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By Christopher Witflee
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Shawn Fanning, the Napster dude
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JANUARY
Rapper Shyne is arrested for attempted murder. Puff Daddy and Jennifer Lopez are allegedly affiliated but get off the hook. Puffy sampled O.J. Simpson's defense team.
Rolling Stone breaks the news that David Crosby provided the sperm to impregnate musician Melissa Etheridge's lover, Julie Cypher. Endless turkey baster jokes ensue.
Whitney Houston is busted with pot in Hawaii.
Dan McCabe, who helped keep Indie music alive in Cincinnati and has long been a staunch supporter of local music, leaves his job as booking agent at Sudsy Malone's, a staple of local original live music. Sudsy's stops featuring bands altogether until toward the end of the year.
All-around prick John Rocker gets a slap in the face when washed-up has-beens Twisted Sister tell him he can't use "I Wanna Rock" as his theme music anymore because of his overtly racist remarks in Sports Illustrated in late '99.
David Byrne swings through town to open his art exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Center. His artwork is interesting (collages and T-shirt slogans), and he seems quite gracious to all the opening night attendees who hit him up for photos and autographs. But what's up with those inflated swimming pools with dishes floating in them (not Byrne's, by the way)? We're pretty sure artists do that kind of art so they can laugh at the people who stand around pretending to "get it."
FEBRUARY
ABBA declines a reported $1 billion offer to reunite for 100 shows. They had better things to do?
Big Pun, a pioneering Latino Hip Hop star, dies from a heart attack.
Legendary R&B; whacked-out singer Screamin' Jay Hawkins dies. His lawyer begin an exhaustive search through the Internet (jayskids.com) to find his 100 or so illegitimate children.
People try to explain Madonna's sudden British accent. As mysterious as that horrible "American Pie" cover.
KISS announce their farewell tour. Yeah, right.
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By Christopher Witflee
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Eminem
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Indie rockers go corporate. Members of Sleater/Kinney, Helium and Fishbone pop up in priceline.com ads, while other commercials feature music ranging from the Apples in Stereo to Low.
Circus of the Sun play a great last show at the Southgate House before calling it quits. Unbelievably, they're cut off by the club during their encore.
MARCH
The Grammys. Santana wins everything but the Polka categories.
Remember the '90s! Early on the morning of March 11, infomercials for The Unbelievable '90s begin running three months after the decade's end. Reminisce about all-those-years-ago artists like Matchbox 20, The Verve Pipe and Sugar Ray! As a bonus, true '90s celeb Eric Nies (of MTV's The Real World and The Grind fame) hosts the ad and tells us "I remember the Lollapalooza tour ... I barely survived the mosh pit!" And the Web site musicspace.com tells us: "It's the perfect time capsule to take you back to everything you loved about the millennium's last decade: chat rooms, grunge, Beanie Babies, CDRoms, CKOne and super models."
It's the James Taylor and Carly Simon of the '90s. Christian Pop star Amy Grant and Country superstar Vince Gill get married. Please, no duets.
Fiona Apple puts on a stellar, light-hearted show at Taft Theatre, just a week after an onstage breakdown in New York City due to bad sound. Apple is not only in excellent form musically, but her demeanor is downright playful and goofy. Thanks, Prozac.
It's announced that the late Linda McCartney left her husband, Paul, $230 million in her will. You know what Paul's thinking: "Sony Playstation 2, here I come!"
Reviewers criticize Britney Spears for lip-synching during her concerts. Isn't that like saying tofu sucks because there's no meat taste? We hear she didn't play all the instruments on her record either!
Ian Dury, a Pub/Punk legend in England, dies of cancer.
Wyclef Jean of the Fugees joins a growing legion of artists boycotting South Carolina because of their refusal to stop flying the confederate flag over the state capital building. He does, however, make it to Cincinnati to play Xavier on a college tour. Actually, instead of "playing," Wyclef fiddles with a few cover songs and mostly just has his DJ play albums while he and his crew dance and pump up the crowd. Sad.
APRIL
The Beatles reunite ... to write an anthology/book documenting the "true" story behind their rise to fame. USA Today speculates about what the Beatles would be doing today if they stayed together ... and nobody said they'd probably suck. Have they heard any of the members' solo albums from the past 10 years?
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Smashing Pumpkins — the old days
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Matchbox 20 changes its name to matchbox twenty, still suck.
A sarcastic Web site (started by a former Miami U. student) called paylars.com is set up to raise money for Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, a multi-millionaire whining about the hundreds of dollars he's losing to Napster, the custom MP3 site. Elsewhere in Napster news, Metallica and Dr. Dre file lawsuits against the site; Limp Bizkit does a free promo tour sponsored by the site.
Bruuuccce! Bruce Springsteen plays an excellent career-spanning show with the E Street Band at the Firstar Center.
The residents of tiny Sparta, Ky., happy about the economic impact of the new Kentucky Speedway, complain about a nudie bar opening. The next day it's announced that a smaller version of Woodstock has been booked in the Speedway for July, featuring not only Metallica but Korn and Kid Rock as well. Poor people.
Due to lawsuits, tapes from the Columbine shootings are made public. Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You" is added as background music by a very confused fireman who assembled the footage. (What was he thinking?) McLachlan and her label, who say they never approved the song's use, demand the song be removed from the tapes. Singer/songwriter Cheryl Wheeler also has a song on the "soundtrack" and also asks for its removal.
Roundhead play their last gig at the Southgate House. Despite having the sound cut off during their last song (an annoying Southgate tendency; see Circus of the Sun above), it was a sparkling farewell.
MAY
Pepsi Jammin' On Main downtown. While there were no super-special national acts, the event was loaded with tons of great local acts. A Raisins reunion, The Simpletons and The Brand were highlights.
Dayton's Guided By Voices shows up on Late Night with Conan O'Brien with an amazing version of their best ballad ever, "Hold on Hope." Britney Spears releases her sophomore record, Oops, I Released the Same Album Again.
Victoria Williams and her Original Harmony Creek Dippers play a cozy show at the Southgate House. One of the best shows of the year.
The members of the Dead Kennedys sue singer/mouthpiece Jello Biafra for failing to fairly compensate them for their work, among other things. They are awarded more than $200,000 in damages by the judge.
In response to the Napster-hating millionaires who are at the time flexing muscle to put the music-sharing software company out of business, satirical online news source The Onion runs the headline "Kid Rock starves to death: MP3 piracy blamed."
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'NSync
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Icelandic Pop princess Björk starts a new career, wins best actress award at Cannes for appearance in Palm D'Or winner Dancer in the Dark.
Rock is dead? Smashing Pumpkins announce their imminent split. Noel Gallagher says he won't tour outside of Great Britain ever again, as he walks off a European tour and is replaced by a gun for hire (signaling another probable, imminent split).
JUNE
Latin Jazz legend Tito Puente dies.
Buffett fans barrage CityBeat with harsh, sometimes violent replies to Mike Breen's "10 Things I Hate About Jimmy Buffett" article. It replaces being called out by Barenaked Ladies after a negative review at their local concert as Breen's career highlight.
Two "It could only happen to them" arrests: Eminem gets into a fight after suspecting his wife of cheating (he has written about killing her for the same reasons on his records). And Country star Kenny Chesney is arrested after jumping on a police horse and riding around after playing George Strait's music festival. Yee-haw!
Eminem gets hit from all sides with the release of his The Marshall Mathers LP album. Women's groups, gay rights organization and Christian Aguilera all denounce the rapper as homophobic and misogynistic. Perhaps not surprisingly, the album becomes one of the year's biggest sellers.
Strawberry Jam festival at (and outside of) the BarrelHouse has a successful inaugural year, featuring great local bands like Ray's Music Exchange, The Simpletons and The Ass Ponys.
"No, you're a dumb ass." The bassist for Creed slams Pearl Jam in a radio interview, saying that Eddie Vedder wishes he could sing as well as Creed singer Scott Stapp. Later in the month, at a radio station music fest, Scott Weiland rips Limp Bizkit for showing up late, Limp Bizkit rips Creed's Stapp for acting "like Michael Jackson" backstage. And Creed's camp later, acceding to Bizkit's Durst, gave the Bizkits an "anger management manual." Just get it over with and sleep together already.
JULY
Nine people are killed at a giant music fest, Roskilde, in Coppenhagen during Pearl Jam's set. (Pete Townshend of The Who consoles PJ's Eddie Vedder; Townshend, of course, experienced a similar situation here in Cincinnati.)
A few days later a man falls to his death at a Metallica/Korn/Kid Rock concert in Baltimore. The tour would come to the Cincy area in less than a week with more problems: Singer James Hetfield hurt his back, forcing a rotating-singer post that included members of opening acts like Kid Rock and Powerman 5000.
Newport Arts and Music Fest and the Queen City Blues Fest happen over one weekend in early July.
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Photo By Sean Hughes/photopresse.com
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Britney Spears
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On Politically Incorrect, careerist musician Art Alexakis (pictured) of Everclear manages to boast of his celebrity, overcoming his drug addiction and how he purposefully overpaid his ex-wife considerably in a divorce settlement, all within the space of about 30 seconds. You did drugs! You're a super-dad! We get it, Art, we get it.AUGUST
Madonna has a baby and insures it a life of schoolyard beatings by naming it Rocco.
Rage Against the Machine play the MC5 to this year's Democratic National Convention, staging a concert/protest across the street from the DNC's ground zero. Police eventually bust up the rally with riot-stopping tactics (pepper spray, plastic bullets), though it came long after the band's set had ended.
NOW, a compilation of previously released Pop hits, tops the album charts for three weeks. K-Tel, where art thou?
Riverbend closes out its season on a high note with a string of sold-out shows from Jimmy Buffett, Creed and Pearl Jam.
Johnny Cougar plays a free acoustic show on Fountain Square. Unless you're standing smack-dab in front of him, you can't hear or see shit. Nice gesture, though.
SEPTEMBER
Shooting Phish in a barrel? Phish cements their reputation as the city of Cincinnati's favorite band, as cops set up shop at their Riverbend show and make tons of arrests for drug charges.
MTV video awards -- usually not even meriting a mention -- are so awful they merit a mention: They're awful.
Smashing Pumpkins (Billy Corgan, pictured) give their record label the metaphorical middle finger by releasing their last album -- actually mostly remixes -- to various Web sites, who proceed to make it available for free to download.
Almost Famous, about a Rock kid turned Rock journalist (based on writer/director Cameron Crowe's real-life experiences) is actually quite good in a nostalgically sweet kind of way.
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Art Alexakis (foreground) of Everclear
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The Olympics in Sydney close with a parade of Australian's "greatest." The best they have to offer? Men At Work, Midnight Oil, a Hutchence-less INXS and the multi-dimensional artist Kylie Minogue. (No AC/DC? No Air Supply? Or were they from New Zealand? Either way, what a crime.) The funnier part is the parade of "Icons" -- Elle Macpherson, Greg Norman, Paul Hogan and Bananas in Pajamas. Maybe Cincinnati really does have a shot at 2012.
OCTOBER
Ben Orr, bassist and occasional singer with The Cars, dies at age 53 after a battle with cancer. Orr sang huge Cars hits like "Just What I Needed" and "Drive."
Radiohead's hugely experimental Kid A tops the Billboard albums chart. That means it's also surely the No. 1 most traded-in CD at used CD stores the following week.
In the same week, NBA star/wannabe rapper Kobe Bryant is dropped from his label and fellow NBA-er Allen Iverson is told he must edit the lyrics for his debut album by NBA Commisioner David Stern.
Zack de la Rocha leaves Rage Against the Machine. Maybe Zack got sick of the band's habit of making the same record over and over.
George Michael pays over $2 million for the piano John Lennon used to write "Imagine." Are you thinking what we're thinking? You are if you're thinking, "Shouldn't he save that money for food?"
A Tennessee teen is caught after hatching a detailed plot to kill the members of 'N Sync (pictured). Now we see what the NRA is talking about.
Local Hip Hop artist/producer Hi Tek has his collaboration with rapper Talib Kweb debut at No. 17 on the Billboard album charts.
NOVEMBER
Sellout flash: Napster teams with BMG to become a subscription service. After all of that?
The Beatles release another compilation (1, which debuts at No. 1 on album charts worldwide), launch a Web site (thebeatles.com) and are the subject of another television special, The Beatles Revolution, which was OK, but did they really need commentary by Pop cultural flukes like 'N Sync and Tim Allen? NBC jumps in with a godawful John Lennon bio-pic.
Do you remember where you were when you heard the news that Kid Rock sidekick Joe C. died?
The year wouldn't be complete without an Old Dirty Bastard crime report. While the notorious ODB kept a fairly low profile (in a drug rehab), by year's end he was in the news after fleeing the clinic, popping up at a New York City Wu Tang Clan show (and performing!) and finally getting taken down at a Philadelphia McDonald's.
The 2000 Cincinnati Entertainment Awards go down at the Aronoff Center, with the Simpletons (pictured) winning Artist of the Year and the Ass Ponys winning Album of the Year.
DECEMBER
One of the few mid-'90s AltRock pioneers left standing, The Smashing Pumpkins, play their final show at Chicago's Metro, where they got their start some 12 years ago.
In an unprecedented move, the major labels unify and decide not to release any more albums by lifeless Teen Pop pin-up dolls (pictured) and thuggish Rape-Rock bands. Hey, there's a couple of weeks left. One can dream.
