Sister Lovers
For Your Musical Entertainment: Swing Out Sister’s groovy music video for their 1992 single “Notgonnachange,” from the album Get In Touch with Yourself. They sure used a lot of washed out photography in ’90s videos, didn’t they? As huge S.O.S. fan, I’m ashamed to say I haven’t heard this particular effort of theirs until… earlier today.
The Wikipedia entry for that album quotes singer Corinne Drewery: “I find it difficult to form opinions about a lot of modern music because my head’s buried in the past. A lot of my favourite records seem to have been picked up in the discount rack at Woolworth’s. I’ll be quite happy if our records end up in the Woollies bargain bin in 10 years time.” I find this funny (and quite true, actually), since my copy of Get In Touch With Yourself came from trawling the 75 cent bin at the local F.Y.E. store (which also netted ’90s goodies by k.d. lang and Shakespear’s Sister). Your wish came true, Corinne!
The Right Kind of Mom Jeans
Made me laugh — the literal reinterpretation of the music video for Jeremy Jordan’s 1992 single “The Right Kind of Love.” Blonde Jordan was a Marky Markish teen idol of the era, with his one hit riding on the coattails of the Beverly Hills 90210 soundtrack. The song itself is a pretty fly groove, but the captions on the video (very of-its-time) are hilarious!
My First Modem
I recently came across a true artifact of its time while cleaning out the garage. This Hayes Accura 1140 modem was purchased after I moved into my first apartment in 1994. Armed with it, a Macintosh IIci, and a new America Online membership, I was ready to blaze the Information Superhighway — at 56K per second! Listen, I even had my place equipped with a separate phone line to enable websurfing and talking on the phone simultaneously (considering my pathetic social life at the time, not really necessary). I’m also not afraid to admit that the AOL membership was mostly used to find dates and look at porn. This was back when it took 15-20 minutes to download one photo, mind you. Thank our lucky stars that the internet has grown up since then, and so have I.
Dig this early AOL commercial from 1995. “A friend of mine told me ‘Try America Online.’ I said ‘Why? I’ve got a computer.’” That line always seemed so bizarre to me, even back then. What, were they selling to complete idiots?
The Lovely Bones
Let’s take a look at one of the TV series that was a by-product of the early years of The Simpsons, shall we? Family Dog originated as an episode of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories. CBS commissioned a full-fledged series based on the success of that episode, but after sitting in the can for two years the network wound up airing only a few episodes in the summer of 1993. As seen in the “Show Dog” opening below, the project bears the charming creative imprint of Brad Bird (The Incredibles). Having only seen the Amazing Stories segment, I’m really curious as to what this entire series was like.
