I’ve been really enjoying the Red Hot Organization’s “No Alternative” and “Dark was the Night” recently, both because they raised a lot of money for AIDS research and because they do a great job of capturing the 90s alternative sound and 00s indie sound respectively, and it’s got me thinking how much I love compilations generally for how they can give you an impression of a place/time/music scene. Any collections like that you think I should know about?
The non-soundtrack compilation that first comes to mind is The Duran Duran Tribute Album. It’s all covers of Duran Duran songs and, because it was released in the late 90s, there’s more than its fair share of ska.
There are a lot of great tracks. My highlights are Goldfinger’s version of Rio and The Wesley Willis Fiasco’s cover of Girls on Film.
This album made me realize that Duran Duran was about 20bpm away from being one of my favorite bands.
Dicks 1980-1986. Pretty much a comp of their best songs, some are live and some are studio takes but it’s just a great album and they did a lot for queer punk in Texas in the early 80’s which was pretty rare.
The best way to discover new punk bands in the 90s was through comps. The Punk-O-Rama, Give Them the Boot, and Fat Wreck Chords compilations are the soundtrack of my teen years. But my favorites were the Nitro Records ones. Deep Thoughts and Go Ahead Punk… Make My Day were my favorites.
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