of shit.)

Our first entry in “Tales From The Apple Box” is the Rolling Stones’ 1994 album . The Rolling Stones had been announcing themselves as “The Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the World” since 1969 (when the Beatles were conveniently breaking up). What began as a pretty ballsy statement of chutzpah has been argued with less and less as years turned into decades and the Stones showed no signs of slowing down. But we all know they stumbled badly in the 80’s – and even their 1989 “comeback” album sounds hopelessly dated and a slave to the worst elements of 80’s production: heavily-processed drums, cheesy keyboards, unnecessary horn sections, etc.