TheThorne
Member
*Hillside, slip and slide, feel the pain, it's no surprise!*
Posts: 27,592
|
Post by TheThorne on Nov 1, 2012 0:06:32 GMT 1
Ra we agreed on two in a row and Pixies but different song 'where is my mind' is overrated IMO but Vas brilliant choice with 'Voodoo Ray'
|
|
|
Post by raliverpool on Nov 1, 2012 18:55:55 GMT 1
Vas, some fantastic selections but considering some of your earlier selections you seem to have gone down the UK Post Punk Faber 45s route and narrowed your musical genre scope a bit too much in favour of Indie/Alternative than capturing how it was so well in your earlier selections. It's partly because the quantum leaps in music have already largely been made. Think of evolution; in the space of 100 million years life went from bacterial to sponges, jellyfish, insects, arthropods, vertebrates, molluscs and plants. In the 500m years since it's basically variations on those models. No new quantum leap has really emerged. Plus if it were a simple mainstream list it would not represent music, but more the hype. There's no real difference between Olivia Newton-John and Kylie Minogue, or Lily Allen and Jessie J. Before 1983 you could have almost anything succeed; since then the categories have been extremely limited. So it's only the alternative that represents the broader spectrum of what music really can be... In essence you've gone down the Paul Gambaccini "popular music ever decreasing returns" / Brian Eno "like climbing Mount Everest" analogy I.E. It is harder to do something new and unique because as time goes by it is more likely to have been done before as most of the best combinations of notes, chord sequences and melodies have already been used.
|
|
|
Post by raliverpool on Nov 1, 2012 19:16:32 GMT 1
Ra we agreed on two in a row and Pixies but different song 'where is my mind' is overrated IMO but Vas brilliant choice with 'Voodoo Ray' I much prefer 1989's Monkey Gone To Heaven or Debaser (although that was not a single release until long after their split so is ineligible) from Doolittle, but taking into account the rules set by Vas means you have to look at what else was released in a given year, and quite frankly 1988 is a rubbish year for seminal songs compared to some of the stellar tracks released in 1989 (without giving away what track I have selected but from what I considered its two of in alphabetical order .... Back To Life; Can't Be Sure; Chime; Fight the Power; Fool's Gold; Hey Ladies; Like A Prayer*; Me Myself & I; Pacific State; Voodoo Ray+). * Obviously not as I've used said act in a previous year. + I had Voodoo Ray categorised as a 1989 not a 1988 release.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 1, 2012 20:32:34 GMT 1
"Voodoo Ray" was originally out in 1988 but wasn't a hit. But it did come out then. Plus, as you say, 1989 had one heck of a lot of seminal music come out, which means a lot of seminal music misses out... Back To Life; Can't Be Sure; Chime; Fight the Power; Fool's Gold; Hey Ladies; Like A Prayer*; Me Myself & I; Pacific State; ...but I've gone for one of these at least... 1989De La Soul - Me Myself And IBecause it's too easy to overlook, in the east/west coast rap wars, that there were still some who did not go for the whole buffalo stance look. As indeed Trugoy, Posdnuos and Mase parody in the above video, for a song that was deliberately written as an introduction; when recording 3 Feet High And Rising, the Tommy Boy label suggested that their sound might go over people's heads, so they should explain what they were doing. MM&I was knocked off in double-quick time and became an unexpected success. Their more laid-back stance was emblematic of the Native Tongues movement, which mixed together some of the less mainstream elements with hip-hop; jazz in particular, but also funk, which was ironic as George Clinton had thought that rap would never take off until he realized the commercial possibilities (and indeed Funkadelic are sampled on MM&I), and the Afrobeat of the likes of Afrika Bambaata, looking to a more rootsy origin for samples and approach, rather than the Americana of Death Row and Def Jam. Plus taking an even more eclectic approach when the right sound came along; there cannot be many hip-hop acts who have sampled The Turtles, let alone a French language tape. In a way the late eighties was a good time for this to kick off; rap had just begun to settle into a post-punk period, where instead of looking back to the original source acts were just looking to their newest heroes for inspiration. Like the C86 movement, there was the chance to move against the new normal, taking pride in being consciously anti-style; which meant that being without a style became a sort of style. DLS were amongst the first to break through, followed quickly by A Tribe Called Quest, whose Q-Tip has a brief cameo on this track, and Queen Latifah. In a sense they were the rap acts that non-rap fans listened to. As with so many movements, it did not last that long, DLS themselves moving to a harder, more cynical edge to try to show that they were not just anti-image, but it left its traces further down, with many later hip-hop artists taking their cues from them. The most successful surely being Black Eyed Peas. But also the likes of Arrested Development, and even perhaps a smidge in Beck and Rizzle Kicks? Besides which, they showed that rap need not all be about gangsta culture and violence, that there was a more interesting message and that a Parental Advisory sticker was not required sleevewear to ensure success. They even ended up with a Grammy for their work on "Feel Good Inc". Not a bad legacy. In sum: a different beat
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 2, 2012 20:29:21 GMT 1
The Stone Roses - She Bangs The DrumsMadchester Rave On. Happy Mondays. Destroy the heart, she said, it'll make you wanna smash your head. Bruno Brookes pronouncing "Inspiral" in a bizarre manner. There She Goes. Spike Island. Cool as f*** t-shirts. Neds and New FADs. England, my country, the home of the free, inclement weather. Paint attacks. Velouria, my Velouria, oh velveteen. And Velveteen. Snuffsaidbutgorblimeyguvstoneme. Hallelujah. Blue Moon Revisited. Spacemen 3. I see you stand in the violent rain with a hollow heart. It's like that mean ol' Texas sun, it makes me dizzy dizzy dizzy in my head. And now Ari's walked away with Johnny's wife. Field Mice. Sit down next to me. But she's got Dickie Davies eyes. When I'm in the mercy seat I smile. Buzz buzz, buzz buzz in the eardrum. Husband don't know what he's done, kids don't know what's wrong with mum. It was quite the year. And who had the biggest-selling single? A fake. The second-biggest? Another fake. As far as the British record-buying public goes, this 1989 single sums them up. In sum: never underestimate the stupidity of the British public
|
|
TheThorne
Member
*Hillside, slip and slide, feel the pain, it's no surprise!*
Posts: 27,592
|
Post by TheThorne on Nov 3, 2012 9:43:10 GMT 1
brilliant song brilliant year 1989 was the best year of my life no joke
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 3, 2012 12:26:53 GMT 1
Hmmmm....any My Bloody Valentine coming up? I wonder... Yep. 1990My Bloody Valentine - SoonThe Jesus & Mary Chain's fuzznoise brought in a new version of the Velvets' sound; The Shop Assistants and The House Of Love pointed the way, and in the late eighties it became a genre in its own right. One without a name, for quite a while, and the various industry magazines tried to find their own. The Scene That Celebrates Itself, pointing to its introspection, was one lengthy neologism; New Wave Of New Wave another. In the end, it has come down to posterity as a description of the acts on stage. Mistakenly believed by many to be a nod to a minimal stage presence, with no crowd interaction, it is really because the guitarists in the group would be looking down at their FX pedals all the time to generate the feedback required. Shoegazing. A number of bands came into it via the C86 scene - keep the melody and ramp up the guitar wall. There was always a pop sensibility beneath everything (perhaps best heard in bands like Lush, Curve and The Dylans, the former of whom blatantly went pop when shoegazing faded away). The best of the many bands at managing this balance of aural assault and tuneliness was Slowdive, who later turned the guitars back down and became the Mojave 3, but others such as Ride, Chapterhouse, Swervedriver, Verve (no "the" at the time) and Catherine Wheel had greater or lesser levels of success. But the ultimate shoegazing band was My Bloody Valentine. They took everything to eleven. They were uber-C86 at first, very poppy, but gradually their main man Kevin Shields withdrew almost entirely from the usual pop movement. Cutting down on live performance to get the studio sound just right, the underlying tune was buried deeper, deeper and deeper with every session. "Soon" was one of a number of indie singles that (suspiciously?) peaked just outside the top 40, thus preventing extra airplay (House Of Love managed to peak at 41 twice); so to make sure they released an EP the following year, as an indication of their work in progress for the masterpiece album Loveless. And the lead track - " To Here Knows When" - must be the absolute most extreme song ever to reach the top 30. It is a supreme artistic achievement, an Yves Klein of a song, the more you listen to the overwhelming ocean of sound the more you somehow distinguish an echo of a shape. And I would have included that one had it not been for others in 1991 crowding for attention. The rise of grunge and the recrudescence of pop - including that from shoegazish bands like Blur - did for shoegazing, in a three-minute culture the need for instant gratification would not be met by challenging music that demanded full attention; ironically one of the major nail-drivers was Oasis, the band whose existence was funded thanks to the success of Creation's shoegazers. However it would never go away entirely, and, indeed, these days, is back. In sum: white noise, white heat
|
|
|
Post by greendemon on Nov 3, 2012 13:17:25 GMT 1
awesome - i was hoping for some MBV.
as i was born in '86, we're now getting to years that i just about remember. i grew up listening to the stone roses, but didn't get into MBV until my teens.
my favourite song from '89 is probably 'there she goes'.
|
|
TheThorne
Member
*Hillside, slip and slide, feel the pain, it's no surprise!*
Posts: 27,592
|
Post by TheThorne on Nov 3, 2012 19:52:35 GMT 1
another amazing song also credit for the Andy Weatherall's Remix one of the best indie dance songs ever. I love both versions just as much. Swervedriver were very nearly my HIt7 song but just couldn't decide which one to choose.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 4, 2012 12:20:37 GMT 1
1991
The KLF - 3am Eternal
Sometimes pop inspiration can come from unlikely places. Scouse teen in NHS specs. Truck driver from Tupelo. Or, in the case of the Kopyright Liberation Front, a textbook. Written by an AOR man and a chap whose band had once reached number 58.
OK, it was at least their own textbook. How To Have A Number One Hit The Easy Way, aka The Manual. A dissection of the music business - why if you get a £100k advance you won't actually see a penny of it and so on - but also giving a clue how to have a big hit. Namely take an old tune and mess around with it a bit. Austrian turntablers Edelweiss took it literally and had a massive Eurohit (and later of course The Pipettes would form as a direct result). So Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, who had reinvented themselves as trance samplers, followed in turn; they mashed up the Dr Who theme with a smidge of Sweet and Glitter and under the name The Timelords topped the chart.
That was the start of their meteoric run of success. They had previously recorded as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, creating their own Illuminati-based mythology as a cod-philosophical underpinning of their technobeats and parodies. And ended up being sued every which way since Christmas for not getting said samples cleared. Hence their wish to liberate copyright...
Whatever, the funds from the success of "Doctorin' The Tardis" enabled them to plunder the world of Dada even more; The White Room, a putative road movie, ended up as an album, and they decided to take house music onto a larger scale. Throwing in pop and a bit of U2 (as opposed to "A Bit Of U2"), they created the epic sound of stadium house; an entire underground globe of self-inconsistent mythos, wordplay, swagger and bloody great music.
The whole thing was truly mental. Concepts such as Trancentral and getting Tammy Wynette to sing about ice cream vans. Then they turned up at the Brit Awards with Extreme Noise Terror and bunged a dead sheep into the audience, announcing their exit from the music business. They wound it up and took the million quid profit they'd made to Jura and burnt it. After doubling the Turner Prize with some of the excess. This was not pop music; this was a parodial subversion.
And when they wound it up they meant it. Deleting the back catalogue and only coming together again temporarily under the name 2K. But it was everything in one go. The live fast die young ethos of punk; the contempt for material gain of the true artist. The subversion of the music industry, laying bare just how vapid the mainstream was. It is no coincidence that 1991 saw the rise of the blandest, most anodyne, most anonymous, most tuneless, most unintelligent, and most crammed-down-the-f***ing-throat-to-make-sure-they-succeded act to date in Take That; about as challenging as the Black Knight after his limbs had been chopped off, an act whose success with their own songs, despite a million quid promotional push and constant presence on morning and kids' TV, had been so non-existent that their label decided to give them a bloody Manilow record to cover. Yes, Barry Manilow. Once upon a time an act trying to push that would have been literally shredded by a disgusted audience; in 1991 however it was welcomed...
It is a dreadful shame The KLF finished it up. It was a time when they were needed more than ever. Instead the Reign of TTerror continued unabated for a few years - and then, appallingly and for no evident reason other than a few middle-aged media producers fancied meeting their childhood heartthrobs, came back. I suppose though a continuing KLF was a bit like the Nobel Peace Prize going to Kissinger. What was the point of satire any more? The real world had vanished up its own fundament.
In sum: pop did eat itself
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 7, 2012 9:00:27 GMT 1
(NSFW)
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
The power trio redivivus. I couldn't sneak in The Pixies, there was too much other stuff going on, but they could be represented thematically by one of the bands they influenced the most.
As you will have seen above Seattle was a hotbed of alt-rock in the United States, and the seeds sown by the garage bands were beginning to re-flourish. It needed a little kick to get into the mainstream market, and the pressure was gradually building; Husker Du in the early eighties, for example, laid some groundwork, Sonic Youth were perennially influential and then The Pixies came along with their quiet THEN LOUD approach.
The one that really sprung through was Nirvana. Seattle's scene was full of bands like Soundgarden and Mudhoney, with a grinding approach to rock - sort of indie meets metal - that was termed grunge, the name redolent of a down-and-dirty lack of sophistication, and Nirvana themselves had had a couple of indie hits as the eighties closed. Then their main man Kurt Cobain decided he wanted a hit single. He therefore created a sort of grungey pop chorus and the band jammed it around a bit before they came up with something with crossover appeal; one charismatic video later and not only did grunge have a top ten, it launched the genre into the stratosphere, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam all having chart-topping albums.
The brief period of ascendancy was killed off with Cobain's suicide, as those that had made it morphed their sound into something with more depth and others just faded away, but unfortunately the mainstream labels had a hold of grunge and tried to make the look a sort of culture. Anyone who saw the film Reality Bites will know just how pathetic that was, and musically it became even worse, as grunge was subsumed into the vapid, soulless, marketing pitch at bored teenagers that was nu-metal - a form of music with, as far as I can see, fewer than zero redeeming qualities.
In sum: beaten generation
|
|
TheThorne
Member
*Hillside, slip and slide, feel the pain, it's no surprise!*
Posts: 27,592
|
Post by TheThorne on Nov 7, 2012 9:10:17 GMT 1
I knew it would be Nirvana didn't want to say unless I jinxed it
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 8, 2012 21:20:22 GMT 1
1992
Guns N'Roses - November Rain
Grunge ended up being a sort of enabler, bringing people back to metal as acts like Metallica and Def Leppard ended up with a career bump.
But metal had never been away, it had always been around, in multifarious forms. There was the NWOBHM in the early eighties that was frighteningly close to Spinal Tapness (indeed the troupe behind ST shadowed Saxon for inspiration), the traditional hard rock from the offspring of Deep Purple, like Rainbow or Dio, and the poodle-perm rock in the eighties when the Americans suddenly discovered glam - Quiet Riot's album Metal Health was very Slade in content - and acts like Poison and Cinderella had hits, plus the aforementioned DL and Whitesnake getting a resurgence of success Stateside.
Never really happened in Britain, the domestic scene splitting into all sorts; death, black and doom metal enjoying their own niches, also popular on the Continent, especially the, er, more Nordic areas, where it ended up with mass murders and suicides amongst various acts.
But the biggest of all the metallish bands was Guns N'Roses, who were a sort of halfway house between rock and metal, and were so mainstream that Slash guitarred for Michael Jackson. So it makes sense to throw this in as a representative of all that; the longest-ever US top ten hit, and perhaps their creative acme just before their implosion. Massively overblown and pompous, it nevertheless showed their instrumental virtuosity and Axl's talent as a frontman. And it shifted a lot of t-shirts.
In sum: always with us
|
|
TheThorne
Member
*Hillside, slip and slide, feel the pain, it's no surprise!*
Posts: 27,592
|
Post by TheThorne on Nov 9, 2012 14:29:41 GMT 1
Oh dear 'November Rain' the start of the end IMO I know you had to pick a less busy year but really only 'Appetite For Destruction' counts its like rating a track of 'Shoulder of Giants' rather than picking something of 'Definetly Maybe' it's just wrong but I understand your reasons
|
|
TheThorne
Member
*Hillside, slip and slide, feel the pain, it's no surprise!*
Posts: 27,592
|
Post by TheThorne on Nov 9, 2012 14:33:59 GMT 1
Oh as we enter the Brit pop years we need to start with the first proper Brit Pop band 1993 is all about one band and they are called Suede !!! pick your own song!!!
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 9, 2012 19:29:12 GMT 1
Oh as we enter the Brit pop years we need to start with the first proper Brit Pop band 1993 is all about one band and they are called Suede !!! pick your own song!!! 'Ode up, we haven't finished 1992 yet. The Future Sound Of London - Papua New GuineaOr, as TOTP once had it, "The Future Sound Of London" by Papua New Guinea. Which wouldn't actually be a bad band name. Music evolution seemed to hit warp speed at times. Whereas beat groups lasted a number of years, and glam half a decade, acid and rave basically lasted a summer and a bit before becoming staid and formulaic, hits by numbers, and the more interesting acts morphing it into different forms. One of which erased all the obvious hints at drug references and "aren't we naughty" culture, and instead steeped itself in the Eno ambient ancestry, to create a different dance experience. FSOL had a very direct route into it. Brian Dougans recorded under the name Humanoid, and was approached by film directors to produce a soundtrack to a video they had created; the result was a chart hit, albeit in a confusing fashion, as I have seen it credited as "Stakker" by Humanoid, "Humanoid" by Stakker, "Stakker Humanoid" by Stakker and "Stakker Humanoid" by Humanoid. Looking at the label this last one is the most correct. One of the collaborators on the project was Gaz Cobain and once everything shook out he remained working with Dougans. Their first successful output was the album Accelerator, which featured "Papua New Guinea", based heavily on a tribal, enhanced bassline taken from from Meat Beat Manifesto, which gave it its dance entry and helped to introduce the more ambient sound into the genre. This became so accepted that follow-up album Lifeforms - thanks in part to guest vocals from Elisabeth Fraser - made the top ten. It propelled ambient trance into the mainstream, with acts like Deep Forest taking advantage as well as any number of New Age albums, plus readying the market for success by more renowned musicians like Orbital, Underworld, Aphex Twin, Autechre and Air. Another sound that was accelerated (heh) by this single was the drum and bass scene; that incessant bassline was almost as memorable as the vocals (taken from Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance), and some took that as their main influence and stripped dance music down to its most naked rhythmic form. In sum: ambient temperature
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 10, 2012 10:32:42 GMT 1
1993One Dove - White LoveAfter the high, the comedown. As the rave peaks subsided and ambient took over, the music industry needed some chillwave. Step forward a new set of producers. Andy Weatherall, who had turned Primal Scream from tweepop into samples and dub before they went all Stones. Stephen Hague, who had worked with synthpop groups and shoegazers before working with Dubstar and merging all the influences together. And Billy Wainwright, aka William Orbit, just making a name for himself as a remixer. All three are to the fore on One Dove's only album. It's a shame that politics got in the way - their Boy's Own label being taken over and them getting lost in the shuffle, Morning Dove White being released a year after it should have been - as One Dove were in some ways the perfect crossover group; as the ravers wanted to have some pop sensibilities, and the pop fans wanted to feel a bit more edgy, they could have both been satisfied by a harmless form of OD. A number of other acts took on the mix of ambient and pop, the slowed-down dub dancebeats, almost trip-hop and had a modicum of success; think later Massive Attack, Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, Olive, Royksopp, Moloko, even Moby and Portishead. The influence still continues even to this day (think of Panda Bear's albums). The success of his remixes within this field created an even bigger breakthrough for Orbit as he was able to make Madonna seem almost relevant and creating an outright classic out of such unpromising material as All Saints. Although the crowning glory of MDW was " Why Don't You Take Me", with scratchy black-and-white video which youtube does not have, and which, being a Weatherall production, was more bass than ambient. This single then was probably a few years before its time, but then again the chillwave might never have broken without its pioneers. In sum: not so moronic orbit
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,465
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 11, 2012 11:00:18 GMT 1
OK, I'm going to get pelters for this, but so be it... Elastica - StutterSo when did Britpop start? John Harris in "The Last Party" ties it down to early 1992, when two iconic groups, Suede and Blur, released singles that could be considered part of the nascent movement. And I did consider very carefully whether Suede's "Animal Nitrate" should be a representative for 1993, but... The problem is that Britpop, as a term of music, is meaningless. What is it? Pop that is British? In that case it has been around since the sixties. And has never gone away, although Cowell has done his best to genocide the product and bury it so deep under a welter of publicity for his freak show to the cretinous masses that a palaeontologist would throw up their hands in horror. No, I don't think it started in 1992, or even 1993; I think it is really yet to come, for reasons which will become apparent in due course. Especially when considering where Suede and Blur were at at the time. Blur were a failed shoegaze outfit. I remember hearing "There's No Other Way" at the time and dismissing them as fake bandwagon jumpers. Just some major's idea of what was happening on the independent scene. And I am guessing when/if Damon writes an autobiog he will agree. Their heart didn't seem to be in it. They were not considered a groundbreaking act at the time; they were thrown on the pile with Northside and Flowered Up. Suede, however, were a different fish of kettles. Rough Trade Records had just gone bump. That was a disaster for the independent scene; the biggest label had gone, releasing a flood of acts who had nowhere to go. And other indies followed suit. Remember The Smiths were long gone, Morrissey was rapidly vanishing up his own fundament, The Wedding Present were sabotaging their own career and so on and so forth. The indie scene needed a hero. This is where Suede came in. The music media's hype was astonishing. All focussed around Brett Anderson and his androgynous appearance and views; "I'm a bisexual who's never had a homosexual experience" and turning up in the NME wearing a bodypaint shirt. When the debut album came out it was one of the fastest-selling ever. "Stay Together" was hailed as a classic to go alongside Bo Rhap or "Stairway To Heaven" (although it was a bit of a Second Coming anticlimax). But even then they were signed up to a Sony imprint. Someone had to pay for all the hype. And, from a Britpop perspective, Suede ploughed their own furrow. Their sound was far less straightforward than pop, textured and tortured, more of the T Rex style glam to them than the scuffed glamour that attached itself to Britpop. Whereas Britpop was blokey, Suede were designedly ambiguous, shimmering around the margins of everything. Which is why I did not include Suede for 1993. Or Blur. I went for a half-way house. Justine Frischmann, who left Anderson for Albarn. And it is rumoured Damon had a hand in the Elastica output. It's easy to forget that Elastica's self-titled debut was an even faster seller than Suede's, as Elastica were more identified with the Britpop burnout; nevertheless this was an excoriation of a single, jaggedly ripping across the airwaves with its buzzsaw and the stark Buzzcocksesque video a naked counterpoint to the ever-exasperating budgets of those like Jackson whose careers were relying on visual rather than audio output. Elastica were part of the New Wave of New Wave, influenced by the aforementioned Buzzcocks and the other late seventies post-punkers like Gang Of Four and Swell Maps, an angry British reaction to the vapidity of later grunge (Stone Temple Pilots anyone? Thought not), but pointing the way towards the melodic retrospectivism that had never gone away but would soon roar back into fashion... In sum: back to life
|
|
TheThorne
Member
*Hillside, slip and slide, feel the pain, it's no surprise!*
Posts: 27,592
|
Post by TheThorne on Nov 11, 2012 17:52:36 GMT 1
Damon was more involved in Elastica than he is ever legally allowed to say allegedly writing most of the best songs.Glad you gave Suede a bit of a write up but there would have been no Elastica without Blur or Suede and they only ever had one good album with 3 amazing singles. I didnt like the term Brit Pop. Dont know about Blur being shoegaze they were as you said more of a Madchester cashin to begin with but they were my favourite band of the 90s including the early singles like 'Shes So High' . 'Theres No Other Way' is one of the best pop songs ever written imo. But yeh for a short time Elastica were brilliant.
|
|
|
Post by Earl Purple on Nov 11, 2012 18:15:57 GMT 1
November Rain wasn't the start of Guns N Roses being a soft-rock band but at the time they seemed to have lost their edge. I'm not sure recording two Use Your Illusion albums was that great an idea.
Sweet Child Of Mine, for me, is one of the greatest rock tracks ever (possibly for me personally the greatest ever). Up there with the classic riffs like Deep Purple made.
More of a worry than Blackbox and Jive Bunny having the biggest selling singles of 1989 is the fact that Jason Donovan had the biggest selling album with "Ten Good Reasons" with Simply Red and Phil Collins (who would overtake in early 1990) just behind.
From my perspective, 1989 saw the release of The Wedding Present's album "Bizarro", their best in my opinion, which contained the singles "Kennedy" and "Brassneck", and the epic "Take Me".
1989 also saw the release of Jim Steinman's album "Original Sin" credited to Pandora's Box, essentially just a collaboration of session musicians put together, which is considered by many to be a classic album even though it didn't sell well. Many of the songs on it were subsequently recorded by others, most notably "It's All Coming Back To Me Now".
Madchester rave-on really only saw the tail-end of 1989, with the Wonder Stuff among the key artists charting around this time. This was a forerunner of Britpop. In fact Blur preceded Brit-pop with a debut single not unlike what we'd heard the year before, and Noel Gallagher was a roadie for Inspiral Carpets.
|
|