The dream of the 90s is a subset of the Wide Open Road podcast. One of my intentions of the WOR was play the full spectrum of all things Aussie indie and alternative, crossing genres, styles, eras, clothing ranges and piercings. The 90s and early 2000s are a challenging era for a podcast generally dedicated to vinyl. The CD abolished most vinyl records to the bargain racks and the import shelves. It became increasingly harder to get vinyl editions of many records and to be honest, once I got a CD player in 1988 I kind of stopped buying new vinyl. Prices balanced between CD and LP. The quality of new vinyl went down hill. If I wanted to go back to rare stuff from the 1970s and 1980s I could pay top dollar for a copy of Radios Appear, or I could buy the minted CD release with bonus tracks and linter notes. And then vinyl just kind of died for a number of years.

 

So why the podcast (WOR – Dream of the 90s)? Because in the COVID years I have been going back to my extensive CD collection, de-cased, archived and stored safely in boxes for a decade whilst I lived in London. I have been ripping them so that I have a listenable copy, and in that process I have found some many rich, diverse, off the grid, popular and forgotten gems. It becomes time to make these into a series of podcasts for those of you that long for the nineties. We will play the headlining and the obscure, the A-sides and whatever we called b-sides in the CD age (bonus tracks?). There is the nineties trend of hidden tracks, idiosyncratic covers, acoustic versions, live jams and just a pile of good old fashioned Aussie music.  We might drift into the late 80s and stumble our way out of the pub and into the early 2000s. But our heart and soul will be the 90s. And yes, we will stick out WOR jam, finding the things connect and link the vast catalogue of Aussie traditions. Plus some piping hot shit. Enjoy.