What is the memory you most associate with this title?
I don’t actually have a specific memory tied to this album. It was released before Nick Lachey became a reality TV star, and it was one of dozens of teen pop albums released in the wake of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys. But for some inexplicable reason, I’m always kind of rooting for Lachey.
I recognize that he’s pretty, and that is probably clouding a lot of my judgment. But I bought Revelation in the interest of understanding why teen pop became so ascendant in the late 90s / early 2000s. (I failed.) When his marriage to Jessica Simpson went on the rocks, his interview with Rolling Stone actually humanized him for me. Also, he posed shirtless in the photo shoot for the article.
So, yeah, I’ll cop to buying this album because sometimes, I just like the pretty faces on the album cover.
What was happening in your life when it was released?
Earlier in 2000, I left my job with the newspaper for an even worse one with a startup. I didn’t last more than 2 months before a friend of mine recommended me for a job at her company. I would stay at that job for 18 months before getting laid off.
But it marked the pivot when I stopped being a journalist and started being a web developer. I learned on the job, but I had already trained through community college classes and self-built projects.
I developed enough of an aptitude for programming that I managed to survive a few rounds of lay-offs before getting the ax in August 2001. Getting paid to program, however, insured I would never go back to journalism.
What was happening in your life when you bought it?
Revelation was released in Sept. 2000 and by Nov. 2000, I had already posted a review of the album. That would seem to indicate I may have bought the album shortly after its release. Perhaps even on release day.
It’s also possible I had downloaded the album through the Evil Sharing Networks before committing to purchasing it.
All that to say, the previous answer applies to this answer.
I will say this time of my life was my first bout of financial security. I was earning enough of a salary that car repair expenses didn’t tank me, and I could afford to buy incredibly expensive Japanese indie rock albums from overseas.
Because of that prosperity, I started to build a home recording studio. I dropped money on Cakewalk 9.0, and bought a bass guitar and electric guitar. I went so far as to start taking guitar lessons, bringing in band scores of my favorite Japanese artists to my instructor.
Oh, and also — I registered the domain name “musicwhore.org” and consolidated all the pieces of music writing I published under other site names.
What do you think of it now?
I am less severe on teen pop today than I was at the time of the album’s release. So a lot of the things I said in the original review probably still apply, just without the rockist attitude.
I have spotted the original self-titled 98 Degrees debut album at the thrift shop a number of times, but I have so far resisted completing my collection. (The previous sentence implies that I also own the group’s comeback album, 2.0, from 2013, and you would be correct.) I did, however, finally pick up Nick Lachey’s solo debut.
What is the memory you most associate with this title?
Before I moved to New York City in 1992 to spend two semesters on an exchange program, Honolulu had two classic rock radio stations. When I came back in 1993, one of those stations had turned into an alternative rock station.
Suddenly, it seemed like everyone had always been into Björk and R.E.M. when I knew for a fact I got confused looks whenever I mentioned these artists to my friends.
Despite my bitterness, I did feel somewhat gratified that people came around to my point of view. But the year I spent on the mainland also revealed I was actually pretty mainstream. It just took six months for Hawaii to catch up with the rest of the country.
What was happening in your life when it was released?
As much culture shock I felt moving to New York City, recalibrating to Hawaiian time was just as hard. I don’t think I managed to feel remotely realigned for at least a year.
Having tasted that independence, I asked my parents whether they would spring for me to live on campus. They agreed.
Honolulu isn’t nearly as walkable as New York City, and public transportation isn’t remotely as frequent. But I held onto as much independence as I could muster till I moved to Austin, Texas in 1997 for work.
What was happening in your life when you bought it?
I bought the album at the time of its release, so same answer as above.
Living on campus did confer a lot of conveniences, though. If I wanted to watch an arthouse movie at the now defunct Varsity Theatre, I could just walk from campus housing. A visit to Tower Records was a 20-minute bus ride to Ala Moana Center. Living on campus probably made it easier for the student newspaper to get its hooks into me.
No, it wasn’t like living in New York City. But I probably would have gone crazy commuting back and forth from the suburbs.
What do you think of it now?
The EP still ranks highly in my favorites for 1993. I listened to it a lot at the time, and I tried to catch Spiny Norman as much as I could, which wasn’t much given how few rock venues were available in Honolulu.
The chip on my shoulder about Hawaii’s lack of an independent rock scene probably got exacerbated by this EP. It was of such stunning quality that I held out hope my hometown wouldn’t be so much a backwater.
The band, of course, broke up, and my music tastes got increasingly esoteric as I explored that thing called the Internet (back when publications still capitalized the “I”.)
But the music on Crust still holds up well. Play it alongside other music of the era — your Siamese Dreams and your In Uteros — and you’d be hard-pressed to think Spiny Norman was a regional band.
What is the memory you most associate with this title?
Spring break 1996. A number of college friends and I traveled to Moloka`i for the weekend. Having lived most of my life up till that point in highly urbanized Honolulu, I never imagined a place where every destination could be described in the singular — not a grocery store but the grocery store.
We rented a pair of cars, and I couldn’t abide by the radio. So we went to the record store, where I picked cassette tapes of Sade’s Diamond Life and Madonna’s Bedtime Stories. I liked Bedtime Stories enough to get it on CD when we got back to Honolulu.
What was happening in your life when it was released?
A year had passed since I returned from a college exchange program in New York City, and I could feel my focus slowly changing from music to journalism.
I was contributing more to the college newspaper, and I felt the music program was changing in a way I didn’t like. A beloved composition teacher had retired, and one of his replacements hadn’t yet developed the skill of letting students find their own voice, even if they were floundering. It was such an encounter that steered me away from composition a number of years after I graduated from college.
What was happening in your life when you bought it?
I was features editor of the college newspaper, which made me realize I was too dictatorial for management. I’ve avoided taking on leadership positions in my career since then.
On this trip, I smoked marijuana for the first time. I also had my first same-sex kiss — with a straight guy. With his girlfriend supervising. It was a good trip.
What do you think of it now?
Bedtime Stories is definitely one of the albums you should own if you’re a very casual Madonna listener.
She faltered a bit with Erotica, between a disastrous appearance on David Letterman and a controversial photo book that seems to have been forgotten. One of the photos from Sex popped up as an Internet meme, misattributing a naked Madonna as Marilyn Monroe.
Madonna recalibrated with Bedtime Stories, focusing more on a smoother R&B sound and even enlisting Björk to contribute the title track.
What is the memory you most associate with this title?
I was living in New York City at the time this album was released. That season, Kronos performed twice at Alice Tully Hall. Most of the pieces on those programs would eventually make their way to the Night Prayers album. So I was a bit disappointed they didn’t end up on Short Stories.
I sat a few seats away from Osvaldo Golijov at one of those concerts. He stood up when Kronos acknowledged him after starting the concert with a premiere of his work. I congratulated him as he passed me on the way out to intermission.
What was happening in your life when it was released?
I had adjusted to life in New York City. I had a rough bout of homesickness the preceding autumn, which I found disappointing because I had waited what felt like an eternity to escape Hawaii.
But I wasn’t totally at ease. I still was in denial about being gay, and I hadn’t learned how to be comfortable with solitude. I did lay the groundwork for what would eventually pivot me away from music and into journalism by writing for the campus newspaper. I had also started to enjoy reading fiction, which was handy because that winter was actually rough.
What was happening in your life when you bought it?
I bought the album on release day, so same answer as above. I’m pretty sure I took a crosstown bus from Hunter College to the Tower Records at Lincoln Center, which had an entire floor dedicated to classical music.
What do you think of it now?
I do not like Short Stories.
Up to that point, Kronos crafted their albums well, threading diverse pieces into a thematic whole. Short Stories felt like a compilation with uninteresting B-sides.
Perhaps the lack of a thread was the point of the album. I just remember feeling impatience with a number of longer pieces on the album.
If I were to rank Kronos’ Nonesuch albums, Short Stories would anchor it.
What is the memory you most associate with this title?
I remember playing this album on my computer CD-ROM drive instead of my stereo and hearing what would have been lush strings strangled through cheap, tinny computer speakers. It was the lowest point in the 14 years I spent in Austin. Even lower than losing my job two years later. Why was I playing this album on cheap speakers? Because my apartment had been burglarized.
What was happening in your life when it was released?
In February 1998, I had been living in Austin nine months, and I wasn’t having an easy time of it. I had a distracting crush on a co-worker, who was leaving the office. I was working a night shift and didn’t have much of a social life. And I was discovering that I really hated gay bars.
I was keeping an online journal at the time, which I now keep under authentication. Around that time, I had wanted to contribute to a Duran Duran tribute album, but I didn’t have the equipment to make a decent recording, nor did I know anyone who could sing it. It would be another 7 years before I could record it properly.
What was happening in your life when you bought it?
Someone broke into my apartment, stole my music equipment, stereo and a bunch of cassette tape cases. They had hit a neighbor’s apartment a few doors down about two weeks earlier, and that spurred me to get renter’s insurance.
The insult to injury in this ordeal was the fact those cassette tape cases didn’t have anything of commercial worth — just the masters of my 4-track demos. I had years of music in those cases, but just one cassette tape survived. It was in my car at the time of the burglary.
At the time, it felt catastrophic to lose so much creative work. I even broke down and cried in the office when the magnitude of the loss hit me.
The insurance settlement covered the cost of the music gear in terms of its current value, not its depreciation. That meant I could purchase entirely new gear for the price I had paid in 1991.
What I eventually discovered was that I was limiting myself creatively with outdated gear. I started to lose the desire to make music because what was in my head didn’t match what I was actually creating.
Since then, I’ve built a home studio and have kept it reasonably up to date. I also never live on a first floor apartment any more.
What do you think of it now?
This album monopolized my attention at the time I bought it, and that’s why I was listening to it on cheap, tinny speakers. Just because I didn’t have my stereo didn’t mean I was going to sit in a silent apartment.
Armstrong did the film score for Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and The Space Between Us included an orchestral version of Des’ree’s “Kissing You.” I dug the mix of electronic beats and strings, and I’ll admit to ripping off a bit of that sound for one of my own tracks.
But I think the melancholy of the album suited my frame of mind at the time. I really wasn’t enjoying life all that much, and I let the sadness of the music wash over me.
What is the memory you most associate with this title?
I jumped on the bandwagon of shopping for music on the Internet really early. How early? Amazon hadn’t even launched when I was sending checks to complete strangers on the rec.music.marketplace group on USENET.
CD Connection had a TELNET interface where you could buy albums at warehouse prices. Interstate taxation hadn’t yet become an issue, although the markup to ship to Hawaii was obscene.
As terrific as Tower Records was, they couldn’t fit everything in the store, and they couldn’t cater to someone with tastes as esoteric as mine.
I bought Halfrack on the Internet, most likely from CD Connection. I knew it would take Tower weeks, if not months, to stock it, so I cut out the middle man and got it myself.
What was happening in your life when it was released?
In May 1993, I was preparing to move back to Honolulu after spending two semesters in New York City on the National Student Exchange Program.
This program allowed students to attend another university in the country while paying either the in-state tuition of the host school, or the in-state tuition of the visitor’s school.
I had wanted to go to the Mainland for college like a number of my high school friends, but my family couldn’t afford it. My parents’ combined income put us out of reach of financial aid, unless I opted to take out loans, which my mom insisted not happen.
I didn’t appreciate the gesture at the time, but I’m glad for it now. I have no student debt, and I’m sure I would be in a worse financial position now had I saddle myself with it.
What was happening in your life when you bought it?
The Internet wasn’t just the World Wide Web. Before the web gave the internet a graphical user interface, there were mailing lists, newsgroups, talk daemons and IRC.
And I was exploring anything music-related through these command-line interfaces. I sold and bought CDs on USENET. I developed friendships with people I would never meet through a shared love of Duran Duran. I chatted with high school friends if the finger command revealed they were online many time zones away.
I also started to shift my academic focus away from music and onto journalism. I wrote a few reviews for the Hunter College newspaper when I lived in New York, and I liked the experience so much, I kept writing for the paper at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
The seeds of this web site were pretty much being sown right around the time I picked up this album.
What do you think of it now?
I have to admit I didn’t listen to Halfrack as much as I could have at the time. V as in Victim followed shortly afterward and quickly monopolized my listening time.
Halfrack set the tone for what would follow, including moments of tenderness next to controlled chaos. At five tracks, it whetted the appetite for more, and even 25+ year later, it’s an astonishing piece of work to behold.
The influence of Naked City is inescapable, which means it will always be a perpetual favorite.
August 26, 2016 for the CD. I would have bought the cassette version around the time of its original release.
What is the memory you most associate with this title?
My bus commute from home to the University of Hawaii. It usually took the length of the album to finish.
What was happening in your life when it was released?
I would have been taking summer classes at UH at the time. I actually deferred my entry to college from fall 1990 to winter 1991 because I was burned out by my senior year in high school. My mom also had gone through heart surgery, so she needed help to recuperate. The summer session of 1991 was my way to catch up.
What was happening in your life when you bought it?
I had bought Toni Childs’ debut album and liked it enough to get this second album, probably right when it was released in 1991. I didn’t like it enough to get it on CD till I spotted it at Lifelong Thrift Store, where I bought it for $0.10 during the monthly CD sale.
I wanted to go college on the Mainland like my friends, but my parents couldn’t afford it. I got over my disappointment fast enough when I started my music classes. I also started my first job that year, working at the circulation desk of the A/V center in the undergraduate library. In short, I was taking those first few steps into adulthood.
I would later discover how much in tuition my parents were paying — let’s say, significantly less than the years of Catholic private school leading up to it — and I’ve been thankful ever since for never acquiring student debt.
What do you think of it now?
It took me a few spins to warm up to House of Hope, but Union is definitely the better album.
The music on House of Hope takes a darker turn, and when I rediscovered the album in 2016, the contrast with Union struck me.
I even questioned how I had grown to like the album in the first place. However much I liked taking more responsibility for my life in 1991, it was under a cloud of heartbreak. One of those friends who went to the Mainland for college was the first person with whom I fell in love.
I’m sure I was in a more receptive state of mind for an album that dark.
What is the memory you most associate with this title?
I read about Sarah McLachlan in a Pulse! magazine article that linked her with Sinéad O’Connor and Tracy Chapman. I didn’t actually make the leap till I heard Touch playing in Jelly’s Books and Music, and I asked the woman behind the counter who it was.
The woman turned out to be Claudette Bond. In 1992, I recognized her onstage at Pink’s Garage with a band called Spiny Norman. They were opening for another new band called Smashing Pumpkins.
What was happening in your life when it was released?
1988 was my junior year in high school. Before I got into McLachlan, O’Connor and Chapman, I had gotten into … musical theater.
The high school band director floated the idea of programming Jesus Christ Superstar for the football game half-time shows. A rather unconventional priest at my family’s parish had a habit of showing movie excerpts to demonstrate ideas in his homilies, one of which was Jesus Christ Superstar.
I borrowed the soundtrack from the public library and got smitten with Andrew Lloyd Webber. He could clearly write a tune, but in those moments between showstoppers, he had rock bands playing dissonant music straight out of Prokofiev. That was the gateway drug to stronger, weirder stuff.
What was happening in your life when you bought it?
I probably didn’t pick up the cassette till 1989. At the start of high school, I had tried to ingratiate myself with the so-called cool kids by listening to the same music they did. By the end of high school, my tastes had diverted further than some faculty members.
My musical theater phase subsided to make way for more post-punk music. And all the things adults were telling me about how I would eventually feel for girls … wasn’t happening for me.
What do you think of it now?
History has not been much kind to Sarah McLachlan.
Her albums litter the dollar bins and thrift stores, and in the same way I used Carole King as shorthand for milquetoast music of the 1970s, McLachlan has become the same kind of cudgel for music of the 1990s.
But I also followed McLachlan’s albums throughout the ’90s, and I don’t feel the promise of Touch was realized.
Her operatic training set her apart from Chapman and O’Connor, but that smoothness let labels steer her in a safer direction. The last single I liked from McLachlan was “Building a Mystery”, but it was no “Vox”.
Touch is the album you must own if you had to pick up a Sarah McLachlan album.
![[98 Degrees - Revelation]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/98DegreesRevelation200016490_f.jpg)
![[Spiny Norman - Crust]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SpinyNormanCrust-300x300.jpg)
![[Madonna - Bedtime Storeis]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/MadonnaBedtimeStories1998831_f.jpg)
![[Kronos Quartet - Short Stories]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KronosQuartetShortStories12898_f-300x300.jpg)
![[Craig Armstrong - The Space Between Us]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/CraigArmstrongTheSpaceBe9260_f-300x300.jpg)
![[Pigpen - Half Rack]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/PigpenHalfrack-300x300.jpg)
![[Toni Childs - House of Hope]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ToniChildsHouseofHope139929_f-300x299.jpg)
![[Sarah McLachlan - Touch]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SarahMcLachlanTouch198840049_f-300x300.jpg)