Rewind: 1999 - End of the Century
By Adam D. Miller

Rewinding back to 1999 may seem a bizarre move to some.  After all, we’re really only talking six years ago, and not a lot has changed in the music/film climate since then.  Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and N Sync were already established, as were Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and J. Lo, annoying the hell out of rock ‘n’ rollers and credible film fans alike.  It was difficult, as it is now, to have faith in new music/film and what it had to offer.  As Michael Stipe sang several years earlier of the radio, “it makes me sad.” 

Given that climate, it was pretty strange that 1999 would prove to be the year that I would discover the potential of new music and film.  Before too long it became clear to me that some of it could even rival the legendary stuff I had immersed myself into exclusively up to that point.

Up until 1999, I pretty much avoided any music released post-1975 like the plague, with the sole exception of a few recent albums by veterans, such as Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind and McCartney’s Flaming Pie a few years earlier.  I couldn’t get enough of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Dylan, Hendrix, The Who, etc.  For me, the twenty-year period between 1955-1975 was more than enough to keep me occupied.  After all, I was much better off than some of my friends, who would only listen to Dave Matthews Band or Phish and nothing else.  My interest in new film wasn’t much different, and I’d only venture to the cinema once or twice a year to catch something new.

I’m not sure if it was a growing interest in UK-based music magazines like Mojo, or some digging around on the Internet, or perhaps even MTV2 (hey, it was cool in 1999!) that got me curious about this assortment of new music.  I came to realize there was a lot of great stuff out there that wasn’t getting any radio play.  Ultimately, my interest in new music in 1999 can be boiled down to two albums:  Mutations and Summerteeth.

So really, it started in late 1998.  I had heard of Beck a few years earlier when his successful Odelay album had been released.  Although I was anti-new music at the time, I couldn’t help but find some of the music on the record appealing.  His name stuck with me, and since I heard that Mutations was to be a mellower, more acoustic affair (not to mention the fact that I was, by this point, buying at least five CDs a month), I took a chance and purchased Mutations soon after its November 1998 release date, without knowing much about it.

As someone who had been recently listening to Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and Blood On The Tracks, the album appealed to me on many levels and I was hooked immediately.  Beck was hardly an indication of typical new music.  The album had everything I loved about older music, but with a fresher, newer sound: great songwriting, interesting instrumentation (horns, sitars, interesting guitar effects), without a bad track on the album.  Since many of its songs drew on familiar styles (“Lazy Flies” was very reminiscent of early Bowie, and “Bottle Of Blues” wouldn’t sound out of place on Led Zeppelin III), it was very accessible.

Four months later I had a similar experience with Wilco’s Summerteeth.  Once again, I bought it on a whim, knowing very little about it.  I had heard the name Wilco floating around in the past, but I had little idea as to who they were.  I heard they were alternative country, which sounded fine, as I had been listening to The Byrds and Neil Young.  The album turned out to be more “cosmic pop” than country, as Wilco were already moving away from their country influences.  Like Mutations, I found great songwriting, instrumentation, and accessible songs, some of which recalled my favorite group, The Beatles.  I listened to Summerteeth constantly over the next few weeks.

Besides these two relatively new bands that I was becoming a fan of, 1999 was also a year that I expanded my musical horizons as far as veteran artists were concerned.  I stumbled upon Tom Waits’ Mule Variations at a listening booth at HMV and was in awe of the strange sounds I heard; Farm animals, singing through a megaphone, and other weird sound effects.  I wasn’t quite ready for it just then, but a few months later I bought the album and have been a big Tom Waits fan ever since.

And of course, as with any year, some of 1999’s best music came to me later.  Another musical veteran to come out with a career highlight in 1999 was Randy Newman, whose Bad Love served as his first pop album since 1988’s Land Of Dreams. Other great albums to come out of 1999 included Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, Blur’s 13, The Beta Band’s The Three EPs, and Beck’s follow-up to Mutations, Midnite Vultures.

Towards the end of the year, I began seeing commercials and trailers for an ambitious looking film called Magnolia.  They all featured music by Aimee Mann, who provided her songs to the film’s soundtrack.  I was hooked immediately, and while I passed on the Magnolia soundtrack, I bought Mann’s Bachelor No. 2 as an import before it was properly released in Canada.

And although I didn’t see it until its DVD release, Magnolia also proved to be one of my favorite films of 1999 as well, though many seemed to dislike it.  The film was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and featured an ensemble cast which included Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Jason Robards, and William H. Macy.

Of course, American Beauty was the film that took home the awards on Oscar night.  While I have little to argue there (especially considering the two previous Best Picture winners had been Titanic and Shakespeare In Love), the film releases that remain among my favorites were very much marketed towards an indie audience I quickly found myself becoming a part of.  Aside from Magnolia, my other favorite film of that year was Being John Malkovich.  Directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman, two men who continue to make brilliant films, Being John Malkovich was a brilliant execution of mixing art with bizarre reality.  Both Malkovich and Magnolia did something much different than the mainstream films that I had been seeing up until this point.  1999 was also the year that saw Fight Club, and Hilary Swank’s award winning performance in Boys Don’t Cry, two films that continue to shine brightly, and will likely do so decades from now.

So while “I Want It That Way” and “Baby One More Time” were flooding the pop charts and The Matrix and The Mummy were making tens of millions in profit, 1999 was the year that I managed to find some diamonds in the rough.  1999 taught me a lesson.  Even when popular culture seems bleak, there will always be artists making art for art’s sake.  In the years since, I have avoided mainstream radio and looked elsewhere for great new music, and I’ve found that films that were successful in the festival circuit were much more appealing to me than Ben Stiller blockbusters. 

I highly doubt Being There could have ever materialized without that realization.

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