Episode 3: Celebrity Skin

Hole, Celebrity Skin, 1998.

We take a deeper look at ourselves while listening to this 1998 classic. If this album is considered by some to be a “guilty pleasure,” we clearly don’t have any guilt about it. This was a foundational soundtrack to our 90’s SoCal lives. From hanging with dolphins at the beach and midnight jaunts to the “Rock n’ Roll Ralph’s” grocery store to being trapped in college life in the valley, this summery, power pop, ironic album speaks to a particular GenX sensibility like nothing else.

(other topics touched on: women in rock, how to relate to your fans, amazing bridges in songs, commercial drum sounds, the names of bands we’ve been in, emotional macaroni and cheese)

• From the vaults: A 1999 interview with Hole’s Courtney Love — “Anyway, my point is that kids who are Blink-182 fans or who are buying Epitaph records can’t even have the selling-out argument because they are three generations away from what punk once was.”
• Courtney Love Does the Math — Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software. I’m talking about major label recording contracts.