List some of your favorite records that turn 20 this year

Black Eyed Peas were making fairly okay rappity-rap in the style of Dilated Peoples, Pharcyde etc before they went down a more pop route on Elephunk.

1998 was all about scratching wasn't it? Even all the Britpop bands recruited a 'turntablist' to perform with them at Reading in a bid to stay relevant.

That NME list actually has a lot of albums I was into at the time. Always held 1998 in mind as a bit of a noesdivey year for music but clearly that's not true. The Mercury Rev album was great at the time too. Really original-sounding, although it and AOTS laid the template for a lot of Amerindie to come

Yeah, used to like that BEP album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5x_dmI9e6Y

"Music Sounds Better With You" >>>>>> any 1998 album

Here's what I picked at the time, I was just expanding beyond indie rock and especially digging into alt-country.

LPs:
Billy Bragg/Wilco - Mermaid Ave.
Jack - The Jazz Age
Spinanes - Arches & Aisles
Unbelievable Truth - Almost Here
Versus - Two Cents Plus Tax
Beekeepers - Third Party, Fear And Theft
Foil - Spread It All Around
Bap Kennedy - Domestic Blues
Statuesque - Arbiters Anonymous
Puressence - Only Forever
Snow Patrol - Songs For Polarbears

Singles:
Annie Christian - The Other Way
Polak - 2 Minutes 45
Pharmacy - Shine
The Creatures - Razor Cuts
Unbelievable Truth - Higher Than Reason

20 years on, my enthusiasm for Unbelievable Truth has long faded, and I probably haven't listened to that Puressence album since then. Beepkeepers & Foil are fun neo-punk, I listened to them last year. That Bap Kennedy album has probably had the most plays since then, an utter classic afaic.

Also dig:
Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
Pernice Brothers - Overcome By Happiness
The Handsome Family - Through The Trees
Neil Finn - Try Whistling This
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
New Model Army - Strange Brotherhood
REM - Up

1998 was all about scratching wasn't it? Even all the Britpop bands recruited a 'turntablist' to perform with them at Reading in a bid to stay relevant.

This isn't just nonsense, it's an actual lie. Ash did it on perhaps two tracks on their album that year, and that's about it. It was a different story in nu-metal, obviously.

1998 felt like a bit of a transitional year for music even at the time - to me, at least. In hindsight, it was a much stronger year for music than I thought at the time.

there's this thing called hyperbole

Nope, literally *all* Britpop acts did this. At Reading. I was there when that Ocean Colour Scene guy was spinning the decks.

I believe there was a scratching mandate which some Britpop bands are still imprisoned to this day for having flaunted.

I remember this as a year of not-as-great-as-before Wu Tang solo and affiliates records:

Killah Priest- Heavy Mental
Killarmy- Dirty Weaponry
Cappadonna- The Pillage
RZA- Bobby Digital in Stereo
Sunz of Man- The Last Shall Be First
Wu Tang Killa Bees: The Swarm Vol.1
Method Man- Tical 2000: Judgment Day
GP Wu- Don't Go Against the Grain

re:brit bands/relevance, that was the year Suede tried to go "electro". a bad idea it was.

oh no, wait, that was in 99.

there's this thing called hyperbole

― Badgers (dog latin), Wednesday, February 7, 2018 3:15 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Of course there is - I've seen you use it repeatedly in Animal Collective threads. Your post above was stupidity.

I remember this as a year of not-as-great-as-before Wu Tang solo and affiliates records:

― President Keyes, Wednesday, February 7, 2018 9:33 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. I was wondering where all of the Wu-related joints were in people's lists and then I saw the perfunctory inclusions on that Muzik list and said oh yeah. I think there may be a direct correlation between the level of general musical quality of any given year during the '90s and the strength of that year's Wu Tang releases.

yes you're right Turrican I honestly believe that literally every band that played at Reading 98 had a scratch DJ

Careful, the employment of 'literally' without a #sarcasm hashtag for the sake of clarity will just stoke his ire all over again.

Ash added a live DJ for a year, but are from Northern Ireland, so Turrican has been exposed as a racist

Eh!?!

I mean, I'm aware that Ash are from Northern Ireland, but you might want to point fingers elsewhere as to how they ended up lumped in with certain other bands.

I was 12 in 1998 and loved spending every weekend in the record store in my city listening to every new release. I guess the staff hated me... they kept opening cds for me and I very rarely bought them... these are 10 albums I did end up buying and the ones I listened to the most that year. Most of them have aged well and I still love them:

Boards of Canada - Music has the right to children
John Sims - Palomino
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Pole - CD1
Quickspace - Precious Falling
Supersilent - 4
Taku Sugimoto - Opposite
William Parker - Peach Orchard
Yummy Fur - Sexy World

The three last ones I actually heard when I was older. I was a cool teen but I wasn’t that cool.

Still fucking cool. I was 17 and I think this was the year I went full music geek I guess. discovering the Beastie Boys and Warp Records and older music after years in a Britpop/grunge wilderness was very exciting

Oh I’m missing Amon Tobin - Permutation on that top 10.

I discovered Ninjatune and Warp in either 1997 or 1998 and I was obsessed with their catalogue. me and a friend bought almost everything by them we could get our hands on. Living in Mexico this meant we only got the big releases so any weird 7” or EP we had to wait a couple of years until Napster appeared.

My music life before the internet feels so distant.

Also downloading mp3 with dialup was a joke. We’d wait for like 3 hours or more to download and listen to this obscure AFX track only to discover it was fake.

The Azusa Plane, 'America Is Dreaming of Universal String Theory'

― Le Bateau Ivre

<3

Feeling the love, Flappy <3 He's criminally underrated.

Come - Gently Down the Stream

WTF at P J Harvey absent from both those 1998 best-of lists. It's her best album, and she towers over most of the artists on those lists.

Jeez, 1998 - the last year of the pre-Napster era. Feels like it should be more monumental than it is. If this was the state of the recording industry before the internet killed it, then maybe it was euthanasia. Sorry, maybe that's a bit harsh. Anyway, not much I love from this year. The Ethopiques comps that were dribbling out that year were pretty cool.

Here are twenty of mine:

The Boo Radleys - Kingsize

Spoon - A Series of Sneaks
Pedro the Lion - It's Hard to Find a Friend
Mercury Rev – Deserter's Songs
Silver Jews - American Water
Arab Strap - Philophobia
Beck - Mutations
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Bedhead - Transaction de Novo
P J Harvey - Is This Desire?
Pulp - This is Hardcore
Air - Moon Safari
Sparklehorse – Good Morning Spider
Embrace – The Good Will Out
The Afghan Whigs – 1965
Idlewild – Hope Is Important
Manic Street Preachers – This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours
Placebo – Without You I’m Nothing
Mansun – Six
Unbelievable Truth - Almost Here

That space was not on purpose but still somehow works. Just went down what was posted in this thread and picked out some.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HH-SyqBJs4

15

Air - Moon Safari
UNKLE - Psyence Fiction
Portishead - Roseland, NYC live
Autechre - LP5
boredoms - super ae
Neutral Milk hotel - in an aeroplane over the sea
massive attack - mezzanine
boards of canada - music has the right to children
eels - electro shock blues
pj harvey - is this desire
tori amos - from the choirgirl hotel
amon tobin - permutation
dirty three - ocean songs
sparklehorse - good morning spider
beck - mutations

Albums I Liked from 1998

Angelcorpse - Exterminate
Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty
Dälek - Negro Necro Nekros
Bruce Dickinson - The Chemical Wedding
Johnny Dowd - Wrong Side of Memphis
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
Lacuna Coil - Lacuna Coil
Melt-Banana - "Charlie"
Metallica - Garage Inc.
Monster Magnet - Powertrip
Nashville Pussy - Let Them Eat Pussy
New Bomb Turks - At Rope's End
Nile - Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka
Liz Phair - Whitechocolatespaceegg
Placebo - Without You I'm Nothing
Queens of the Stone Age - Queens of the Stone Age
Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come
Shellac - Terraform
System of a Down - System of a Down
Theatre of Tragedy - Aégis
Turbonegro - Apocalypse Dudes

Also downloading mp3 with dialup was a joke. We’d wait for like 3 hours or more to download and listen to this obscure AFX track only to discover it was fake.

Ha! Remember being in some Audiogalaxy groups that shared DJ mixes and you'd have to leave your computer on overnight for them to download

good times

The intentional omission of In The Aeroplane... from my list isn't revisionist reactivity, btw. Love the first album and any number of other Elephant Six releases, but I saw them perform that material (in like late '97/early '98) before I ever heard the album and the recorded versions are weak tea in comparison. Mangum was channeling some shit.

I was trying to describe dial-up to the ten-year-old I tutor and it makes no sense to him whatsoever. TBF, it doesn't make much sense to me now, either.

Oh, the fights with my parents over the phone bill. Trying to download a GBV song that took 45 minutes, only for my brother to pick up the phone downstairs when it was nearly in, ruining the download. Good times.

friends and family telling me they could never get through to me on the phone because it was constantly engaged

I don't think I knew what an mp3 was until at least 2000. I remember uploading some tunes I'd been working on to my Angelfire site and only being able to do 30 second snippet previews as it was all in WAV

While we're drifting away from the thread mandate: I remember being so impressed in the mid-80s by a file that we had for our Commodore 64 which played a fifteen-second, extremely low-quality snippet of 'Rock Me Amadeus'. Felt like I was living in a sci-fi novel.

10 obscure/underrated indie rock favorites from 1998:

The Glands - Double Thriller
Myracle Brah - Life on Planet Eartsnop
Quasi - Featuring "Birds"
Black Box Recorder - England Made Me
Rancid - Life Won't Wait
Silkworm - Blueblood
Sarge - The Glass Intact
The Pernice Brothers - Overcome By Happiness
Drive-By Truckers - Gangstabilly
Grant Lee Buffalo - Jubilee

I loved when Napster had to block certain names upon request so everyone had to figure out "alternate" artist names to share stuff under (I don't think there was a centralized forum to do this, you just had to guess). I still have MP3s by "Imenim", "They Might B Gaints", and "9 Inch Nials"

Will rep for Grant Lee Buffalo's entire output.

wow, time is merciless.

cat power
mercury rev
lauryn hill
at the drive-in
beastie boys
royal trux
r.l. burnside
third eye foundation
neutral milk hotel
boards of canada
air
black star
juniour kimbrough
lucinda williams
make up
jon spencer blues explosion

i stil pull all these out at least once a year every year

roy montgomery, and now the rain sounds like life is falling down through it
BoC, MhTrTc
pj harvey, is this desire?!
plastikman, consumed
burger/ink, las vegas knights
theo parrish, first floor
tarwater, silur
monorchid, who put out the fire
horace andy, mr. bassie

sorry

burger/ink, las vegas GOLDEN knights

fucked up my joek

Oh Cat Power! I bought Moon Pix two years later but she was my spirit animal that year.

98 was my favorite year for rap releases.