I realize that my previous post might have seemed like a defense of Pitchforkmedia's indieism (did I just coin that). If you read the Zelious piece, what I intended was to oppose Sanneh's views in his NY Times article, much the same as Carl Z did. Since we agree, I couldn't be bothered to write a long piece myself, especially since Carl did it so well himself.
In other news, Rhino's 90's box arrived this week. It's a confusing mess, collecting hits that charted on Billboard plus tracks I guess the guys at Rhino considered important. It leans heavily on alternative artists, which is fine by me, but since such nineties phenomena as dance and electronic music are barely represented, the box is not what it says on the cover. They've done a terrible job of representing rap music too. MC Hammer, Wrex-n-Effect and House of Pain may fit the bill as hits, but are they hardly good representatives of this prolific time for rap music. De La Soul is, but what about Public Enemy. Ok, they were at their peak in the late eighties, but did good music well into the nineties. Pharcyde, Outkast, Dr. Dre and the whole g-funk era? Nowhere to be seen. If Rhino had trimmed the box down to a couple of CD's, they could have had an excellent overview of alternative and indie music from the era when Nirvana and alternative entered the charts. As a guide to nineties pop culture, though, they are way off the mark.
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