I’ve griped before – and have seen others griping – about how the back half of the 1990s (specifically 1996-99) was a musical low period marked by a dearth of exciting, ground-breaking new music, rocknroll or otherwise. Low periods are nothing uncommon, obviously; there would be no high periods without them. It’s certainly all in the eye of the beholder, naturally. I was in grad school during these times, and my record collecting necessarily fell off a cliff due to lack of funds and time. I got married; I moved to Seattle and back; and yeah, I was still listening to music like a fiend, but found myself shuffling into a comfortable if limiting corner of my own making: either garage punk, solo guitar (my John Fahey discovery & appreciation totally soared during this time) or old pre-WWII blues and country, of which there was much to discover. This corner was almost entirely analog in nature.
So just as Jeremy Rotsztain was publishing Frequency #1 in Summer 1997 and having the time of his life with new electronics-driven space rock and the whole Kranky/Drag City Chicago funhouse that was surging during these years, I was busy ignoring most of it. He might tell you the late 90s were the glory years. Honestly, I really only overlapped with Rotsztain and the Ontario-based Frequency crew at the time on Stereolab and Roy Montgomery, two acts I hold close to my bosom to this day. But Jessamine, Trans Am, Rachel’s, Silver Jews? Barely knew ‘em; and when easy streaming later allowed me to plumb their catalogs, I found this world wasn’t particularly to my liking in any case. Such are the vagaries of taste.
Picked up a used copy of Frequency #1 at a local record store recently and used it to try and sway me into their Moog-centric world. Best piece in here is an interview with Simeon from Silver Apples. I’d forgotten about how they’d “reformed” during this time; the Silver Apples Discogs shows many releases during these years. It’s all coming back to me; the kids were going nuts about their crazy 1960s oscillator sounds right as the internet and message boards were getting started, yet I’d only heard that 60s stuff (Silver Apples and Contact) and was still a few years away from appreciating even that. Can anyone give an honest endorsement of any of that 90s stuff? If so, which one(s)? I’ll investigate accordingly.
Rotsztain was a fanzine editor who’d meticulously done his homework before each interview and came in pre-loaded with discographical and tour questions that he may or may not have already known the answers to. His talk with Jim O’Rourke is a good one as well, and O’Rourke previews a new album he’s working on – Bad Timing – a fantastic record. So it’s not all bleeps and blurbs over at Frequency! Rotsztain became an artist of some renown; you can see his work on his own website here. Meanwhile, I can’t get a read on whether his Frequency fanzine ever published again but this one here is a nice capsule to pull out when I’m ready to try and reevaluate the late 90s yet again.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 