Oo yeah baby, I'm celebrating 1996 this week. Here's just a few albums that I remember most.
Apocalyptica - Plays Metallica by Four Cellos
Cranberries - To the Faithful Departed
Jamiroquai - Traveling Without Moving
Alex Lifeson - Victor
Anthony Phillips - Dragonfly Dreams
Rush - Test for Echo
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America soundtrack
Weird Al Yankovic - Bad Hair Day
Apocalyptica was an unusual group of three classically trained cellists and one drummer. This, their first album, was a collection of Metallica covers. What does Metallica sound like played on four cellos? Like. . like. . . well, like four lovely cellos rockin' out. I especially like their cover of Welcome Home (Sanitarium).
I was a fan of the Cranberries after their previous two albums, and this one wasn't quite as great, but has one of my favorite songs of theirs, Forever Yellow Skies. The bass and drums in this song drive me out of my mind. Love it!
Lots of people at the time were complaining that Jamiroquai was just a lousy rip-off of Stevie Wonder. Well, if they were, they did it very well. The video of Virtual Insanity got a lot of play on MTV at the time. I loved several songs off this, their third album, but my favorite will always be Cosmic Girl.
Victor was a solo album by Alex Lifeson, guitarist with Rush. To date, and Rush has been around for over 40 years now, and there have been exactly two solo albums by band members. So you can imagine, this was pretty interesting to me when it came out. It's not a very memorable record though. I couldn't tell you one song from it, but it's something I remember from '96.
Anthony Phillips was an ex member of Genesis when they were arty. In the eighties, I used to hunt down all his solo albums for their accoustic guitar and piano tracks that evoked living in the country. Of course, that country was England where he's from, but still, the English countryside is not far from my particular Philly suburb countryside. Half the place names around here are of English origin and we have a horse show, The Devon Horse Show. Doesn't get much more country English than that. Dragonfly Dreams was more of that, and in 1996, it brought fond memories of my high school music listening.
Rush's Test for Echo. I have to admit, Rush was a favorite band of mine in the 80s, but in the 90s they just weren't of much interest to me. I did notice when a new album came out though, and eventually I listened to this one. It's Rush, I'm always gonna give 'em a shot.
The TV show Beavis and Butt-Head got so big they made a movie. I was a casual fan of the show and saw the movie. What hooked me musically to it was the Red Hot Chilli Pepper's cover of the Ohio Players song "Love Rollercoaster". I loved that track and got a hold of the soundtrack. Then I got really into The Ohio Players, which reminds me, I still haven't heard all their albums yet. Gotta get on that.
Weird Al probably had his biggest year in '96 with the song "Amish Paradise" parodying the Coolio song "Gangsta's Paradise". The whole album is great and I still can't get his song "Gump", a parody of the Presidents of the United States song "Lump" out of my head. I think I sung it last week at work. What's wrong with me?
There were a lot of songs I liked that year but which I didn't listen to the albums they were from. Sheryl Crow's self titled album with "A Change Would Do You Good" and several others were, and still are, on the radio (now it's internet radio in coffee shops wher I hear it). I always liked her songs a lot. Barenaked Ladies had a track "Straw Hat and Old Dity Hank" from their album Born on a Pirate Ship that I like. I learned about Tool and Sepultura this year with their interesting music videos. Sepultura's Ratamahatta song had a creative video and so did Tool's Stinkfist (among several others) from their Aenima album from this year. Yes, MTV still ran music videos then.
And that's it for music. Now it's on to 1996 games.
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