A Cowboys Salvation

The rules of the game were clear when the credits for the soundtrack of Aki Kaurismäki's debut film Crime and Punishment gave the names Franz Schubert, Dmitri Shostakovich, Olavi Virta, the Renegades, Harri Marstio and Billie Holiday. Dostoevskian to say the least! Added to these as Kaurismaki’s career progressed were Tchaikovsky (the Pathetique Symphony a dozen or so times!), Shostakovich, Chuck Berry, the great Estonian Georg Ots, rhythm & blues, Finnish rock’n’roll (Melrose, with Tokela in the vocal lead), Jussi Bjorling, and Toshitake Shinohara - the Japanese composer of a host of beautiful scores now settled permanently in Karkkila, home of Kaurismäki himself. Not all are familiar to a non-Finnish audience. Yet Finn and foreigner, familiar and unfamiliar are as such one seamless entity, their associations equally fascinating. The director himself says he grabs armfuls of discs off his shelf at home before setting off for the editing room.

Any discussion of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums will have to include some grunge, and this one is no different. A defining element of that decade, the genre (and the bands that rose to fame playing it) was given credit for revitalizing rock at a badly needed moment. That said, there's far more to the story. Our list of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums, presented in chronological order, takes in the rich diversity of the period.

Canadian-born guitarist, singer, and songwriter Anthony Gomes is a critically acclaimed chart-topping artist who plays a style of modern electric blues that incorporates elements of rock, soul, R&B, and country. Born in 1975 in Toronto, Canada, to a Portuguese father and a Canadian mother, he began playing guitar in his early teens and moved to Chicago, IL, in the late '90s with hopes of establishing himself as a musician. After honing his craft on the Windy City club circuit, he moved to Nashville, TN, where he found a home for himself amid the city's renowned music scene. Gomes made his recording debut in 1998 on the Urban Electric label with Blues in Technicolor, followed by Sweet Stringin' Soul in 2000. In 2002 he switched to 33rd Street Records for Unity and proceeded to win the 2003 BluesWax Artist of the Year award.