Friday, October 27, 2023

Q's best of 1998: Stoned in the morning light



The last time I ever got to be a proper unemployed bum was the summer that kicked off 25 years ago. Me and some of my best mates from school were all flatting together, it was a beautiful summer, and after years of manual labour, we took some time off spent much of the summer getting mega fucking stoned and listening to music all day long.

And while there was also a lot of Radiohead and Portishead, and I was going through another punk phase, but the disc I most listened was the free Best of 1998 CD that came stuck to the cover of Q Magazine.

I'd been an off-on Q reader for a couple of years, but that one album still stands as s snapshot of that time. Post Britpop, pre nu-Metal, lots of groovy electornica and basic rock, just like you'd expect at the end of the century.

Air grooving into Fatboy Slim, the eternal Teardrop and Placebo, Garbage and Gomez and even flippin' James at their best. Some prime Manics and Neil Finn, Oasis' accidentally creating the greatest B-side of the 90s in The Masterplan, and going out with some Bernard Butler and his dreamy guitars.

I still have the CD, and still listen to this selection from a quarter of a century ago, and it still sounds like 1999 to me.


























(There was also a Marilyn Manson tune in there, but seriously. Fuck that guy.)

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