Entertainment For Lively Minds
In defence of 1992
Posted by spt on 18 February 2010 - 12:00am.
I've noticed this year getting a bit of a kicking. Now I was otherwise engaged for a lot of the year living in France but it can't have been that bad surely? A quick check shows:
Fatima Mansions - Valhalla Avenue
Nick Cave - Henry's Dream
The Breeders - Safari EP
REM - Automatic for the People
er and Virus 100 a compilation of Dead Kennedys covers
ah, much as I like those records, we are looking at a low water mark aren't we? Anyone?
- More from spt.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Yes
it was a poor time for music, for personal reasons it was a poor time. The early 90's has always struck me as a low point for music, and doing a brief search of albums released in 1992 confirms that indeed 92 was probably as bad as it got, only a few albums from that year are in my collection
Not many jewels
But one or two I like/d that you haven't mentioned:
Eric Clapton - Unplugged
Lemonheads - Shame About Ray
Sugar - Copper Blue
Frank Zappa - You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Vol 6
The Cure - Wish
Paul Weller's first solo album
Morrissey - Your Arsenal
Which leaves undisputed album of the year:
Julian Cope - Jehovakill
Get Weaving Vol 1
Get Weaving Vol 1 came out in 1992. I had to make a second copy of it for the car because the first tape wore out because I played it so much over the years. A Town South of Bekersfield Vol 3 (also from 1992) was on the other side which may have been equally responsible. Apart from that, the 1st Curve album, the last great Carter album, a superb David Byrne offering and Pavement's "Slanted & Enchanted" my collection doesn't contain much of note.
Hip Hop Rules in 92
Dr. Dre---The Chronic
Showbiz & A.G.-----Runaway Slave
The Pharcyde----Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth---Mecca and the Soul Brother
Gang Starr---Daily Operation
Diamond D---Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop
Beastie Boys---Check Your Head
Hard Knocks----School of Hard Knocks
The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy----Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury
House of Pain---House of Pain
Arrested Development---3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of..
also
Los Lobos--Kiko
That's a bit more like it.
That's a bit more like it. I'd forgotten DHoH. Good album.
On the rock side timing obviously explains the mysterious popularity of the Lemonheads. They were ok...
Also never understood what people saw in Pavement. And don't know where to start on the phrase "the last great Carter album"(they had their moments I s'pose).
Must get more Cope though...
1992 - between two stools really
Somewhere between Grunge and Britpop.
Here's a Spotify playlist - let's see what the Massive can come up with.
http://open.spotify.com/user/milkybarnick/playlist/5GJoI5XiUv5vZ8SHRFTYJ...
Er - you might struggle, cos it's locked though. Sorry, will sort it later (*makes shamed face*)
It's locked
Or I'm being thick - can't see any way to add the Cope masterpiece Upwards at 45 degrees - and I NEED to...
ah
First time I've done one of these - I'll have to unlock it - but I can't get on at work... sorry folks. Will have a look later (unless someone else can unlock it for me).
some fine ones
Sonic Youth Dirty
Tom Waits Bone Machine
The Fall Code:Selfish
David Byrne Uh-Oh
I think what this thread shows..
..is that while there may not have been a strong scene of any kind in that year (although bands like Suede, Pulp, Spiritualised and Verve were hotting up), there were as many great records released that year as in any other I can think of... so amen to
Julian Cope - Jehovahkill
REM - Automatic
The Fall - Code Selfish
Sonic Youth - Dirty
Sugar - Copper Blue
The Cure - Wish
Ice Cube - Predator
Ride - Going Blank Again
Spiritualised - Laser Guided Melodies
Carter - 1992 The Love Album
and singles:
Blur - Popscene
Pulp - Babies
Verve - Man Called Sun (b-side)
Auteurs - Showgirl
Primal Scream - Dixie Narco
The Orb - The Blue Room
So...
Lemonheads (perhaps) and Dr Dre (arguably) aside was any artist with a career of more than a couple of years actually at their peak in '92?
Perhaps everyone was distracted by the energy and joy of the wider world? Lets see:
- a timorous and time-marking election result in the UK(no matter what side of the policital spectrum you're on)
- the deadeningly underwhelming Maastricht treaty
- black wednesday
- the creation of the Premiership (a little bit of football dies)
- even the European Championship is won by a team that didn't qualify for the finals, which now looks like a fitting metaphor for the triumph of mediocrity in 1992
oh. Perhaps we were all just listening to Clinton's sax. On the bright side I remember the Olympics being sort of all right, and it was an annus horriblis for the Royal Family!
As someone posted
Somewhat caught between Grunge and Britpop.
I would argue that Julian Cope was absolutely at the peak of his career. Jehovahkill is magnificent - distilling the best elements of Peggy Suicide in terms of melody, instrumentation and experimentation.
Morrissey's pretty near the top of his game too - he would only top Your Arsenal with follow-up Vauxhall and I imv.
Paul Weller's debut solo album is also a career highlight for me. More playful and experimental than Wild Wood.
with as much goodwill as I can muster
were Morrissey and Weller's career highlights not the Smiths and the Jam respectively?
Ah either way - I know why I spent most of 1992 listening to the Fatima Mansions...
Not for me
Sure I loved the Jam and Smiths as an adolescent - and a large part of my brain will always remain arrested in adolescence - but Your Arsenal, Vauxhall and I and Weller's first solo album still resonate today - for me at least.
Pavement
Their Watery Domestic EP released in the autumn was pretty good and dominated the indie charts. More tunes than the album.
And...ladeez and gennlemen with a "Welcome return to form" Mr. Neil Young and "Harvest Moon"
EDIT: You can add "Hollywood Town Hall" by the Jayhawks to that list.
The REM album was hyped beyond belief but almost lived up to it. The October issue of Q seemed to be an REM exclusive. And all that tedious stuff about Stipe not talking to the press. Which created more press. Clever.
Neil Young´s Harvest Moon
It may not be the best produced album he´s made, but it was the first of his I heard at the tender age of 14. It really was the one that made me discover him. I´m still thankful. Thank you, 1992!
Freedy Johnston
Can You Fly.Hands down.
My '92
Early 90's were generally a bad time for me musically, but looking at my record list these are my pick of the pops released in 1992, a handy A-Z Guide to cut out and keep.
AZTEC CAMERA - Spanish Horses
BARRACUDAS - Wait For Everything
BLUE AEROPLANES - Up In a Down World
BUFFALO TOM - Let Me Come Over
CHARLATANS - Between 10th & 11th
Chris MARS - Horseshoes & Handgrenades (solo from Replacements drummer...no, please wait...it's great honest!)
David BYRNE - Uh-Oh
DENIM - Back In Denim
EUGENIUS - Oomalama
FALL - Code: Selfish
FATIMA MANSIONS - Valhalla Avenue (runner up album of the year)
FLAMING LIPS - Hit To Death In The Future Head
JAYHAWKS - Hollywood Town Hall
JESUS & MARY CHAIN - Honey's Dead
John CALE - Fragments Of A Rainy Season
Julian COPE - Jehovakill (album of the year!)
LEMONHEADS - It's A Shame About Ray (their best)
MONOCHROME SET - What A Whopper
MORRISSEY - Your Arsenal (my fave Mozzer album)
MUTTONBIRDS - The Muttonbirds
NIRVANA - Insesticide (compilation but great)
Paul WELLER - Paul Weller
PAVEMENT - Slanted & Enchanted
PJ HARVEY - Dry
PULP - Babies
R.E.M. - Automatic For The People
RAMONES - Mondo Bizarro
SEERS - Peace Crazies
SHONEN KNIFE - Let's Knife
SONIC YOUTH - Dirty
SUEDE - The Drowners
SUGAR - Copper Blue (Brilliant!)
TELEVISION - Television (decent come-back)
THROWING MUSES - Red Heaven
UNION CARBIDE PRODUCTIONS - Swing (not their best)
XTC - Non-such
Dry was 1992?
I could've sworn it was earlier.
Also didn't realise Fragments as '92
those two definitely take it back towards par.
And the Seers - is that the "Lightning Strikes - song about Michael Ryan" Seers? I'd forgotten all about them!
but Honey's Dead, the shark was in the Mary Chain rear view mirror by then surely? I suppose it might look better from a distance (the album, not the shark).
I think they were both '92...
well, according to my record collection "spreadsheet" they were...crivens, am I that sad!? I might be wrong though.
Maybe "Fragments" shouldn't count as it is a live album, but I do love it.
Yes, that's The Seers, they were a great live band, released two excellent albums of psychedelic garagey punk rock but sadly didn't really get anywhere, a bit like Godfathers, Screaming Blue Messiahs, That Petrol Emotion - really great bands that might have been more respected if they were around today.
With regard to J&MC, you're right, hardly their best effort but I think that was my problem with the early 90's, not many of my favourites released anything anywhere near their best work, except maybe Cope, Mozzer and Fatima Mansions.
Double checked Dry
it is '92. Which means a very specific memory I have of listening to it is completely false. How odd...
I remember making an effort with Godfathers, SBM and TPE - they were all in the music press a lot, i've got a few of their tracks on free Sounds 7"s I think - but never got on with any of them for some reason.
Free Sounds 7"
ha ha...seems like a relic from a real bygone age doesn't it?
I think I've got one with some really early Pixies demos on, have to go up in the loft and dig them out!
Aha yes -
there's one with Rock a my Soul and an early version of Down to the Well.
I'd love it if the Word replaced the free CD with a 4 track 7". Love it. In fact I've come over all queer just thinking about it!
That's the one...
(quick check) Sound Waves 3 E.P. back in 1988 along with Wedding Present, Sugarcubes and The Pogues - probably the first time I heard Pixies in fact.
Yeah, a Word 7" EP would be a great idea every month!
The teenage me
remembers Bjork looking especially lovely in the Sugarcubes photo on that *hazy dissolve*
John Cale
Fragments of a Rainy Season is one of my favourite albums.
1992 was my first year at uni, all I knew of Cale was Songs for Drella until I went to see him at the Queens Hall. One stunning solo performance later and I was loading up on his CDs. Fragments captures the power of solo Cale so well. Many of the tracks are better than the originals, I reckon.
1992
Lets see:
Looking at the Wikipedia entry for album and single releases from 1992 I can see a few that I liked at the time:
Manic Street Preachers - Generation Terrorists
Selected Ambient Works 85-92 - Aphex Twin
Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury -The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
Let Me Come Over - Buffalo Tom
Tongues and Tails - Sophie B. Hawkins
Henry's Dream - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
It's a Shame about Ray - The Lemonheads
Connected - Stereo MCs
Creep - Radiohead
Babies - Pulp
Paul Weller - Paul Weller
But that's not a lot. I remember it as a bad year for music, too much grunge. That year XFM were running a test broadcast in London and I was unemployed so I listened to a lot of it. Pretty grim listening.
Radiohead - Creep
I mentioned it and looking over the rest of the posts realised nobody else has. I'm not a fan of Radiohead particularly, but that was a pretty damn good single. Certainly it stood out amidst all the grunge that XFM were playing me.
Very good single
In my mind it was late 93. But that might have been a re-release. As I said in opening I was living in France for the first half of 1992 and so got a very different filter of the music being released (reading about stuff in the then brand new and bimonthly Inrockuptibles and picking up whatever was showcased in FNAC or the independent record shops of Lille)
Radiohead - Creep
I mentioned it and looking over the rest of the posts realised nobody else has. I'm not a fan of Radiohead particularly, but that was a pretty damn good single. Certainly it stood out amidst all the grunge that XFM were playing me.
I was 16 in 1992
And in later years I came to feel resentful that I should reach that magical age at such a poor time for music. To me, Honey's Dead, Seven by James, and 30 Something by Carter were simply as good as music got. Seeing Ned's Atomic Dustbin at Portsmouth Guildhall was a life changing experience. I was thinking of those in the earlier thread about music you are embarrassed to have loved. Mind you, it didn't make me enjoy it any less at the time, so what does it matter?
(I'm also being selective. I also fell in love with Automatic for the People and witnessed Suede mk 1 in their pomp.)
I saw Suede at the Windsor Old Trout
on one of their early tours and thinking they were great, easy to scoff now but at the time they were quite "glam" and different compared to the legions of dull shoe-gazing, grungey lumberjack shirted bands. It was nice to see a band wanting to be in a band, if you know what I mean, instead of looking so damn apologetic and miserable.
Bernard's guitar weren't bad either.
Is this barking up the wrong tree?
Dance was going huge at this time, with the first signs of what Word readers might call 'proper bands' emerging from the entirely dj/single driven scene of the late eighties.
Orbital
Underworld
Chemical Bros
Prodigy
Future Sounds of London
Were all releasing/about to release their first singles and albums. I'm sure I can find loads more, avoiding The Shamen entirely
So the early nineties were a great time for dance music, with new genres, clubs and artists all going 'overground' at a rate of knots.
Clubs like Cream, Ministry of Sound, Renaissance were all founded around this time, setting the template for what would become in a few years horrible corporate club culture...
A great time was being had. Just not in a particularly Word way. Discuss.
Copper Blue was from 1992..
..checks..
Blimey. I'd have put good money on a year later.
Otherwise, a dire year for music. I bought my first CD player, read Q assiduously and purchased quite a lot. Most of it utter shite.
You weren't on a podium at Cream then.
I take it.
Well, aye, of course.
Giving it some large.
But with heavy post-modern irony.
apart from the aforementioned stint in France
I lived in Manchester from 1989-93 and never once set foot in the Hacienda. Dance music for the most part passed me by. Mainly becuase of the "dance" bit.
Although as a Fatima Mansions fan I have got quite a few very well-liked dance remixes of them.
3 great 1992 releases
The previously mentioned Jayhawks album
Joe Henry's brilliant Short Man's Room
and Uncle Tupelo's March 16-20, 1992
oh hands up
who plays any of the above on a regular basis?
Some of them
Jayhawks, REM, Uncle Tupelo - frequently
I must admit that 1992 was the first year I spent mainly buying old music though.
5 of em
Fatima Mansions
cave
breeders
pj Harvey
cale
it's the last one - Fragments of a Rainy Season - which gets most spins.
Of course a lot of my favourites from back when I didn't have many lps hardly get any plays cos they are thoroughly internalised.
Yes I do
Laughing Len-The Future
REM-Automatic
Pavement-Watery Domestic
Jayhawks-HTH
Right-o
Spotify playlist is collaborative now - so if it's not too far past the point of interest have a look at
http://open.spotify.com/user/milkybarnick/playlist/5GJoI5XiUv5vZ8SHRFTYJ...
(No Sugar on Spotify though, which is a shame).
No Carter USM either
Well, not 'The Only Living Boy In New Cross' anyway
New Fast Atomic Daffodils
.."It's Not What You Know" was a great single. I for one still listen to a lot of these records. Although some of the massive clearly think we should be listening to Pet Sounds and Astral Weeks on a continuous loop...
"Make mine a large one"
Once cleared my room at a student party by playing it! Must dig it out...
I saw them live once
didn't they have two drummers or a percusionist or something like that, a bit like a more funky Fall??
1994
I reckon 1994 has to be the lowest point ever. Some may disagree, since it was the year of Definitely Maybe and Parklife, but I can't stand either. i can't think of a worse year. Cobain died, and lots of dreadful depressing music. A long way from 1967, I reckon
nah
Even a quick look through my CDs gives you
Fatima Mansions- Lost in the Former West
Palace Brothers - Days in the Wake
Nick Cave - Let Love in
Divine Comedy - Promenade
Girls Against Boys - Cruise Yourself
Kristin Hersh - Hips and Makers
Beats '92 hands down.
Tried all if them, and not
Tried all if them, and not for me. I think I'm too old for the 90s in general
Supersonic Prototypic
Everyone's forgotten Adorable. They released their first three singles in 1992, and they were all great. Alan McGee was clearly working towards something by this stage (whether he knew it or not), and if they'd had a singer as pretty as Liam Gallagher, a better stylist, the muscle of Sony, someone to tell them when to stand still, and a team as dedicated as Ignition behind them, THEY would have been Oasis - but better.
Something of a cult in the US right now, I understand...
..good call...
..there's not many bands from that era that I have completely forgotten about so thanks for the reminder. I think they were peers of the Boo Radleys?
Oh dear...
I think I saw them live once or twice, I remember they were the hyped "next big thing" record company toys (sort of like Coldplay) that appeared as support slot to every bloody gig you ever saw in London around that time.
All I remember is their bass player having a samurai style top-knot and pretending to be not only completely off his face but also pretending to be the tough guy, he wasn't - I have very rarely seen audiences stand there laughing at bands as I saw when they played!
..oops..
..yes I have just refreshed my memory with a download of Sunshine Smile. Now I'm no big Oasis fan but I can kind of see why they made it and this lot didn't. Still - the New Fads were great..
A few that have endured and are still played today
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92*
Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes*
Curve - Doppelganger
Spritualized - Laser Guided Memories
Stereolab - Peng
Faith No More - Angel Dust*
Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience*
House Of Love - Babe Rainbow
Roger Waters - Amused To Death
Jayhawks - Hollywood Town Hall
Prodigy - Experience
Peter Gabriel - Us
REM - Automatic For The People
There's enough good stuff there to keep me going for weeks. I was DJing on the university radio station at the time and although my show was conceived as a Peelesque anthing-goes affair, I had no problem finding decent new music to play. Where I've asterisked, that denotes a career high im rather humble o.
If you want a truly bad year, try 2007. I practically gave up on music (and reading about it) for the duration of that year. It was like somebody had turned the tap off.
Gallon Drunk !
Peng! Still sounds wonderful. I first saw Stereolab on the same bill with Gallon Drunk , once at the Clapham Grand and once at The Venue , New Cross , both bloody brilliant.
I think Gallon Drunk's first album "You , The night and the Music" came out in '92. One of the best live bands ever .They looked amazing and knew how to put on a show.
Everyone is forgetting
...Boing by Airhead which was certainly my soundtrack to the summer of 1992 and still gets regular spins even now. OK, so probably no one else knows it, but for that alone 1992 gets a big thumbs up.
And then there was:
- Asquarius by Cud.
- The Looks and The Lifestyle by PWEI
- UF Orb by The Orb
- Red Heaven by Throwing Muses
OK - so I only listen to two of those with any regularity, but I loved each one at the time and a few other classics that have already been mentioned (Copper Blue, Generation Terrorists) are never far away.
The question is, why would anyone listen to the opinion of someone who likes Airhead?
Sheep On Drugs...
...anyone????
Pigs In Space!
No Levellers?
Come on, they weren't that bad. In fact I thought they were pretty good: certainly one of the best live bands of the day. I watched them progress from a grotty pub in New Cross (The Amersham Arms, that was the one) to selling out enomodomes in what seemed a matter of months, and all through word of mouth.
You don't get to do that by being rubbish.
erm, to borrow an example from another genre
Michael McIntyre...
Anyhoo -I liked the Levellers back in the day, but like most of their skanky counterparts (Senseless Things, Mega-City Four, Ned's etc) they'd worn out their welcome by 1992. I still like and sometimes play the early Senseless Things and MC4 singles, but can't say that the Levs haave had a spin in the last 15 years...
No Levellers?
Come on, they weren't that bad. In fact I thought they were pretty good: certainly one of the best live bands of the day. I watched them progress from a grotty pub in New Cross (The Amersham Arms, that was the one) to selling out enomodomes in what seemed a matter of months, and all through word of mouth.
You don't get to do that by being rubbish.