Tag: 1990s

RIP – James Van Der Beek

Van Der Beek shot to fame in 1998 as Dawson Leery, the teenage film buff who was as obsessed with Steven Spielberg as he was with his neighbour and lifelong crush, Joey Potter (played by Katie Holmes). Later that year, he was voted one of People Magazine’s Most Beautiful People in the World. On the 25th anniversary of the show starting, Van Der Beek wrote: “Twenty-five years ago today, my life changed. Not gradually, not day-by-day … instantly. It was the culmination of five years of auditioning, hundreds of hours on stage, thousands of hours travelling, preparing, dreaming, hoping, hearing ‘no’ and making up reasons to keep going. But the shift was overnight.”

The intense pressures of celebrity proved difficult to cope with given his youth. After Dawson’s Creek became a smash hit, he said in an interview: “Walking around at that time was very tricky because one autograph could turn into a mob scene. So I walked around in fear of teenage girls.”

James Van Der Beek, star of Dawson’s Creek, dies aged 48
Actor who also starred in Varsity Blues and Rules of Attraction revealed in 2024 he had been diagnosed with cancer

From the last Dawson’s Creek recap on Television Without Pity:

…which Dawson picks up at the office in Los Angeles. “It’s us!” Pacey and Joey squeal, offering him their congratulations. “I can’t wait until next season,” Joey says, and Dawson tells them that he can’t wait for the next day. Because he’s meeting Spielberg. Whatev. Pacey and Joey, like good friends (and unlike me), are thrilled for him. The three of the yammer about what he ought to wear to the meeting, as the camera pans to framed photo of Pacey, Joey, Dawson, and Jen, framed on Dawson’s desktop. “Say goodnight, not goodbye,” the soundtrack sings.

And that’s it. We’re out. Thanks for coming along for the ride. It was long and occasionally painful, but I don’t regret a second of it. See you around.

Just a Girl – No Doubt

“Just a Girl” is a song by American band No Doubt from their third studio album, Tragic Kingdom (1995). Released as the record’s lead single in the United States on September 21, 1995, it was written by Gwen Stefani and Tom Dumont, and produced by Matthew Wilder. It has also made an appearance on their 2003 greatest hits album, The Singles 1992–2003. Lyrically, “Just a Girl” is about Stefani’s perspective of life as a woman and her struggles with having strict parents. “Just a Girl” was the first song Stefani wrote without the assistance of her brother Eric.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_a_Girl

Debaser – Pixies

“Debaser” is a song by American alternative rock band Pixies, released in April 1989 as the opening track on their album Doolittle and later as a promotional single following the dissolution of the band…

1929 short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. The film includes a scene in which a woman’s eye is apparently cut open by a razor, which is referenced in the lyric “slicin’ up eyeballs.” According to frontman and songwriter Black Francis:

I wish Buñuel were still alive. He made this film about nothing in particular. The title itself is a nonsense. With my stupid, pseudo-scholar, naive, enthusiast, avant-garde-ish, amateurish way to watch Un chien andalou (twice), I thought: “Yeah, I will make a song about it.” [He sings:] “Un chien andalou”… It sounds too French, so I will sing “un chien andalusia”, it sounds good, no?

The title “Debaser” references the fact that Un Chien Andalou “debases” contemporary morality and standards of art: “I guess it means: one who debases. A debaser. It was an attempt to introduce a new word into the lexicon, but I don’t think it’s been successful, else I would have heard about it.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debaser

Blow Up the Outside World – Soundgarden

When asked if he really wanted to “blow up the outside world”, Cornell said, “All the time, so it doesn’t encroach on me—you can hibernate and not have to worry about it.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blow_Up_the_Outside_World

Nothing seems to kill me no matter how hard I try
Nothing is closing my eyes
Nothing can beat me down for your pain or delight
And nothing seems to break me
No matter how hard I fall
Nothing can break me at all
Not one for giving up though not invincible I know

I’ve givin’ everything I need
I’d give you everything I own
I’d give in if it could at least be ours alone
I’ve given everything I could
To blow it to hell and gone
Burrow down in and blow up the outside
Blow up the outside
Blow up the outside world

Someone tried to tell me something
Don’t let the world bring you down?
Nothing will do me in before I do myself
So save it for your own and the ones you can help

I’ve givin’ everything I need
I’d give you everything I own
I’d give in if it could at least be ours alone
I’ve given everything I could
To blow it to hell and gone
Burrow down in and blow up the outside
Blow up the outside
Blow up the outside world

Want to make it understood
Wanting though I never would
Trying though I know it’s wrong
Blowing it to hell and gone
Wishing though I never could

Inside Out – Eve 6

The band’s final name is a reference to The X-Files. Fagenson, a fan of the show, suggested the name after seeing an episode titled “Eve,” which included a character who went by the name of “Eve 6.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_6
see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Modern_Rock_Tracks_number_ones_of_the_1990s#1998

I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside
Swallow my doubt, turn it inside out
Find nothin’ but faith in nothin’
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin ’round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you

I burn, burn like a wicker cabinet
Chalk white and oh-so-frail
I see our time has gotten stale
The tick-tock of the clock is painful
All sane and logical
I wanna tear it off the wall
I hear words in clips and phrases
I think sick like ginger ale
My stomach turns and I exhale

I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside
I would swallow my doubt, turn it inside out
Find nothin’ but faith in nothin’
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin ’round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you

So-Cal is where my mind states
But it’s not my state of mind
I’m not as ugly, sad as you
Or am I origami
Folded up and just pretend
Demented as the motives in your head

I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside
I would swallow my doubt, turn it inside out
Find nothin’ but faith in nothin’
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin ’round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you
(Rendezvous)

I alone am the one you don’t know you need
Take heed, feed your ego
Make me blind when your eyes close
Sink when you get close, tie me to the bedpost
I alone am the one you don’t know you need
You don’t know you need me
Make me blind when your eyes close
Tie me to the bedpost

I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
The lack thereof would leave me empty inside
Swallow my doubt, turn it inside out
Find nothing but faith in nothing
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin ’round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous, then I’m through, now I’m through with you

Through with you
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you

Nookie – Limp Bizkit

I did it all for the nookie
(Come on) the nookie
(Come on) so you can take that cookie
And stick it up your (yeah)
Stick it up your (yeah)
Stick it up your (yeah)
Stick it up your

Limp Bizkit is an American Nu Metal band from Jacksonville, Florida. Its lineup consists of lead vocalist Fred Durst, drummer John Otto, guitarist Wes Borland, turntablist DJ Lethal and bassist Sam Rivers. The band’s musical style is marked by Durst’s angry vocal delivery and Borland’s sonic experimentation. Borland’s elaborate visual appearance, which includes face and body paint, masks, and uniforms, also plays a large role in Limp Bizkit’s live shows. The band has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, sold 40 million records worldwide, and won several other awards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limp_Bizkit

Lollapallooza Oral History

ROB TANNENBAUM (journalist, author) I’m trying not to use the word “lifestyle,” but I guess I have to. This was a lifestyle, and if you went to Lollapalooza what you realized was that the lifestyle was bigger than just, “I’m going to see a band.” It made you feel not just that you were part of the Jane’s Addiction Fan Club, but you were part of the world that embraced, you know, tattoos.

STEPHEN PERKINS (drummer, Jane’s Addiction) I tell you, man, nothing is better than playing to a roomful of people that want your music. They know the lyrics, they’re there for you. There’s a union. And Perry, he’s a shaman when he’s up there. You can go into the room and let him take you somewhere.

JIMMY CHAMBERLIN (drummer, Smashing Pumpkins) Mike D was instrumental in teaching the Tibetan monks how to play basketball. It was so out of their wheelhouse and something that they could kind of latch onto. They were all pretty athletic guys and they actually got pretty good at it. By the end they had a pretty good scrimmage team!

Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival
Richard Bienstock, Tom Beaujour
Note – Recommended Book

LOLLAPALOOZA 1994 DATES: JULY 7–SEPTEMBER 5

MAIN STAGE: Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars, the Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, L7, Boredoms (first half), Green Day (second half)

SECOND STAGE: Flaming Lips, the Verve, Guided by Voices, the Frogs, Shudder to Think, Luscious Jackson, the Boo Radleys, Lambchop, Girls Against Boys, Stereolab, various

Seether – Veruca Salt

From the comments:
@pbcoop62
The 90’s were a golden age for Chicago rock bands. Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, Urge Overkill, Liz Phair, and Material Issue to name just a few.

@DonJHughes
Nothing beats the 90’s alternative female rockers.. Veruca Salt, Liz Phair, Hole, L7, Garbage, PJ Harvey, Elastica. Juliana Hatfield, Breeders.. the list goes on and on.

@quakerninja
If you think this song sucks you don’t own a skateboard.

The song was written by Veruca Salt singer-guitarist Nina Gordon. “Seether” was more pop-sounding compared to the rest of the band’s material. In a 1994 interview with MuchMusic, an interviewer suggested that “Seether” could either be about female “animalistic instincts” or bouts of rage. Gordon agreed that her songs’ meanings often changed during and after the writing process. “You write a song, think it’s about one thing for five minutes….and discover that it’s about many different things and working on many different levels.”[6] In Veruca Salt’s 1997 hit single “Volcano Girls,” the seether was identified as “Louise,” which presumably refers to Veruca Salt singer-guitarist Louise Post.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seether_(song)

Longview – Green Day

LYRICS
Sit around and watch the tube, but nothing’s on
I change the channels for an hour or two
Twiddle my thumbs just for a bit
I’m sick of all the same old shit
In a house with unlocked doors
And I’m fucking lazy

Bite my lip and close my eyes
Take me away to paradise
I’m so damn bored I’m going blind
And I smell like shit

Peel me off this Velcro seat and get me moving
I sure as hell can’t do it by myself
I’m feeling like a dog in heat
Barred indoors from the summer street
I locked the door to my own cell
And I lost the key

Bite my lip and close my eyes
Take me away to paradise
I’m so damn bored I’m going blind
And I smell like shit

I got no motivation
Where is my motivation?
No time for the motivation
Smoking my inspiration

Sit around and watch the phone, but no one’s calling
Call me pathetic, call me what you will
My mother says to get a job
But she don’t like the one she’s got
When masturbation’s lost its fun
You’re fucking lonely

Bite my lip and close my eyes
Take me away to paradise
I’m so damn bored
I’m going blind
And loneliness has to suffice
Bite my lip and close my eyes
I was slipping away to paradise
Some say, “Quit or I’ll go blind.”
But it’s just a myth

eXistenz – trailer, quotes from

A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.

Allegra: So how does it feel?
Ted: What?
Allegra: Your real life. The one you came back for.
Ted: It feels completely unreal.
Allegra: You’re stuck now, aren’t ya? You want to go back to the Chinese restaurant because there’s nothing happening here. We’re safe. It’s boring.
Ted: It’s worse than that. I’m not sure… I’m not sure here, where we are, is real at all. This feels like a game to me. And you, you’re beginning to feel a bit like a game character.

Ted: Free will is obviously not a big factor in this little world of ours.
Allegra: It’s like real life. There’s just enough to make it interesting.

Ted: What was your life like before?
Gas: Before?
Ted: Before it was changed by Allegra Geller.
Gas: I operated a gas station.
Ted: You still operate a gas station, don’t you?
Gas: Only on the most pathetic level of reality.

Ted: It’s none of your business who sent us! We’re here and that is all that matters… God, what happened? I didn’t mean to say that.
Allegra: It’s your character who said it. It’s kind of a schizophrenic feeling, isn’t it? You’ll get used to it. There are things that have to be said to advance the plot and establish the characters, and those things get said whether you want to say them or not. Don’t fight it.

Allegra: What the hell was that?
Ted: That wasn’t me. That was my game character. I wouldn’t have done that. Not here anyway.
Allegra: Our characters are obviously supposed to jump on each other. It’s probably a pathetically mechanical attempt to heighten the emotional tension of the next game sequence. No use fighting it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120907/quotes/?ref_=tt_dyk_qu

American Beauty – Quotes from

Brad Dupree: [reading Lester’s job description] “My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men’s room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn’t so closely resemble Hell.” Well, you have absolutely no interest in saving yourself.
Lester Burnham: Brad, for 14 years I’ve been a whore for the advertising industry. The only way I could save myself now is if I start firebombing.

Lester Burnham: [narrating] Both my wife and daughter think I’m this gigantic loser and they’re right, I have lost something. I’m not exactly sure what it is but I know I didn’t always feel this… sedated. But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back.

Lester Burnham: When I was your age, I flipped burgers all summer just to be able to buy an eight-track.
Ricky Fitts: That sucks.
Lester Burnham: No, actually it was great. All I did was party and get laid. I had my whole life ahead of me.

Colonel Frank Fitts: Where’s your wife?
Lester Burnham: Uh, I dunno. Probably out fucking that dorky, prince-of-real-estate asshole. And you know what? I don’t care.
Colonel Frank Fitts: Your wife is with another man and you don’t care?
Lester Burnham: Nope. Our marriage is just for show. A commercial for how normal we are when we’re anything but.

Lester Burnham: I feel like I’ve been in a coma for the past twenty years. And I’m just now waking up.

Angela Hayes: Who are you looking for?
Jane Burnham: My parents are coming tonight. They’re trying to, you know, take an active interest in me.
Angela Hayes: Gross. I hate it when my mom does that.

The Slacker – Background and Philosophy of

The term achieved renewed popularity following its use in the 1985 film Back to the Future in which James Tolkan‘s character Mr. Strickland chronically refers to Marty McFly, his father George McFly, Biff Tannen, and a group of teenage delinquents as “slackers”.[11] It gained subsequent exposure from the 1989 Superchunk single “Slack Motherfucker”, and the 1990 film Slacker.[12] The television series Rox has been noted for its “depiction of the slacker lifestyle … of the early ’90s”.[13][14][15]

Slacker became widely used in the 1990s to refer to a type of apathetic youth who were cynical and uninterested in political or social causes and as a stereotype for members of Generation X.[16] Richard Linklater, director of the aforementioned 1990 film, commented on the term’s meaning in a 1995 interview, stating that “I think the cheapest definition [of a slacker] would be someone who’s just lazy, hangin’ out, doing nothing. I’d like to change that to somebody who’s not doing what’s expected of them. Somebody who’s trying to live an interesting life, doing what they want to do, and if that takes time to find, so be it.”[17]

The term has connotations of “apathy and aimlessness”.[18] It is also used to refer to an educated person who avoids work, possibly as an anti-materialist stance, who may be viewed as an underachiever.[12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker

V: What are your parent’s occupations?
DP: My mom’s a teacher and my dad was a white collar clerk working in the customs field. We were pretty poor, and throughout childhood we watched our dad lament about coming to America filled with visions of wealth, and how everybody was becoming rich except him. He struggled and worked well beyond the age of retirement and still never really got ahead. I don’t know how young  I was – maybe around ten – when I realized that you can work all your life and still end up poor. I’d rather not go chasing those rainbows and just be happy with what I have.

Zines, Volume 2 – RE/Search
More self-expression obsession coming at you: in-depth interviews with 12 more unusual publishers. From a 15-year-old suburbanite former punk, to a filmmaker and “tracker” (8-track collector/expert); a French self-publisher of art books (in the original meaning of the word), to the dishwasher whose goal it is to wash dishes in every state of the U.S.A. Also, a history of proletarian novels, zine reviews and much, much more. Read all about it in Zines! Vol. 2!

Excerpt from the interview with Dishwasher Pete