It's kind of insane that you put Ani DiFranco and Nina SImone in the same category... The High Priestess of Soul is in a category of one, especially once she got political.My older cousin was a big fan of Murmur, I believe Monster was the first album off that big deal, I got a burnt copy of it from somewhere, wasn't super impressed.
By the mid nineties I was listening to stuff like Ani DiFranco, Portishead, Nina Simone, Beth Orton and you know local bands like Nick Cave, You Am I, Something for Kate, Magic Dirt, Powderfinger, Blue Bottle Kiss. I hadn't yet discovered the Dirty Three that was in the summer of 99 or 2000,
It's kind of insane that you put Ani DiFranco and Nina SImone in the same category... The High Priestess of Soul is in a category of one, especially once she got political.
It turns out I'm only 3 degrees away from Nina Simone. My dad spent a night in jail with Dick Gregory, who knew her well.As a teenager things were very political. I grew up in a part of town with a huge drug and gang problem. It was a weird way to grow up, I was mostly insulated from it.