Tonight’s rips were The Cardigans, Sugarcubes and Frente (or – somehow I randomly pulled out my favorite girl-fronted bands from the late 80s and early 90s). And actually, I can kind of chart a course through these CDs from high school (The Sugarcubes) into my last year at Tower in Sacramento (Frente) into my years in Berkeley (The Cardigans). Of the CDs I’m ripping tonight, the Frente album has probably not quite stood the test of time as well as the others, but the more acoustic hits on the disc (“Labour of Love” and their WONDERFUL cover of “Bizarre Love Triangle”) are great. But when I listened to the rest of the album recently, I was much more lukewarm about it. The Cardigans have pretty much shown up on my mix discs or stereo pretty regularly since I first heard them. While the cover of ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ on Frente’s album is basically genius, the Cardigan’s cover of ‘Iron Man’ is on equal footing. What great covers of great songs.

The first Sugarcubes album though is still a favorite of mine. I first heard it with my friend Josh from high school (though I had heard “Birthday” before), and was even more impressed with the rest of the album. Unlike the quirkiness that Bjork would become in her solo career, the Sugarcubes had a different kind of quirkiness (along with a Johnny Marr like guitar sound, some trumpet and think Icelandic accents singing about sick toys). And what surprises me most (about some of those high school memories) is the fact that I could some how bounce between the Sugarcubes and Ministry and didn’t see anything wrong with that. When the girls get older and I start to prep them for the confusion that is adolescence, that may be one of the examples from mine… “Here is ‘Motorcrash’ by the Sugarcubes… fun, boppy… now, imagine your mood going from this to…” (and I put on ‘Stigmata’ by Ministry) “and believe it or not, you’ll think changes of mood like this are normal!’. Now – I need a couple days usually between switches like that, and I rarely feel the NEED for Ministry. But when I do hear them, for some reason I always lead back to the Sugarcubes and being a teenager… go figure.