My placenta fell to the floor. Admiring their cheek, repulsed by the immobile straight laddishiness, I had no use for Oasis in 1994-1996 besides a couple tracks from the debut and the title track and “Some Might Say” from their American breakthrough. But Oasis didn’t get airplay commensurate with their magazine covers here. Worse was flatlined crap like Dishwalla and 311, faster than the 1981 pop hits in that spring and summer of tight-panted white horrors, sure, but no less indistinguishable. Alanis Morissette counts as a welcome oddity. Only U2 offered anything close to lipstick and camp (then they would go too far in the next album into “lol lipstick and camp”). Besides her and Tracy Bonham, the women disappear. Primitive Radio Gods’s murmured, almost abashed “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” counts as a throwback. Sublime should’ve called themselves Average, thus dampening our expectations. No wonder I listened to trip-hop, Pulp, Waiting to Exhale, and Roxy Music.
The Hague
Live – Lightning Crashes
Bush – Glycerine
Oasis – Wonderwall
Alanis Morissette – Ironic
The Cranberries – Salvation
Dishwalla – Counting Blue Cars
Oasis – Champagne Supernova
Meh
Soul Asylum – Misery
Red Hot Chili Peppers – My Friends
Eels – Novocaine for the Soul
The Presidents Of The United States Of America – Lump
Alanis Morissette – Hand In My Pocket
Silverchair – Tomorrow
311 – Down
Sublime – What I Got
Bush – Comedown
Sound, Solid Entertainment
Green Day – J.A.R.
Bush – Swallowed
Primitive Radio Gods – Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand
The Smashing Pumpkins – 1979
Tracy Bonham – Mother Mother
Good to Great
Green Day – When I Come Around
U2 – Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
Pearl Jam – Who You Are
Better Than Ezra – Good
Alanis Morrissette – You Oughta Know
Humanizing The Vacuum 
Man, this was such a desperate era of music. It was amazing how swiftly we went from the relative heights of 92-94, to this, the dregs and B-teamers who the A&R people were still scooping up, still hoping something would “stick”. Many of these artists would never make another song/album that made a dent on any chart. And while I’m no fan of nu-metal or most of what came after this, I can understand why it happened. Few were buying the idea that Bush was somehow an acceptable replacement for Nirvana, so Korn must have felt like a revelation.
And many of the stalwarts of that earlier era released albums during 95-96 that can be best described as desultory. Despite their intentions, only Pearl Jam got a real hit, and then the public moved on. Compare that to Soundgarden: None of their songs from Down On The Upside hit #1, whereas “Black Hole Sun” took the top spot for seven weeks in 1994. Then most of those bands imploded.
I am all too familiar with these songs. During this era, I was driving around in a hand-me-down 1986 Plymouth Turismo. The tape deck was blown, so all I had was the radio. And beyond Top 40 (which I didn’t listen to) and AOR (which I was bored with), the only station I could pick up with any reliability was the “alternative” one. I tried to find something interesting in it, which was hard when “Lightning Crashes” played hourly, even into the end of 1996. If there was anything good that came out of it, it was the idea that I would have to seek out interesting music on my own, which I did. Thankfully the next year I got a better car with a working tape deck, and the good college radio station boosted its signal.
And, as evidenced in the separate post you wrote about Dishwalla, I’m surprised that “Counting Blue Cars” has any defenders, let alone two!
1979 is better than great