As part of The Current’s live broadcast from Duluth, host Jade welcomed Alan Sparhawk as a special guest host of Tonal Recall, The Current’s weekly ‘90s music program. Sparhawk crafted a playlist of ‘90s tunes that continue to resonate with him — and he shared some stories along the way.

The ‘90s, musically speaking, were a time of a lot of discovery and a time when a lot of independent voices had a place on the radio as well. Certainly grunge emerged, but hip hop was also growing at a rapid pace, and pop music remained influential while taking on elements of the emerging genres. “I do remember that shift when the underground sort of percolated to the top,” Sparhawk recalls. “I do remember specifically when Smells Like Teen Spirit first hit the radio, it was a pretty exciting song. And for anybody that was sort of in the scene and following underground music at the time, there was definitely a feeling of like, ‘Oh, boy, this is gonna be different now.’

“It was exciting,” Sparhawk continues, “because through the late '80s, there was a lot of bands building up in the underground, a lot of really creative and innovative and original artists doing things, [and] different genres were really growing and really exploding at the time. So when the '90s hit, the rest of the public kind of opened their eyes to new music; there was a lot to be seen, a lot to be heard. It was a little bit of the grunge, and there was a whole really heavy R&B scene that really blew up in the ‘90s that we were only aware of adjacently.

“We spent a lot of time sitting in the van and driving around for those first tours, and we would meet other bands that were on the road playing similar places like us, and we would become friends and fans.”

Sparhawk plays some of those friends, as well as other artists — such as A Tribe Called Quest, who, for Sparhawk, were his first introduction to hip hop. And Sparhawk concludes the program with a great recording by his own band, Low, featuring lead vocals by his bandmate and wife, Mimi Parker.

Listen to the complete episode above.

Program playlist

A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It
Stereolab - Crest
Fugees - Killing Me Softly With His Song
Raymond Listen - September in the Night
Versus - River
Shannon Wright - Captain of Quarantine
Fugazi - Blueprint
Lisa Germano - Tomorrowing
Low - I Started A Joke

Gallery: Tonal Recall with Alan Sparhawk

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