Sorry for the lack of engagement BTL this evening. Our kid is up to his neck in GCSEs, I've been feeling poorly, and today's editing efforts have taken it out of me somewhat. An early night for me! Will catch up with all your comments tomorrow! Cheersly, D
Some great albums there…love that muses album…but the album that had the biggest impact on me that year was Mercury Rev’s Yerself is Steam. Totaly blew me and my friends away. In particular the opener, Chasing a Bee and the track Frittering. Also caught MBV’s Loveless tour that year (Dublin)…so my hearing took a kicking too….sorry I think that was summer 1992 actually…as Loveless was only released in the Autumn of 1991 if my memory serves me right.
That Loveless tour had different supports every night, and I remember being a bit gutted that Cambridge (the night following the Norwich gig) got The God Machine and Mercury Rev, and Norwich got Silverfish. No slight on the 'Fish, but I'd seen them a few times and was desperate to see both of those. I'd caught Mercury Rev's lunchtime Reading set in '91, which was wonderfully surreal, but I never got to see them live during the Dave Baker era ever again. Also, I did Yerself in the 90s OU series, so just trying to spread the love around a bit! Cheers, D
I was thinking the exact same thing. I love everything about that album, from the sleeve to the beautiful weirdness of every song. I saw them at Leeds duchess of York; I believe they played on the same night that Nirvana played in Bradford, although I might have that mixed up. Either way, I didn't regret seeing them. They were fantastic live. In terms of my life though, loveless has had more play than any other record I've ever owned. Still find myself totally captivated by it to this day.
I'm constantly amazed by quite how much inspiration a younger generation of musicians have taken from shoegaze. It's really very heartwarming! If you'd told me back in '90/'91 that MBV would wield the influence they have today, via the subsequent iterations of what was at the time, quite a short-lived scene, I don't know if I'd believe you. It's like a skiffle/Beatles thing...but then that would make MBV skiffle, and I don't know who the Beatles equivalent would be. I haven't thought that analogy through too well, have I? Oh well. There's a point in there somewhere! Cheers, D
Another surprising choice! I'd figured that it wouldn't be Nevermind (too easy), and Out Of Time wasn't an option since Green was so prominently highlighted a few weeks ago. For me, the big albums of '91 that didn't have a swimming baby on the cover were God Fodder by Ned's Atomic Dustbin (first CD I ever owned), and Why Do Birds Sing? by Violent Femmes. Both of these still get regular play from me. I'm always intrigued to see what you choose, and I'm looking forward to 1992! Also, quite a lovely tribute to Steve Albini. That one still hurts.
Been away so short catch up. Honourable mentions for Nevermind, Ten, Blue Lines and of course Laughing Stock. Me in Honey fave track from Out of Time. My favourite album of 1991 is in my opinion their best, made so in part by the one-time appearance of brother Tim… Woodface by Crowded House. Saw them 3 times live, sadly only 2 with Paul Hester.
What a choice. Love love LOVE The Muses. Saw K Hersh play in Zaragoza a few weeks back and she was brilliant. She encored with Cottonmouth which is the b-side of Counting Backwards. That live vid you showed a clip off is wild - TD's guitar on Hook In Her Head on that stuck with me too. So delighted you picked this, I'm gonna crank it up when I finish work today
Clip was from a German TV recording (the whole show is up on YT) of a show in (I think) Dusseldorf on the Ramona tour. The Norwich show was loud from the get go, as I remember it, but they clearly had their sound guy push it over the edge for Hook. Give it a spin! Cheers, D
Aww. Never really got into them! I loved Belly though. I did and do love Out of Time. Country Feedback is, for my money, the best thing that they ever did. Resonates so much. I love Radio Song 😆Probably because I love hip-hop. It was again two wonderful artists colliding together. KRS-1 and BDP were brilliant in the '80s. I have been listening to Nevermind recently funnily enough. That was a strange time and probably one of the things that I can remember about Nirvana - they were punk rock but equally pure pop and something that you would often hear on the radio, especially in pubs around Cardiff. So much for 'Our little group it's always been...' Loved Ice-T's Original Gangster album. Scored highly everywhere. I would probably include Metallica's Black Album. It was everywhere in '91 for me. We were into all sorts - industrial figured highly around '91 for us, along with indie, rock, hip-hop, and dance on the odd occasion.
Belly burned very bright for an album and a few EPs, then went a bit off the boil for me. The Muses I can pick up with at any point and it just works. Radio Song? Sorry! It just has that shonky rock/rap vibe of the time where it does the Spinal Tap "fire and ice" thing, ending up in the middle as lukewarm water. REM trying to play it a little funky (please, no) and KRS having to shoehorn rhymes onto a lame "beat" over the coda. Separately, REM, BDP...awesome...but together, it just falls super flat for me. I'm actually struggling to think of a genuinely good rock/rap team-up, and the only noteworthy one I've got is PE and Anthrax. That whole "Judgement Night" soundtrack album was a pretty mixed affair, too, as I recall. Cheers, D
What can I say? "Isn't Anything" is the sound of MBV as a band, and "Loveless" is the sound of Shields whittling away for years in a studio. I can appreciate the work, but IA just "leaps". Cheers, D
So nice then that Kristin Hersh and Fred Abong are now happy together. Kristin and Tanya have also toured together. Nice choice for this installment, great album. Anyway, revisited Biosphere's '91 album Microgravity today (as in: "And now for something completely different!")... fine album and quite unique for its time but MAN is it bass heavy. I think I prefer Leftfield for that feeling of floating in endless space but that is/was yet to come. Some (other) not quite random albums from 1991 I still really love: Crowded House - Woodface, Billy Bragg - Don't Try This at Home, Family Stand - Moon in Scorpio, Jellyfish - Bellybutton, Massive Attack - Blue Lines, Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger, Willie Nile - Places I have Never Been, Pixies - Tromple le Monde, Sam Phillips - Cruel Inventions, Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend, Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque, This Mortal Coil - Blood, Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fear, Trip Shakespeare - Lulu, Screaming Trees - Uncle Anesthesia... hard to choose just one for me! And U2, Roxette and Seal I was very much into in 1991 as well. Roxette was very big in 1991 in my memory. Maybe not in the UK though? "Hello you fool, I love you. C'mon join the joyride!" I was no yet old enough to scoff at this commercial drivel you see ;)
Yeah, nice to see Kris and Fred got it together. They do seem very happy with how it turned out, finally. Big list! Nice. Family Stand! My goodness! "Ghetto Heaven" was the one, I remember. A "banger" as the kids might say now, but probably off the album before this one, no? '91 was an extremely good year definitely. Roxette? Yes, ubiquitous unfortunately, but one man's drivel is another mans "charmingly naive". I'll sit that one out! Cheers, D
@@discellany With Roxette it's mostly nostalgia for me but definitely a talented act, good songs and singer but yes, also overly slick and commercial for me now too. Ghetto Heaven is indeed from the debut Chain but I actually listened to their second album first and still think it's a rather impressive and ambitious 70 min+ album that encompasses a lot of styles well. In fact, I probably like it more than any Living Colour album I've heard.
And there was me thinking you'd pick EMF's Schubert Dip. Ooh, or the Ned's double bass having greebotwaddle. Ahem. No. In retrospect it has to be Talk Talk for me this year, not that I had a clue at the time. I was as skint as mince and bought nothing, but I'm gobsmacked looking back at how much I now love: Slint (who I sniffly didn't like at the time), De La Soul is Dead, Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory and Orbital's green record. And MBV, obviously. At the time I probably was listening to a shonky copy of Recurring and the Orb though. Because I'm an idiot. Although I was right that Screamadelica wasn't an album, it was a compilation. And I'll still fight you over Shiny Happy People. Bah
And Bandwagonesque! Bloody hell. Now that's a record. (I never did do grunge. Several of my friends will absolutely agree with you on the Muses. But I just don't get it. The thing I like is you've made me want to go and give it a fresh listen, though)
Pull up a chair! My only recollection of EMF (beyond "the hits") is that one of them could manage something anatomically improbable with a lime. No joke! I read it somewhere...although that probably says more about the tabloid nature of the music press of the day than anything about the fruit-based sexual proclivities of EMF. Yes..Talk Talk...Slint...If I were stretching my inclusion rules, it would definitely be Spiderland this year. And whilst ...Is Dead is much (and unfairly) maligned, Low End Theory should have got a big mention. That is pure sloppiness on my part. Shiny Happy People? It's not so bad. This is the band who made "Can't Get There From Here" remember, another track that sullies another otherwise-stupendous album. They recorded worse, and it features a B-52, which gives it a pass from me. Bo! Cheers, D
I mostly agree with you on Out of Time, btw. Country Feedback is one of the best things ever recorded by anyone, there's several other classics as you say, and the real baddie is Radio Song (had Crappy Whiny Peephole not been a huge single, anyway).It reminds me that I think you said to me, many years ago, that Green is the last REM album that's a proper album - all the rest are collections of songs. Which is both true and also a wonderful line to crack out with a critic's beret off at a jaunty angle. There's nowt wrong with either in principle but I'm utterly gone for 80s REM and ever will be. Complete aside. I went through a New Adventures in HiFi phase last year. It's the last REM album I bought, I think, having had diminishing returns since Out of Time (implied heresy about what was next intended). Wasn't hugely impressed with it at the time, but listening to it now, it really landed with me and felt a lot closer in its edges and mood to records from the previous decade (if not in style). So there's that, which came as a surprise to me. EMF could always get in the sea. Artful citrus rudery does not change that at all. I kind of forgot they existed, happily.
Yeah, that sounds like the kind of thing I would have passed of as "insight" back then. And you bought it! Ha! But seriously, I think Monster was the turning point for me. I genuinely love side one of that record...as good a 4-6 track run they'd put together since the Warners move, but side two is a complete let-down. New Adventures left me cold, bar a few tracks (Electrolite, E-Bow, mostly because it sounds like The Blue Aeroplanes, but with Patti Smith), and I haven't fired it up in many many years. I will follow your lead and get reacquainted, see if I'm better equipped for it nowadays. D
It's partly the sonics of the thing, and yeah, I was young, so probably a bit of the "dunking-on-all-the-johnny-come-latelys" when they went huge that year. I dunno. Some albums I revisit, and they just don't land like they used to. That's Nevermind for me. Cheers, D
'Two Step' breaks my heart every time. Maybe MBV would have done it for me as AOTY. 'Spiderland' so amazing but not until later. 'Nevermind' an album I could share with friends who mostly did pop. Our friend above who cites 'Yerself is steam' above is owed a pint next time he passes by these parts. Great year in music 😊
Lyrically, "Two Step" does feel like a bit of a farewell to that version of the band, and thinking about it, it's actually the only co-write on the whole album, credited to the whole band. And yeah, I probably still rate Yerself as the best of the Rev albums, ahead of the whole "Deserters Songs" period where they went massive for a bit. Cheers, D
Nice to see some Consolidated! They seem to have been forgotten by everyone but I really liked their right-on industrial rap. I agree with you about Loveless, it's innovative and groundbreaking but Isn't Anything has the tunes. I'd add Steady Diet of Nothing by Fugazi, Gish by Smashing Pumpkins and The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, but my favourite from 1991 is another one recorded by Steve Albini, No Pocky for Kitty by Superchunk.
Consolidated were actually a pretty tight live band too, which was definitely the exception rather than the rule for most rap/hip-hop of the time ("all the people on the left...all the people on the right..." was THE default crowd interaction IIRC) Fugazi can do no wrong, but Steady Diet is probably my least played of theirs...I should give it a spin and try and remember why! Cheers, D
Loveless from MBV wins not the year, it wins the decade! I buy and sold Real Ramona 3 times. I have a love and hate thing with it. Spiderland wins the decade also. Sebadoh III it's one of my favorite from91 the year punk broke!
If I was allowing myself the luxury of retrospective choices, it would be Spiderland all the way this year. No question. Keeping things honest? I adored Real Ramona, played the hell out of it, and that version of the band was a fearsome live unit. Cheers, D
For me, it was Gish by Smashing Pumpkins. Saw them live as the opener for RHCP and Pearl Jam and they were just so good. Went and bought the disc the next day. It was my first year of college and I wasn't working, so funds were always low. I never cared for the follow-ups that much, but Gish. As much as I love Throwing Muses, I preferred their earlier albums to this. Maybe it was Leslie's bass lines. Maybe it was just I my dislike for None Too Soon. :) The other disc that was huge for me that year was the Peel Session Sampler A New Season. This was my intro to a lot of smaller bands, and I'm thankful I took a chance on it (most because there was a Lush song on it).
I think Gish is pretty much the only Pumpkins I can stomach. They did nothing for me beyond this one, which I know leaves me in a minority position with many out there. Honestly, it's Corgan. I've tried, but he's the line I can't/won't cross! Cheers, D
@@discellany Have you ever seen the attempt Billy has at interviewing Nick Cave at Lollapalooza in 1994 then? You might get some "schadenfreude" from that! ;)
Great choice. I do prefer the muses first album though. It's so raw and at the same time wonderfully pretty. It's difficult to think of the muses without comparing them to the pixies. Muses win every time for me It's a shame that hunkpapa was so badly produced because it has great songs. The real Ramona still has legs and it's definitely a superb record. Foxbase Alpha got a lot of play from me back then, as did screamadelica.
Sorry for the lack of engagement BTL this evening. Our kid is up to his neck in GCSEs, I've been feeling poorly, and today's editing efforts have taken it out of me somewhat. An early night for me!
Will catch up with all your comments tomorrow! Cheersly, D
Some great albums there…love that muses album…but the album that had the biggest impact on me that year was Mercury Rev’s Yerself is Steam. Totaly blew me and my friends away. In particular the opener, Chasing a Bee and the track Frittering. Also caught MBV’s Loveless tour that year (Dublin)…so my hearing took a kicking too….sorry I think that was summer 1992 actually…as Loveless was only released in the Autumn of 1991 if my memory serves me right.
Frittering from Lego my ego from a Peel session it's one of my favorite songs ever!
That Loveless tour had different supports every night, and I remember being a bit gutted that Cambridge (the night following the Norwich gig) got The God Machine and Mercury Rev, and Norwich got Silverfish. No slight on the 'Fish, but I'd seen them a few times and was desperate to see both of those. I'd caught Mercury Rev's lunchtime Reading set in '91, which was wonderfully surreal, but I never got to see them live during the Dave Baker era ever again. Also, I did Yerself in the 90s OU series, so just trying to spread the love around a bit! Cheers, D
I was thinking the exact same thing. I love everything about that album, from the sleeve to the beautiful weirdness of every song. I saw them at Leeds duchess of York; I believe they played on the same night that Nirvana played in Bradford, although I might have that mixed up. Either way, I didn't regret seeing them. They were fantastic live.
In terms of my life though, loveless has had more play than any other record I've ever owned. Still find myself totally captivated by it to this day.
I would have gone with Loveless or Leisure but then again I am in a 5th wave shoegaze band lol
I'm constantly amazed by quite how much inspiration a younger generation of musicians have taken from shoegaze. It's really very heartwarming! If you'd told me back in '90/'91 that MBV would wield the influence they have today, via the subsequent iterations of what was at the time, quite a short-lived scene, I don't know if I'd believe you. It's like a skiffle/Beatles thing...but then that would make MBV skiffle, and I don't know who the Beatles equivalent would be. I haven't thought that analogy through too well, have I? Oh well. There's a point in there somewhere! Cheers, D
Another surprising choice!
I'd figured that it wouldn't be Nevermind (too easy), and Out Of Time wasn't an option since Green was so prominently highlighted a few weeks ago.
For me, the big albums of '91 that didn't have a swimming baby on the cover were God Fodder by Ned's Atomic Dustbin (first CD I ever owned), and Why Do Birds Sing? by Violent Femmes. Both of these still get regular play from me.
I'm always intrigued to see what you choose, and I'm looking forward to 1992!
Also, quite a lovely tribute to Steve Albini. That one still hurts.
Cheers! '92 is shaping up to be another "dilemma" episode. Might have to try something a bit different to resolve that one. D
Been away so short catch up.
Honourable mentions for Nevermind, Ten, Blue Lines and of course Laughing Stock.
Me in Honey fave track from Out of Time.
My favourite album of 1991 is in my opinion their best, made so in part by the one-time appearance of brother Tim… Woodface by Crowded House. Saw them 3 times live, sadly only 2 with Paul Hester.
What a choice. Love love LOVE The Muses. Saw K Hersh play in Zaragoza a few weeks back and she was brilliant. She encored with Cottonmouth which is the b-side of Counting Backwards. That live vid you showed a clip off is wild - TD's guitar on Hook In Her Head on that stuck with me too. So delighted you picked this, I'm gonna crank it up when I finish work today
Clip was from a German TV recording (the whole show is up on YT) of a show in (I think) Dusseldorf on the Ramona tour. The Norwich show was loud from the get go, as I remember it, but they clearly had their sound guy push it over the edge for Hook. Give it a spin! Cheers, D
Aww. Never really got into them! I loved Belly though. I did and do love Out of Time. Country Feedback is, for my money, the best thing that they ever did. Resonates so much. I love Radio Song 😆Probably because I love hip-hop. It was again two wonderful artists colliding together. KRS-1 and BDP were brilliant in the '80s. I have been listening to Nevermind recently funnily enough. That was a strange time and probably one of the things that I can remember about Nirvana - they were punk rock but equally pure pop and something that you would often hear on the radio, especially in pubs around Cardiff. So much for 'Our little group it's always been...' Loved Ice-T's Original Gangster album. Scored highly everywhere. I would probably include Metallica's Black Album. It was everywhere in '91 for me. We were into all sorts - industrial figured highly around '91 for us, along with indie, rock, hip-hop, and dance on the odd occasion.
Belly burned very bright for an album and a few EPs, then went a bit off the boil for me. The Muses I can pick up with at any point and it just works.
Radio Song? Sorry! It just has that shonky rock/rap vibe of the time where it does the Spinal Tap "fire and ice" thing, ending up in the middle as lukewarm water. REM trying to play it a little funky (please, no) and KRS having to shoehorn rhymes onto a lame "beat" over the coda. Separately, REM, BDP...awesome...but together, it just falls super flat for me. I'm actually struggling to think of a genuinely good rock/rap team-up, and the only noteworthy one I've got is PE and Anthrax. That whole "Judgement Night" soundtrack album was a pretty mixed affair, too, as I recall.
Cheers, D
Nice to see Isn't Anything get some love.
What can I say? "Isn't Anything" is the sound of MBV as a band, and "Loveless" is the sound of Shields whittling away for years in a studio. I can appreciate the work, but IA just "leaps". Cheers, D
So nice then that Kristin Hersh and Fred Abong are now happy together. Kristin and Tanya have also toured together. Nice choice for this installment, great album.
Anyway, revisited Biosphere's '91 album Microgravity today (as in: "And now for something completely different!")... fine album and quite unique for its time but MAN is it bass heavy. I think I prefer Leftfield for that feeling of floating in endless space but that is/was yet to come.
Some (other) not quite random albums from 1991 I still really love: Crowded House - Woodface, Billy Bragg - Don't Try This at Home, Family Stand - Moon in Scorpio, Jellyfish - Bellybutton, Massive Attack - Blue Lines, Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger, Willie Nile - Places I have Never Been, Pixies - Tromple le Monde, Sam Phillips - Cruel Inventions, Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend, Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque, This Mortal Coil - Blood, Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fear, Trip Shakespeare - Lulu, Screaming Trees - Uncle Anesthesia... hard to choose just one for me!
And U2, Roxette and Seal I was very much into in 1991 as well. Roxette was very big in 1991 in my memory. Maybe not in the UK though? "Hello you fool, I love you. C'mon join the joyride!" I was no yet old enough to scoff at this commercial drivel you see ;)
Yeah, nice to see Kris and Fred got it together. They do seem very happy with how it turned out, finally.
Big list! Nice. Family Stand! My goodness! "Ghetto Heaven" was the one, I remember. A "banger" as the kids might say now, but probably off the album before this one, no?
'91 was an extremely good year definitely. Roxette? Yes, ubiquitous unfortunately, but one man's drivel is another mans "charmingly naive". I'll sit that one out!
Cheers, D
@@discellany With Roxette it's mostly nostalgia for me but definitely a talented act, good songs and singer but yes, also overly slick and commercial for me now too.
Ghetto Heaven is indeed from the debut Chain but I actually listened to their second album first and still think it's a rather impressive and ambitious 70 min+ album that encompasses a lot of styles well. In fact, I probably like it more than any Living Colour album I've heard.
Nirvana - Nevermind. No discussion for me. Changed my life (and countless others)!
If I were a year or two younger, and this was my first Nirvana, I've no doubt I'd be in complete agreement with you! Cheers, D
And there was me thinking you'd pick EMF's Schubert Dip. Ooh, or the Ned's double bass having greebotwaddle. Ahem. No.
In retrospect it has to be Talk Talk for me this year, not that I had a clue at the time. I was as skint as mince and bought nothing, but I'm gobsmacked looking back at how much I now love: Slint (who I sniffly didn't like at the time), De La Soul is Dead, Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory and Orbital's green record. And MBV, obviously. At the time I probably was listening to a shonky copy of Recurring and the Orb though. Because I'm an idiot. Although I was right that Screamadelica wasn't an album, it was a compilation. And I'll still fight you over Shiny Happy People. Bah
And Bandwagonesque! Bloody hell. Now that's a record.
(I never did do grunge. Several of my friends will absolutely agree with you on the Muses. But I just don't get it. The thing I like is you've made me want to go and give it a fresh listen, though)
Pull up a chair! My only recollection of EMF (beyond "the hits") is that one of them could manage something anatomically improbable with a lime. No joke! I read it somewhere...although that probably says more about the tabloid nature of the music press of the day than anything about the fruit-based sexual proclivities of EMF.
Yes..Talk Talk...Slint...If I were stretching my inclusion rules, it would definitely be Spiderland this year. And whilst ...Is Dead is much (and unfairly) maligned, Low End Theory should have got a big mention. That is pure sloppiness on my part.
Shiny Happy People? It's not so bad. This is the band who made "Can't Get There From Here" remember, another track that sullies another otherwise-stupendous album. They recorded worse, and it features a B-52, which gives it a pass from me. Bo!
Cheers, D
I mostly agree with you on Out of Time, btw. Country Feedback is one of the best things ever recorded by anyone, there's several other classics as you say, and the real baddie is Radio Song (had Crappy Whiny Peephole not been a huge single, anyway).It reminds me that I think you said to me, many years ago, that Green is the last REM album that's a proper album - all the rest are collections of songs. Which is both true and also a wonderful line to crack out with a critic's beret off at a jaunty angle. There's nowt wrong with either in principle but I'm utterly gone for 80s REM and ever will be.
Complete aside. I went through a New Adventures in HiFi phase last year. It's the last REM album I bought, I think, having had diminishing returns since Out of Time (implied heresy about what was next intended). Wasn't hugely impressed with it at the time, but listening to it now, it really landed with me and felt a lot closer in its edges and mood to records from the previous decade (if not in style). So there's that, which came as a surprise to me.
EMF could always get in the sea. Artful citrus rudery does not change that at all. I kind of forgot they existed, happily.
Yeah, that sounds like the kind of thing I would have passed of as "insight" back then. And you bought it! Ha! But seriously, I think Monster was the turning point for me. I genuinely love side one of that record...as good a 4-6 track run they'd put together since the Warners move, but side two is a complete let-down. New Adventures left me cold, bar a few tracks (Electrolite, E-Bow, mostly because it sounds like The Blue Aeroplanes, but with Patti Smith), and I haven't fired it up in many many years. I will follow your lead and get reacquainted, see if I'm better equipped for it nowadays. D
Great video as always, and I'm totally with you on the opinion of nevermind not aging the best. It'll get us both slaughtered but it's how I feel
It's partly the sonics of the thing, and yeah, I was young, so probably a bit of the "dunking-on-all-the-johnny-come-latelys" when they went huge that year. I dunno. Some albums I revisit, and they just don't land like they used to. That's Nevermind for me. Cheers, D
'Two Step' breaks my heart every time. Maybe MBV would have done it for me as AOTY. 'Spiderland' so amazing but not until later. 'Nevermind' an album I could share with friends who mostly did pop. Our friend above who cites 'Yerself is steam' above is owed a pint next time he passes by these parts. Great year in music 😊
Lyrically, "Two Step" does feel like a bit of a farewell to that version of the band, and thinking about it, it's actually the only co-write on the whole album, credited to the whole band. And yeah, I probably still rate Yerself as the best of the Rev albums, ahead of the whole "Deserters Songs" period where they went massive for a bit. Cheers, D
Nice to see some Consolidated! They seem to have been forgotten by everyone but I really liked their right-on industrial rap.
I agree with you about Loveless, it's innovative and groundbreaking but Isn't Anything has the tunes.
I'd add Steady Diet of Nothing by Fugazi, Gish by Smashing Pumpkins and The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, but my favourite from 1991 is another one recorded by Steve Albini, No Pocky for Kitty by Superchunk.
Consolidated were actually a pretty tight live band too, which was definitely the exception rather than the rule for most rap/hip-hop of the time ("all the people on the left...all the people on the right..." was THE default crowd interaction IIRC)
Fugazi can do no wrong, but Steady Diet is probably my least played of theirs...I should give it a spin and try and remember why! Cheers, D
@@discellany I saw Consolidated in Edinburgh in '91 or '92, they did a great cover of Neil Young's Rockin' In the Free World!
Think it was a co-headline tour with Meat Beat Manifesto when I saw them, so a bit of an Industrial double-bill! D
Loveless from MBV wins not the year, it wins the decade! I buy and sold Real Ramona 3 times. I have a love and hate thing with it. Spiderland wins the decade also. Sebadoh III it's one of my favorite from91 the year punk broke!
If I was allowing myself the luxury of retrospective choices, it would be Spiderland all the way this year. No question. Keeping things honest? I adored Real Ramona, played the hell out of it, and that version of the band was a fearsome live unit. Cheers, D
For me, it was Gish by Smashing Pumpkins. Saw them live as the opener for RHCP and Pearl Jam and they were just so good. Went and bought the disc the next day. It was my first year of college and I wasn't working, so funds were always low. I never cared for the follow-ups that much, but Gish.
As much as I love Throwing Muses, I preferred their earlier albums to this. Maybe it was Leslie's bass lines. Maybe it was just I my dislike for None Too Soon. :)
The other disc that was huge for me that year was the Peel Session Sampler A New Season. This was my intro to a lot of smaller bands, and I'm thankful I took a chance on it (most because there was a Lush song on it).
I think Gish is pretty much the only Pumpkins I can stomach. They did nothing for me beyond this one, which I know leaves me in a minority position with many out there. Honestly, it's Corgan. I've tried, but he's the line I can't/won't cross! Cheers, D
@@discellany Have you ever seen the attempt Billy has at interviewing Nick Cave at Lollapalooza in 1994 then? You might get some "schadenfreude" from that! ;)
Just checked that clip out, and it's achieved the impossible. I now feel sorry for Billy Corgan. I'm sure if I watch it again, that'll pass! D
@@discellany Different mentalities! :P
Another great installment. Thanks.
Cheers Andrew! D
Great choice. I do prefer the muses first album though. It's so raw and at the same time wonderfully pretty. It's difficult to think of the muses without comparing them to the pixies. Muses win every time for me
It's a shame that hunkpapa was so badly produced because it has great songs.
The real Ramona still has legs and it's definitely a superb record.
Foxbase Alpha got a lot of play from me back then, as did screamadelica.