30 Years, 30 Days: Day 13, 1992

I've realized upon looking at a couple of past entries that I've come off as pretty negative about the major music industry in general. I don't know if I need to backpedal and explain the more specific conundrum I have about music as a business, or to just let it roll. To put it simply, I despise the practices while loving the end result. Some of my favorite records are carefully fine-tuned to sound the way they do, with a lot of non-musician input to make the record a "hit". Would they sound as good if the band was just left to its own devices with an engineer in a studio? Probably not. It's something to think about: every bit of commercial music you've ever listened to has been carefully crafted to sound the way it does, sometime sby the artists and sometimes by execs who want whatever sound will make money immediately. And the 90s are an excellent place to explore that, as bands that never would have been signed in the past suddenly have access to a lot of label money, but the label wants results and return, hence why it's called the "music business" and not the "music partnership of good vibes and grooves, man".

But I digress. 1992 was the year that a lot of alternative music was really breaking into the public consciousness. Basically, if I heard it in 1992, it was already known and praised and on its way to being a hit (if it wasn't one already). I don't know anyone my age who can claim with a straight face that they were listening to Nirvana's Bleach the year it came out in 1989. It just seems highly unlikely.

However, 1992 marks a year where I can unequivocally state that some of the records I did hear right when they came out. Like this first one:

Barenaked Ladies' Gordon was something I definitely remember listening to in 1992. One of my camp counselors made a tape for me (Remember taping things for people?) and I loved it to pieces. They were both incredibly funny and incredibly good at the same time, and my predilection towards things like Weird Al definitely put me in the right place. Gordon was a culmination of a very talented live band finally getting to put down a real record. It helped that they were Canadian, and the Canadian government does subsidize a lot of popular music with grants (for no real gain other than to showcase great Canadian music). They still do it to this day.

Gordon was just a pop-rock masterpiece to me. All its songs were listened to intently and pored over, it was one of the first times I ever really did that with a record. While BNL definitely portrays a relaxed, humorous attitude, their songs are very deep and very poignant at times. "The Flag" and "What A Good Boy" are the types of songs that should have been written by a band much older than them, but there you go. Even in their lighter songs, like "Enid" (a song about having a relationship with an older girl while still a teenager), there's a remarkable amount of intelligence as it reaches the last lines about how you could grow up and be all these grown-up things for the older girl (get a job, pay the phone bill, cut the lawn, cut your hair, cut out your cholesterol), but Steven Page simply ends the verse with "I could do it all for you /But I don't want to". Aside from it being a great sort of "fuck-you" line which appealed to the pre-teen me, it's also a great line because it's about that selfish time of life where you could be all these great, grown-up, mature things, but you'd rather not. You'd rather just young and keep trying to dodge all the expectations.

A quick little mention needs to be made about the album Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos, her first full-length. To be honest, I haven't listened to it in almost ten years, and if I did, it probably wouldn't mean the same thing. But Tori Amos, like Kate Bush, was one of the first powerful female songwriters in my life. I still remember where I was the first time I heard "Silent All These Years": in the furnished basement of a family friend with my brothers, watching MTV (which was a rare luxury for us, as we did not grow up with cable). I don't know what it was about that song that struck me, it couldn't have been the lyrical content and themes. It would be years before I started to decipher those. It was her voice, soaring like Kate Bush's, and the piano arrangement and all these elements together to make me stop and think, "Wow. This is a great song. It needs nothing else than to simply be a great song. I don't have to know where it came from, and it doesn't have to scream for my attention through loud guitars and a rebellious attitude. This song is just simply gorgeous and I am for a moment moved by it." I probably didn't think it in those terms, but I think that was probably the core of it. I went out and got it as soon as I could, and it remained one of my well-kept secret records to the outside world. It was hard enough being a skinny kid who wasn't very good at sports and other guy things, being a Tori Amos fan would probably have just made things worse. In high school, however, I met girls who loved Tori, and quite a few guys who had also hidden their love of her music. It was a great common ground between us, and began to etch on my brain that it was okay to like what you like, as long as it speaks to you.

Another quick mention needs to be made to Phish's A Picture Of Nectar, which was the real jump start to my love affair with the band. My best friend James lent me his copy sometime in early high school to try and convert me (at the time, I associated Phish with the athletic guys who used to wail on me, mostly because of my big mouth and inability to run fast enough). It worked. This album has everything: bluegrass, jazz, 70s style heavy rock, Latin, everything. Not only did I probably not give it back, I subsequently lost it, forcing me to buy another copy before 18. I still don't recall if I bought him a new one. James, if I didn't, I am truly sorry to deprive you of one of our favorite records, and I'll gladly burn you my copy. Which is hardly a substitute, I

know.

The thing that struck me so heavily about this record was that i felt like I was seeing through the outer layer of Phish, from the party, Dead-like touring atmosphere with its drug culture, and into the actual musicianship of the band, which has sustained my love for them ever since. Let the jocks get drunk and stoned to this, I'm sure I thought. I'm going to enjoy it because it is truly great, and requires no additional anything to receive full enjoyment. It's been my philosophy on music and drugs ever since.

I've ended up flipping a coin to decided the last record for 1992. And heads says it's Broken, Nine Inch Nails' EP with big flaming "N" on the cover. This record literally blew my freakin' ears off, it was so loud and primal and powerful and full of heavy guitars and masculinity. It's only five tracks (not counting the two hidden ones), and it is like being in a fistfight, except you don't get hurt and you actually feel a hell of a lot better at the end.

I could write paragraphs on the song "Wish", not for its lyrics, which are kind of awful despite being some of Reznor's better (the man can sing, the man can write arrangements and manipulate synths and drums like no one else, but the man write lyrics like teenage girl poetry), but for the sheer brutality of its sound. I could write a good paragraph on each of the subsequent songs as well. But I won't. Unlike Pretty Hate Machine, I don't cringe with embarrassment when I hear Broken now, at nearly 30. It is such a kick to listen to, and to be pummeled in the ears with sound of it all. It still sounds freakin' great, despite having been made on technology from almost twenty years ago. My suggestion for any fan of heavy music who has never heard Broken is to do so immediately. Labeled as "industrial" music, it transcends any label you can throw at it and just simply rocks loud and hard. And it's short, which is good, because it's hard to sustain that level of "being-pumped" for much longer.

I've been noticing my blog traffic has increased immensely since starting this series, and that makes me happy, because while I am definitely writing this for me, I am also writing it for others who lived through the music I lived through. Feel free to share your own stories and anecdotes about music that still means a great deal to you. Art can be a bonding point between people, and I'd love to hear from others about growing up in the 90s and music and life and all things in general.

Incidentally, a few records got left out here, most importantly REM's Automatic For The People, The Gin Blossom's New Miserable Experience, They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18 (their first record with a full band), and a special shout-out to Dr. Dre's The Chronic, which every white kid growing up in the 'burbs in the early 90s heard unless they had their ears stuffed full of some kind of dense material. And even still, the bass probably rattle through and you felt it. This was the record that showed the rest of the country that rap music was for everyone young, regardless of race, and it's a grand and wonderful place we live in after it.

-Dan