The '90s were a strange, interesting, and fun time for music. I went from being a sixth grader when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 1990 to a senior in college ten years later, so I quite literally grew up in the '90s. When the decade started, hair bands were kings, Madonna was the queen, and gangsta rap was beginning the hip hop revolution. Of course, by the end of 1991, the entire musical world was turned on its head by grunge. Alternative rock became the mainstream, while hair bands sadly fell by the wayside, and by the end of the decade, somehow we were listening to rap metal and boy bands. In the middle, we had ska, groove metal, Britpop, the swing revival, alterna-pop, riot grrrl, house, acoustic pop, techno, pop punk, post-grunge, jam bands, nu metal, whatever Ween was, and so much more. In many ways was a fantastic decade to be alive, as there was economic prosperity, no more Cold War, and generally a feeling of more acceptance and less hate. Perhaps it was a reaction to the superficiality and materiality of the '80s, but everything in the '90s just seemed to be more laid back. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and like Altamonte provided a dark end to the '60s, Woodstock '99 did the same for the '90s, foreshadowing the division that would come in the next decade. But man, what a great decade the '90s was to be in junior high, high school, and college.
As I do every October, I am going to run through your wicked garden with a daily dose of rock, at least on the weekdays. There will be no repeated artists during the course of the month. I'm going to try my best not to repeat songs that I have featured in prior Rocktobers, but I make no promises. As always, the week of Halloween will feature songs with dark, evil, or macabre themes. CoronaVinyl and Retro Video of the Week will be suspended during Rocktober, but Hair Band Friday will continue because Hair Band Friday never stops, although I won't post a Hair Band Friday tomorrow because I'm going out of town.
As always, remember that this is Rocktober, so these will all be bands, artists, and songs that rock, even though they may not always be from genres or artists that you would consider "rocking" or "rockers." There will be popular songs, songs that you may never had heard before, and maybe even some bands and artists you've never heard of. Rest assured, though, everything will rock. Whatever.
Today marks the 35th anniversary of the release of New Order's fourth studio album, Brotherhood. It was kind of a split album, with half being post-punk and half being synth pop. The album was the band's third in a string of seven consecutive Top 10 studio albums on the UK album chart, reaching #9. It didn't do quite as well across the pond, topping out at #117 on the Billboard album chart. Despite having had seven Top 40 hits on the UK pop chart, the band hadn't yet broken through in the U.S., other than on the Billboard Dance chart.
"Bizarre Love Triangle" helped break the band in the U.S. Even though it only sniffed the Billboard Hot 100, hitting #98, and oddly enough, that wasn't until 1995, when the band's "best of" album was released -- I was shocked to see that it was that low -- it went to #4 on the Billboard Dance chart. Maybe the song was played more on Z-95 in Chicago than in other places, but I remember it being bigger. It's one of those songs that immediately takes me back to the mid '80s and grade school as soon as I hear it. Regardless, the song is a synth pop/new wave masterpiece. The video is pleasantly weird.
Today's CoronaVinyl category is "W," and of the many albums I acquired as part of various lots of records over the years that I probably wouldn't have otherwise purchased are two Slim Whitman albums. One of those is his 1980 album Songs I Love to Sing.
Whitman was a country singer and yodeler whose career spanned over seven decades, beginning in the 1940s and lasting until shortly before his death in 2013 at the age of 90. He fought in the South Pacific in World Ward II as part of the U.S. Navy, and thanks to his singing and entertaining his shipmates, his captain blocked Whitman's transfer to another naval ship, which was later sunk, killing everyone on board. He began his singing career a couple years later, eventually selling over 70 million records worldwide.
He had one Top 10 song on the Billboard Hot 100 (1952's "Indian Love Call" (#9)), and 11 Top 10 songs on the Billboard Country singles chart. In addition to success in the U.S., he had a great deal of international success. His 1955 song "Rose Marie" topped the UK pop chart for 11 straight weeks, which remained a record until 1991, when Bryan Adams's "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" lasted 16 weeks at #1.
Songs I Love to Sing is re-recorded songs that Whitman had previously released over the years, as well as some covers. It's generally kind of syrupy country pop, sometimes even bordering on yacht rock. It was Whitman's last Top 25 album on the Billboard Country albums chart, reaching #25. It also featured his last Top 40 song on the Billboard Country singles chart -- "When," which went to #15 -- as well as two other charting songs, "I Remember You" (#44) and "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine" (#69).
Whitman was 57 when this album was released. I hope I look that good and dress that garishly when I'm 57. This album isn't available on Spotify or YouTube.
Favorite Song on Side 1: "When" This one has kind of a yacht rock and Latin feel to it.
Favorite Song on Side 2: "I Remember You" Not to be confused with the Skid Row power ballad of the same name, this features Whitman's trademark yodel, and it was also featured in the 2003 horror movie House of 1,000 Corpses.
Today's CoronaVinyl category is "T," and I went with an early Jack White selection, Live at the Gold Dollar by Two Star Tabernacle.
White was in or involved with various bands in the Detroit area in the mid to late '90s, most prominently, of course, being The White Stripes. One of those other bands was Two Star Tabernacle, a short-lived garage rock band that only released two singles. Aside from White on guitar and vocals, the others in the group would also feature prominently in the Detroit music scene. On the other guitar and vocals was Dan John Miller, who would go on to form garage country band Blanche, along with his wife Tracee Mae Miller, who was the bassist in Two Star Tabernacle. Dan John also went on to play Johnny Cash's guitarist Luther Perkins in the 2005 Cash biopic Walk the Line. On drums was Damian Lang, who would go on to play the drums in the Detroit Cobras.
This album is a January 1998 live set that the band played at the Gold Dollar in Detroit, and it was part of a Third Man Records Vault record club package, along with a couple other early White band live shows from the Gold Dollar (The Go and Jack White & The Bricks). It's one of only two known live recordings of the band, and as a White Stripes fanatic, what I found interesting was that there are two early versions of what would become White Stripes songs: "Hotel Yorba" and "Now Mary," both of which would end up on the band's fantastic 2001 breakthrough album White Blood Cells. Dan John Miller would also co-direct the White Stripes' video for "Hotel Yorba," which is one of my favorite White Stripes songs. The version of "Now Mary" by Two Star Tabernacle is definitely different than the one that ended up on White Blood Cells, starting out with a riff that reminded me of another White Stripes' song, their version of "Black Jack Davey."
The album was pretty solid overall. It was what you'd expect from an early Jack White project -- garage rock, punk, and rockabilly, all rolled into one. I was also pleasantly surprised at the sound. I expected it not to be all that great, but it was actually really good, considering this was a live recording in a club in 1998.
Needless to say, this album isn't available on Spotify or YouTube.
Favorite Song on Side 1: "Itchy" White handles lead vocals on this one, which he also wrote. I guess I'd classify it as garage country punk. It's got a breakneck pace behind a country-ish drumbeat, with wailing guitars.
Favorite Song on Side 2: "Jesus and Tequila" Well, one outta two ain't bad. But seriously, what a great name for a song.
Today's CoronaVinyl category is "S," and I listened to Billy Squier's third studio album, 1982's Emotions in Motion.
Squier got his start in the Boston area and formed the rock band Piper in the mid '70s, but the band broke up before making it big. Squier then signed a solo deal with Capitol Records, releasing his debut album, The Tale of the Tape, in 1979. His sophomore effort, 1981's Don't Say No, proved to be a big hit, reaching #5 on the Billboard album charts and producing three of his most well-known songs, "The Stroke," "Lonely is the Night," and "My Kinda Lover."
Emotions in Motion followed the next year, with just as much success. The album also went to #5 on the Billboard album chart, and the song "Everybody Wants You," which went to #32 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart for six weeks. The title track -- on which Queen's Freddy Mercury and Roger Taylor sing backing vocals -- was also a minor hit, reaching #68 on the Billboard Hot 100. The videos for both got heavy rotation on MTV. Eventually the album went double platinum in the U.S.
But just as MTV made stars of artists and bands who might otherwise not have achieved big success, it also sometimes did the opposite to artists and bands who should have been bigger, and Squier falls into the latter category. Squier was a great guitarist with a voice that harkened Robert Plant's, so he was seen as a hard rocker, and rightly so. The song "Rock Me Tonite" off of Squier's follow-up album, 1984's Signs of Life, proved to be his most successful on the Billboard Hot 100, going to #15. However, in one of the most famous gaffes of the video era, the video for "Rock Me Tonite" features Squier wearing a pink tank top while prancing and dancing spasmodically around a loft apartment. It was not well received, for a guy who was supposed to be a rocker, and Squier's success effectively ended there, as it would be the last of his songs to reach higher than #58 on the Billboard Hot 100.
But hey, Emotions in Motion is a solid early '80s hard rock album.
Favorite Song on Side 1: "Emotions in Motion" The title track is a soulful rocker, in the vein of mid '70s Zeppelin.
Favorite Song on Side 2: "It Keeps You Rockin'" The second side starts off with a nice hard rock track, with some impassioned vocals from Squier in the verses.
As I mentioned in last week's Retro Video of the Week post about GNR's "Don't Cry," August and September 1991 were uniquely prolific months for groundbreaking and massively successful albums. Thirty years ago this Friday, five of those albums were released: Waking Up the Neighbours by Bryan Adams; Nevermind by Nirvana; Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers; Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden; and The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest.
I've featured videos on Retro Video of the Week by all of those artists except Soundgarden, so now is the time. Badmotorfinger was Soundgarden's third studio album, and thanks to the fact that the band was from Seattle and grunge was becoming the new thing, the album was helped by the grunge wave, even though it's really more of an alternative metal album. It was the band's highest-charting album up to that point, reaching #39 on the Billboard album chart, and it eventually went double platinum in the U.S., setting the stage for their huge, chart-topping follow-up album, 1994's Superunknown. And while Superunknown may get more love, Badmotorfinger is a pretty damn good album.
"Rusty Cage" is one of the band's most well-known songs prior to Superunknown, and it's a badass, weirdly tuned, frenetic song with time signature changes and a fuzzy, whirling guitar riff. And, of course, Chris Cornell's vocals on the song are amazing. That beginning guitar riff is like a "welcome to the '90s" moment, and the video is definitely pure '90s, but at the time, it would have been weird to see a video like this on MTV.
The song was also famously covered by Johnny Cash on his 1996 Grammy Award-winning album Unchained, and if you thought this was originally a Cash song covered by Soundgarden, you wouldn't be alone.
Today's CoronaVinyl category is "R," and I went with Tom Rush's seventh studio album, his self-titled 1970 release, which was actually his second self-titled album (the first was in 1965).
Rush started off as a folk singer in the Boston area in the early '60s while at Harvard. He was one of the pioneers of the signer-songwriter genre, and not only sang his own songs, but also songs written by others in the singer-songwriter genre, like Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor.
This album is exactly what you'd expect from a folk singer/singer-songwriter. It's nearly all acoustic. None of the songs on the album are Rush originals, but many are by acclaimed songwriters, including two songs by Jackson Browne, one co-written by James Taylor, one by the Youngbloods' Jesse Colin Young, and one by Fred Neil (who wrote Harry Nilsson's hit "Everybody's Talkin'."
Favorite Song on Side 1: "Drop Down Mama" This one was written by Sleepy John Estes, and it's kind of a cool, post-psychedelic folk song.
Favorite Song on Side 2: "These Days" The most famous version of this song was by German chanteuse Nico on her 1967 album Chelsea Girl -- which was famously featured in The Royal Tenenbaums, as Margot gets off the bus -- and I don't think I had realized this was written by Jackson Browne. Anyway, it's a lovely song that has been covered by various artists, and Rush gives it a good folk treatment.
Today's CoronaVinyl category is "P," and something I realized today is that I have two albums by French jazz fusion violinist. I can sincerely say that I did not intentionally purchase either of them, but presumably I got them as part of one of the larger lots of records that I bought at some point. Anywho, today I listened to his 1977 album Enigmatic Ocean.
Before today, I literally knew nothing about Ponty, other than his name. Born into a family of classical musicians, it's not surprising that Ponty was a violin prodigy. In the late '60s and early '70s, he played an album of Frank Zappa songs and collaborated with Zappa on several other Zappa albums, and he played electric violin on Elton John's Honky Chateau album in 1972. In 1975, he signed a solo deal with Atlantic and was a jazz-rock fusion powerhouse, and overall, he has released dozens of albums, most recently in 2015.
I hadn't looked anything up about him before I played the record, I had no idea what to expect when I put Enigmatic Ocean on the turntable. I was pleasantly surprised. It's definitely jazz-rock fusion -- all instrumental, lots of jams, and a little harder rocking than what I expected from the very '70s cover. I will say that the title Enigmatic Ocean is a good one, even if redundant, as all oceans are enigmas.
After signing with Atlantic in 1975, Ponty had 12 consecutive albums that reached the Top 5 of the Billboard Jazz albums chart, and some had some decent crossover success. Enigmatic Ocean went to #1 on the Billboard Jazz albums chart and #35 on the Billboard album chart.
Favorite Song on Side 1: "Enigmatic Ocean Part III" The title track is a four-part suite that closes out side one. Part III is a funky tune that has some good guitar solos.
Favorite Song on Side 2: "The Struggles of The Turtle to The Sea Part III" "The Struggles of the Turtle to The Sea" is a three-part suite that ends the album, and Part III is a rockin' jazz jam, also with some pretty great guitar solos.
My concert-and-work-induced hiatus from CoronaVinyl is over, and we're getting back into gear with a monster. Today's CoronaVinyl category is "M," and I recently purchased Metallica's eponymous 1991 fifth studio album, better known as the "Black Album."
To call the Black Album a success would be a bit of an understatement. It transformed Metallica from being darlings of the metal world to international superstars. It was the band's first album to top the Billboard album chart, and it also went to #1 on the album charts in seven other countries and cracked the top ten in another seven. It was the #8 album on the Billboard End of the Decade album chart for the '90s. In 2019, it became only the fourth album in the history of the Billboard 200 album chart to remain on the charts for an amazing 550 weeks, and only the second studio album to accomplish that feat (Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is heads and shoulders above the rest). It is certified diamond in the U.S., where it has sold over 16 million copies, making it the first album in the Nielsen SoundScan era to reach that number and the best-selling album of the SoundScan era. It's also one of the top 25 best-selling albums of all-time worldwide.
The album also featured the band's highest-charting single up to that time, "Enter Sandman," which went to #16 on the Billboard Hot 100. Two other songs were Top 40 hits: "Nothing Else Matters" (#34) and "The Unforgiven" (#35), and "Sad But True" and "Wherever I May Roam" weren't big chart hits (#98 and #82, respectively), but were fixtures on MTV and are now considered Metallica classics.
It won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance, and has been a fixture on various "best of" lists throughout the years.
The version of the Black Album I bought is a remastered version that was released as part of the 30th anniversary of the album. I somehow managed to pay less than $9 for it, as a result of what I can only assume was an unintended temporary glitch on Amazon (as soon after I put my pre-order in, the price rose to $22.99, and now it's at $39.99). It is a double LP, but contains the original twelve songs from the album, just split into four sides. All this does is allow me to highlight two more songs on the album than I would have otherwise been able to do.
Favorite Song on Side 1: "Holier Than Thou" While "Enter Sandman" and "Sad But True" are excellent songs and Metallica classics, "Holier Than Thou" has always been one of my favorite songs on the album. It's a ballbuster with a great riff and a message of telling people not to be so damned self-righteous.
Favorite Song on Side 2: "Don't Tread On Me" I also skipped over two other Metallica classics -- "The Unforgiven" and "Wherever I May Roam" -- for a deep cut. "Don't Tread On Me" is a plodding metal song that pays tribute to America, as the coiled snake from the Revolutionary War Gadsen flag is on the album cover, albeit muted.
Favorite Song on Side 3: "Through The Never" "Through The Never" is another hidden gem that kicks ass. It's probably the most thrashy song on the album.
Favorite Song on Side 4: "The Struggle Within" The last song on the album, like "Don't Tread On Me," has some military connotations with its military snare drum intro. Then it kicks into gear, and it's another badass metal song with an amazing guitar solo.
Apologies for the lack of CoronaVinyl posts this week. I've had a couple concerts this week and have had to work late other nights, which has prevented me from posting, but rest assured, CoronaVinyl will be back next week.
The late summer and early fall of 1991 was arguably one of the greatest couple months for album releases in history. You may have seen the meme floating around social media with a photo of a stack of seven cassette tapes, saying "These were all released within 41 days of each other in 1991." The stack contains Metallica's self-titled album (aka "the Black Album"), Pearl Jam's Ten, Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and II, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, and Nirvana's Nevermind.
The meme is actually off by two days. The Black Album was released on August 12, 1991, and the last three albums listed above were released 7 weeks and one day later (i.e., 43 days later) on September 24, 1991. Except for Soundgarden (who was nominated in 2020 for the first time), all of the bands on that list are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and all seven of those albums are classics that helped define grunge, hard rock, and alternative rock in the '90s.
What's crazy is that, in that same 43-day span, there were several other massive and/or influential albums in various genres that were released. Check out this list, which is in chronological order and contains some stats where necessary:
August 12 -Metallica by Metallica (16x platinum in the U.S.; best-selling album released in the SoundScan era (3/1/91-present); #1 on Billboard 200 for four weeks)
August 13 -Brooks & Dunn's debut album Brand New Man (6x platinum in the U.S.; #10 on Billboard 200; produced 4 #1 songs on the Billboard County singles chart) -Cypress Hill's self-titled debut album (double platinum in the U.S.)
August 20 -Pocket Full of Kryptonite by Spin Doctors (5x platinum in the U.S.; #3 on Billboard 200)
August 26 -Blur's debut album Leisure
August 27 -Ten by Pearl Jam (13x platinum in the U.S.; #2 on Billboard 200) -The Fire Inside by Bob Seger (platinum in the U.S.; #7 on Billboard 200) -Fear by Toad the Wet Sprocket (platinum in the U.S.; two Top 20 songs on Billboard Hot 100)
September 3 -Naughty By Nature's self-titled second album (platinum in the U.S.; "O.P.P." was #6 hit on Billboard Hot 100)
September 10 -Ropin' the Wind by Garth Brooks (14x platinum in the U.S.; first country album to debut at #1 on Billboard 200; eventually spent a combined 18 weeks at #1 on Billboard 200)
September 17 -Emotions by Mariah Carey (4x platinum in the U.S.; #4 on Billboard 200; three Top 5 songs on Billboard Hot 100, including one #1) -Use Your Illusion I by Guns N' Roses (7x platinum in U.S.; #2 on Billboard 200) -Use Your Illusion II by Guns N' Roses (7x platinum in U.S.; #1 on Billboard 200 for two weeks) -Hole's debut album Pretty on the Inside -No More Tears by Ozzy Osbourne (4x platinum in the U.S.; #7 on Billboard 200)
September 24 -Waking Up the Neighbours by Bryan Adams (4x platinum in the U.S.; #6 on Billboard 200; five Top 40 hits on Billboard Hot 100, including one #1) -Nevermind by Nirvana (10x platinum in U.S.; #1 on Billboard 200 for two weeks -Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers (7x platinum in U.S.; #3 on Billboard 200; "Under the Bridge" went to #2 on Billboard Hot 100) -Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden (double platinum in U.S.) -The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest (platinum in U.S.)
Holy shit, what a 43 days.
All of this does have a point and is timely. I happened to see Guns N' Roses last night at Wrigley Field, and they predictably put on a great show. Coincidentally -- but certainly not ironically -- today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Gun N' Roses' ambitious release of two albums on the same day: Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. The albums were GNR's first releases in nearly three years since their half-live, half-acoustic G N' R Lies was released. In that time, they brought on Dizzy Reed on keyboards, and drummer Matt Sorum replaced original drummer Steven Adler. Both albums were huge, with Use Your Illusion II debuting at #1 on the Billboard album chart and Use Your Illusion I debuting at #2, meaning that GNR had the top two albums in the U.S. in the same week. Both eventually going 7x platinum in the U.S.
Use Your Illusion I went to #1 in Canada and was top five on the album charts in nine other countries. Use Your Illusion II topped the album charts in Austria, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK, and it reached the top five on the album charts in five other countries. Together, the albums spawned four Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, one of which was "Don't Cry" (from Use Your Illusion I), which went to #10. Blind Melon lead singer Shannon Hoon (whose older sister was high school friends with Axl Rose) provides co-lead vocals on the song, singing the higher parts behind Rose's main vocals.
Just as memorable as the song was its video, which along with "November Rain" and "Estranged," form a related trilogy of songs and videos inspired by the Del James short story "Without You." The video features Rose's then-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour (as does the video for "November Rain") and Hoon, but noticeably absent from the video is guitarist and the song's co-writer Izzy Stradlin. A "Where's Izzy?" sign can be seen at one point in the video. Stradlin would quit the band about a month after the video was shot.
Today's CoronaVinyl category is "L," and I went with country legend Loretta Lynn's 42nd solo studio album, 2004's Van Lear Rose.
Lynn is one of the most decorated country singers of all-time. Over the course of her career, which is now in its seventh decade (she just released an album earlier this year!), Lynn has had ten albums that topped the Billboard Country album chart, and she has garnered 16 #1 hits on the Billboard Country singles chart. Her 1980 biopic Coal Miner's Daughter (starring Sissy Spacek as Lynn) garnered seven Academy Award nominations, and it won the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and for Best Actress for Spacek.
In 2004, at the young age of 72, Lynn collaborated with musical renaissance man Jack White for Van Lear Rose. I got the album as part of White's Third Man Records' Vault record club, and as you can see, it has a cool golden vinyl color. The name is a nod to the Kentucky coal mine where her father worked. White plays guitar and several other instruments on the album, and his Raconteurs band mates Patrick Keeler (drums) and Jack Lawrence (drums) also played on the album. I'm not a huge country fan, but I enjoyed the album. It's got some Americana, folk, and even some rock elements to it, and Lynn's voice (even in her 70s) is great.
Van Lear Rose went to #2 on the Billboard Country albums chart and #24 on the Billboard 200, which made it the highest-charting album of Lynn's career on the latter chart. The album also won the Grammy for Best Country Album, and the song "Portland, Oregon" (a duet with White) won the Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.
My version of the album has one bonus track, and the album is not on Spotify (in any incarnation), but there is a YouTube playlist with the songs on the album, so I'm embedding that below.
Favorite song from Side 1: "Have Mercy" This one sounds the most White-influenced, with pounding electric guitar and drums.
Favorite song from Side 2: "Mrs. Leroy Brown" A nod to the famous Jim Croce song, from the other side of Leroy Brown's relationship. It starts out slow and then turns into a foot-stomping country rock romper.
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