7th and Final Version Now Available! (as of 11/6/22)

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Linked above is the seventh final iteration of Don’t Call It Nothing: The Lost History of ‘90s Roots, Rap & Rock ‘n’ Roll. I created a new cover and made a few other corrections (see below). I could continue to make corrections just like I could’ve continued the podcast, but the mission is now complete. This has been an intense and illuminating four-year process of relearning as much as learning.

To say that I’m a different person now than when I started is an understatement. You may not notice because this may be your first time visiting this site, but my given name at birth was Lance Davis. I recently changed it to LD Uehara to honor my mother and the sacrifices she made not just to raise me, but to survive and advance in this world. She assimilated to white culture so thoroughly that she went from Michiko Uehara to Billie Jane Davis.

And I say this not as criticism because if you know the context of being an Asian American living in the U.S. in the years after World War Two, then you’ll know that Asians assimilated because whites pretty much gave them no choice. Besides, who would I be to criticize her for assimilating? Is her whitewashing any different from me immersing myself in country music, Alabama football, and Austin, Texas? Survive and advance.

Asian Americans learned from the jump that whites will never see us as truly American, so we’ve pragmatically adapted. The problem is pragmatism and adaptability comes at a psychological cost. Are you who you really are or are you who whites want you to be? That’s a motherfucker of a question to answer honestly. And when I finally answered it honestly, I was not a Davis. I was a Uehara.

My mom stepped through the portal because she felt like she had no choice. I’m stepping back. We Okinawans fought off the Mongols, survived the dynastic Chinese, outlasted the Imperial Japanese, and have endured the equally imperial U.S. I’d be a lazy, self-centered idiot to honor not only the hardiness of my people, but also the collective trauma that lives inside me.

The name change is part of a process of differentiation that I’ve been going through over the last 4–5 years. I realize now that this book and podcast was a love letter to the ‘90s, but also a goodbye. I wrung everything there was to wring out of rock ‘n’ roll/indie rock culture, left behind a catalog of writing/curating that stands up to any music writer ever, but I’m exhausted by it.

I also feel like Gen Xers are more interested in boomer culture than their own. White people, in general, have a nostalgia for the ‘60s and ‘70s that I simply don’t get.

I’m obsessed with K-pop, K-drama, and the history of Asian/AAPI representation on film and TV. My job actually motivated me in this direction and I’m so grateful. I started editing articles about Blackpink, Twice, and BTS and much to my surprise, the songwriting, arrangements, and performances blew me away. These insane hip hop beats with Taylor Swift-style pop structures and ABBA harmonies? What??? Throw in ‘60s pop, ‘80s electro, and obviously Korean pop, and I am totally smitten.

The fact is, Asian Americans are FINALLY on the ascendancy in the U.S., and I’m here for it. I adapted to white American culture because I felt like I had no choice. And it turned out I was pretty good at chronicling it. But, what if I didn’t have to adapt? What if I could woo to the young to the woo and hit you with that ddu-du ddu-du du and be happy? It would look a lot like this.

See ya on the flippity flop, LD

Don't Call It Nothing: The Lost History of '90s Roots, Rap & Rock 'n' Roll is part autobiography, part biography, part social history, and all music history. It’s an excellent reference tool for the best American music of the decade, largely driven underground in favor of terrible grunge, emo, Britpop, nu metal, and rap rock. In fact, the heart and soul of ‘90s rock ‘n’ roll came from small-ish American towns like Belleville, Illinois (Uncle Tupelo), Stockton, California (Pavement), Ellensburg, Washington (Screaming Trees), Tacoma, Washington (Girl Trouble, Neko Case), Olympia, Washington (Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Elliot Smith, K Records, Kill Rock Stars), Denton, Texas (Slobberbone, Centro-Matic), Dayton, Ohio (GBV, Breeders), Louisville, Kentucky (Slint, Freakwater, My Morning Jacket), Chapel Hill/Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina (Superchunk, Merge Records, Archers Of Loaf, Polvo), Norman, Oklahoma (Flaming Lips), and even Austin, Texas, back when it was still just a big town (Prescott Curlywolf, Bad Livers, Alejandro Escovedo, Jack O'Fire, Gourds, Damnations, Meat Purveyors). Hell, great rock 'n' roll was even made in Australia (You Am I), The Netherlands (Bettie Serveert), Canada (Sadies), and Japan (5.6.7.8's). Learn it, know it, live it.

UPDATES

11/6 - Created new book cover, changed all Lance Davis references to LD Uehara per my name change, changed order of 1994 Top 10, with Slant 6's Soda Pop*Rip Off assuming its rightful place at #2—just behind aMiniature's Depthfiveratesix, and made all repagination corrections. These are the final changes I'm making to the book. Seventh and final edition.

10/11 - Italicized Without a Sound. (p. 147)

10/3 - Added Slant 6's "What Kind Of Monster Are You?" single to 1993. (p. 439)

8/13 - Fixed a couple of strange errors in Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock. "Aesthetic" was weirdly misspelled (including characters?) and the numbering of the Spotify playlist was jacked up. Fixed that and broke up that final paragraph into two. (pp. 849–850).

7/31 - Switched out quote at the top of 1998. I moved the David Berman quote into the Silver Jews section (since it was #1, it didn't go far) and replaced it with a quote from the Red Aunts' Ghetto Blaster. (p. 710)

Added Red Aunts' Ghetto Blaster to 1998. (pp. 73-31)

6/25 - Added Poly Styrene references to a couple different Kathleen Hanna sections because it was dumb not to have done that the first time. (pp. 290, 811)

6/20 - Added Red Aunts to intro and slightly edited "When we talk about the great icons of rock history" paragraph. (p. 8)

Added Red Aunts to Epilogue. (p. 894)

Sharpened up Slobberbone picture. (p. 894)

Added Red Aunts' Saltbox to 1996. It's now at 20, just behind Slobberbone's Crow Pot Pie (weird coincidence) and in front of They Might Be Giant's Factory Showroom. (p. 614)

Moved Screaming Trees' Dust up to #9, which bumped Gillian Welch out of the Top 10 and into the lead position in the Next Level. Slightly tweaked the language on the Dust entry, too. Nothing too major. (p. 607)

6/19 - Finally added the Red Aunts' #1 Chicken to its rightful place at #2 on the 1995 Top 10 list. Added them to the sneak peek (p. 516) as well as their own entry. (pp. 526-27)

Downsized the track titles for the Geraldine Fibbers' Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home. Didn't realize I had them at 14 font. Dropped it to 12. (pp. 523-25)

Finally, made sure that Grand Prix—which was at #10, but now is #11 with the emergence of #1 Chicken—was both moved off the sneak peek and also now the first album in the Next Level section. (p. 543)

6/9 - Replaced the Meat Purveryors at #10 in the 1999 sneak peek with Le Tigre. The body of the text was correct, I just forgot to update the numbered list at the start of the chapter. (p. 774)

6/9 - Corrected mistake in Mark Lanegan's I'll Take Care Of You entry. I said Steve Berlin played organ on the title track. It was flute. Goddamn flute. So good. (p. 813)

5/18 - Made slight edit to Mark Lanegan's Scraps At Midnight entry. (p. 748)

5/15 - Added Red Aunts' Drag album to 1993. (pp. 416-17)

Added Red Aunts' Bad Motherfucken 40 O-Z album to 1994. (p. 503)

Deleted extra white space between albums and EPs. (p. 505)

Added Red Aunts, "My Impala ’65" b/w Claw Hammer, "Car Down Again" split single on Gearhead. (p. 508)

5/14 - Added Red Aunts' debut single to 1992. Also corrected two examples where I wrote Sympathy For The Industry instead of Sympathy For The Record Industry. (p. 366)

Added Red Aunts' "Retard Jenny Jones" single to 1993. (p. 439)

Moved Jawbreaker's "Better Half" single down a few spots. Now it's behind Fluf's "Sheela Na Gig" and above Silkworm's "Into The Woods." (p. 441)

5/5 - OMG, just realized I'd misspelled Conner as Connor in several different Screaming Trees sections. [facepalm]

4/10 - Inadvertently had Mark Lanegan's Whiskey For The Holy Ghost too low. It's now behind Vic Chesnutt's Drunk and before Beck's Stereopathetic Soulmanure (p. 484). Also, I'm going to start adding page numbers as an additional data point.

4/4 - Since publishing Don’t Call It Nothing in January, I’ve actually gone back through the book and made a number of minor edits to the text. However, when I realized I inadvertently omitted my favorite L7 release, I had to replace the entire PDF. FYI, future updates will include a similar list of dates and edits so you know I’m not chopping this thing up all willy nilly.

4/2 - Added L7's Smell The Magic to EPs. I don't know how I overlooked this one.

4/1 - URL at the end of the Bicycle Thief review was accidentally bolded.

4/1 - Fixed The Way I Should review, which was a minor disaster. Moved the quote about "Letter To Mom" so that it was separated from the lyrics to "Wasteland Of The Free." From a design perspective, it looked terrible. That following paragraph had an extra space, an "a" missing from the the phrase "all that and a plate of biscuits," and the word "need" missing from the sentence, "She didn’t need a legend."

3/28 - Corrected misspelling of name of trumpet player Jeff McGrath in the Screaming Trees' Uncle Anesthesia (page 257). He was actually listed incorrectly in the liner notes (as McGraph).

3/27 - Corrected mistake on page 132. In my review of Mark Lanegan's The Winding Sheet, I called producer/collaborator, Mike Johnson, "then-bassist of Dinosaur Jr." That's not correct. Winding Sheet was recorded in December 1989 and released May 1990. I changed the wording to "not-yet-bassist of Dinosaur Jr" because he'd join Dino after Van Conner's separate stints as touring bassist in early and late '91. Also deleted the sentence, "All of which brings me to the album’s other contributors." Unnecessary.

3/20 - Moved the Screaming Trees' Something About Today from EPs to Singles because it has only four songs. Also, slightly revised the text.

3/20 - Moved the Screaming Trees' Uncle Anesthesia from 18 to 16. It went from behind Cypress Hill's self-titled to behind Sister Double Happiness, Heart And Mind.

2/9 - Corrected mistake on page 461. I said of aMiniature, "Both Depthfiveratesix and 1995’s Murk Time Cruiser sit in the Top 5 of their respective years." That was true when I originally wrote that, but by the time of publication I dropped Murk Time down to 8.

1/20 - Rewrote Sister Double Happiness, Heart And Mind entry (p. 255)

1/7 - Thanks to Nate “The Man” Pottker, I have a new cover and we upped the DPI on his illustrations. Woo hoo!!! Everything else is the same. Feel free to download the new version. And save that original PDF. One day it’s gonna be worth quintuple what you paid for it!

Excerpt (p 138):

The book is pretty straightforward. I go through every year of the 1990s individually, starting with my ten favorite albums from each year and then follow up with the next best (or most interesting) fifty or so records. That’s followed by noteworthy EPs, singles, compilations, reissues, and soundtracks. Live albums are organized by year of performance, not year of release. I include relevant quotes, often from years after the fact. To fully appreciate their own music, I think it benefits musicians to be removed from their work by a couple of decades. I think the passage of time allows for more transparent honesty and an earned wisdom to settle on the artist themselves. When you’re in the moment, you’re in some ways living in the unconscious. Fast forward 20-25 years and you filter your experiences through age, pain, loss, grief, joy, and love.