FRIDAY FLASHBACK: Every Friday we set the Hot Tub Time Machine to
one year in rock history and give you the best (and worst) music from
that year, all day long beginning at 1:00 AM EST and running for 24
hours on Jivewired Radio powered by Live365.
This week: 1991
Next week: 2008
To listen, just press play on the radio widget to the right or use this
link to open in a new window that will allow you to listen when you
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Launch Jivewired RadioAlbum art from 1991 - Click album cover to purchase at Amazon.com![]()
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1991 Album I Wish I Owned:Loveless by My Bloody Valentine
1991 Album I'd Give Back If I Could:We Can't Dance by Genesis
1991 Nominee For Worst Album Cover Ever: Metallica by Metallica
1991 Most Underrated Song:Love Rears It's Ugly Head by Living Colour
1991 Most Overrated Song:Something To Believe In by Poison
1991 Most Memorable Song:Losing My Religion by R.E.M.
1991 Most Significant Song:These Are The Days Of Our Lives by Queen
1991 Most Forgotten Song:Sax And Violins by The Talking Heads
1991 Fan's Choice For Most Popular Song:Losing My Religion by R.E.M.
1991 Album Of The Year: Nevermind by Nirvana
1991 Most Likely To Start A Party Song:You're Unbelievable by EMF
1991 Please Don't Play Anymore Song:More Than Words by Extreme
1991 Song That I Like More than I Actually Should:High Enough by Damn Yankees
1991 Album I Liked More Than I Thought I Would:Loveless by My Bloody Valentine
1991 Song That I Tend to Leave on Repeat:
Evenflow by Pearl Jam
Guilty Pleasure of 1991:
Groove Is In The Heart by Deee-Lite
Breakout Artists Of 1991: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Matthew Sweet, Soundgarden, Jane's Addiction
1991 Rookies Of The Year: Nirvana, Pearl Jam
1991 Comeback Of The Year: Queen
Overplayed In 1991: Jesus Jones
Not Played Enough In 1991: Material Issue
Greatest Chart Re-Entry from 1991:Light My Fire by The Doors (1967)
Worst Cover Song of 1991: Signs by Tesla
Best Cover Song Of 1991:Mustang Sally by The Commitments (originally by Wilson Pickett)
An unheralded great album from 1991:Temple Of The Dog by Temple Of The Dog
An unheralded great single from 1991:Nothing Can Stop Us by Saint Etienne
Best Soundtrack of 1991: The Commitments
Worst Soundtrack of 1991: Robin Hood - Prince Of Thieves
An Album From 1991 That Changed My Life: Nevermind by Nirvana
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Get it at:Amazon |
iTunes01. Smells Like Teen Spirit02. In Bloom03. Come As You Are04. Breed05. Lithium06. Polly07. Territorial Pissings08. Drain You09. Lounge Act10. Stay Away11. On A Plain12. Something In The Way13. Endless, Nameless
It's not often that we are witness to the birth of a new genre. Sure grunge was just an offshoot of punk, allegedly, but it really wasn't. It was something new and exciting and for us, something unheard of before and something incredibly cool.
The early grunge movement coalesced around Seattle independent record label Sub Pop Records in the late 1980s. Grunge became commercially successful in the first half of the 1990s, due mainly to the release of Nirvana's
Nevermind and Pearl Jam's
Ten. The success of these bands boosted the popularity of alternative rock and made grunge the most popular form of hard rock music at the time. Although most grunge bands had disbanded or faded from view by the late 1990s, their influence continues to affect modern rock music. But 1991 was year one in grunge. That was the groundbreaking year and
Nevermind was the groundbreaking album.
Mark Arm, the vocalist for the Seattle band Green River—and later Mudhoney—is generally credited as being the first to use the term grunge to describe this genre of music. Arm first used the term in 1981, when he wrote a letter under his given name Mark McLaughlin to the Seattle zine Desperate Times, criticizing his band Mr. Epp and the Calculations as "
Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!" Clark Humphrey, editor of Desperate Times, cites this as the earliest use of the term to refer to a Seattle band, and mentions that Bruce Pavitt of Sub Pop popularized the term as a musical label in 1987–88, using it on several occasions to describe Green River.
Arm said years later,
"Obviously, I didn't make grunge up. I got it from someone else. The term was already being thrown around in Australia in the mid-'80s to describe bands like King Snake Roost, The Scientists, Salamander Jim, and Beasts of Bourbon." Arm used grunge as a descriptive term rather than a genre term, but it eventually came to describe the punk/metal hybrid sound of the Seattle music scene.
Nirvana's
Nevermind was the first perfect grunge album.
Ten by Pearl Jam was a close second. In fact I could flip flop those albums at any time and still feel 100% conviction that either, or both, were the albums that changed my life in 1991. It was the song
Smells Like Teen Spirit that started it all and it seemed at any given time that song was being played on the radio or it's corresponding video was being shown on MTV. Kurt Cobain, whether he wanted to admit it or believe it had changed the landscape of music and along with it, style, attitude and a nation of personalities. It's hard to believe
Nevermind is nearly a quarter of a century old. The album still sounds fresh today but of course I am biased. What a year for music. What a year for grunge. What year for Seattle. What a year for Nirvana.
You can hear Nevermind in it's entirety beginning at 5PM CST during today's Friday Flashback presentation. Our Top Five Songs Of The Year
01.
Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
02.
Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam
03.
Lithium by Nirvana
04.
Even Flow by Pearl Jam
05.
Losing My Religion by R.E.M.
Our Top Five SIX Albums Of The Year
01.
Nevermind by Nirvana
02.
Ten by Pearl Jam
03.
Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers
04.
Out Of Time by R.E.M.
05.
Temple Of The Dog by Temple Of The Dog
06. The Sky Is Crying by Stevie Ray Vaughan
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Pearl Jam. Nirvana. Soundgarden. Kurt Cobain. Eddie Vedder. Chris
Cornell. Andy Wood. Mother Love Bone. Seattle. Flannel Shirts. Grandpa
Sweaters. These are just a few of the things that effectively ended the
reign of the glam metal groups that enjoyed massive success in the
1980s like Mötley Crüe, Poison, Warrant, Cinderella, and Ratt, whose
sales and critical viability had already begun to decline.
If that is all you remember from 1991 you're certainly not alone.
Oh yeah. R.E.M. exploded in 1991 so you probably remember that too.
And who could forget all those sappy love songs by hair metal bands?
Hard rock went a little soft in 1991, and people dug it, though nobody
will admit it today.
The music industry wanted to contain and protect their product, namely
their historical best sellers. Maybe there were too many dollars
invested in Madonna, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and U2. Quite
honestly, 1991 might have been the turning point where Bono went from
super cool to super pretentious. He had George Bush to fight, Bill
Clinton to support, Ireland's honor to defend, starving people to feed,
homeless people to shelter, sponsors to dine, Desmond Tutu to revere,
God to debate and a dozen or so modeling shoots. Thankfully he also
had the Edge to keep him in check. Somewhat. No wonder we clung to our
flannel shirts and grandpa sweaters.
Homogenization -- As I said, 1991 was the year that the music industry
attempted to homogenize itself, though admittedly this may be a gross
over-approximation. Over the decades rock music had always been the
soundtrack of alternative youth lifestyles. Still, a distinct separation
always existed between alternative and mainstream rock. In an exercise
of extreme shortsightedness the music industry tried to consolidate new
wave, alternative, pop and rock genres and their respective sub-genres
into what was termed general rock. The labels wanted to protect their
historically successful artists like The Rolling Stones, Bruce
Springsteen and Paul McCartney, and by marginalizing musical genres, the
hope was to keep the aging icons relevant when they really weren't
anymore.
The result of this shortsightedness may have been the launch of the
second counter-culture movement, as 1991 instead saw popular music
further separate. A veritable bounty of sub-genres, including lo-fi pop,
industrial, gothic, roots-rock, noise-rock, indie-pop, techno, ambient
and shoegazer, etc., multiplied and evolved in a fashion largely
independent of the others. Historically speaking, the attempted
miscibility of general rock as a whole gave birth to the indie label
movement. It makes sense: as the major labels tried to homogenize music,
music itself countered the trend and rebelled against the norm.
1991 offered breakthrough mainstream success for many crossover artists
that had previously found limited, short-range appeal. The massive
success of Garth Brooks in 1991 set the stage for the mid-1990s influx
of pop-oriented country musicians like Shania Twain, Faith Hill and Tim
McGraw. In addition, several soon-to-be pivotal bands formed or released
debuts, including the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Live,
Phish and the Spin Doctors. Metallica also released their most
commercially successful self-titled album, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers
crossed over to the mainstream with their critically and commercially
acclaimed
Blood Sugar Sex Magik. R.E.M. released their massive
commercial breakthrough album
Out of Time and debuts by Pearl Jam
(
Ten) and Nirvana (
Nevermind) were immediate hits.
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1991 in many ways also marked the birth of the provincial-independent
movement. The broadening use of the internet may have been the catalyst,
as local bands with local sounds could reach national and world-wide
audiences. Seattle, Washington and Athens, Georgia were the first
localized areas to bear the fruits of expanded independent musical
coverage. Seattle, led by the bands Pearl Jam and Nirvana, offered a
revivalist hard rock sound that was coined grunge music. Athens, led by
the band R.E.M. (and to some extent Widespread Panic), offered an
intermixture of college rock, pop and roots music that was coined, for
lack of a better term, alt-rock.
An involuntary catalyst for the commercial success of the various
sub-genres was Billboard Magazine. In 1991 the trade magazine and
industry leader finally changed the way it ranked singles and albums by
tallying actual sales at retail stores. Until then, Billboard relied on
the very subjective method of polling retail outlets and radio stations
to see what was hot rather than relying on verified retail sales
references. Suddenly, rock outsold pop, and minority genres such as
hip-hop and country entered the charts. The biggest winners were the
sub-genres and independent releases, thanks again in large part to the
growth of the internet, as word-of-mouth acclaim produced rapidly
increasing sales and ultimately Billboard rankings for the first time
for many artists and genres.
Ironically enough Sire Records, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Records,
may have also aided in the birth of the second generation of the
counter-culture. Sire Records founder Seymour Stein ostensibly seemed a
throwback to an earlier era when mini-moguls stamped their label's
releases with their own idiosyncratic tastes. But Sire's impossibly rich
canon instead argues Stein was driven more by a shrewd, far-ranging
artistic vision than mere personal musical obsessions. It was during
this movement that Sire became synonymous with groundbreaking music,
launching many of the most popular artists of that era.
Sire's uncompromising passion and willingness to take risks set a new
standard for artist development and creative vision in the record world.
Indeed, a look back at their stable of artists reveals the visionary
that was Seymour Stein. Star acts included Madonna, The Ramones, Depeche
Mode, Erasure, Primal Scream, Seal, Echo & The Bunnymen, The
Pretenders, The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Lou Reed, English Beat,
Ministry, The Talking Heads, and many, many more.
Similarly, Sub-Pop Records Records opened doors for their artists as
well. Sub Pop, started in the early 1980s by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan
Poneman, owed much of it's early success to the breakout of Nirvana, but
artists like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Afghan Whigs and Saint Etienne
helped garner the small indie label from Seattle national attention.
Pavitt and Poneman were serious about creating a brand for the label
that would rival classics like Motown or Blue Note. Many of their early
releases featured a uniform look: a black bar across the top, with the
band’s name in all capital letters, followed by the release name, all in
a sans-serif font. Many of those early records also featured the
iconic, action-packed rock photography of Charles Peterson. Tastemaker
Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth offered props to both Nirvana and
Mudhoney in interviews. Bands that once drew 100 hipsters to Seattle
clubs were now selling out the city’s Moore Theater. Meanwhile, Sub Pop
released records by heavy rockers Tad, the universally offensive
Dwarves, and feminist badasses L7, among scores of others on their way
to critical and mainstream success.
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On a sad note, 1991 also marked the death of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, who passed due to complications from AIDS.
Gone Too Soon:- Leo Fender (March 21)
- Odia Coates (May 19)
- David Ruffin (June 1)
- Stan Getz (June 6)
- Dottie West (September 4)
- Tennessee Ernie Ford (October 17)
- Freddie Mercury (November 24)
- Eric Carr (November 24)
I choose "Dare"![]()
Madonna's 1991 film documentary is in reference to the party game "Truth
or Dare?" but the original working title of the documentary was "Truth
or Dare: On the Road, Behind the Scenes and In Bed with Madonna".
The film documents Madonna's first major tour of the 1990s beginning in
April 1990 in Mukuhari, Japan and ending in August in Nice, France. The
tour hit 27 cities and sold out every show except in Italy where one
show was canceled apparently to objections over its content.
During the summer of 1990, Madonna hired director Alek Keshishian, to
film backstage and onstage footage of her Blond Ambition World Tour. The
entire documentary is filmed in Black-and-white, except for onstage
sequences which are in full color. There are appearances from
celebrities such as Al Pacino, Mandy Patinkin, Olivia Newton-John,
Antonio Banderas, Sandra Bernhard, Kevin Costner and Warren Beatty, whom
she was dating at the time.
We just like the gratuitous shots. Otherwise we never would have included this blurb.
Tastes Great. No, Less Filling.![]()
"This live rock show is brought to you without commercial interruption."
That cheesy line got the Black Crowes booted from ZZ Top's headlining
tour in 1991.
In an interview on Rockline, the Crowes' lead wailer Chris Robinson said
the band was bounced from its opening act slot by ZZ Top's management
firm, Lone Wolf Management Company and the group's corporate sponsor,
Miller Brewing Company.
The origin of the Crowes' dismissal on March 25 -- in the band's
hometown of Atlanta, no less -- seems to have taken root after Lone Wolf
repeatedly told Robinson to stop dropping cracks about their corporate
sponsorship.
Said Robinson,
"They weren't allowing us to be the Black Crowes. They
were trying to censor what I was trying to say." So they fired them.
Don't You Knock The Knack Mister!![]()
The Knack reunited in 1991 after a ten-year hiatus and released a
straight-to-discount-bin album called
Serious Fun. It seriously
flopped. Still, the band's website and subsequent press release claimed
that: "The Knack's fourth studio album is serious fun! Some of the best
music the band ever made."
Raise your hand if you own a copy of this album. Anybody? Hello?
Musician Magazine panned the album, stating that
"Anyone who believes
the musical legacy of the '70s is nothing to be ashamed of might want to
reconsider after hearing this one." Critic William Ruhlmann with
Allmusic commented that
"it's hard to imagine anyone other than die-hard
Knack fans expressing any interest in it."
Don't fret, Knackwhacks, the band had a serious third comeback attempt
after the 1994 movie
Reality Bites featured their hit single from
1979,
My Sharona. So they released another album in 1998 called
Zoom that suffered a fate similar to
Serious Fun. Not so much fun,
apparently.
It just sounded better than the Farrell Farewell Tour![]()
Conceived and created in 1991 by Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell
as a farewell tour for his band, Lollapalooza ran annually until 1997,
and was revived in 2003 when the band got back together. The inaugural
festival is where Farrell coined the term
"Alternative Nation." The
inaugural 1991 lineup was made up of artists from diversified genres,
such as post-punk's Siouxsie and the Banshees and rap and hip-hop icon
Ice-T, as well as industrial rockers Nine Inch Nails in addition to
Jane's Addiction.
The word Lollapalooza dates from a late 19th/early 20th century American
idiomatic phrase meaning
"an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or
event; an exceptional example or instance." In time the term also came
to refer to a large lollipop. Farrell, searching for a name for his
festival, liked the euphonious quality of the now antiquated term upon
hearing it in a Three Stooges short film. Paying homage to the term's
double meaning, a character in the festival's original logo holds one of
the lollipops.
Now there is a [insert name]-apalooza for just about everything. Some people just lack Farrell's creativity.
Go forth, for you are the future of rock & roll........![]()
The following bands were formed in 1991: Dave Matthews Band, Oasis,
Luscious Jackson, Three 6 Mafia, Portishead, The Chemical Brothers,
Temple Of The Dog, Counting Crows, Rage Against The Machine, Incubus,
The Spinanes, Sloan, Candlebox and Cake. On the flip side, 1991 also
gave us Vertical Horizon, Utah Saints, Brooks & Dunn, The Wiggles
and Frente!
To hear 200+ songs from the year 1991 please tune in to
Jivewired Radio all day long and thank you for reading!
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