Remember the music of the 1990s? Rob Harvilla certainly does.
He's been a professional rock critic for more than 20 years. He’s the host of "The Ringer" podcast and author of the new companion book called "60 Songs That Explain the '90s."
Harvilla said his book "combines shrewd musical analysis, vital cultural and historical context and whimsical personal digressions."
We at WPR's "BETA" have got to say, Harvilla's "whimsical personal digressions" are among many highlights of his book.
As frequent "BETA" guest Chuck Klosterman said: Harvilla's book is "an increasingly rare thing: a book about pop music that’s legitimately funny."
Harvilla serves up a smorgasbord of scintillating songs from a wide selection of genres, including grunge, hip-hop, R&B and ska punk.
Just like in his podcast, Rob shows how a single song could capture so much about the '90’s era, whether it was Salt-N-Pepa’s takes on sex, Green Day’s example of selling out or The Counting Crows' softening of the grunge era.
As a music-obsessed teenager during the '90s, Harvilla said this project is also very personal.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Selling out is so '90s
Doug Gordon: Chuck Klosterman gave you that nice blurb on the front cover of your book. He wrote a whole book on the '90s, and he described the one characteristic of the decade as the desire not to sell out. You have a whole chapter on bands facing this dilemma. Which song or band do you think best represents this struggle?
Rob Harvilla: Probably if you're going for one song, one band, that's got to be Green Day, right? They grew up in the Bay Area as part of this fiercely independent Bay Area punk scene —you know, 924 Gilman (Street), this mythic venue. You cannot play Gilman if you're on a major label. And they signed to a major label, and they are like ex-communicated from Gilman, you know, they really anger people.
And people write all kinds of angry letters to the editor, angry reviews like ... "Maximum RocknRoll," who had loved them previously. It is totally turned on them and it hurts them.
"Dookie" sold like 10 million — I think maybe even closer to 20 million now — records. But they're heartbroken at having lost the community that they started out in, that they grew up in.
And I think that's the starkest example of people being so upset with the band for the crime of signing to a label that could better distribute their music. I understand the dilemma there. And I understand the argument of the purity of an independent label, but it is an idea that just does not make any sense.
The reason it is such a '90s concept is that it basically did not survive the '90s. This idea of selling out, it's just not a thing people agonize about at all anymore.
Eavesdropping on Ice Cube
DG: Selling out seems quaint nowadays, but even in the '90s, it was a little bit different for hip-hop acts. How so?
RH: I've been doing this podcast show for three years. Each episode is one song. And so when it comes time to write a book, I have to radically distill 600,000 words of raw material into a coherent book. And so when I think about doing a sell-out chapter, I'm trying to think about different ways to define that term. And in the case of Coolio or Ice Cube, the struggle they're having is that suddenly they're huge in the suburbs. Suddenly they have this huge white audience that has no experience with South Central L.A.
And I think it was Ice Cube who said, 'White kids are eavesdropping on my music. Like, it's fine if they listen to it. I'm glad they enjoy it. I'm certainly glad they buy it. But I'm making music for Black people and white people are eavesdropping on me.'
And I think Coolio is the same way. Coolio came up in a far more independent scene in Los Angeles, but suddenly he's a household name, right? Suddenly "The Fantastic Voyage" is everywhere and everybody knows the braids, and "Weird Al" (Yankovic) is doing a parody of him ("Amish Paradise") that caused the whole kerfuffle.
And he's agonizing over the fact that this isn't the audience that I sought, you know, like, this isn't who I thought I was talking to. And he is honestly very concerned that he's being viewed as a caricature and he has to sort of push against that. It just fascinated me the different ways that you could take that idea of selling out.
Erykah Badu is Harvilla's vote for best live performer
DG: Erykah Badu gets your vote for the best live performer of her generation. Why?
RH: I've told this story on the podcast many times, and I'll keep telling it because I saw her live in the early 2000s at the Newport in Columbus, Ohio. My first job was at an alt-weekly there as an arts writer and arts editor.
It was a fantastic show, and she had a giant Afro and at a climactic point in a song, she picked up the Afro off her head and bounced it on the stage, just like 'boing' — like it bounced across the stage. And it was the most incredible thing I've ever seen at a rock concert. And I've attended probably closing in on 1,000. She is just so fascinating, it's so magnetic. I saw her at Radio City Music Hall. I saw her at smaller places. I just hung on her every word, to a degree that I can't say about any other performer. I don't know what it is exactly, but she's incredible.
DG: Do you have a favorite song from her live album that really kind of speaks to you?
RH: Oh, dude, it's got to be "Tyrone," right? I mean, when I did an episode on her, that's the song I did an episode on. She put out her debut album in 1997, and then she did a live album almost immediately afterward. And it was like she was introducing this song to the audience.
And it's like a breakup song. It's like a diss song against the person who she's just broken up with. And all the women in the audience are screaming the entire time, they're so delighted and they relate to this song so thoroughly, so immediately.
Kim Deal's voice is the 'greatest musical instrument ever'
DG: I really love your take on the Breeders' 1993 hit, 'Cannonball." Can you share your take on that?
RH: My take is that I love that song and the killer bassline, courtesy of bassist Josephine Wiggs. The Deal sisters' audible switchblade smiles as they harmonize on the line, "Spitting in a wishing well." The split second of dead air right after the Deals harmonize extra-sweetly on the line, "the bong in this reggae song." The giddy insubordination of that silence, which packs more personality than any other band's noise.
I'm from Ohio, right? I'm from the Cleveland area. I live in Columbus now. The Breeders are from Dayton. That makes a huge difference if you're in Ohio and maybe not as big a difference if you're not, but it's Kim Deal's voice, man.
Kim Deal's voice is just the greatest musical instrument ever invented, in my opinion. There's this quality that it has that's so playful and so sinister at the same time, like a children's librarian reading you the scariest story you've ever heard in your entire life.
And "Cannonball" was just such a blast of fresh air on the radio in 1993. You're at the height of grunge. You're at the height of the Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice in Chains at excess. And I worshiped those bands, and I worshiped them at great length in this book and on this show.
But "Cannonball" — the first 60 seconds is all sound effects. The song takes forever to get going in a way that's so appealing to me. It just struck me as revolutionary at the time. I'm 15 or whatever, and I cannot believe that these people live in the same state that I live in. I can't believe they live on the same planet as I do.