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?
Do soundtracks count? If so, O’ Brother Where Art Thou? And Grosse Point Blank
GPB was quality
GPB is such an underrated movie. Banger soundtrack, great action sequences, funny jokes, Minnie Driver, Joan Cusack, Dan Ackroyd… It’s got everything!
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.
“His name is Dio. Ronnie James Dio!”
Oh wow, “Dio” would be a great name for a Lemmy app. 🤘
For classic rock, the Dazed and Confused soundtracks are phenomenal. I’m also partial to the Hackers soundtrack for early/mid '90s electronic music.
There are many great soundtracks that spring to mind. Among them just two are: Pulp Fiction and Garden State.
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Survival of the Fattest
The Crow soundtrack has some great ones.
You reminded me of the Hackers soundtrack
Another good one.
The Sire Records “Just Say” albums of the early 90s.
O Brother Where Art Thou? has a fantastic soundtrack. The Guardians of the Galaxy soundtracks are also quite good.
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.
Also special shot out to Punk-O-Rama III
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The soundtrack to Dirty Dancing sent me off in directions of 1960s dance and doo-wop and also 1980s pop in a big way.
Brazil Classics 1 - Beleza Tropical, was compiled by David Byrne from Talking Heads and has some incredible Latin stuff on it.
Hugh Masekela – The Chisa Years 1965-1975 (Rare And Unreleased) has some African jazz and funk that sounds like nothing else and is what American funk would sound like five to ten years later.
Pomegranates, from 2009, is a compilation of pre-revolution Iranian funk that is shockingly listenable.
International Superhits was a really good Green Day album. Only thing I’d really change though is add 86 (from Nimrod) to it.
Punk goes pop - was the soundtrack of my teens
Pulse, for the sweet 90s dance.
