Through the Past, Smugly

I was listening to the local alternative rock station on the old wireless crystal set recently, and they were playing a "classics of the 90's" countdown. The 90's are a decade near and dear to me; I was 13 in 1990 and got to grow up right along with the decade. MC Hammer pants? I had a pair. Metallica shirt? Check. Flannel grunge shirts? I had one. Some Halloween I'm going to put on all three at once and tell people I'm dressing as 1991.

Now, what kills me about the local alterna-rock concern is their unabashed revisionism.
They goof on themselves for cramming rap-metal/nu-metal schlock like Limp Bizkit and Staind down my throat 5 years ago, which is like Germany goofing on itself for that whole Holocaust deal. "Vaht vere ve thinking?" So they've owned up for one great musical sin. But then they go on, in the aforementioned countdown, to pat themselves on the back for the sorts of mega-crap that sowed the seeds for the Aaron Lewises of the world years later. They even call it classic!

This situation can go on no longer. The truth must be told. Let's see how many of these overrated "classics" we can knock down in one breath:

SUBLIME



Retarded, retarded, retarded. Once upon a time, Sublime was just this one hit wonder faux-ska band that seemed destined at the time, like Dishwalla, for the dustbin of history. Then they hit upon a time-honored formula: (Lead singer who offs himself ignominiously) + (Talent vacuum bandmates willing to tirelessly flog his corpse for lost recordings) = RELEVANCE! I call this the Crapdratic Equation.

"Date Rape" was at least a mild giggle-inducer at the time, especially if you had been sniffing glue. Unfortunately Sublime seems to have become the band of choice for inebriated frat assholes and twenty-something high school hangers-on like Matthew McConaughey in "Dazed and Confused"; in short, the kind of people responsible for most date rape.

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS



I'm not gonna take a stand here on the whole STP vs. Pearl Jam: Who ripped off whom? debate. One was engaging and fairly interesting, if a bit overblown, and the other was fucking Stone Temple Pilots. It wasn't even a debate at the time: you didn't have to like Pearl Jam, but only a douchbag of the first order liked Stone Temple Pilots. Yet somehow they became, through sheer force of will, something other than footnotes.

Lead singer Scott Weiland is perhaps the biggest waste of carbon since coal dust. He is also, in the great pantheon of smack-addicted 90's frontmen, the only one who hasn't managed to die yet. Truly he was sent here by Lucifer himself. I'm pretty sure if you play "Interstate Love Song" backwards your head will explode. If you're a long time STP fan and disagree, by all means experiment with this at home. Just make sure to swallow a bottle of Dran-O first. Y'know, to get the acoustics in your head right.

ALICE IN CHAINS


Alice in Chains were more boring than trigonometry. They were more boring than a 2-hour stint in a MRI machine. They were more boring than "SUSE Linux 9.3 For Dummies". Which was okay because Alice In Chains's main audience were heroin users, who can clap along and nod their heads to the Emergency Broadcast System noise.

They were at least slightly musically interesting, and Jerry Cantrell can play guitar and not embarass himself. But you would need to somehow get past Layne Staley's bizarro voice singing about "mosquito deeeaeath", and even if you could, it ain't worth it brother. I suggest just doing smack.

GREEN DAY



In uncertain times such as these, I grasp for the things I can rely on for their unswerving stability: The passage of the seasons. The Bible. Green Day's suckiness.

Green Day's the only band in my iron sights that are still around today, and they've become the elder statesmen of whiny pop punk. They must be attracting fans based on the "strength" of their new material, because I can't imagine any 14 year-old in 2006 sitting down with 1994's "Dookie" and seeing these guys for anything but the retarded offspring of moms who handled too much cat feces while pregnant. Then they put out a half-dozen completely forgettable albums, then they put out "American Idiot", which if you haven't heard it, sounds like "London Calling" would have sounded if The Clash had gone to the Diane Warren School of Songwriting.

God willing and the creek don't rise, I can be annoyed by Green Day for decades to come! They're the Tom Joad of suckiness. As long as whiny pop punk keeps drifting back into popularity every few years, Green Day will be there. Wherever there's a kid with more iTunes credits than IQ points, Green Day will be there. And wherever there's a cop beating on a guy, Green Day will be there too. In the cop.

Now get out your tar and feathers, because here we go...

NIRVANA



Preamble: Nirvana was important. Nirvana saved us from hair metal. Nirvana paved the way for countless great acts to come, who were either inspired by them directly or found the mainstream more accepting once Nirvana had kicked the doors down for them.

Nirvana, unfortunately, also weren't really that good.

Before you form a posse: Have you actually listened to Nirvana lately? It hasn't aged well.
Kurt Cobain leaned heavily on the kind of meandering nonsense lyrics like "Broken hymen of your highness/I'm left black" that you could only get away with in the 90's. Sorry Kurt. It annoyed me when Pavement did it too, and you don't get a free pass either. Even Beck writes straightforward songs nowadays.

Musically, they relied on "soft-LOUD-soft" that rock critics just call it "The Nirvana thingy" when emo bands do it now. And their ineptness can be heard for yourself on any of the countless outtakes bootlegs passed around fetishistically by modern day fans. It truly goes to show that the real unsung genius of the 90's isn't Kurt Cobain; it's "Nevermind" producer Butch Vig. If it weren't for him running that album through his filter we'd all be sitting around here talking about which Winger album is our favorite.