This is part three of my 1998 Year In Review series. Parts one and two included my Top 25 albums of the year. Part three presents a Top 20 list of genre-based albums – funk, rap, dance, jazz, country, metal, and international music. 25 years ago, I was listening almost exclusively to rock and pop music, so almost all of the albums on this list are records I have discovered later in my life. In fact, many of them are albums I discovered while researching this 1998 series. Over the last 25 years, my interest in music has expanded greatly and part three of this series gives a good snapshot of the kind of music I now enjoy on a daily basis. In fact, I am much more likely to listen to many of these 20 albums than I am to listen to the albums on my Top 25 of the year list.
I’m not going to write much about these 20 albums. I’ll let the music speak for itself and present some interesting facts for a few of them. In addition, I did not rank the albums on this list. These are simply 20 albums from a variety of musical styles.
Funk
Faux Show fans know how much I love funk. 1998 is not a banner year for funk music, but there were several notable funk releases. By 1998, funk was ingrained so deeply in R&B, soul, and rap music that most artists and albums considered funk 25 years ago are actually funk-influenced rather than pure funk. The days when dozens of popular bands like The Meters, Tower of Power, and P-Funk released albums annually were long gone by 1998.
Interesting Facts: Maceo Parker was a long-time member of James Brown’s bands; The Daktaris were an Afrobeat revival group whose 1998 album provides a fictionalized story of the band as an homage to artists like Fela Kuti; The Headhunters are the Herbie Hancock band that were influential in the development of jazz fusion in the ’70s, and their 1998 album includes Herbie Hancock playing with the other original members for the first time in almost 20 years.
Jazz
Interesting Facts: Cowboy Bebop by Seatbelts is the original soundtrack to the popular Anime series, and is now often how youngsters gain an introduction to jazz , although calling it jazz is a stretch.
Rap
The Beastie Boys and Black Star are also on my Top 25 of the year list.
Dance
Interesting Facts: Madonna is famous; Fatboy Slim ruled the clubs in 1998.
International Artists
I took a short trip around the world with these selections.
Interesting Facts: Chucho Valdes is a legendary Cuban pianist and bandleader; Tom Ze is an original Tropicalia artist and the only Brazilian artist to continue making Tropicalia music for his entire career; Manu Chao is a French/Spanish musician who works in a variety of styles and released his solo debut in 1998.
Country
Interesting Facts: Lucinda Williams is discussed in my top 25 of the year show; Br5-49 got their name from the show Hee-Haw and became famous after years of local legendary status playing at Robert’s Western World on Broadway in Nashville (if you don’t know what that means then you should go to Nashville and find out); Bad Livers are a fun Bluegrass band.
Metal
I occasionally make reference to metal on the Faux Show, although I seldom include songs on the playlists. This is due largely in part to the fact that people who like metal from the last 30 years understand that the days of metal sounding like pop music (Van Halen, Motley Crue, and even Metallica) died in the late 80s. Metal from the 90s and on (at least metal that is interesting) is loud and scary, often sung in other languages, and not easily digested by non-fans. For that reason, I usually only include this music as links to albums for those who are interested in investigating. For this show, I have included three metal songs on the playlist, but they are at the end.
Interesting Facts: Jerry Cantrell is a founding member of Alice In Chains; Opeth and Meshuggah are two of my favorite metal bands and these are two of my favorite metal releases, ever.
That concludes this 1998 In Review series. I’m not sure what the theme of the next Radio Faux Show will be, but in the meantime, as always, thanks for listening (and reading)!
As usual, there is a playlist of the songs on this week’s show.
The Radio Faux Show 