120 Reasons To Live: The Folk Implosion

Nothing did more to further the cause of Alternative Nation-building than 120 Minutes, MTV’s Sunday-night video showcase of non-mainstream acts. For nearly two decades, the program spanned musical eras from ’80s college rock to ’00s indie, with grunge, Britpop, punk, industrial, electronica and more in between. MAGNET raids the vaults to resurrect our 120 favorite and unjustly forgotten videos from the show’s classic era.

#62: The Folk Implosion “Natural One”

Radio 104.5 is the alt-rock station in MAGNET’s hometown of Philadelphia, and you’ve probably got a station just like it in your city. For various reasons, this writer has been obligated to listen to 104.5 while in a car with younger co-workers. These stations play so much Foo Fighters material that the DJs simply refer to the band as “the Foos.” Dave Grohl would like you to please stop that shit. They play new stuff, too—Florence And The Machine, Phoenix, Adele, Black Keys—but the playlist is dominated by ’90s standbys (Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Live), opening up the question of whether the current teenage generation really has any separation from the grunge era. But getting to the point: When an off-brand ’90s act is played, it’s always Better Than Ezra or Candlebox or the Toadies. What’s wrong with Edwyn Collins, the Dandy Warhols or the Folk Implosion? They had equally huge singles that aged better and are more fun. When the archivists fail to deliver a) fair and balanced historical treatment and b) good taste, the preferable option is not to remember the ’90s at all. Just play Mumford & Sons and pretend everything else is as prehistoric and irrelevant as classic rock; at this point, maybe it is.