1990

                It’s somewhat appropriate that I reach 1990 in time for the opening weekend of Euro 2012 (it’s a soccer tournament) since here’s where I first encounter in my collection examples of “football songs,” commemorating the national teams of the 1990 World Cup.  Football songs almost invariably run the gamut from mediocre to terrible, but it’s a fun tradition anyway, and it’s nice to see the likes of Prince and Wiz Khalifa try their hands in recent years at awful songs for the Vikings and Steelers respectively.  But back here in 1990, we’ve got a pair, one from the Pogues & Dubliners, and one from New Order.  The Pogues/Dubliners one is about what you’d expect, and pleasantly mediocre.  The New Order one is both more terrible and more interesting, in a dumbed-down version of their conventional formula with actual “rapping” from England player John Barnes (who makes MC Hammer look like Rakim).  So of course it was New Order’s biggest hit of all time (though that probably has more to do with England’s performance at the Cup than the song’s actual worth).

                Speaking of Hammer, though:  Last year (and the year prior) hip-hop proved it wasn’t just a fad, through of a series of impressive albums from the likes of Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, and De La Soul.  PE have the second of their twin masterpieces this year, but this is also the year that rap (or, if you’re generous, hip-hop) proved its viability not so much artistically as commercially.  A group like Public Enemy was never going to be responsible for hip-hop’s first commercial breakthrough, but why couldn’t it have been the likes of De La Soul instead of the simplistic pop-rap of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice?  I know for me (and a lot of people my age) this was our first experience with rap, and it’s almost astonishingly simple compared not only to the sophistication of the groups mentioned above, but virtually everything done post-“Rapper’s Delight”…  Still, it did big numbers, and “Ice Ice Baby” still packs the dancefloors at weddings.  (also, with Hammer’s Prince and Rick James samples and Ice’s Queen/Bowie sample, they at least have good taste).  Also this year, you start to see a touch of a hip-hop sensibility even in still more mainstream acts like C+C Music Factory, who otherwise are techno-pop of a Prince-aping style (and a thanks to Andrew for making sure I had Gonna Make You Sweat in time for ’90.  If any other listeners want to make sure I have other things to listen to, by all means I’ll listen to anything provided for me…).

                For slightly more credible incorporation of hip-hop sounds, we can look to the Madchester/baggy sound in the UK.  Virtually no rapping (thankfully), and continuing in the proud English tradition of dance music you can’t dance to, but a real borrowing from the beats of hip-hop, especially in the drums.  This year it’s really starting to spread like a virus through the UK indie scene, affecting older and newer groups alike.  Of the older ones, the Cure and even the Mekons start adding baggy beats to their sounds.  Though the Mekons may be doing it somewhat tongue-in-cheek, they also put out some fun beat-driven country-punk-hip-hop sounds.  Younger groups are getting in on it too, with shoegaze flagship act My Bloody Valentine adding beats to their gauzy guitar haze formula – it’s mild as dance music, but sound shockingly different compared to their typical work.  More impressively (and radically), forgettable jangle-poppers/Stones wannabes Primal Scream turn over one of their Stones-indebted ballads to Andrew Weatherall, who radically reconstructs it into a funk odyssey, creating the biggest hit of the whole scene (and the second best Wild Angels-sampling song of the Bush years, after Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick”).  The Primals will, in turn, adopt this as their new direction, and this year put out another song in the same psych-funk style, both of which will be on next year’s Screamadelica, one of the three essential records of the whole Madchseter/baggy scene. 

                The Stone Roses’ debut from last year was also one of those three, and this year they don’t have a follow-up outside of a single that both follows on last year’s funk groove “Fool’s Gold” and fits well next to Primal Scream’s singles.  It really sounds like they’re going to settle in to being a Phish/Who hybrid, but instead they’ll piss off their label and not be allowed to record for half a decade.  The third essential record is (generously) the Happy Monday’s Pills, Thrills, ‘n Bellyaches, which is easily the least of the three.  Bands like the Mondays don’t make great albums (and they’re so inconsident they can barely fill up a consistent greatest-hits), but this one is the closest they came.  Much like the Fall, who were a clear influence, esp. on the vocals, it all comes down to how entertained you are by listening to a band bash out a funk groove while a semi-crazy man spits nonsense on top.  The Fall, by the way, are still interested in dancier sounds, but much like Wire, are moving in their own idiosyncratic take, and no longer sound much like Madchester.  The Fall are sounding more like a Sly Stone-influenced funk band, albeit with Mark E. Smith vocals on top, while Wire end their first comeback by fading into limp techno sounds.

                Given how much this sound dominated UK indie in ’90, it’s easy to see how, if you didn’t really like it, you’d come to hate it a lot (since even the goths and shoegazers are starting to all sound the same).  So it’s unsurprising that Morrissey hated it a lot (either despite or because he was from Manchester), and the stuff he’s working on is finally starting to move from Smiths-lite into his own sound, slightly harder and simpler (the later unsurprising, given that he’d lost his extremely talented guitar player from the Smiths).  It also starts to sound not just like a holdover from the mid-80s jangle-pop but like the beginnings of the next big UK sound, Brit-Pop.  Also fitting in this proto-Brit-pop are the La’s, whose big hit (the only one you’re likely to hear in the US, “There She Goes”) really doesn’t sound at all like the much more Kinks/Them sound of their lone album.  Very good, but at this point sounding more throwbacky than prescient.  (and just as an aside, between the Stone Roses last year, the La’s this year, and My Bloody Valentine next year, the dominant mode for British acts of this period seems to have been “put out a masterpiece and disappear.”  Though the Roses will put out a follow-up eventually, most of their fans would have been just as happy if they hadn’t, there are still people waiting for the 2^nd La’s record and the 3^rd (4^th?  I’m not sure what’s an EP and an LP) My Bloody Valentine one).  Also debuting this year are Blur, who of course will be one of the giants of Brit-Pop soon enough.  This year, though, they sound like competent if wholly-derivative Stone Roses followers.

                So if hip-hop or dance sounds are dominating in the UK, it’s somewhat surprising to hear just how little engagement there is between hip-hop and alt-rock in the US.  Chuck D does guest on Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing,” but sounds utterly lost – even more out of place than Biz Markie will sound on R.E.M.’s “Radio Song” next year.  Instead, US alt-rock this year is splintering into a bunch of different guitar-heavy sounds, none of which have anything to do with hip-hop, or even are at all danceable, outside of the early Third Wave ska bands. 

                The biggest band in US alt-rock this year is probably still the Pixies, though they put out their weakest album.  Bossanova is far from bad, and there’s even an admirable attempt to expand their sound to include more surf-rock elements, but Frank Black’s album-a-year pace is starting to wear.  To his credit, Black’s not a formula songwriter, so can’t just turn out soundalike jams over and over again, AC/DC-style.  Of course, he also turned his back on the most obvious solution, by refusing to acknowledge the comparably-talented other songwriter in his band.  Kim Deal’s Breeders also put out their first album this year, and there’s a really phenomenal single album between the two records.  If it’s not as consistent as Bossanova, Pod is also a bit more exciting and daring, going deeper into a psych-surf vibe that’ll crop up throughout the early ‘90s.  Kim Deal’s influence is also important in really carving out a space for female rockers in the early ‘90s.  Whatever else you want to say about the early ‘90s, until the rise of nü-metal at the end, it was probably the single best time for women in rock who weren’t slotted into the role of sensitive folkie or dance-pop tramp (or, in the case of Stevie Nicks, folkie tramp), and could really just be idiosyncratic rockers on their own terms.  Kim Deal didn’t start this, obviously, but she was one of the first to carve out a space on alt-rock radio. 

                Kim Deal, was, of course, not even the only Kim that was a part of this shift, and Kim Gordon’s  Sonic Youth are again quite good this year.  They’ve moved away from the NYC-shoegaze of Daydream Nation toward a more US-style guitar rock sound.  Still plenty idiosyncratic, and scronky (with space for minute-long tracks of amelodic noise mixed in with driving rockers and spoken word and the like), but increasingly sounding like they fit with the rest of the musical world outside of NYC.  They now, for instance, make a lot of sense next to the Flaming Lips (esp. insofar as both are driven by a combination of exciting guitar skronk and charmingly/painfully weak vocals).  The Lips add a second guitarist and put out their first really great album, driven by a combination of interesting guitar work and (more importantly) Wayne Coyne penning his first really solid collection of memorable songs (prior to, there were maybe 0-2 memorable songs an album).  I don’t know how much they were influential or just captured the zeitgeist, but the Lips actually sound like a bigger influence on the rising crop of new alt-rock bands (i.e. Superchunk) than either Sonic Youth or the Pixies.  Also, their roughed-up garage sound is probably easier to follow than Sonic Youth’s modern classical/punk fusion or the Pixies manic fractured style.  Of course, next year Nirvana will make sounding like the Pixies into the basis for the whole alt-rock assault on the mainstream, so what do I know? 

                Also adding a second guitarist this year are Bad Religion, which like the Lips produces their greatest album to date (and for BR, probably their best of all time).  While the Lips use their second guitarist to open up their sonic palette, though, Bad Religion use theirs to ramp up the intensity of their sonic assault, although they do also slow down occasionally for some post-punk grinding, Mission of Burma-style.  Also returning to the Mission of Burma style of arty guitar attack are Fugazi, the new band from ex-Minor Threat Ian MacKaye.  While Bad Religion are more or less a conventional punk band, though, Fugazi are far from, and much closer to Mission of Burma, with an intensity that, say, Sonic Youth lack, but a proggier attention to interesting riffing than the likes of Bad Religion or Hüsker Dü.

                Oh, and here’s probably a good time to talk about Operation Ivy.  I should have been talking about them in ’88 and ’89, but iTunes screwed up the dating.  If I’d listened at the proper time, it probably would have changed some of what I had to say about both Bad Religion and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.  Op Ivy mean that Bad Religion were less alone in keeping the punk fires burning in late-80s California, and that the Bosstones weren’t the first band of the Third Wave of ska.  In fact, Op Ivy sound more like an influence on the pop-punk ska bands that made up the bulk of the Third Wave on the radio than do the Bosstones.  (but the jokey funk-rock of Fishbone and the Chili Peppers were probably at least as influential).  In Second Wave terms, also, while the Bosstones showed a Beat/Madness influence, Op Ivy are far more interested in the Clash and to a lesser degree, the Specials, though they lack the chops for it, so the Specials debt is chiefly lyrical. 

                Elsewhere on the West Coast, Jane’s Addiction have really come into their own, no longer sounding at all like Guns ‘n Roses or really anyone else active in ’90.  Perhaps they most sound like a Led Zeppelin/glam rock hybrid, with a dash of Red Hot Chili Peppers funk and Pixies-style manic vocals.  Probably the most sonically interesting band on the West Coast this year though (with the likes of Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and the Pixies/Breeders all being East Coasters).  (and it’s interesting to me how I’m really starting to hear US alt-rock as a tilting balance of power between the coasts). 

Jane’s Addiction, anyway, are certainly more interesting than what’s going on up in Seattle in ‘90, which is surprisingly quite this year.  The Screaming Trees and Soundgarden have EPs, and Nirvana has a very punk-sounding single and some radio sessions, but none of the “real” grunge bands put out a full-length album.  Mother Love Bone do, but they really don’t fit as a grunge band in any way but geographically.  More than ever, they sound closer to the LA sounds of GnR or Jane’s Addiction than anything in Seattle; must funkier and more cleanly-produced than the scronk of the other Seattle bands (or, if you like, less “grungy”?).  Also not nearly as interesting.  Mother Love Bone fans talk about how they could have been huge if Andrew Wood hadn’t died, and that’s true, insofar as they sound like a radio-ready mainstream hard rock band circa 1990, but that doesn’t make them interesting.  Successor band Pearl Jam, who start to demo by the end of this year, are already much more interesting.  Even if they sonically (unsurprisingly) aren’t all that different, Eddie Vedder is a much more compelling and interesting vocalist than Andrew Wood.  This whole scene, though, is about to break wide open next year, and finally justify all the attention I’ve paid to it so far.

So if I’ve been framing US alt-rock in terms of East Coast vs. West Coast, I’d be remiss not to point out all the great music that came from the middle part of the country.  I’ve already mentioned the Flaming Lips, but the single biggest influence on what’s going on in alt-rock in ’90 is probably still Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Hüsker Dü.  This year Bob Mould returns to that classic driving Hüsker rock sound, too, adding better production but otherwise sounding very close to his earlier work.  Although, if he’s put aside folk-rock, he hasn’t put aside his Richard Thompson influence, and at times his songs sound at least as much like Thompson in pounding-rocker mode (think “Shoot Out The Lights” or “Gypsy Love Songs”) as he does like his old bad. 

The other big band of the ‘80s Minneapolis scene, however, is deeper than ever into folk-rock.  Although All Shook Down gets referred to as Westerberg’s first solo record rather than a true Replacements album, it does sound like an entirely natural follow-up to their last album, esp. insofar as the ballads are quite nice (better, probably, than last year’s, “I’ll Be You” excepted) but the rockers are pretty toothless.  Thankfully, there’s very little attempt at rocking in between the folk-rocking.

That emphatically is not the case for Neil Young, however, who has returned to full-bore rocking with an intensity not heard since at least Re*Ac*Tor.  And unlike Re*Ac*Tor, on Rust Never Sleeps, Young is giving attention to the songwriting as well as the playing.  Oddly, I hear more of a Hüsker Dü-with-better-guitar sound than I do a return to his old ‘70s style.  Pretty great, though, and the first of Young’s godfather-of-grunge period.  Not nearly so great, though, is Bob Dylan, whose latest comeback fizzles to an end nearly as quickly as it began last year.  Under the Red Sky isn’t Dylan’s worst album, but it might just be his slightest.  The likes of Saved and Self-Portrait weren’t necessarily great, but they did sound like Dylan had a purpose.  On Under the Red Sky, Dylan’s songwriting is practically at the level of nursery rhymes, and give that the guy from Was (Not Was) produced, it almost goes without saying that sonically, it’s all polish and shiny lack of substance.

But the act I’m most excited about in ’90 is Uncle Tupelo, who as far as I’m concerned have been a long time coming.  Country-rock since the’70s has been all but AWOL.  There have been a few acts here and there (the Cowboy Junkies, the Jayhawks), but they’ve practically existed in a vacuum.  Even the Grateful Dead by ’90 have moved almost entirely away from country-rock in their sound.  There were some precursors to Uncle Tupelo.  Neil Young, obviously, but the punk-country of the Meat Puppets and Mekons were big forerunners.  Still, Uncle Tupelo really manage to combine the intensity of Hüsker Dü style punk-rock with the songcraft of classic country and bluegrass.  Their clearest proximate precursors might actually be the Pogues.  Not sonically, of course (the “American Pogues” in terms of Celtic folk-rock would be the Black 47), but in the sense of taking a real respect and love for old-school folk of their respective home country and filtering it through the intensity of punk rock & roll.  Social Distortion also are pulling off a similar kind of trick this year, but since they’re drawing from the closer-to-rock sounds of Johnny Cash-style rockabilly, it’s less daring than the bluegrass-punk of Unlce Tupelo.  The Pogues, by the way, have a mini-comeback of sorts this year.  Shane MacGowan sounds engaged again, the band is looser than the rather stiff sounds of Peace & Love, and there’s even a hint of a Dylan influence lyrically.  So of course, MacGowan will immediately quit because the rest of the band will refuse to play his new 20-minute acid-house song, and they’ll splinter apart….

Finally, and largely because I don’t know where else they fit, Midnight Oil are back this year with what’s my favorite of their albums (and not coincidentally, the first one I owned – thanks again, Andrew!  clear blue vinyl!).  It’s almost surprising how quickly their big R.E.M./U2 style has started to sound old-fashioned.  Though it’s by no means artistically exhausted, there’s no one else in my record collection that sounds like them this year.  Last year, the Tragically Hip came close, so perhaps this is just a sound that’s most popular in the non-US, non-UK English-speaking world…

Song of the Year:  Primal Scream – “Loaded.”  Turning a mediocre Stones rip-off into a musical-movement-defining anthem via remix is a neat trick.  Probably no remix has ever done more to improve a song’s quality.   Plus it’s a great groove that gradually shifts its shape without you ever really noticing over the course of the song.

Album of the Year:  Uncle Tupelo – No Depression.  It’s clear why this record jump-started the whole alt-country movement.  It’s on the one hand a daring sonic innovation, and on the other hand a perfectly logical (to the point of being inevitable) combination of Hüsker Dü-style guitar rock with the older country-folk/country-rock traditions. 

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Fugazi.  I know that, as a DCer, I should have been praising them all along, but they always somehow got overlooked by me.  Still, worthy successors to Mission of Burma in the intelligent guitar-rock sound, and almost shockingly better than Minor Threat.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Operation Ivy.  Yes, I now hear them as more influential than ever, but I also notice how thin they sound, and how weak a lot of their songs were.  Basically, this was a band where I could have been blown away by a 10-song budget greatest hits, but my 27-song complete discography just highlights their weaknesses a little too much…

Album List

AC/DC - AC/DC

Bad Religion - Against The Grain

Bad Religion - All Ages

Big Audio Dynamite - Planet BAD: Greatest Hits

Blur - Leisure B-Sides

Blur - The Best Of

Bob Dylan - Greatest Hits Volume 3

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Rastaman Vibration

Bob Mould - Poison Years

Bruce Springsteen - 18 Tracks

C+C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat

Charlatans UK - Melting Pot

Cheap Trick - The Authorized Greatest Hits

Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) - Carry On

David Bowie - Best Of Bowie

David Bowie - Changesbowie

Devo - Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology

Dio - The Very Beast Of Dio

Edwyn Collins | Orange Juice - A Casual Introduction 1981/2001

Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac

Fugazi - Repeater + 3 Songs

Happy Mondays - Double Easy: The U.S. Singles

Happy Mondays - Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches

Iggy Pop - Nude & Rude: The Best Of Iggy [Explicit]

Iron Maiden - Misc.

Jane's Addiction - Up From The Catacombs: The Best Of Jane's Addiction

John Lee Hooker - The Ultimate Collection 1948-1990

Johnny Cash - The Great Lost Performance

Judas Priest - Metal Works '73-'93

MC Hammer - Back to Back Hits: MC Hammer/Vanilla Ice

Megadeth - Greatest Hits: Back To The Start (Digital Only)

Midnight Oil - 20,000 Watts R.S.L.: Greatest Hits

Midnight Oil – Blue Sky Mining

Morrissey - The Best Of Morrissey

Mother Love Bone - Apple

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Rarities

Neil Young - Ragged Glory

New Order - Retro

Nirvana - Incesticide

Nirvana - The Complete Radio Sessions

Operation Ivy - Energy

Operation Ivy - Hectic EP

Operation Ivy - Turn it Around!

Pearl Jam - Ten Redux

Pet Shop Boys - Discography: The Complete Singles Collection

Peter Gabriel - Shaking The Tree: 16 Golden Greats

Phish - Lawn Boy

Primal Scream - Shoot Speed (More Dirty Hits)

Prince - The Hits

Public Enemy - Fear Of A Black Planet

Red Hot Chili Peppers - What Hits!?

Screaming Trees - Ocean Of Confusion - Songs Of Screaming Trees 1990-1996

Social Distortion - Social Distortion

Sonic Youth - Goo

Soundgarden - A-Sides

Stevie Ray Vaughan - The Real Deal: Greatest Hits Vol. 2

Superchunk - Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91)

The Breeders - Pod

The Cure - Galore (The Singles 1987-1997)

The Fall - 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats

The Flaming Lips - In A The Priest Driven Ambulance

The Grateful Dead - 1990-07-12 RFK

The Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 9: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 9

The Grateful Dead - Without a Net

The Grateful Dead (live incomplete) - So Many Roads [1965-1995]

The Jesus & Mary Chain - 21 Singles

The La's - The La's

The Mekons - Fun '90

The Mekons - I Have Been to Heaven and Back..., Vol. 1

The Mekons - Where Were You?

The Pixies - Bossanova

The Pixies - Death To The Pixies

The Pixies - Death To The Pixies (Live)

The Pogues - Hell's Ditch

The Replacements - All for Nothing

The Replacements - All Shook Down

The Replacements - Nothing For All

The Stone Roses - One Love (Single)

The Stone Roses - The Complete Stone Roses

Uncle Tupelo - 89/93: An Anthology

Uncle Tupelo - No Depression

V/A - Children Of Nuggets II

V/A - Children Of Nuggets III

V/A - Children Of Nuggets IV

V/A - DGC Rarities, Vol. 1

V/A - Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute To Cole Porter

Vanilla Ice - Back to Back Hits: MC Hammer/Vanilla Ice

Vanilla Ice - Wedding Songs

Violent Femmes - Add It Up (1981-1993)

Waylon Jennings - Best Of Waylon Jennings

Wire - 1985-1990 The A List

Yo La Tengo - Prisoners Of Love