March Sadness 90s Edition

thanks! we love this one too!

"When Facebook came along, offering Gen X a 24-hour class reunion, we intersected again; by then, he had styled himself with a Buddhist title, looking for meaning there. It still seemed ill defined, uncertain, like he continued to be searching for words and just not being able to find them."

it's nice to be reminded of this band; they came on our radar a whilllllle ago and I totally forgot about them; this is a bop

Beachwood Sparks - Gentle Samurai 2024 USA
Holy Byrds fans with hints of their zombies namesake—it feels like they made this for me! Thank you @countryuniverse.net for the custom recommendation.
#TheTwen2ie5 day 34 NK&IS ✅

oh yeahhhhh kool aid man break into itttt

"The crush on that person who sucks, the breakup that came out of nowhere, the feeling that love will never find you, no matter how hard you try—we've all had those feelings that would never hold up in a court of law."

Hell yes to this essay; also love the "yelling is how you release sadness"

"...we've all had those feelings that would never hold up in a court of law. But they keep our nights sleepless anyway, because at the root of those feelings, there is a sadness so intense that it defies reason..."

Beautiful phrasing of the axiom that emotions don't have to make sense to be valid.

Essays — March Sadness 90s Edition

"when I, with my supposed iron stomach for sadness, try to think of the saddest song I've ever heard, my mind goes to that CD that Sam gave Jennifer, and the one song I couldn’t believe was on it."

Chris Ritter on Journey's "Separate Ways":

marchxness.com/the-essays#/...

"Death may be the only true certain thing in life, but for most people even death reserves a surprise in its time and place of arrival. Not for Wendy."

Joshua Turner On the Important of Not Knowing (and Concrete Blonde's "Tomorrow Wendy":

marchxness.com/the-essays#/...

"Then suddenly you sit up straight in the middle of a random mid-August Wednesday night."

Now available for pre-order: Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music: The March Xness Anthology, edited by Ander Monson and Megan Campbell, coming with Split/Lip Press on March 31. Image shows a yellow book cover with a dubbed cassette tape, upon which the title of the book has been written.

Hey @marchxness.bsky.social fans! It's cover reveal + preorders day for HIT REPEAT UNTIL I HATE MUSIC: THE MARCH XNESS ANTHOLOGY, edited by @angermonsoon.bsky.social and @meganc.bsky.social!

Available for preorders (+ ARC requests) NOW, link in our bio or www.splitlippress.com/march-xness-anthology

YES LORD IT IS NOW

I love @splitlippress.com! I love @marchxness.bsky.social! I really, really love them smushed together!! 🎶👩‍🎤

amazing!

thanks g!

Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music: The March Xness Anthology For the first time in print, Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music: The March Xness Anthology, edited by Ander Monson and Megan Campbell, spans Xness history with 40 essays representing nearly a decade of mus...

Amid everything else, preorders for the @marchxness.bsky.social anthology Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music are open!

Includes possibly the only thing I will ever try to write about music, from the 2023 80s fadness bracket, on Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight!

www.splitlippress.com/march-xness-...

"The love you had for these bands was so tender and so loyal."

Whoa here we go into to the first of our extracurriculars for March Sadness: @lydiapaar.bsky.social on Modest Mouse, STRFKR, and marchxness.com/the-essays#/...

Pumped that my extracurricular pitch for @marchxness.bsky.social was given the green light. It's going to bite! (like in a good way)

This was... like... a country-sized dagger straight to the heart. Sheesh!

This Ani DiFranco song might be the saddest song I've ever heard.

yeah it is

this sounds exactly right. Saw her in Grand Rapids in 1994 and it was an amazing show. Super intimate. Got it differently.

One like, one horror thought.

Reading your essay about it made us want to read Loop (or the novels more generally)!

good

Some observations on the unpicked songs in the @marchxness longlist (2/2)

Red House Painters?
Springsteen?
Sundays?
The Verve Pipe?
Lucinda Williams?

Just saying there are some absolute BANGERS on there just waiting to have an extracurricular essay written about them. Pitch us!

That's the field. Some observations on the unpicked songs in the @marchxness longlist (1/2):

Sarah McLachlan: wow unpicked
Alice in Chains??
Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart???
Garth Brooks?
The Cure?
Live's "Lightning Crashes"?
Magnetic Fields?
Pearl Jam??
Radiohead??

YouTube video by SadeVEVO Sade - No Ordinary Love - Official - 1992

Here it is, our last pick for 2026's March Sadness: with the very last spot Danielle Deulen selects Sade's "No Ordinary Love" (1992): www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WcW...

I'll be spinning this a lot in the coming months. Join in! Marchxness is so much fun, and interactive.

next March I'll be writing about my mom's early 90s crush, Sammy Kershaw, and about garage sale culture; the yard sale as public marker of having sorrowful life changes seen & recognized by your community; the costs of making that transactional; idk my divorce probably. We're gonna go deep.