1994 was the year Green Day broke through with Dookie. It was kinda popular.
The Smashing Pumpkins, having released Siamese Dream in 1993 released Pisces Iscariot as a follow-up - a collection of stuff that they'd done post-Gish that didn't make the next album. I like it more than Siamese Dream, actually, as I think the Pumpkins are sometimes at their best when they're not taking themselves so damn seriously and allow themselves to play a bit (and cover Stevie Nicks).
Speaking of acid, how about the Lords of Acid? I got their best album, Voodoo-U, when I was 17 and highly susceptible to Coop's drawings of naked, lesbian devils on the cover, plus Ruth McArdle singing about sex, rough sex, sex with young boys, smoking weed while having sex and more. I have several pet electronica/dance bands and they're all really sleazy. Partially, I think this is because could you take an electronica group with lyrics about, say, politics seriously in any way? And if you're going to sing about something over grinding technotronic beats you might as well go the whole way and sing about sex. That is, for better or worse (17-year-old Dave says better), all Lords of Acid sing about. In high school this is pretty much what I imagined a Lords of Acid concert would be like:
The Toadies have released three albums over two decades and the two I have are amazing. Most folks only know them because of "Possum Kingdom," but their 1994 album Rubberneck is great from start to finish. It doesn't deserve its place in the bargain bins. I can't embed any videos here thanks to Universal Music Group, but if you watch any videos I'm posting watch this one.
Ween put out their first album that sounded like an album in '94 with Chocolate and Cheese, cementing their title as They Might Be Giants for stoners.
Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon got together in '94 to release an album that hasn't really found a place in history like most of the other albums I'm mentioning (except for Compulsion, which no one cares about but me). Their album Prairie Home Invasion is fucking amazing, though, fusing Jello's punk fire with Mojo's folk/country sensibility. I gave a copy to my dad thinking he'd like it. He didn't. It opens with the 9-minute-plus "Buy My Snake Oil" and goes on to cover protest songs by Pete Seeger and more.
Like Green Day, Nine Inch Nails released the seminal album they can never escape from in 1994, too, with The Downward Spiral. Mostly known for "Closer" and, much later, for "Hurt" it's hard for me to think about anything bad about this album. Pretty Hate Machine and The Fragile are great, but they're not as polished or coherent as this bad boy. (Let's not talk about With Teeth or Year Zero, at all...) Plus it was recorded in the house that Sharon Tate was murdered in by the Manson family! Speaking of which...
Trent Reznor also produced the debut album, Portrait of an American Family, by a young, scrawny prodigee named Marilyn Manson and his band the Spooky Kids in '94. Regardless of Manson's rise and co-option of the national media to become a spooky boogie man followed by his transformation to weird to irrelevant to boring, I will never stop defending this album. Like the Pumpkins, Manson is great when he's not taking himself seriously - something you never really see post-Portrait. I miss the nerdy goon pushing buttons by imitating Willy Wonka and writing songs about killer cars and lovable cyclops. Plus his videos had kittens and roller rinks in them! Amazing.
For the grown-ups, Tom Petty released Wildflowers. What can I say about this album? It's flawless.
Young up-and-comer Jeff Buckley also released his only proper album, Grace, before tragically dying. Man oh man, what could have come after this? You know the album's good because it alone carries Jeff Buckley's reputation of amazing songsmith.
And lastly, Tori Amos released my favorite of her albums, Under the Pink, featuring songs about masturbation, atheism and more. Oh, and a song about wanting to kill a waitress - perhaps a response to Live's bizarre song pleading for a friend to leave a tip? I like to think so.
Did you know this song's about female circumcision? Now you do.
Here's my final list of why I think 1994 was fucking awesome. I hope I changed someone's mind or affirmed someone's opinion. I know that in the act of listing these I proved to myself why I love the mid-'90s, which was pretty nice, and that's the only thing that matters, right?
Jar of Flies - Alice in Chains
Mellow Gold/One Foot in the Grave/Stereopathetic Soul Manure - Beck
Parklife - Blur
Anarchy - Chumbawamba
Comforter - Compulsion
Dookie - Green Day
Live Through This - Hole
Grace - Jeff Buckley
Prairie Home Invasion - Jello Biafra/Mojo Nixon
Orange - Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Throwing Copper - Live
Voodoo-U - Lords of Acid
Portrait of an American Family - Marilyn Manson
The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails
Ungplugged in NY - Nirvana
Vitalogy - Pearl Jam
Pisces Iscariot - the Smashing Pumpkins
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star - Sonic Youth
Ruby Vroom - Soul Coughing
Superunknown - Soundgarden
Purple - Stone Temple Pilots
John Henry - They Might Be Giants
Rubberneck - Toadies
Wildflowers - Tom Petty
Under the Pink - Tori Amos
Chocolate and Cheese - Ween
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4 comments:
If you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin'
Also I've been listening to Rhinoceros like 3 times a day for a week now.
Chocolate and Cheese is one of the few Ween albums I can listen to from beginning to end... Yeah, your argument for 1994 is a good one.
Rhinoceros is bomb!
Thanks Andrew, I think so.
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