Blue Album – WeezerI first came across Weezer, like most people in the 1990s, after watching their video which was hidden on Windows 95. Buddy Holly was the song. Happy Days was the video. Ah, to see the Fonz doing his bit. Always brings a smile that does.
The Best Air Guitar Album in the World…Ever – Various Artists
This is every Dad’s favourite compilation from the nineties and noughties. Glove boxes throughout the UK had a copy of this album in it and jukeboxes in dodgy pubs were required by law to have this album also.
As much a part of pre-MP3 music culture as Tubular Bells, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds and other coffee table albums, The Best Air Guitar Album in the World…Ever is one of those compilations that seem to be in every collection. It’s not hard to see why. All the traditionally popular bands are here; Queen, Def Leppard, Skynyrd and Blur but there are also bands and songs that are missing – Stiltskin’s Inside and Mountain’s Nantucket Sleighride for example, surely two of the most prolific air guitar riffs ever? Also there are some bands whose inclusion seems to only be to hook the younger generation in, Blur and Robbie Williams for example.
Still as compilations go, this is one of the better more agreeable ones.
The Album- Various Artists
Short of stealing a TARDIS and traversing the wibbly wobbly, time travel is a bit difficult. However, you can mitigate the lack of ornate chez lounges or blue police boxes by slapping on a good old compilation of music from the period to which you want to travel.
And that’s exactly what this album does. It transports the listener to the heady days of the late nineties and early noughties.
There are just as many artists I’ve never heard of on here as there are artists I have. Immediately I am there, mooching about Liverpool in the mid to late nineties wearing my scruffy jeans. Neo-Socialist optimism oozing out of the ground in a pre-911 hedonistic carefree era.
Bands such as Blur, Creed, Manic Street Preachers and Top”We now play at village fetes”loader strumming away in that plastic coated faux indie scene soundscape created in antithesis of the cheezy and garish eighties soundscape.
Not a bad compilation for long journey in the car. Or for when you’re writing one of those gritty dramas about young people flat sharing in the mid 90s early noughties.
Stegzy's Music Project 