On Record: Vol. 12 - 1996: Images, Interviews & Insights From the Year in Music

by G. Brown

Overview

The On Record series presents rare archival images and insightful interviews by long-time popular-music journalist and radio personality G. Brown.

"In his On Record series, G. Brown makes stories of recorded music come alive by digging into the experiences of the artists – and through his writing, he reveals their humanity. What a gift these books are to music lovers.” – Jesse Colin Young, singer, songwriter and founding member of the Youngbloods

In Volume 12 – 1996 of G. Brown’s extraordinary On Record series, G. chronicles the biggest artists in pop music (Celine Dion, Kenny G, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince), legacy-defining records from alternative rockers (Beck, Weezer, Sublime, Rage Against the Machine) and a wealth of up-and comers (Dave Matthews Band, the Roots, Wilco), in addition to the year’s top releases in hip-hop, classic rock, country, jazz and new age genres.

Interview-based profiles of more than 100 artists and bands include:

• Beck
• Weezer
• Fiona Apple
• The Roots
• The Cardigans
• Marilyn Manson
• Jamiroquai
• Eels
• Wilco
• Social Distortion
• Tool
• Rage Against the Machine
• Kula Shaker
• Cibo Matto
• Stone Temple Pilots
• Tori Amos
• Tony Toni Tone
• New Edition
• Counting Crows
• Celine Dion

About the Series:

Colorado Music Experience founding director and author G. Brown covered popular music at The Denver Post for 26 years, interviewing well over 3,200 musicians, including Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, and Kurt Cobain, all of whom recounted their escapades and reminisced about what their time on the charts meant to them personally and musically. Over the decades, G. also amassed an archive of close to 15,000 rare promotional photos.

Each volume of the On Record series presents nearly 200 rare archival images and 100 interviews with an array of performers from that year. To date, Colorado Music Experience has released 10 volumes in this year-by-year, comprehensive look at the evolution of popular music from 1978 to 1998. 

Proceeds from book sales benefit Colorado Music Experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798988532958
Publisher:	Colorado Music Experience
Publication date:	10/14/2025
Series:	On Record
Pages:	364
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

G. Brown has navigated the Rocky Mountain musical landscape for decades, both as a journalist and as a radio personality. He covered popular music at the Denver Post for 26 years, interviewing well over 2,500 musicians, from Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen to Bono and Kurt Cobain. Published in numerous national magazines, including Rolling Stone and National Lampoon, Brown also covered music news and hosted and programmed for a myriad of Denver-based radio stations.

 

He is the author of four other books, including the award-winning Red Rocks: The Concert Years, Colorado Rock Chronicles, and Telluride Bluegrass Festival: The First Forty Years. And he is the founding director of Colorado Music Experience, a nonprofit cultural and educational organization established to preserve the legacies of Colorado music.

 

G. currenty lives in Colorado.

 

FB: @colomusic.org

IG: @onrecordbooks

Read an Excerpt

BECK

He was smart, funny and a little weird. Beck got that way by cutting his musical teeth on blues and folk songs he heard on records owned by his bohemian parents and their friends. While in the ninth grade, Beck quit school. At 16, he got himself a guitar and started discovering the diverse cultures on the streets of Los Angeles. In 1989, he took a bus to New York and spent a year gigging around the Lower East Side before returning to L.A. and performing regularly at local punk dives.

 

In the early Nineties, he recorded an avant folk-based hip-hop tune called "Loser" in the living room of a local producer's home. A year later, a tiny indie label released it as a single. What followed was nothing short of a miracle. Modern rock stations began playing "Loser," the song became a runaway success - "Soy un perdedor/l'm a loser, baby/So why don't you kill me?" was the unforgettable chorus, and major labels set upon Beck.

 

His life did a 180, and a question followed: Could he survive one-hit novelty status. The albatross around his neck? The tag of "motivation-de­ficient slacker nincompoop/spokesman" was imposed on him, and boors wrote things like "I have two words for this kid: Tommy Tutone."

 

But Beck's ambitious Odelay showed the 26-year-old boy wonder to be one of the decade's most innovative artists. The inspired album resulted from 18 months of feverish recording, cutting, pasting, layering, dubbing and sampling. Beck enlisted the Dust Brothers, the producers responsible for the kitchen-sink approach on the Beastie Boys' seminal Paul's Boutique.

 

How did Beck make such a huge leap in artistic prowess? "I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to do and where I wanted to take it," he said in his slow, measured way. "By a chain of coincidences, I made a substantial record. It worked."

 

The songs that Beck stitched together were crammed full of his encyclopedic knowledge of musical genres. On the hit singles "Where It's At," "Devils Haircut” and "The New Pollution," he crafted a world of sonic shifts and hairpin stylistic turns, from Delta blues, twangy country licks, hip-hop beats, surrealist folk, old-school rap, fuzzed-out garage rock and an esoteric list of samples. Beck wanted Odelay to be "the kind of album they made in the Sixties, when people experimented with whatever they felt like.”

 

That fruitful period, he said, "had to do with the interchange between R&B and soul music with the white rock world. A lot of that came out of the folk revival, where white kids were starting to get into the traditional forms of blues and country. It manifested itself in bands like the Rolling Stones. That friction of the two approaches, the distinct cultures coming together, made the music healthy and vibrant somehow. It's sad now, but once alternative music embraces hip-hop and R&B, it'll have much more vitality.”

Table of Contents

007 INTRODUCTION

008 CELINE DION

010 KENNY G

012 NEIL DIAMOND

014 BUSH

016 STONE TEMPLE PILOTS

018 SOUNDGARDEN

020 THREE FISH

022 METALLICA

024 MATCHBOX 20

026 THE WALLFLOWERS

028 COUNTING CROWS

030 CRASH TEST DUMMIES

032 WILCO

034 HOOTIE & THE BLOWFISH

036 DAVE MATTHEWS BAND

038 PHISH

040 BECK

042 TORI AMOS

044 PAULA COLE

046 FIONA APPLE

048 MARILYN MANSON

050 THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS PRINCE

052 TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS

054 JOHN MELLENCAMP

056 STING

058 THE HEADS

060 LOU REED

062 STEVE EARLE

064 LYLE LOVETT

066 JUNIOR BROWN

068 JOHN WESLEY HARDING

070 BOB MOULD

072 FRANK BLACK

074 LOS LOBOS

076 THE ROOTS

078 GIN BLOSSOMS

080 THE REFRESHMENTS

082 THE VERVE PIPE

084 THE SAMPLES

086 THE WHY STORE

088 THE BLACK CROWES

090 MICKEY HART’S MYSTERY BOX

092 PANTERA

094 CORROSION OF CONFORMITY

096 GRAVITY KILLS

098 RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

100 TOOL

102 PORNO FOR PYROS

104 MINISTRY

106 SOCIAL DISTORTION

108 GOLDFINGER

110 NEW EDITION

112 THE SUBDUDES

114 JACKOPIERCE

116 SHAWN COLVIN

118 RICHARD THOMPSON

120 DUNCAN SHEIK

122 DONNA LEWIS

124 TRACY BONHAM

126 BETTER THAN EZRA

128 CRACKER

130 THE AFGHAN WHIGS

132 COWBOY JUNKIES

134 LUSCIOUS JACKSON

136 CIBO MATTO

138 THE CARDIGANS

140 JAMIROQUAI

142 KULA SHAKER

144 SPACE

146 REPUBLICA

148 EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL

150 MAZZY STAR

152 SNEAKER PIMPS

154 STEVEN CURTIS CHAPMAN

156 NEWSBOYS

158 THE REVEREND HORTON HEAT

160 SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS

162 SEBADOH

164 THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

166 PRIMITIVE RADIO GODS

168 OMC

170 SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER

172 THE CURE

174 DEF LEPPARD

176 KISS

178 RUSH

180 ZZ TOP

182 DONOVAN

184 BUTTHOLE SURFERS

186 LOCAL H

188 BLOODHOUND GANG

190 WEEZER

192 NERF HERDER

194 WEEN

196 EELS

198 WESLEY WILLIS

200 ADAM SANDLER

202 “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC

204 TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA

206 CARL PERKINS

208 THE BEATLES

210 FUGEES

210 NAS

210 AALIYAH

214 JAY-Z

214 2PAC

214 EAZY-E

218 SNOOP DOGGY DOGG

218 WESTSIDE CONNECTION

218 MOBB DEEP

222 SPICE GIRLS

222 MADONNA

222 TRISHA YEARWOOD

226 SHERYL CROW

226 R.E.M.

226 THE CRANBERRIES

230 PEARL JAM

230 ALICE IN CHAINS

230 SCREAMING TREES

234 TONI BRAXTON

234 SWV

234 MONIFAH

238 MC LYTE

238 DA BRAT

238 NONCHALANT

242 BLACKSTREET

242 THE TONY RICH PROJECT

242 TONY TONI TONÉ

246 BABYFACE

246 AZ YET

246 THE ISLEY BROTHERS

250 GINUWINE

250 MAXWELL

250 KRIS KROSS

254 TONIC

254 KORN

254 STABBING WESTWARD

258 CAKE

258 GEGGY TAH

258 NADA SURF

262 DIAMOND RIO

262 VINCE GILL

262 TRAVIS TRITT

266 ALAN JACKSON

266 GEORGE STRAIT

266 BRYAN WHITE

270 JOHN MICHAEL MONTGOMERY

270 KENNY CHESNEY

270 KEVIN SHARP

274 TOBY KEITH

274 TRACY LAWRENCE

274 TRACE ADKINS

278 LEANN RIMES

278 DEANA CARTER

278 MINDY MCCREADY

282 REBA MCENTIRE

282 PATTY LOVELESS

282 WYNONNA

286 JOHNNY GILL

286 702

286 DRU HILL

290 A TRIBE CALLED QUEST

290 BUSTA RHYMES

290 DE LA SOUL

294 CRUCIAL CONFLICT

294 DO OR DIE

294 LOST BOYZ

298 BARENAKED LADIES

298 BODEANS

298 UGLY AMERICANS

302 BRYAN ADAMS

302 CHRIS ISAAK

302 PHIL COLLINS

306 GLORIA ESTEFAN

306 GEORGE MICHAEL

306 LIONEL RICHIE

310 LUTHER VANDROSS

310 NATALIE COLE

310 MONTELL JORDAN

314 PET SHOP BOYS

314 MAXI PRIEST

314 TRICKY

318 SUZANNE VEGA

318 ANI DIFRANCO

318 MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO

322 MEDESKI MARTIN & WOOD

322 RUSTED ROOT

322 ROBERT BRADLEY’S BLACKWATER SURPRISE

326 GUIDED BY VOICES

326 SOUL COUGHING

326 QKUMBA ZOO

330 MICHAEL HEDGES

330 STEVE VAI

330 ERIC JOHNSON

334 KEB’ MO’

334 HARRY CONNICK, JR.

334 GEORGE WINSTON

338 COCTEAU TWINS

338 K’S CHOICE

338 NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS

342 SUBLIME

342 REEL BIG FISH

342 BAD RELIGION

346 QUAD CITY DJ’S

346 KRISTINE W

346 BILLIE RAY MARTIN

350 JOHNNY CASH

350 JOHN MCEUEN

350 CURTIS MAYFIELD

354 JOURNEY

354 YES

354 ENIGMA

355 JIMMY BUFFETT

355 BROOKS & DUNN

355 ROBERT MILES

356 MAKEVELI

356 MASTER P

356 E-40

357 LIL’ KIM

357 TOTAL

357 112

358 OUTKAST

358 MO THUGS

358 FLESH-N-BONE

359 GETO BOYS

359 FOXY BROWN

359 PLANET SOUL

360 KEITH SWEAT

360 NO MERCY

360 GHOST TOWN DJ’S

361 DANZIG

361 THE JAZZ PASSENGERS

361 THE ZAMBONIS

362 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Editorial Reviews

In his On Record series, G. Brown makes stories of recorded music come alive by digging into the experiences of the artists—and through his writing, he reveals their humanity. What a gift these books are to music lovers.”
–JESSE COLIN YOUNG, singer, songwriter and founding member of the Youngbloods

From the Publisher