I can never claim to be an indie music fan like Nick Hornsby's character Rob Fleming, in his book & subsequent movie, High Fidelity, but I have listened to some great indie & alt rock in my day.
TRUE MEN DON'T! KILL COYOTES! Old RHCP - my favorite. Blood Sugar Sex Magic was the last full album I really enjoyed by these guys. I liked a song here & there from their later stuff, but their earlier songs are my favorites. I think that Justin may have also put Fight Like a Brave and Higher Ground on some of his mixtapes.
As I mentioned, Justin was a bass player. He LOVED Primus and if you listen to this song, you can hear Les Claypool's ridiculous bass playing. Man, I haven't heard this song in a long time. Say, baby. SAY, BABY!
24/7 Spyz - Understanding - I've actually been trying to find this on youtube forever. This was probably my first time really listening to anything with a reggae sound besides The Police. I remember getting this CD and being disappointed that the rest of their album was more punk than anything else. Nevertheless, this has been a favorite song of mine for about 20 years now, not only because of the sound, but because of the message. And the band themselves - there aren't that many Black punk bands out there, you know?
Ok, this is funny. I was trying to find this song, but I thought it was a song by the Dead Milkmen . . . another band that Justin had on my mixtapes, I'm pretty sure, but I don't remember which song. Anyway, this was a fun little ditty by Scatterbrain.
Look! More Black punk! I don't know if this is the Bad Brains song Justin put on my tapes, but I know he listened to this band, and I like this song, so . . .
I know with all the punk, you wouldn't expect this to find it's way onto a Justin mixtape, but it sure did! I loved this song so much that I bought their CD, devoured the whole thing, and it's still one of my favorite albums. Start to finish, awesome. Happy and melancholy indie rock from the UK. Gotta love it!
R.E.M. was around constantly during my middle & high school years. This is the song Justin put on a mixtape and I remember arguing with him about some of the lyrics. I think their album Out of Time came out around the same time, and I ended up finding most of their old albums and listening to them over and over. I also loved the album that came out after Out of Time, but after that didn't dig into their new stuff. Please note the hairstyle of the skater kid in this video - Justin and his skater friends all had variations of this hairstyle. :) The Justin Bieber-y boys of today got nothing on the original early 90s skater FLOP!
Sure, we all love Been Caught Stealing, but have you ever listened to this song? It's from the same album and it's beautiful.
There are other versions of this song, but this is the one Justin put on my tape, and this is the one I love. If you want to get to know late 80s, early 90s indie rock, go no further. Just get everything the Pixies ever recorded.