🎙️ Episode 1997: Desert Island Classics – The Year That Was Everything

What if you could only bring one year of music to your desert island? For The New Dad Rock, that year just might be 1997.

In this special “Desert Island Classics” edition, Keith makes the case for a trio of albums that still echo through indie rock history:

🎸 Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West
🎸 Pavement – Brighten the Corners
🎸 Radiohead – OK Computer

These three towering releases helped define an era, a mindset, and a mood—sprawling, angular, atmospheric, and occasionally absurd. Steve and Keith unpack their enduring influence, share personal memories tied to these records, and debate what makes an album truly castaway-worthy.

🌴 Also in this episode:

• What counts as a “desert island disc”?
• Are we really alone out there—with only our CD wallets and Discmen to keep us company?
• And which albums from 1997 still feel like survival essentials?
  

No filler. All killer. Come wade into the waters of a year that still resonates like a perfectly delayed guitar loop.

The New Dad Rock—where nostalgia meets noise.

Let us know what’s up.

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1996 was a wild, weird, and wonderful year for music. Alternative rock was shifting in unexpected ways, techno was taking over clubs and airwaves, and Gen X was riding the high of a pre-Y2K world—blissfully unaware of what was to come. In this episode of The New Dad Rock, Steve & Keith take a joyride through the sonic landscape of ‘96, from scrappy indie rock to stadium-filling anthems to the rise of electronic music that made rock purists sweat.

So what was in that five-disc CD changer back in ‘96? This episode revisits some of the era-defining records, including:

🎸 Beck – Odelay (Genre-bending brilliance)
🎸 Modest Mouse – This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About (A lo-fi road trip for the soul)
🎸 Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (Champagne Supernova, anyone?)
🎸 Cake – Fashion Nugget (Quirky, ironic, undeniable earworms)
🎸 The Olivia Tremor Control – Dusk at Cubist Castle (The Elephant 6 movement at its trippiest)
🎸 Neutral Milk Hotel – Everything Is EP (The precursor to Aeroplane Over the Sea)
🎸 Prodigy – The Fat of the Land (Firestarter ignited a whole new sound)
🎸 Chemical Brothers – Exit Planet Dust (Rock meets rave culture)
🎸 Sublime – Sublime (Laid-back anthems, sun-drenched SoCal vibes)
🎸 Fugees – The Score (One of the greatest hip-hop albums ever)

Along the way, Keith recounts his legendary summer road trips, complete with mixtapes, underrated indie gems, and a time when Olivia Tremor Control was a best-kept secret. The guys also dive into the great genre debate of 1996: Was rock dead? Or was it just evolving into something new—thanks to the rise of electronic music titans like Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, and The Dust Brothers?

It was a halcyon year—carefree, creative, and chaotic. So jump in, roll the windows down, and take a ride back to 1996 with The New Dad Rock.

Let us know what’s up.

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Did you know that The New Dad Rock has swag? Coffee mugs, pillow and t-shirts in a multitude of colors and arm lengths.

Step into 1995—a time when five-disc CD changers ruled the bedroom, cassette Walkmans were essential for the commute, and a record player still held a place of honor in the living room. Not a single MP3 in sight. This was also the golden age of mixtapes, crafted with care and burned onto CDs, blending the past and future of rock into something unmistakably 1995.

This episode of The New Dad Rock explores the birth of an alternative nation, when rock’s underground darlings started gaining mainstream traction, and genre lines blurred in ways that would shape music for decades to come. Steve and Keith take you through the landmark releases that defined this pivotal year, including:

🔥 Pavement – Wowee Zowee (Lo-fi weirdness at its best)
🔥 Morphine – Yes (Jazz-infused, sax-laden grit)
🔥 PJ Harvey – Down By the Water (Haunting, bluesy, and powerful)
🔥 Primus – Tales From the Punchbowl (Les Claypool’s bass wizardry in full force)
🔥 Bjork – Post (Eclectic, Icelandic and electronic)
🔥 Sonic Youth – Washing Machine (Experimental alt-rock, pushing boundaries)
🔥 Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (Epic, overstuffed, and unforgettable)
🔥 Red Hot Chili Peppers – One Hot Minute (Dave Navarro steps in, things get weird)
🔥 Blind Melon – Soup (A deep-cut masterpiece, tragically overlooked)
🔥 Everclear – Santa Monica (Power-pop angst distilled into one perfect track)
🔥 Thurston Moore – Psychic Hearts (Sonic Youth’s frontman goes solo)

And as the alt-rock establishment took shape, 1995 also marked the birth of some future legends, including Wilco, Cat Power, Sparklehorse, and Rammstein—all of whom would go on to define their own corners of New Dad Rock.

What albums still hold up? What sounds haven’t aged well? And what exactly was in that five-disc changer back then? Tune in as Steve & Keith revisit the birth of an alternative nation—when mixtapes ruled, rock evolved and Gen X finally had their own classic rock.

Let us know what’s up.

Support the show

Did you know that The New Dad Rock has swag? Coffee mugs, pillow and t-shirts in a multitude of colors and arm lengths.