Here's a cool and funny interview with Dave about the background of Let Your Dim Light Shine and 'Misery'... plus a mention of yours truly.

http://radio.com/2014/08/05/single-agai ... Ow.twitter

(I don't expect Dave to remember that bit, though I do remember telling him that the first time I met him in the late 90's.)

That was so cool!

Great stuff, thanks Jim =)

I don't think I knew that Weird Al did a Misery parody.

So if I'm reading it correctly, he wanted to make another kind of record but settled with a lot of songs that the record company liked... radio friendly songs like Misery and songs that sounded like Runaway Train. I remember reading interviews and reviews when this album came out and a lot of journalists criticized them for that, and I guess that's when a lof of fans from the early days gave up on them aswell.

The 90s outtakes are more interesting to me than most of the stuff that made the albums. I wonder if tunes such as Gone Forgotten and Painkiller were on Dave's original list to make Dim Light.

Funny how Nirvana gets a lot of credit for taking hard rock back from the hair metal bands and for making it relevant again, but almost simultaneously acoustic tunes such as Runaway Train and the MTV Unplugged shows took rock in another direction, which led to at least half a decade of crappy music.

Gone Forgotten is such a great tune and I can't imagine why it didn't make the album. It would have fitted in perfectly and I can imagine it's the kind of song that any record company would like because it has that catchy pop vibe, just like Hopes Up which did make the album... but I personally like Gone Forgotten much more.

The second half of the 90's still had some pretty good music... too many Nirvana clones came out, but there were still some really good alternative bands active.

Yaz McBoo wrote:The 90s outtakes are more interesting to me than most of the stuff that made the albums. I wonder if tunes such as Gone Forgotten and Painkiller were on Dave's original list to make Dim Light.

Funny how Nirvana gets a lot of credit for taking hard rock back from the hair metal bands and for making it relevant again, but almost simultaneously acoustic tunes such as Runaway Train and the MTV Unplugged shows took rock in another direction, which led to at least half a decade of crappy music.

I completely object to the term "hair metal." It must die. To take an entire genre of music and relegate it to simply a look or style is just wrong. What are the bands of today called? "No hair bands?" "Baggy pants bands?" "I have the same tribal design tattoo as everyone else bands?" "Non talented bands?"

so you need to name it something else!

Aha, valid point. I was just stating what I thought were the inconsistencies of rock journalism and the music industry of the time. Nirvana and every else in Seattle had long hair/big hair too, LOL, but didn't get tagged with that label. The state of 90s is rock is entirely my own assessment however. Although some of favorite bands formed then or made their best records then, popular music in general/on the whole was at its nadir then, I think.

Yaz McBoo wrote: Although some of favorite bands formed then or made their best records then, popular music in general/on the whole was at its nadir then, I think.

I guess it's always a matter of opinion of course. In the second half of the 90's we got all that teen pop stuff and especially here in Europe we got terrible techno and house music that became way too popular, at least I thought it was terrible music... other people loved it. And RnB became very popular, which I wasn't a fan of either. But rock wise the 90's are my favourite by far... just the year 1991 is incredible when you look at how many classic albums were released that year... I can't even imagine that happening today. The second half of the 90's weren't bad either with albums that are today considered classics like Radiohead's OK Computer, Weezer's Pinkerton and Smashing Pumpkin's Mellon Collie, to name a few. And Britpop became very popular aswell and there were a lot of good bands coming from there like Oasis, Blur and Supergrass, too many to mention really.