Saturday, February 24, 2007
(4:06 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Rock of the 90s
This topic came up at dinner after a lecture last night: If forced, which would you choose, Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails? More specifically, which double album: Mellon Collie or The Fragile? I went with Nine Inch Nails all the way, but the concensus was in favor of Smashing Pumpkins on both counts. How anyone who has listened to the last half of the second disc of Mellon Collie could even consider choosing it over The Fragile is beyond me.When the topic turned to Stone Temple Pilots, my claim that Tiny Music was their best album -- indeed, their only album that is even marginally memorable -- was contested by a partisan of Purple. I can kind of see that. "Interstate Love Song" was arguably the greatest rock radio single of the 1990s -- that is, if we consider it qua radio single. (Better songs were released as radio singles in the 1990s, but they weren't necessarily better singles.)
Metallica didn't even come up. Apparently we've all finally forgotten them -- a richly deserved fate. Even Q101 appears to have given up on the afternoon "Mandatory Metallica."
