A bunch of albums turning 30 makes me feel both old and thankful
Today, September 24 is a monumental day in music. It's the release date of 4 absolutely massive albums: "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik" by the Chili Peppers, "Badmotorfinger" by Soundgarden, "The Low End Theory" by A Tribe Called Quest and "Nevermind" by Nirvana. Must've been one helluva day at Strawberries!
As a grizzled vet of the latter days at Strawberries, I can say that 9/24/91 must've been fun. Probably not as fun as when Bronson Arroyo released his album of 90's cover songs, but still.
Anyways, 1991 as a whole was an industry changing year for music. There are literally dozens of outstanding albums that came out throughout the year:
- "Out Of Time" - R.E.M.
- "Gish" - Smashing Pumpkins
- "Use Your Illusion I & II" - Guns N' Roses
- "Waking Up The Neighbors" - Bryan Adams...don't laugh. The Robin Hood song was #1 for 7 weeks!
- "Achtung Baby" - U2
- "Temple of the Dog" - Temple of the Dog
- "Slave to the Grind" - Skid Row
- "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" - Van Halen
- "Into the Great Wide Open" - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
- "Metallica" - Metallica
- "Fear" - Toad the Wet Sprocket
- "Dangerous" - Michael Jackson
- "Ten" - Pearl Jam
- "No More Tears" - Ozzy Osborne
- "Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black" - Public Enemy
- "2Pacalypse Now" - 2Pac
I've left A LOT of albums off this list simply because this would just turn into...well, a giant list. The point I'm getting at here is the '91 was awesome. Young Dave was wrapping up Jr. High School and starting his freshman year at the Regional and while I could just offer something like "Yeah, hey, I feel kind of old now." but I think I can do better.
Every single human on Earth has some sort of connection to music. Every single human that probably ever been on Earth has some sort of connection to music. I don't mean to make this some sort of really deep musical shit, but as a 13 year old in 1991, all of this shit was HUGE for me! Sure, it's a rock slanted list, but the Apocalypse '91 was HUGE, TCQs album was probably my first exposure to anything sort of jazzy and 2Pac's album ended up getting played quite bit in high school. Of course the MJ album had about 37 smash singles over the 3 years after.
Thinking about my old Sony Discman that I wore out to death from listening to all of these while on the bus to school or doing my paper route. Man, that thing was awesome. Sure, it skipped like hell on occasion, but if you held it just right it was smooth sailed all the time.
So many of these albums played a small part in the growth of Young Dave and 30 years later I still listen to all of them. Except for Bryan Adams. I grew so sick of that fucking song.
The video for "Right Now" is still fucking awesome.
Back in '91 on the night before their album was released, Nirvana played a show for WFNX at Axis. For the uninitiated, Axis was the smaller, shittier neighbor to Avalon on Lansdowne St. I was never fond of Axis. Always got a weird vibe in there, but maybe that was just me. Having said that it wish it were still there as opposed to House of Blues. HOB isn't a terrible place, but it's very sterile and also gives me a bad vibe. I'm beginning to think that it's entirely a "me" thing. Oh well, moving on.
They played at Axis that night and this is 17 minutes of the show. I'd never seen it before earlier this week and it's pretty cool.
The 90's were the absolute best and these albums were part of the foundation of the entire decade. Nostalgia, man. Yeah.