In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 130: Restaurant Storytime VII: A Great First Impression; 1994 Year In Music Pt. 1; Most Unusual Phobias; Creation of Coca-Cola(1-31-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 130

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The first day at a new job can be exciting, it can also be nerve-racking. In Episode 130 of the podcast we look at a day of work that was a mixture of both. In Restaurant Storytime VII: A Great First Impression I share the details of my first shift ever in the hospitality industry. For it to be on the podcast you know it was not an ordinary day.
1994 was a monumental year for the music industry. There were numerous groundbreaking albums and songs that made their way into the world. There were also events that occurred that are still shaping the music landscape to this day. We will go way Back In the Day to look at 1994 the Year In Music Part 1, January through June, with Part 2 coming later this year.
Fears of things such as flying, the unknown, deep water, and darkness, are fairly common. However this week's Top 5 will focus on those fears that are far less common, and at times oddly specific, as we dive into some of the most unusual phobias.
There is also a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centering around the creation of the soft drink juggernaut Coca-Cola. Why has this drink held such an important place worldwide for so long?
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Speaker 00:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 130. We've passed the halfway point of winter. This episode's going to try to help get you through the rest of the dog days of winter. Food and fun and a whole heaping bunch of nostalgia. We're going to start it off with some nostalgia from my own life as I share with you the seventh installment of Restaurant Storytime. Restaurant Storytime 7, making a great first impression. The story of my very first day, my first shift, my first minutes in the restaurant industry and how that went. We're going to go way, way back in the day to look at 1994, the year in music. Part 1, January through June, the event. events, albums, songs, important moments that happened in the first half of 1994. Part two will come in July. In this week's top five, we are going to look at the top five weirdest and most unusual phobias. These are some oddly specific things for people to be afraid of. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around the Coca-Cola company being incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia. All of that and more So here we are, finishing up the first month of the year. How's everyone's 2024 been? How have your New Year's resolutions gone? Remember, even if your New Year's resolutions have kind of fallen off already, you can always restart. It doesn't have to be January 1st for it to be meaningful. I know I joked that one of my New Year's resolutions was to make this podcast as awesome as I could. I hope I've lived up to it. I've had a lot of fun with the episodes thus far this year. As we begin to transition more into a nostalgia Generation X, 70s, 80s, 90s type of podcast, As I head towards three and a half years of doing this show, 130 episodes, I've noticed which things resonate more with more listeners. So that's where some changes and evolution of the podcast are coming from. And I hope you've enjoyed thus far the deeper dives into nostalgia. Hope it gives you the warm, fuzzy feelings, especially during the cold winter months. I wanted to start off by thanking everyone who has been tuning in Anyone who has come aboard recently, those of you that have been there from day one, episode one, who have shared it, supported the podcast in that way, sent good reviews to Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast and become a subscriber on Patreon or Buzzsprout, you can definitely do that. There are links to those pages in the description of the podcast. Shout out to my Patreon subscribers, Leo, Laurie, Mary Lou, and Ashley. If you want to join them and get shout outs on each episode, you can do that. If becoming a subscriber is not feasible for you, and I totally understand that, there are many, many other ways to support the podcast, support my content, like my YouTube channel. And that's as simple as just liking videos, sharing episodes of the podcast. It takes two seconds. And I am constantly adding new content, especially on YouTube. I put up full audio episodes of the podcast on YouTube as Google Podcasts will be closing down in early April. But I also do individual segments from the podcast. Some of you have likely seen them. And with those, I'm working on my animations and things to make these videos more visually appealing. I'm scouting other YouTube channels to see what they do that gets them views. But we can catch up on all of that housekeeping type stuff with the podcast and all the content at the end of the show. Right now, I want to get to the self-deprecating humor and embarrassment that I sometimes like to bring about myself as we jump right into Restaurant Storytime 7, Making a Great First Impression. here on episode 130 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Well, it's time for the seventh installment of restaurant story time. This is a favorite of mine, getting to share these crazy but true stories. And I'm sure a lot of you who have worked in the restaurant slash hospitality industry can relate to a lot of this. Maybe not the exact craziness, but you've got your own stories that are on the same wavelength. For this installment, though, we're going all the way back. It's the origin story. Restaurant story time seven. Way to make a first impression. Longtime listeners of the podcast, remember when I talked about how I started working? I basically began as a stock boy at my friend Matt's family general store. And that was when I was 12 years old. You imagine 12-year-olds today having jobs. It's weird because I don't feel like I'm from that different of a generation, but the more I think about things I did in the 80s and even into the 90s, it is a different time. Then I landscaped when I was 13. Little stuff under the table. Then in between, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do as far as work. I was now starting high school. So I needed slash wanted a job so I could have money to do stuff with my friends like go be a mall rat. I'm sure even if the opportunity had not presented itself like it did for this story, I'd have likely have ended up doing something in the restaurant or hospitality industry because it's kind of a gateway to employment for most people. You either work in a kitchen, work as a server, do some kind of landscaping, maybe work the register at a supermarket or another department store. Those are typical first jobs. For me, we're going all the way back to the late spring of 1993, Memorial Day weekend. My father's job, where he worked in the restaurant, they needed somebody to come in and do a little bit of prep work. And so my father's boss, the owner of the restaurant, asked if I might want to come in and do that. I figured it was an easy intro into the industry, working where my father already was, so I had kind of an in. And it was also good because one of the main chefs there knew my grandparents. So there was another check in the boxes for why I should do it. Although, interestingly, I thought I would have it easy with my father there and this other chef that knew my grandparents. But it actually was the opposite, where they didn't want to seem like they were coddling me. So I wasn't treated badly. But I think I thought I was going to be treated like some kind of golden child. Back in those days, so I was 15 years old, depending on the day that I worked, it was usually weekends, maybe holidays every now and then. But I would either get a ride in with my father or I would ride my bike down, which that was more typical. And I just looked it up now on Google Maps. So from where my childhood home was back in the 90s, To get to the restaurant where I worked, it was just over seven miles. So I was 15 years old, getting up to go to work. Typically, I'd get in at 8 a.m., but riding my bike by myself, seven miles each way. But hey, at least I burned off all of the chicken nuggets and french fries that I would have as my meal every time I worked, along with cattlemen's barbecue sauce. which that was a staple back then, and you can't find it. I can get it on Amazon, and I do. I order it from Amazon. So this very first day, I think I rode my bike down. We'll just say I did. I got there, T-shirt, shorts, went into the kitchen. I think I got a tour around, met some people. Any of you who have heard the other restaurant story times in this series, You know that the restaurant was kind of rustic, we'll say, seafood restaurant, gravel parking lot, and across the parking lot was this bluish, dilapidated barn where one side was our prep room, walk-in fridge, walk-in freezer. The other side was dry storage, but it was big and wide open. People stored their cars in there. So I got my marching orders, went across to the prep room, And got my apron. Now, mind you, I've never done any of this work before. Food prep. I mean, today it's common sense. And I'm sure to a lot of you that have spent years and more in culinary and such, it's all common sense. But you start somewhere. There's always a first time handling food, handling utensils. Our prep lists in those first years with the prep boys rock, that was part six. Me and my tag team partner prep boy, it would be a yellow lined paper. It was yellow, it was never white lined, yellow line. Typically two columns worth of prep on each side. So here I am, first day, I've been there for probably 10 minutes, tie my apron on, grab myself a cutting board. saddle myself up at one of the stainless steel tables in the prep room, look at the prep list and pick out something that was simple. Something to kind of dip my toes into the prep slash hospitality waters. I went over to our knife block, grabbed out a typical chef's knife. For those of you that have worked in restaurants, you know what I mean. Probably an eight or nine inch blade. probably about two inches across. No, less than that inch or so across. I said, you know, it'll be good to start with slicing tomatoes. That's easy. Went into the walk-in, grabbed one of these five by six boxes of whole tomatoes. I always loved when we got the giant tomatoes, ones that were like softball size, because you could get like 30 slices out of it. I don't remember if I was prepping by myself that day or if the other prep guy was there already. He'll let me know if he remembers this day. I walked back out of the walk-in with the box of tomatoes, set them up on the table. We used to put our finished prep in used fish tubs or clam buckets. Used. I mean, they were clean, but they were still stuff we got from the fish place. So I had a clam bucket that I would fill with sliced tomatoes, cover it, put masking tape on it, put sliced tomatoes in the date. I grab out the first tomato, set it up on the cutting board, grab the knife, and you know what happened. The very first thing I did was slice my thumb with the knife, not the tomato. I didn't know about how much pressure to put into the skin of the tomato and how sharp the knife might be to get a cut. Like I said, these things that are common sense now. Oh boy, the knife was sharp enough though. The knuckle on my thumb on my left hand was sliced and I'm just bleeding everywhere. I've been at this job for probably 15 minutes by that point, including getting introduced to people. My first job on my first day. And the first thing I do is slice myself open. Now imagine over in the kitchen, my father telling people, yeah, my boy's next door. I brought him in. He's going to do a great job doing the food prep. And he looks up and here I am coming through the kitchen door with about three feet worth of paper towel wrapped around my thumb. I think it was a combination of shock at getting cut and embarrassment that this is how I make my first impression. Hi, it's nice to meet everyone. My name's Chris. I'm going to go slice myself next door. Now, I suppose it could have been worse. We had an old school grater that you would turn on and you would shove carrots or cheese in there and it had the spinning grater blades. So I guess I could have done that, done carrots and stuck my hand in there and just shredded my whole hand off. So I was cleaned up, bandaged up, but oh, I did not return to prep. Nope. They took one look at me, knew I had no knife skills yet, and they decided to stick me at the dishwasher so I could learn from the feet of the current dishwasher. So within 20 minutes of my first day, I was demoted from prep to dish. It took a while before I got sent back to do prep. And I mean, probably a couple of months. I started getting good at dish. Dishwashing was easy, but I was still haunted by my horrible first impression coming in and immediately slicing myself. So when I finally got back to doing prep, I didn't want to leave prep because that became easy. Once I got good at it, that was simple and there was no pressure like working on the line in a busy kitchen. I was disconnected. I was over in the barn doing my thing while the cooks were getting slammed by how busy we'd be. I had probably worked at that restaurant for five years or more before I finally went over to start cooking. I stayed as prep as long as I possibly could. They had to drag me kicking and screaming over there. So this story about my first day and slicing myself open... It got me thinking about a couple of other famous knife incidents not involving me. If you are squeamish, I would say fast forward a little bit. I'm going to make sure it's not too graphic, but these two stories are definitely things that could be in any Eli Roth horror movie. First off, okay, I was still dishwashing. This was probably a year after I started, a year after I sliced myself. And I was night dishing. That was a little harder because dinners were always busier. So at the end of the night, there were two cooks, maybe three cooks, me dishing. So on this night, one of the cooks had a friend that stopped in chatting. He was standing out on the deck having a beer or something like that. And I'm busy in our two bay sink. One bay was filled with pots. The other one we try to clean in the other. There is a golden rule when it comes to dishwashing, or I should say when putting things in the sinks. And that golden rule is do not put a knife in the sink because the water will get cloudy and you can't see the knife. So you see where this story is going, but it's got a twist. Somebody put a knife in the sink, a chef's knife. That's dangerous right away. So the shift is over. We're trying to get out of there. Me as the dishwasher, I'm kind of lagging behind. So the cooks were thinking about helping me out, putting some of the stuff away as I cleaned it and dried it. The friend of the cook that was there, out of the goodness of his heart, decided to try to help me out. You see where this is going. He reached into that sink with the cloudy water and he's the one that found the knife. He had grabbed it around the blade. I didn't know it was there. I don't know who put it in there. But oh boy, his hand came up and it was just, you know, that sink was just red with blood. We had to drain it and find the knife. And think about that. He didn't work there. So this was just some stranger came in and sliced his hand open in our sink. I don't know if there could have been any sort of lawsuit. I mean, I guess he wasn't supposed to be handling anything in our kitchen, so it could have been the opposite. But oh man, that was wild when he reached into the sink and all of a sudden you could see the red coming up and it was like, well, we know what happened there. I never saw that guy ever again. I don't blame him. I wouldn't want to go back in that kitchen with knives in the sink. But then there's this story. Probably the king of all knife stories. There was this guy that got hired. We'll call him Hank. Came in, did his interview, got hired to be cook slash prep. His first day, you could tell something was off about him. When he did his interview, he was fine. But that first day that he worked, you could tell he had likely partaken in a little bit of a drink before he got there. He was constantly complaining about the noise in the kitchen, which... If you work in a kitchen, it's not a library. You've got to be prepared for noise. But we chalked it up to, you know, first day jitters. Second day, he's in. At this point in the kitchen, we had the line where people put in their orders. Then on the other wall, the other side of the kitchen was the salad station. That's where Hank was. He was saddled up at the salad station and he was going to dice tomatoes. They tell you don't drink and drive. Well, I'll tell you, don't drink and use knives. Because this second day, he'd obviously had more to drink, and he's over there dicing tomatoes. At some point, he cut himself. I can't tell you exactly when, but he obviously didn't feel it because of the alcohol. So he's continuing to dice tomatoes and pour blood into the diced tomatoes. I didn't see this happen. I only know the story because the chef, I watched the chef go over and flip out because here's buckets of diced tomatoes and there's blood in all of them and he's still going. We had to throw out at least two six pans worth of diced tomatoes that had his blood in them. But it was crazy because he didn't feel it because he was drunk on the job on his second day. Needless to say, there was not a third day for Hank. He was gone. That was the damnedest thing I'd ever seen. We would all have post-shift drinks, A beer, but never be drunk on the job so much that you would just slice yourself open and keep going. Those of you that worked in the restaurant industry or still do, what's the craziest knife story you've ever seen? I'm likely going to do... A restaurant story time that's my worst injuries. I'll try to make it the least graphic that I can. But that wraps up restaurant story time seven. Way to make a first impression about me cutting myself on my first day. The first thing I did. I'll take a bow as that's a really good first impression to make. Nice to meet you. Let me go slice myself open. Yay. This week in history, we are going back 132 years ago to January 29th, 1892, and the Coca-Cola Company being incorporated in the city of Atlanta, Georgia. Coca-Cola, even all these decades later, is still a globally recognized and beloved company and beverage. The invention of this soft drink, didn't just quench your thirst, but it changed the world. The genesis of Coca-Cola began in 1886, and a man named Dr. John Stiff Pemberton, who was a pharmacist with a penchant for experimentation, he concocted a syrup in a brass kettle in his backyard. And that was intended to be a medicinal tonic consisting of cocoa leaves, cola nuts, and some other things. You know the recipe's secret. Initially, his drink was called Pemberton's French Wine Coca, but that didn't last long. Atlanta implemented prohibition laws in 1886, which meant that Pemberton had to change his formula and get rid of the wine that was in it, and then he fortified the syrup with carbonated water, and this new drink was named Coca-Cola, derived from the two primary ingredients. And yes, the urban legends appear to be true that the original Coca-Cola did in fact have cocaine in it, but not a huge amount, because I think it would have killed a lot of people if it was filled with cocaine. In the decades that followed, the Coca-Cola company grew. It transcended the origins as a medicinal tonic and became a cultural phenomenon. Think about it. The red and white logo, the unmistakable contour bottle that Coca-Cola used to be in, it all became synonymous with joy and togetherness, celebration, the I'd like to buy the world a Coke song, and the famous company marketing campaigns, the Santa Claus ones, slogans like open happiness. It was a way to connect Coca-Cola the drink with positive emotions in general. The longevity of Coca-Cola is incredible. Like I said, over 130 years it's been in existence. It has expanded globally to become a symbol of American culture around the world. And you can only imagine the economic impact of Coca-Cola with it becoming the number one beverage in the industry, the jobs it created, which helped the global economy. It's seen America through World War I, World War II, bridging cultural gaps during those times. It was the commitment by the company to make sure that American soldiers had access to Coke during World War II. It just became more than a drink. It was a symbol of home for people that were abroad and just the literal definition of nostalgia for people that have grown up with it. And Coke has continued to evolve and adapt as consumer preferences change. Although the less we say about new Coke in the 1980s, the better. That was probably their biggest fail ever. But they've had a lot of success with diet Coke, zero calorie drinks, sugar-free ones. Sugar and caffeine-free soda, I don't understand the point of. Because when you drink a soda, don't you want at least one of those? But here we are in 2024 and Coca-Cola is still as relevant as it ever has been. And when you think about all the different drinks that have come and gone in those 130 plus years, it's amazing. So let's raise a glass to the iconic Coca-Cola, acknowledge its enduring legacy and its role in changing the world one sip at a time. And that all began with its incorporation and creation by Dr. John Stiff Pemberton 132 years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We are going back 57 years ago this week to February 1st, 1967. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was I'm a Believer by the Monkees. This song was actually written by Neil Diamond. When it went to number one, it stayed there for seven weeks and it was routinely played on the Monkees TV show. Some of you younger listeners might remember it being played at the end of Shrek, recorded by Smash Mouth. As a little side note, when I was about eight years old, I sang this song with my father's band and they recorded it. So we're talking 1986, maybe? So somewhere hidden away in a box in an attic is an audio cassette with eight-year-old me singing this song. So every time I hear it, I think of that, where the band should have sent it to Star Search so Ed McMahon could have me become the next child star. The number one movie was A Fistful of Dollars. This is a famous Western starring Clint Eastwood. And you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $1.22. The movie was a remake of a Japanese film called Yo Himbo, which came out in 1961. These movies were part of a trilogy. Fistful of Dollars was one of them. The three were A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Combine these three movies, made nearly $127 million worldwide. The number one TV show was The Dean Martin Show. This was a TV talk show, variety show, comedy show, starring singer, actor, Rat Pack member, Dean Martin. It ran for a total of nine seasons and 264 episodes between 1965 and 1974. The theme song for the show was Dean Martin's hit song, Everybody Loves Somebody, and it was a big ratings draw for most of its time as a show, finishing in the top 20 ratings for four of its nine seasons. And if you were around back then, February 1st, 1967, perhaps you're a parent with children that have been out sledding in the snow or sledding in the dirt, getting their clothes ruined, and you need something to wash them in the washer. Well, you're in luck. This week's A&P Circular has deals on detergents. You could get a giant box of Duz detergent for 75 cents. or a giant box of Dreft detergent for 67 cents. Or perhaps you could go down to A&P yourself to find other discontinued detergents from the 60s, such as Salvo, Thrill, Breeze, or Bonus detergents. That'll wrap up a brand new time capsule, a brand new This Week in History. Let's shift our focus from number ones to top fives. As we look at the top five weirdest, most unusual phobias that a person can have coming up right now. Everybody's afraid of something. Anyone that says I'm not afraid of anything is usually a liar. There's something deep down that they don't want you to know about. Me, I'm not the biggest fan of heights. In fact, when I first got on my first flight ever, when I went to Las Vegas back in 2000, I left a big, sweaty handprint on my Discman as that plane took off. I was terrified. But fear of heights, fear of flying, fear of the dark or the unknown or deep water, those are pretty common. What I wanted to do for this week's top five was find ones that are uncommon or very oddly specific. And what's going to be the funniest part of this is me trying to pronounce these words. I may have to do some extra editing on this segment of the show. Based on looking at my notes, these words are going to be tough. As with most of the top fives, there will be some honorable mentions to kind of give you an idea, just of kind of the gist of what this top five will entail. So let's just get to it. Here are the honorable mentions for the most unusual, least common phobias possible. They include dextrophobia, which is the fear of having objects to your right. Plutophobia, which is the fear of money, more specifically handling it than getting it, so that might be more of a germ thing. There's Owlophobia, which is the fear of flutes, specifically that instrument. There is Lenonophobia, which is the fear of strength. And there is Genufobia, which is the fear of knees or kneeling. Have any of you heard of any of those phobias? Hopefully none of you have them because they're very oddly specific. But speaking of oddly specific, let's get into the actual top five, starting with number one, geniophobia, which is the fear of chins. Most people who have this phobia are more obsessed with people's chins, prominent chins, imperfect chins, double chins. It's unlikely that people have this phobia from injuring their own chin or jaw because it's usually one of the least injured body parts. But in the extreme versions of this phobia, people don't want to interact with others that they think have hideous or deformed or unusual chins and jaws. So they become introverted. Can you imagine not wanting to go outside and interact with people because you're afraid you might see someone with an odd shaped jaw or chin? That's one of those things that must be horrible to deal with. I'm going to have to think of that next time I go out. Just look at people and see how many have, I guess in my opinion, odd chins. And just imagine being obsessed or afraid of interacting with people like that. Number two, and let's see if I pronounce this right. is ephebiphobia, E-P-H-E-B-I phobia. That is the fear of youth slash teenagers. That seems like something that older people would start to develop, the fear of teenagers. It's like a Grandpa Simpson phobia. This phobia was first coined as the fear and or loathing of teenagers. It's now seen as the inaccurate, exaggerated characterization of young people in general, that all young people are up to no good, which is weird because everybody grew up. Everybody was a teenager. I didn't think I was a terrible youth, so maybe that's why I don't see other young people as being like that. I guess if you grew up and you were getting into trouble all the time, maybe you would just assume when you got older that all teenagers are like that. But I guess the only real cure for things like that type of phobia, fear of teenagers, is either moving into a retirement community or maybe deep in the woods off the grid because there's young people everywhere. Number three, get ready for this pronunciation, is arachiboutierphobia. A-R-A-C-H-I-B-U-T-Y-R-O phobia. Oh man, that is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. Now, when I said this top five was for oddly specific phobias, this was A number one. I suppose you could easily overcome this fear by just not eating peanut butter. In general, it's more the fear of peanut butter itself. Although with these people with this phobia, the fear of the peanut butter sticking to the roof of their mouth gives them the feeling like they're choking. So I guess part of it is kind of a fear of choking as well. And some of the research I did for this segment, I saw some that the peanut allergy may actually cause the fear of the peanut butter because of what it could do to you. But again, with these phobias in this list, They're oddly specific and they must be rough to have. Because like I said a few minutes ago, if you have a fear of flying or the ocean or the dark, there's millions of people that have those. But a fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, there's probably not as many. So it's harder to find any support. And speaking of oddly specific, number four, and like I said, here's another one I'll try to pronounce. Anatidae phobia. A-N-A-T-I-D-A-E phobia. It's the fear of ducks or geese watching you. These are 100% real phobias. You can go to BetterHelp.com, which is the excellent therapy site, and they have articles on these phobias. This is an actual fear that ducks are watching you. And again, I suppose you could... just avoid this fear by not going to ponds. But it must be horrible to have. You imagine this fear being kind of unleashed in front of your friends if they didn't know, where a duck flew overhead or something and it just caused you to have a panic attack. This phobia is considered very rare, but it can lead to nausea, stomach issues, panic attacks, social isolation over ducks and geese. I could almost understand having the phobia of swans because after years of working in a restaurant next to a marsh, swans are beautiful, but they are jerk birds who would like to come into the parking lot and chase customers and things. So I could understand that fear, but ducks, they're little and tiny and cute. I mean, geese are kind of jerks too, Canadian ones. And finally, number five on the list of top five weirdest phobias is Sedonglobophobia. S-I-D-O-N-G-L-O-B-O phobia. That's the fear of cotton balls. This phobia, in addition to being cotton balls, it's anything made of cotton. Again, this is a very rare phobia. And I've read that people may understand that cotton and cotton balls are harmless, but it's kind of an association with cleaning things with cotton. So it's almost like a fear of germs that cotton balls are meant to clean up dirt. But this is another one. It can affect people's quality of life. Fear, panic, nausea, overcoming in contact with cotton. With this one, there are no studies about it. So imagine having this fear and there's literally nothing out there you could do or study to understand it better. I tried my best with this segment to not minimize these phobias, to not make fun of them. I hope I didn't. Because if you think of something, whatever it is in your life that you fear the most, and then imagine how horrible you'd feel people making fun of it. So I didn't want to do that, even though these things are so oddly specific that it would have been really easy for me to just start making fun of people that are afraid of chins or teenagers or ducks. But that wraps up the top five. Hopefully, none of you have any of these fears. And if you do, hopefully you check out a site like BetterHelp.com. It's hard to believe that it's now 30 years since 1994. It gets more and more sad as the years go by that I look at my childhood getting further and further into the past. Back in episode 107, I did a segment on 1993, the year in music, and that was the entire year crammed into one segment. So I felt that I kind of rushed. So with this, I'm going to do a segment on the first half of the year, January through June, and then we'll revisit it in July. So what we're going to do is we're going to go in chronological order of events. A lot of these are albums and songs, but there are some major musical events that happened in the first half of 1994. January 25th saw the release of the Jar of Flies EP from the grunge band Alice in Chains. This was a monstrous album my sophomore year of high school. Alice in Chains was one of the pillars of grunge rock in the first half of the 90s. They had so many great songs. And when you think back about the fact that after 1995, when they had their self-titled album, which had the picture of the dog with three legs on it, they basically were broken up from that point. At least the original incarnation of the band, because Lane Staley and Jerry Cantrell just couldn't get along. This EP had the hit song Nutshell on it, the hit song No Excuses. That may be their most well-known song, at least one of them. Also in the month of January, one of the biggest songs of the year was the song All For Love by the super trio of Sting, Bryan Adams, and Rod Stewart, the kings of kind of soft rock. I guess specifically Rod Stewart, he fell into that category because Sting was big into rock with the police and Bryan Adams was more rock in the beginning. But I think as they all aged, they started to go softer. The song was for the movie Three Musketeers and the song stayed at number one for three weeks. We move into February to February 1st and the release of Green Day's Dookie album. They're making a big deal of the 30th anniversary of that album. If you're a fan of the band, you know it's coming if you've been following their social media. This was Green Day's break into the more mainstream. They had a couple of albums out before that were kind of underground. Punk, pop punk, I guess. This album had the songs Basket Case, When I Come Around, Longview. They were all these three-minute, tight, in-your-face rock songs. The funny thing is, how big this album was, if you had told me back in 94, 95, that they would have an even bigger album, I'd have said that's probably impossible. But then American Idiot came out 10 years later, and that introduced them to a whole new generation of people. When this album came out, I was 16, and I make the joke that My niece Emma was 16 listening to the same music I listened to when I was 16. And now my nephew Landon, 16, is listening to Green Day. So everything comes full circle. On February the 11th, a major monumental moment began as the three surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison... received and began work on the unreleased John Lennon songs that would go on to be Free as a Bird and Real Love. So this was when they started the work on the anthology. Interestingly, just last year in November 2023, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr released Now and Then. which was the third song that they were going to record for the anthology, because there were three volumes to the anthology. Each was going to come with a new Beatles song. and the audio of Now and Then they couldn't use because Lennon's vocal and the piano were so mashed up together that they couldn't get them to sound worthy of being recorded. So only in 2023, when director Peter Jackson came up with that technology from the Get Back Beatles movie, where he was able to pull the vocals out And then they released the Now and Then song and it literally sounds like John Lennon's alive and in the studio again. Other big major hit songs that were out in February 1994 include the cover of Baby I Love Your Way by Big Mountain. It was more of a reggae type version of the song that Big Mountain did. I don't think they really ever had hit songs after that. There was also the alternative rock song Cannonball by The Breeders. If you were around back then, you might know the song just by the title. If not, go to YouTube and find the song, the video, and you'll immediately go, oh yeah, that's right, I remember that song. We start to get into the more serious overtones of 1994 as we get into March and March 1st with Nirvana's last ever concert. This was in Munich, Germany, and was a smaller, more intimate gathering. Naturally, there was no way to know that this would be Nirvana's last concert, but Kurt Cobain's rapid downward spiral in March 1994 began not too long after that. Also on March 1st is another famous event where at the Grammys, Frank Sinatra got a Lifetime Achievement Award, and he gave this really long, lovely speech just thanking everybody, and they started to play the music playing him off, which was so disrespectful to someone like Frank Sinatra. And then later on, when Billy Joel was playing, he stopped in the middle of his song and just looked at his watch, and he said, uh-oh, dead air time, oh no, like as a protest, which was great. A couple of major landmark albums came out the next week on March 8th. Nine Inch Nails' Downward Spiral and Soundgarden's Super Unknown. Both of these bands had been around for a few years prior. These were kind of their breakthroughs into the mainstream. It's interesting because 1994... Feels to me like it was the biggest year for grunge and or alternative in the 1990s, despite the tragedy that was coming in April that seemed to kill grunge. But Super Unknown had Black Hole Sun, Fell on Black Days, My Wave, and Super Unknown itself. Downward Spiral, similar but different. Nine Inch Nails is not really alternative. They're definitely not techno. They've got a different sort of sound. Trent Reznor is very unique in his musical style. I don't know if you could call them industrial alternative, something like that. You'd have to listen to it. If you're not familiar with Nine Inch Nails, go and listen to Downward Spiral. The most well-known song off of that album is Closer. It's a great song for sure. You just might not want to play it at work, at least not the album version. You might want some kind of censored version of it. You could always listen to the song Hurt. You may be familiar with that where Johnny Cash covered it in 2002 where Trent Reznor, it was so good and the video was so good and so powerful that Trent Reznor basically said Johnny Cash owns that song now. It was on March 30th that Pink Floyd started their final tour ever for their Division Bell album, which is a great album. If you haven't heard it, Coming Back to Life, Take It Back. There are other songs too, but those stick out to me. They were great. Another big hit song that came out in March 1994 was The Sign by Ace of Bass. That album, The Sign by Ace of Bass, I think is one of those lesser appreciated, maybe kind of forgotten major albums of the 90s. When you think of the hit songs that were on it besides The Sign, All That She Wants, and Don't Turn Around, those songs were everywhere in 93, 94, but then they kind of vanished after the mid-1990s. The first thing that I thought of and the first thing I think of when I think of 1994, the year in music, is the death of Kurt Cobain on April 5th. That was a seminal moment in my life because Kurt Cobain was a huge influence on me as a teenager, as a writer. He spoke to me despite being 10 years older. He epitomized Generation X, the teenage angst, torn jeans and flannel, all that that defined my identity at that time. I've done a lot of deeper dives into Kurt Cobain and his influence on me, so I don't want to spend all of this time going over it, but it was a major deal, and it's hard to believe that it's going to be 30 years ago in April that it happened. There were two other monumental moments albums in terms of grunge alternative that came out in April. Those were Offspring's album Smash on April 8th and Live's album Throwing Copper on the 26th. I find it interesting that both Offspring and Live had a certain sound when they came out, certain vibe to their music, I guess. And interestingly, in the later 90s, both altered their sounds. Offspring became almost like a humor rock band where they were like not quite parody songs, but they were songs with funny lyrics, funny videos, and they got more popular. Whereas live got away from their kind of religious overtones to their music and went more mainstream rock and pop and it killed them. It's funny how making changes sometimes can help or hurt your brand. In May, on May 6th, there was the infamous Pearl Jam Ticketmaster complaint. This was where Pearl Jam was claiming that Ticketmaster had bought up all their competition. It was basically overcharging with all these hidden fees. And it was true. Ticketmaster was terrible. And ticket prices in general are terrible even to this day. But Pearl Jam tried to do their tour for their Vitology album without Ticketmaster. This would lead to Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam appearing before a congressional subcommittee about the ticketing industry in June 1994. Ticketmaster ultimately won this battle. They wanted to get all of the hidden fees featured so you would know what you were paying for. But even though they failed, it still shined a light on the industry. Major albums that came out in May 1994 included Weezer's Blue album on May 10th. This included Buddy Holly, Undone the Sweater Song, Say It Ain't So. The video for Buddy Holly that was in the Happy Days universe, that made Weezer famous. Thanks to the airplay on MTV. On May 31st, there was also the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication, which included Sabotage, Sure Shot, Root Down. Again, Sabotage, the video for that that was like a 70s cop drama. Not that the Beastie Boys needed to be made household names. They had been for almost a decade. But that video was great. It's still ingrained in my brain from my teenage years. And it was in the month of May that the biggest song of 1994 came out. And that was I Swear by All For One. Interestingly, this was a cover version of a country song by John Michael Montgomery. But the All For One version that came out went number one and stayed there for 11 straight weeks. And at one point, it was considered one of the top 100 songs of all time, according to Billboard magazine. I don't know where it ranks today, but at one point it was seen in the top 100. June 1994 saw another album that defined my teenage years get released, and that was Purple by Stone Temple Pilots on June 7th. This included the songs Interstate Love Song, Big Empty, Vaseline. The whole album is awesome. If you love alternative music from the 90s, I can't recommend it enough. It's one of my favorite albums ever. One of the more infamous moments probably of the entire 90s was June the 9th when Lisa Left Eye Lopez of the extremely popular TLC R&B group burned down her boyfriend football player Andre Rison's mansion. This was an incredible story. Andre Rison was kind of a D-bag to left eye. I guess it was abusive. I don't know if it was both ways, but Andre Rison's a football player, so he's much, much bigger than her. And she struck back by setting a pair of his sneakers on fire and putting them in the bathtub. And those obviously caught the place on fire. And we'll end our look at 1994, the year in music, the first half of the year with a look towards the future as on June 27th, Aerosmith debuted a never before released song entitled Head First, which would be available exclusively on CompuServe Information Service for a limited time starting on June 27th. It was said that CompuServe's estimated 2 million users would be able to download that single for free, but it was expected to take up to 90 minutes to be able to transfer the song to their computer. Those of us that had internet in the 90s, late 90s, you know what it was like, file transfers, how long it would take a simple JPEG image to transfer. But online debuting of music exclusively in 1994, that was considered a groundbreaking event. And that's where we'll leave off 1994. Those of you who were around back then, which of those moments stuck out most to you? And the albums, do you have any of those? Did you get any when they came out back then? We'll see what the rest of 1994 has to offer when we do part two in July. But that's going to wrap up episode 130 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you've enjoyed the warm nostalgia, the fuzzy feelings, the comfort food for the Gen X soul. Granted, you don't have to be a Gen X kid like me to appreciate these memories, but I hope that you've enjoyed this as we kind of transition from towards more of that nostalgia. If you enjoy the content, if you enjoy what I do, you can become a subscriber, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show on Patreon, Buzzsprout. You can go find me all over social media, Instagram, X, Threads. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. I try to update with videos a couple times a week. If you're interested in any of my nine books that are currently available, you can visit my website, ChristopherSetterlin.com. If you're more specifically interested in The Lady of the Dunes, this is the 50th anniversary of that infamous Cape Cod crime. So if you're interested in that, or if you have no idea of the story of the Lady of the Dunes, visit theladyofthedunes.com, a website I built that has links to my book, links to the incredible documentary by Frank Durant that started all of this, my connection with it, and stories about the case, newspaper articles, other videos I put together. And I'll keep you updated with more events that I'm going to be having this year for that book. As I said, it's the 50th anniversary, so I'm really hammering that home. Be sure to come back next week for episode 131. And also... Switching back to Patreon just for a moment. Dropping tomorrow, so the day after this podcast goes live, February 1st will be the fifth bonus episode that's for members, subscribers only on Patreon and Buzzsprout. These bonus episodes... I kind of review an old blog that I did about 15 years ago called Initial Impressions that was meant to be a sister blog to my travel blog entitled In My Footsteps. It ended up becoming more of a slice of life, weird sort of my life as a Seinfeld episode type of blog. You would have to hear it to understand that. But that's what I base the bonus episodes around. And as we march into February, Valentine's Month, hopefully everyone has the best possible time, whether you celebrate Valentine's or not, or you celebrate Groundhog Day, check in with your own mental health. Lean into the things that make you happy so that on the coldest days, you can kind of get through them. Whether that's favorite people, favorite foods, favorite podcasters or YouTubers. And I'll be here continuing to pump out the content, hoping to add some good to your mental health. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path. And enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you again to everybody for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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