Crank It to 11, Blow another speaker

I was having a conversation a few days ago with a friend of mine who wasn’t allowed to listen to any music whatsoever when he was growing up. He asked me what he missed out on in the 1990’s. I started playing some music for him, I played “Smells like teen spirit” I played “Black Hole Sun” I played “Mr. Jones” all good songs, but none of which blew him away.

Side Note- He had heard all these songs at some point but never knew who sang them and never paid attention to them. For all intents and purposes, these were virgin ears.

Then I played him a personal favorite of mine, “I’ve Seen Better Days” by Sublime. He loved it. He was so excited about it too. It’s like all of a sudden there was a whole new favorite food he could eat that he hasn’t grown tired of already.

It made me think about where I rank Sublime in terms of favorite bands of the 90s. Keep in mind; my musical taste is stuck in the 90s so this is essentially still all I listen too. Without further ado, here’s my list.

1.     Red Hot Chili Peppers
2.     Sublime
3.     Pearl Jam
4.     Foo Fighters
5.     Counting Crows

Now as I look at this list I think to myself, “Wow, I seem like a granola-eating college-freshman douche”.  I guess that’s what I am then because these five bands fucking killed it for me the entire time Clinton was el presidente.

I was surprised though how high I ranked Sublime. I mean no band was going to beat out RHCP but Sublime beat out Pearl Jam for goodness sake! I also noticed that I didn’t even have Nirvana on the list. And then I realized how much more I liked the Foo Fighters than Nirvana.

Also can we all agree that Counting Crows don’t get enough credit as one of the greatest bands of the 90s? All they did was produce hit after hit and yet after talking about this list with others they're the band that raises eyebrows.

Anyway yay for Sublime, yay for my list, yay for writing a blog!

-Jeff Kahn