Dig Me Out: 90s & 00s Rock

San Diego may be known for beaches and year-round mild weather, but the second-largest city in California is also home to a vibrant if isolated music scene dating back to the 1960s with Gary Puckett & The Union Gap and Iron Butterfly. As per our "Digging Your Scene" episodes, we're interested in sounds of the 1990s - where those bands played, bought and sold records, recorded their music, read and...

Greta was and is definitely not a household name when discussions of 90s bands come up. But like so many, major labels still found them and on occasion put out stellar releases that have gone forgotten, which is sort of the entire point of this podcast. Their second and final album, 1995's This Is Greta! may not fall into the stellar and must-have category, but it's got a lot going for it. Tight a...

By 1994, shoegaze was no longer the hip, underground music scene the UK press was enamored with just a few years prior. The Britpop of Blur, Oasis, Elastica, and Pulp had taken over, My Bloody Valentine had collapsed, and blissing out on feedback and layers of guitar was no longer novel. Smartly, the singing/songwriting/guitar-slinging tandem of Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson of Lush evolved, and...

A lot of ink has been spilled on the biggest band of the 90s. Whether it was reviews, interviews or in-depth cover stories, or modern retrospective or anniversary pieces, it's not hard to find a "your favorite band's album ranked" clickbait article on nearly every "grunge" platinum seller. What is there anything left to say about these bands? When Nirvana 's 1993 album In Utero enter into our revi...

Twenty years ago, emo wasn't a Hot Topic brand or a nostalgic DJ night. It was the sound of teenagers and twenty-somethings taking the urgency of punk, combining it with emotional and confessional (re: not sad) lyrics, and playing to a generation of kids too young for the early 90s grunge wave. If you were apart of that scene, hitting all-ages venues or DIY punk houses at the end of the 20th centu...

Steve Albini. Nigel Godrich. Butch Vig. Bob Rock. Jack Endino. Michael Beinhorn. J Robbins. Sean Slade. Paul Kolderie. Youth. Ric Ocasek. Dave Fridmann. Ken Andrews. Brendan O'Brien. Brad Wood. Rick Rubin. Ted Niceley. Stephen Street. Flood. Terry Date. Dave Jerden. Alan Moulder. Dave Ogilvie. Chances are, if you purchased a CD in the 1990s and read through the liner notes, whether it was a major...

When our listeners bring us an obscure 90s album to check out, it's usually something along the lines of a rock band on an indie label that managed one or two releases before fading into obscurity. On the flip side, we have Café Tacuba - a massively successful band around the world, including the United States. Unless you are tuned into the rock en español bands, you've probably never heard them o...

If there is a new episode of Dig Me Out in your feed on a Thursday, that can only mean one thing - we are sharing with you a preview of our latest Dig Me Out '80s episodes. With the help of our Patreon Board of Directors and Steering Committee tiers , we're revisiting another album from the 1980s based on suggestions and votes of our patrons. This month we're checking out the 1982 album Junkyard b...

Though best known for their string of pleasant if repetitive mid-to-late 90s alt-rock radio hits, Everclear started out as a scrappy, rough-around-the-edges early 90s trio with as much fire in their sound as their lyrical content. On their 1993 indie-label debut World Of Noise, singer/guitarist/songwriter Art Alexakis was able to channel the trendy soft/loud verse/chorus format made commercially s...

The 1993 debut Exile In Guyville by Liz Phair was declared a landmark album that helped define the 1990s almost as soon as it was released. To be a decade-defining artist can be a stifling burden, but Phair managed to release a worthy follow-up in 1994 with Whip-Smart, sticking with mostly the same group of players and studio folks for both. On her third album whitechocolatespaceegg from 1998, all...

Having a three-guitar band can often mean the lead singer simply strumming chords on an acoustic while the other two do the heavy lead lifting and riffing. That's not the case with Juno , and their 1999 debut album This Is The Way It Goes And Goes And Goes on DeSoto Records. Like their then label-mates Shiner, Juno unleashes a big, layered guitar sound, but Shiner sound much leaner in comparison,...

What if Nick Cave or Mark Lanegan decided to record an album of Bob Marley, ZZ Top, War, and Slim Harpo covers? That's the question posed by the 1993 album The Honeymoon Is Over by The Cruel Se a , an instrumental blues and surf band from Australia that added Beasts of Bourbon frontman Tex Perkins to create a weird and oddly compelling album. Somehow, that combination managers to come together bet...

On their 1994 debut album Rubberneck, the Toadies managed to score a hit single that is still a staple of rock stations spinning 90s alternative hits. But like a lot of people, that one single is our starting point with the band. When we gave the entire album a listen, we discovered a band confident from the get-go in their style and strengths - energetic, concise, no-frills alternative riff-rock...

To paraphrase a rock 'n roll saying, you get a lifetime to make your first record, but six months to make your second. As we've discovered in our Sophomore Slump Revisited series, it is not always the case that limited time causes the dreaded Sophomore Slump. Record label management shake-ups, shifting radio playlists and various other factors have impacted the success or failure of second albums....

While we've touched on some alternative country over the years on the podcast, we've never encountered a straight-up folk record. Until now. Thanks to a patron selection, we checked out the 1999 debut album Bareback by Hank Dogs . A family band with lineage to the Sex Pistols, we had no idea what to expect, though the name and album cover tipped us off to something country-ish. The reality is much...

If we told you that a soul/blues singer from Detroit released a record on Sub Pop on 1996 backed by funk rockers Big Chief, who had themselves just released an album influenced by 70s Blaxploitation films, you'd think we'd have a crazy game of Mad Libs going on. But the end result of Thornetta Davis' debut solo album Sunday Morning Music is much more traditional than expected, find space between t...

If there is a new episode of Dig Me Out in your feed on a Thursday, that can only mean one thing - we sharing with you a preview of our latest Dig Me Out '80s episodes. With the help our Patreon Board of Directors and Steering Committee tiers , we're revisiting another album from the 1980s based on suggestions and votes of our patrons. This month we're checking out the 1989 album Freedom by Neil Y...

Touring festivals were all the rage in the 1990s, with Lollapalooza kicking things off in 1991, following by Lilith Fair, the H.O.R.D.E. Tour, Ozzfest, Family Values Tour and others. We're heading back to 1995 to revisit the Warped Tour, from those who attended it and those who played it, gaining insight on the various line-up incarnations of the 90s, as well as the evolving line-up of artists, th...

When singer/guitarist Toni Halliday and multi-instrumentalist Dean Garcia paired up to form Curve in 1989, they already had established bonafides in the music world with previous releases on Anxious Records, set-up by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. While those efforts failed to connect, their three 1991 EPs gained enough momentum that the 1992 debut album Doppelgänger, with assistance from soon t...

If you are checking us out for the first time, you'll quickly learn what our regular listeners already know: reggae and/or ska were not our thing back in the 1990s. Now, we're not going to claim to have fully converted to fandom, but the 1996 album Forever = 1 Day by Fighting Gravity left us with positive vibes. When the band locks into a relaxed mid-tempo groove, we're fully on board. When they o...

Maybe you listened to Modest Mouse in 1996 or 1997 and thought, yes, this band will invade the public consciousness with a catchy single in the 2000s, launching them into elite status as a festival headliner, collaborate with a legendary guitarist, and influence a new generation of artists like Silversun Pickups, Future Islands, Car Seat Headrest and more. Most likely like us, you didn't, and figu...

Albums made in 1990 or 1991 often have the "sound" of the 80s in their production - lots of reverb on the drums, particular guitar effects, etc. Sometimes in reviewing albums from this period, it can date the album, pinning it down to a certain time instead of receiving the "timeless" accolade that so many well-regarded albums receive. But what if big, booming reverb gives the album a personality...

Movie soundtracks, as we have learned , come in all shapes and sizes. The 1994 Backbeat soundtrack is an interesting concept - get a bunch of well-respected alternative musicians of the day, and have them tackle early cover songs played by The Beatles. The list is impressive even today: Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum and Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs sharing vocal duties, Thurston Moore of Sonic Yout...

By the end of the 90s, a number of bands had penetrated the mainstream with ambitious, layered albums. Like with OK Computer, The Soft Bulletin, Deserter's Songs and Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, dEUS  took a turn on their third album, 1999's The Ideal Crash. Dialing down the Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart influences and incorporating contemporary sounds from trip-hop, electronic...

If there is a new episode of Dig Me Out in your feed on a Thursday, that can only mean one thing - we sharing with you a preview of our latest Dig Me Out '80s episodes. With the help our Patreon Board of Directors and Steering Committee tiers , we're revisiting another album from the 1980s based on suggestions and votes of our patrons. This month we're checking out the 1983 album Flick Of The Swit...