In the mid-to-late 90s, I spent most Sunday nights waiting until I was about to fall asleep to hit record on the VCR in the family room. 120 Minutes, MTV’s long running lone outpost of indie music, aired midnight to 2am, barring LoveLine or Road Rules reruns. I didn’t trust the VCR to actually start recording when I programmed it, so I set it to record in EP mode (remember that?) and let it run from around 11pm til whenever the tape ran out in the wee hours. Eventually I amassed a small collection of episodes, though even at the time I knew most only had 1 or 2 videos worth re-watching. The excitement came in not knowing what was coming next: would it be an overhyped UK band, or another fucking 311 video? It must have been easy to get touring bands to the downtown Manhattan studio, as Sebadoh, Hum, Buffalo Tom, and the Butthole Surfers (among many others) showed up for interviews, performances, and/or hosting entire episodes.
There’s videos still burned into my memory, usually from bands that rarely got MTV airplay. The endless memory bank of YouTube saved them for posterity, blurry VHS quality and all. Honestly it would be weird to see these videos in HD, as the tracking issues and fuzzy resolution are part of the memory. Here’s some videos I remember, with my memories of watching them, and some info on what happened to these groups after a brief shot at glory in the early ante meridiem (many thanks to The 120 Minutes Archive, crucial to jogging my memory https://120minutes.tylerc.com/)
October 20, 1996
The Connells had a big hit overseas with “74 75”, but despite hitting the Top 20 in the US, this North Carolina band never really leveled up, even after almost two decades of grinding it out. I’m not sure a video based on Deliverance was going to push them over the top, but they sure look like they had fun filming it. Back when they started, this type of jangly, R.E.M.-indebted rock, with little to no trace of its punk roots, was called College Rock. It was never totally palatable to fans of mainstream rock, nor rough and noisy enough for that day’s Indie Rock crowd, which was closer to Black Flag than The Replacements. Singing to TVT didn’t help much, as the former TeleVision Tunes label has a well documented history of screwing over bands. Maybe one day a label like fellow North Caroliners Merge will do a box set that covers their post-punk beginnings to their final shot at stardom.
September 8, 1996
Living in the Dayton suburbs in 1996 exposed me to more of the southwest Ohio music scene than I normally would have, with Guided by Voices unavoidable and The Afghan Whigs repping Cincinnati. I used to hear this track on the local alterna-rock radio station (The Edge 103.9) pretty regularly, though usually in the late hours, to avoid offending the sensibilities of corn fed Midwesterners. Main man Happy Chichester’s professional relationship with Greg Dulli probably helped with getting signed to Columbia, and after Howlin’ Maggie disbanded he went on to join Dulli in The Twilight Singers. I come back to this song maybe once a year, since it is catchy as hell and has more attitude in one song that most bands can muster for a whole album.
Booth and the Bad Angel “I Believe”
August 11, 1996
Did you know Tim Booth from James did an album with composer Angelo Badamenti? I’d completely forgotten about this before researching this article. Turns out Googling “Tim Booth rolling in flowers” bore fruit! Besides the string section, I’m not sure how much Badamenti I hear in this, essentially a pretty standard jangly mid-90s alternative rock song. Despite the massive success of “Laid”, James always had an experimental streak, with a bunch of records produced by Brian Eno to their credit. Anyone looking for Twin Peaks style soundscapes will be disappointed with the rest of the album, which alternates upbeat numbers with moodier midtempo songs that flirt with Adult Contemporary. I remember Matt Pinfield being pretty excited about this video but I was not. Angelo Badamenti spends the video perched on a building miming as a conductor, and Tim Booth rolls around in a field of flowers. I’m just now noticing that the song is mostly the chorus over and over.
October 20, 1996
This Belgian trio got caught up in the post-Nirvana grunge wave, but I hear a lot more of the dissonant indie pop of Shudder To Think in their sound, especially the atonal hook that anchors the song. Metal Molly were a little too silly for the dour, authenticity-obsessed 90s, and not quite silly enough to appeal to Ween fans. They put out one more album in 2000 before going on hiatus, and their brief run is a good reminder of how popular guitar-based rock used to be. The boundaries between pop, rock, rap, etc have blurred so much that it’s hard to remember when the only game in town was a guitar/bass/drum lineup.
September 29, 1996 (120 Minutes of Nothing)
This video aired 2 years earlier when the album came out, but was revisited for this special “120 Minutes of Nothing”, which turned out to be a fairly normal episode, with some remote interviews during the Nothing Records showcase concert. After the massive success of The Downward Spiral, Interscope gave Trent Reznor a blank check for his boutique label, Nothing. He did some good with it, like giving Autechre better US distribution, and some pretty middling, like helping out former Lucky Pierre bandmate Kevin McMahon with his new project. Prick does have a small but loyal fanbase (one of my high school friends was, and remains, an ardent supporter), but it sounds to me like a bit of bandwagon jumping, wearing Industrial music like a costume. Have you heard Lucky Pierre, anyways? Their jittery, noisy new wave would have been a big hit in the Meet Me In the Bathroom 00s blog rock era. The video takes place in a big metal silo, which was strangely ubiquitous in the 90s (see also: “Warped” by Red Hot Chili Peppers). Having people dress up as animals is a sorta neat twist, though I’d pay to see the Jack Hannah type of backstage shenanigans that went on when the real animals showed up.
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