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Sirius Thoughts: You’re Standing on My Neck

On Sirius satellite radio’s Lithium channel (90s grunge and alternative), one of the between-song taglines that seeks to cleverly describe and endear itself to its aging, jaded audience is “It’s what Daria’s mix tape would have sounded like.”

And just as a pleasant buzz of nostalgia radiates from my cerebrum — ah, Daria, the last good thing MTV ever did — a freaking Dave Matthews song comes on.

Excuse me. Daria would sooner join Quinn’s Fashion Club than listen to Dave Matthews. Methinks that, too often, Lithium strays over the critical line between 90s alternative and 90s mainstream by playing the likes of the Gin Blossoms, Limp Bizkit, Lenny Kravitz, and Alanis Morrissette. (I’m sure Daria just loved listening to that former pop princess belt out her overwrought anthems of pseudo-angry chick empowerment.)

More than a decade after the fact, and I’m still pathetically indulging in the whole what’s alternative/what’s mainstream debate. Of course all of the bands that Lithium plays have been commercially successful on a national if not global level, so by the strict, unforgiving standards of my youth, none of them are alternative. Then again, I’m commercially successful, too… I’m pretty darn mainstream these days. So I guess if I want to work a 9-5 office job, spend my weekends skiing, and read fiction, I can’t really hurl accusations of “poseur!” at the Lithium station for playing Dave Matthews. I can, however, change the channel to Factionand hope that some NOFX, Pantera, or Cypress Hill is playing.

Posted in Nostalgia.

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