Last week was my annual foray into the dreaded realm of New Music. Yes, I write the Tuesday Tracks roundup of the best new songs of the week once a month or so, but as an old man who hates change, it’s challenging to find anything new I like.

There is one thing I know and enjoy, though: The ’90s. The ’90s were in almost every way better than the present. Sure, the world’s views on race and gender were even more backward than they are now—it was the decade where a show portrayed a New York City with absolutely no Black people and an entire movie’s punchline was that trans people are gross—but also airport security was less draconian, police didn’t have surplus military equipment and nearly all Americans agreed that fascism is bad.

Music was way better. Rock still existed, hip-hop was creative and socially conscious rather than whatever is happening on Soundcloud, pop hadn’t been turned into the audio equivalent of an Apple Store by Jack Antonoff and the economy wasn’t so broken that it was impossible to start a band in your garage because you could support yourself on just one job.

So this week, allow me to introduce you to five new bands… from the ’90s. I’m digging deep into my memory for this one, if you know of any of these already, I’ll be impressed.

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A — “Monkey Kong”

This is one of the more well-known bands on this list, since both the band itself and all four of its studio albums have Wikipedia pages. It helps that frontman Jason Perry became a pretty famous producer and, after its breakup in 2007, a couple of its members joined the more famous Bloodhound Gang.

This is off the second album, which I had a perfectly legal copy of in college, which was definitely not ripped MP3s I got from a guy down the hall. I would never have pirated music in the ’00s before MP3s were legitimately sold anywhere, how dare you imply such a thing?

It’s got an Offspring vibe, but from a more alt-rock direction rather than a pop-punk direction. You’d think the popularity of Offspring and Bad Religion would have given A more of a long-term boost, but I guess now it just lives in my memory—and also in real life since A played 11 U.K. shows in 2022 opening for Reef.

Stanford Prison Experiment — “You’re the Vulgarian”

While coming up with songs for the column, I heard this one on Tom Morello’s satellite radio show and recognized it from, yes, another perfectly legal MP3 in college. It’s appropriate because I’m pretty sure the guy I got this one from told me he saw Stanford Prison Experiment open for Rage Against the Machine. So one way or another, I heard about the band via Morello.

While the last one is pop-punk-flavored alt-rock, this one is just extremely heavy punk. There’s not enough of that in the world. For that matter, there’s not enough of any punk music in the world. I have no evidence for this statement, nor do I have any supporting arguments, but I insist that if punk still had non-niche popularity, the country would be in a much better place. Go ahead and try to fight me on that, I’m not gonna change my mind.

Alice Donut — “Rise to the Skin”

I don’t remember where I heard of this one, but I pretty clearly remember that album cover, so maybe I actually bought the CD? Possibly based on the cover art? I mean, I was a teenager at the time, I wouldn’t put it past me.

Alice Donut is a very weird band, and I love the bass line on this song. It’s up there with Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” on the grand list of songs with awesome bass intros.

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TAD — “Jinx”

I’d like to amend my statement in the intro: I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone knew these bands. There’s one exception.

We’ve covered TAD before. Wondering if I’d already listed it, I looked it up and its one mention is by none other than fellow ’90s music connoisseur and renowned Dickhead David Gill, in a 2019 review of an L7 album. So I’m assuming he’s familiar with all these bands.

Anyway, if there’s one band I expect someone to tell me isn’t obscure, it’s this one. TAD were grunge pioneers, toured with Nirvana, and the album this song is on was produced by Nirvana producer and Garbage founder Butch Vig. This song was in a Cameron Crowe movie, the highest honor a band could receive back then. But Lithium doesn’t even play it, so apparently it’s obscure now.

Nigels11 — “All the Way Around”

I said these were new to you bands, not good bands. This one is decent at best and made the list because, 1: I find it funny and 2: in an effort to stump David Gill.

Nigels11, or possibly Nigel’s 11, it’s hard to tell, was the post-N’Sync project of Chris Kirkpatrick. I realize there are layers to that sentence so let’s break it down chronologically.

I’d always assumed N’Sync was artificially created by the urform of slimy, exploitative record execs, convicted felon Lou Pearlman. And that’s partially true, he did inspire it. But Kirkpatrick had the idea, recruited his Universal Studios Orlando coworker Joey Fatone, then contacted Mickey Mouse Club alumni JC Chasez and Justin Timberlake and Lance Bass, with whom Kirkpatrick shared a vocal coach. Then Kirkpatrick ended up as the fourth or fifth most popular member.

When N’Sync broke up, Kirkpatrick decided to start an alt-rock band. This was in 2007, so it wasn’t exactly a booming genre. They released a five-song EP, a few singles, then ceased to exist when Kirkpatrick wanted to focus on producing and the guys he hired to play instruments wanted to get paid to play instruments for other bands.

They’re not great, but they certainly exist. And you’d never heard of them. Mission accomplished.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.