On This Day In Music: The Trifecta

Zman:

A July Grantland article about A Tribe Called Quest prompted an e-mail from an old friend in which he noted that three tremendous albums were released on September 24, 1991: The Low End Theory, Nevermind, and Blood Sugar Sex Magik. A post regaling the twentieth anniversary of this sonically significant date is entirely necessary, but I can only do proper justice to one-third of this musical trifecta. Accordingly, I enlisted rob and Whitney to bring you today’s post, “On This Day In Music,” in which we each recall our memories surrounding the release of one of these albums.

Whitney:

1991 was a spectacular year in music. Every year there are great songs, great albums released. ’91 just had more than its fair share.

Just using September 24 of that year as a starting point, there are the three albums we highlight here PLUS Ceremony by The Cult, one of the critical turning points in Dave’s love/hate relationship with that band. (Dave is issuing a full post on Ceremony and its scars soon.) Within a three-week period, these albums were accompanied by Use Your Illusion I&II, The Pod, Badmotorfinger, and Apocalypse 91. (And Cool as Ice, but let’s forget about that.)

There were first albums of merit (Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, and especially Primus), even by bands that didn’t last long (Tupac, Live, Crash Test Dummies, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Spin Doctors, Matthew Sweet, Temple of the Dog).

There were bands’ final albums, or at least final decent albums (Pixies, Genesis, GN’R, Fishbone, Violent Femmes, Hoodoo Gurus, Random Idiots).

There was the first-ever Lollapalooza.

There were huge albums by huge artists, like Achtung Baby, Out of Time (which divided the fan base a tad), and Metallica. There were cheesy singles like “Life Is a Highway,” “I Touch Myself,” “Unbelievable,” “Just the Way It Is, Baby,” “Right Here, Right Now,” and “More Than Words.” Bryan Adams released the worst song of the year.

James Brown was freed. Shane MacGowan was booted. Freddy Mercury died.

There was hip-hop funny (“Pop Goes the Weasel,” “O.P.P.”) and not (O.G Original Gangster). Country was beginning its comeback, whether we liked it or not. And there was music people would come to call Shoegaze, or Britpop, or just indie (My Bloody Valentine, Teenage Fanclub, Blur).

Sting released an album, and Rob swooned. Then the BoDeans, then Crowded House. Our little buddy really danced his loafers off that year.

Talking Heads packed it in that year. So did The Replacements. As did N.W.A. And Men Without Hats. Van Hagar should’ve.

An older gent with a musical penchant recently told me he thought 1970 and 1984 were the most significant years in rock and roll. I had too many beers to remember exactly why. But make no mistake, 1991 was no slouch.

rob:

Since I'm the last of this trio to get around to finish his assignment (read: laziest - and in this company, that's noteworthy), I've not much to add to this introduction, other than to note that the great Theodore Geisel died on September 24, 1991, right around the time he was being celebrated in the music of Random Idiots. I think you'll find a great deal of commonality in our recollections and musings on why music means so much. Hope you enjoy.

zman: The Low End Theory

Kids have lots of favorites. Favorite books, favorite movies, favorite colors, favorite athletes, favorite dinosaurs, whatever. As I get older I find that I have few absolute favorites, perhaps because with age and experience comes an appreciation of nuance. As a result I don’t have a favorite author or book, band or song, TV show or movie. I can, however, say with complete assurance that my favorite album is The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest.

Most people assume that I started listening to hiphop as an act of rebellion because I am a white kid from suburbia. To the contrary, I started listening to hiphop as an act of outright conformity. My high school was what is commonly referred to as “minority majority.” I’m not exactly sure how to explain the school’s racial olio, but a picture is said to be worth a thousand words. Here’s a page from my yearbook:


Probably a bit different from your “class officers” page. Also likely different from your high school: the top three singles players on our tennis team were, in order, a black kid, a Thai kid, and a kid with a turban. Not your typical squad.

I played doubles and hung out with the three other doubles guys: two Jewish kids and a giant Jamaican. We hit together regularly, were in all the same AP classes, and had similar tastes in music, cars, girls, and all the other stuff that’s important in northern New Jersey. We all agreed that People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm was a mind-blowingly good album, that it was perhaps the greatest musical accomplishment ever committed to a fixed medium, and that Tribe’s next album would be a highwater mark in our lives. In retrospect, we were correct in at least two regards.

Travels is a fantastic album. I encourage you to go download it and listen to it now. I’ll wait.

Great stuff, right? It was unprecedented twenty-one years ago. Tribe wasn’t the first group to make jazz-influenced hiphop. De La Soul, Gang Starr, Main Source, Pete Rock and CL Smooth, and the Jungle Brothers all sampled jazzy stuff from time to time. And two of the most popular songs off the album aren’t jazzy at all: “Can I Kick It?” and “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” . What Tribe did before anyone else, and arguably better than anyone else (fans of “Mecca and the Soul Brother” have a legit counterpoint here), was make silky smooth boom bap with conscious/positive lyrics. This created an entirely new musical niche now occupied by thinking man’s artists like Mos Def, Common, Talib Kweli, Little Brother, and The Roots.

So you can imagine how excited four tennis-playing nerdy rap nerds were to hear Tribe’s next album. My friend Jon, who looked startlingly like MC Serch (right down to the Jewfro), was the most on-top of the music world out of the foursome so he first determined the new album’s release date. And, in an effort to cement his musical superiority, on September 24th he cut out of school before lunch, bought the album, and listened to it so that he could be the first to opine on its greatness. Which he did, ad nauseum.

I bought the album after school. The local record store, coincidentally called Igor’s (pronounced Eye-gor’s) Records, was an early casualty of the big box boom, so I went to Sam Goody’s at the mall and bought The Low End Theory on cassette. I took back roads home so that I would have enough time to listen to the whole thing.

About three songs in I realized that I was going to have to listen several times to absorb it all. I neared home before getting through the tape so I drove aimlessly and listened. Then a song came on that was unlike anything I had heard before. When it was over I rewound and listened again. I repeated this process again. It turned out that this was the last song on the album, “Scenario.” I proclaimed its dopeness to myself, went home and listened to the whole album again on my Walkman. I knew that this album would be the soundtrack for the rest of the school year.

And it was. Everyone liked it, even the hippies who eschewed most rap in favor of classic rock and jam bands. It was perfect music for any situation that could be conjured up in the social microcosm of our high school. You could dance to it, hang out to it, party to it, drive to it, drink to it, smoke to it, earphones to it, whatever you want. And we did. I almost wore the tape out and then bought it on CD several times to replace lost/stolen copies. I still have two jewel cases for this album (but only one copy of the CD).

Theory stirs up nostalgia unlike any other record in my collection. For instance, when singing along with “Butter” it will always begin with “1992 senior year at Teaneck High” and the “Tracy” at the end of Phife’s list of skanky jumpoffs will always bear special emphasis in honor of my friend Tracy to whom we would point at that point in the song. When Charlie Brown asks “Who’s that?” in the middle of “Scenario” I will always think of my friend Adrian who wisely applied early and was accepted to Brown, allowing him to spend the rest of his high school career playing tennis and molesting girls, and to whom we accordingly pointed at this point in the song. “Scenario” conjures up tons of other memories as it was everyone’s jam, but the funniest could be my performance in the senior step show. That isn’t a typo – I once performed in a step show involving “Scenario”. When Q-Tip says “Optic presentation sizzles the retina” on “Check the Rhyme” I will always think of the time my friend Keith practically put his eye out drunkenly over-acting the line while singing along with the song. My friend Brian found true inspiration in the line “The aim is to achieve and succeed at 21” from “Jazz” and whenever the song came on in my 1983 Accord everyone threw their hands up for “Your Honda or your Beamer or your Legend or your Benz.”

The most ignored song on the album is “Vibes and Stuff,” and it deserves your attention.



It’s the quintessential Tribe song and showcases Q-Tip’s skills as a producer. Who else could combine a big boom bap beat with several discernably different high-hat sounds and seamlessly lay it over a Grant Green song without sounding contrived? How many other MC’s could compatibly flow with this track?

And the lyrics! Good lawd. Go read Tip’s first verse. It’s the opposite of everything Jay-Z ever said: crack dealers suck; if you battle Tip and win he’ll shake your hand and admit you’re better than him; he strives to make music that pleases the young and old alike; commercially successful rappers are phonies; communities must stick together for the betterment of all. Phife isn’t messing around either. “All I do is write rhymes eat drink shit and bone.” Exceedingly strong braggadocio.

The only song I skip is “The Infamous Date Rape,” mainly because no one wants to listen to a song where the chorus is “Classic example of a, a date rape,” it just isn’t a pleasant topic. Even Sublime’s radio-friendly song on the subject is unpleasant.

Theory held up well over the past 20 years. It is lyrically and musically more complex than lots of the garbage that comes out of the Dirty South (not this Dirty South) or much of the junk spun on the radio. It’s still great music for any situation. And the “positive” or “conscious” lyrics helped my friends and me muddle through and move past a very weird time in our lives.

The Low End Theory will always be my favorite album, even 20 years from this date in music.

Whitney: Nevermind

“Guys, you gotta hear this band. They’re from Seattle.”

With that, our friend Mac cemented his place in my personal musical history as the guy who introduced me to Nirvana. Three of us followed him back into fraternity house room 306 and waited attentively with equal parts excited anticipation and skeptical doubt.

Mac was first and foremost a metalhead. He and his roommate were of the opposite build (Mac was nicknamed “2-D” for his slender frame; his roommate Kevin was “Fubsy”; as a pair they were called “10”), but of the same musical affinity. Their room generated the loudest and most aggressive musical emanations, a thrash sandwich between thin slices of alt-moping (Rob cranking The Stone Roses in the room to the left of them and Squeaky playing Ned’s Atomic Dustbin on the other side). I would wander in from time to time to satisfy the occasional need we all feel for some metal. My freshman roommate had broadened my horizons and introduced me to masterpieces like Kill ‘Em All and Blizzard of Ozz . . . and then he failed out after one year. Mac’s music collection filled the void.

And so I expected music to bang your head to, not mosh your ass off. Seems like a fine line there, but it’s not.

Instead . . . well, you know.

* * * *
If there is one word to describe Nirvana’s Nevermind album, it’s probably “hyperbole.” That has nothing to do with the content of the album and everything to do with the world’s reaction to and regard for the record, both in 1991 and 2011. This blogpost represents just one out of 10,000 Nevermind-related pieces to grace the world wide web in the past few weeks. Adding to the overkill isn’t what we usually do here, but in this case, it feels necessary.

The thing is, most of these tributes don’t actually delve into the music, not really. They lay up on the fairway of what the legacy of Nevermind was – what the effect and influence were and are. While that may be tempting since the impact on music’s landscape overshadows the 12+ songs on the album, ultimately it’s supposed to be about listening to music.

So go listen to Nevermind again.

Here’s what you already know:

• Nevermind unseated Michael Jackson’s Dangerous album on top of the charts in early 1992 in the most symbolic changing of the cultural guard Billboard has ever generated.
• The Grunge Era was then ushered in: punk attitude/punk guitars/pop melodies.
• A flux of booming guitars, the Pacific northwest, flannel, and intentionally poor hygiene followed.
• The world was never the same!

Here’s what you might not know:

• The album borrows fairly liberally from its predecessors. You can hear Frank Black in the crooning/shrieking tandems. You can hear the Killing Joke song “Eighties” in “Come As You Are,” nearly note for note. (Check this out.) You can hear plenty of punk rock outfits throughout the album. These aren’t my revelations, these are Kurt Cobain’s acknowledgments.
• Pearl Jam might owe Nirvana a debt of gratitude for opening the door to the mainstream, but certainly not for establishing the sound. Ten came out a month prior to Nevermind.
• Kurt Cobain’s lyrics aren’t genius poetry fit to be studied in British grammar schools. As he told people, virtually every idiot who bothered to try to decipher his ramblings had transcribed them wrong, anyway. Listen to “In Bloom” for his disdain for the aforementioned idiots.
• Nevermind is a really good record with some truly stand-out tracks. While seminal (to employ a rock-snob descriptor), it’s just neither as singular nor as revolutionary as the hype (original or 20-year) will lead you to believe.

But it’s good. Go listen to it.

Remember why “SLTS” was so friggin’ popular, and why “Lithium” fits hand in hand with it. Other natural couplings are the heavy “Breed” & “In Bloom,” the acoustically creepy “Polly” & “Something In the Way,” and the frenzied “Territorial Pissings” & “Stay Away.”

I could talk more about the musical connections, from the Kingsmen-ish flub in “Polly” to the “Come As You Are” hat-tip in “Adam’s Song” years later to the Youngbloods to Weird Al. Or the foreshadowing of Kurt Cobain’s early demise. Or Dave Grohl being 10,000% better than Chad Channing (and this from a guy who boycotted Grohl for five years). Or the hidden “Endless, Nameless” and the new era of cleverly hidden tracks on CD’s. Blah, blah, blah.

But I won’t. Just go back, dig it up, and listen to it. Loud. Very loud.

* * * *

Once upon a time, there was a small handful of songs that fairly spontaneously would make our merry band of idiots stop what they were doing, come into the room, and hurtle around with, by William & Mary standards, uncontrolled gleeful fury. Stupid, especially by William & Mary standards, but always amusing. Yeah, we were the high five’n white guys.

Thinking back on those instant mosh tunes, “Fiesta” comes to mind. “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver.” “I Wanna Be Sedated.” “Stop.” “Shake Your Rump” (really that whole album). “Smells Like Teen Spirit” became one of those songs upon first listen.

I have never been on the cutting edge of most music. For the most part, I seem to be many days late and many bucks short. The Clash became my favorite band of all time in 1989. (They broke up in 1983.) I got really into R.E.M. just two albums and two shows before they went major label milquetoast. I decided Camper van Beethoven wasn’t just noise and was actually rock and roll about the exact same time they split. Same with The Pixies. Old 97’s? Awesome. And I had that epiphany as their five-album heyday drew to a close. Same with The Replacements. Never saw They Might Be Giants or Ween when they were two dudes goofing around with drum machines. (Maybe that’s better, but it would have been cool.) Always late to the party.

But with Nirvana? Okay, so I wasn’t rocking to Bleach when the rest of the dweebs were bopping to “Love Shack,” but at the very least, I was the first guy I knew (besides Mac) to know and love Nevermind. It went Mac, then a few of us, then the rest of the guys in the house, then months later the people at the College Delly who played it on the juke ad nauseum. That and a dollar will get me a draft beer at happy hour, but especially considering the groundswell of folks on the grungewagon, it was good to have been able to appreciate it from the get-go.

The generation prior to mine is marked by the universal truth that each American will forever remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news that JFK had been shot. Our generation has the similar tragic memory-etching of 9/11. It’s not hard for me to remember where I was (frat house) and what I was doing (skipping class) when I first heard this music, because those activities goes for nearly every day of my 1988-1993. Still, as my memories get fuzzy on all too many precious things, somehow I’ll always recall with vivid images and much amusement my first exposure to “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nevermind, and Nirvana.

I dusted off the CD and gave it a full listen a couple of weeks ago. Straight-through, probably for the first time in 15 or more years. Don’t read anything more about this album. Just go give it another listen.

You gotta hear this band. They’re from Seattle.

rob: Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Music as memory. That's really where the power comes from, right? Sure, our subconscious minds love the perfect mathematical precision in a killer melody, and a dope beat hits us in that spot when we drive down the road turning it up loud (and if not a dope beat, how about all of Son Volt's 'Trace' - has a better late-night lonely-road driving album ever been made?). We lose ourselves in a live show, body moving without thought, singing along with no worry about not looking 'cool', whatever that means. But music gets us, really gets us deep in the place where it attaches itself to our recollections.

I have five 'favorite' albums, all from the day where music was so much more tangible than it is today. From when you had to buy a physical product, unwrap it, place it into the CD player, connect listening to action. In no particular order, the first four are Bob Mould's 'Workbook', R.E.M.'s 'Lifes Rich Pageant', the Smiths' 'Louder Than Bombs' (double record - score!), the Beastie Boys' 'Paul's Boutique'. If you didn't know I'm white, that list might be a clue.

The fifth record, and the topic of this ode to September 24, 1991, doesn't burnish my diversity credentials much, even as it borrows heavily from the greats of funk and owes so much to one of the great rap producers. But like the others, it instantly takes me back to a place and time. Despite the Stone Roses-based sound picture Whitney paints above (and I do dig some Roses), the Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik' was the soundtrack of my senior year of college.

I liked the Chilis well enough before 'BSSM' came out, but I didn't consider myself a huge fan. Like everyone around me, I knew all the words to 'Magic Johnson', and thanks to Beavis and Butt-Head, was a big fan of Michael 'Flea' Balzary's manic bass stylings. My still-adolescent male self giggled along with the joke when they performed wearing nothing but strategically placed socks. He still does, actually.

But from the first notes of 'The Power of Equality', 'BSSM' dug its way into my life in a way unlike few records before or since. It's by turns loud, bawdy, so, so funky, sweet, complex, juvenile, thoughtful, silly, positive, and grateful. From the raucous hits 'Suck My Kiss' and 'Give It Away', to the lecherous title track, to the underrated funk of 'Mellowship Slinky in B Major', 'Apache Rose Peacock' and 'Naked in the Rain' the record has terrific range, emotionally and musically. I'm ambivalent about the album's megahit, 'Under the Bridge', but there's not a weak track in the bunch, and it says something to me that the two songs I like the most are so very different.

'The Righteous and the Wicked' is a driving, guitar-heavy romp. Producer Rick Rubin lets John Frusciante's alternately roaring, keening, careening sound play a starring role - in fact, Frusciante's evolution from the distortion of 'Mother's Milk' to the crisper sound on 'BSSM' was one of Rubin's most important contributions on the record.

On the other end of the spectrum, 'Breaking the Girl' is 4:55 of the sweetest, saddest heartache you ever want to hear. I love the line, "She was a girl/soulful and strange". Isn't that what we all wanted when we were 21? At least when we were sober and 21. And Anthony Kiedis' narrator broke her heart because he was too much of a tough guy. Kiedis' ability to combine naked introspection and compassion with the dirtiest of horndoggery - sometimes in the same song - is one of the contradictions that make 'BSSM' so compelling.


RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - 03 - Breaking The Girl by infra-pink

I don't remember whether I bought 'BSSM' or if my roommate, Jon Goodstein, did. Given that my lifelong inability to manage money first became obvious in college, it's likely that Steiner dropped the cash. What I do remember vividly is that we played it constantly for months. Unless one of us was hooking up, 'BSSM' went into the CD player at bedtime. (So, um, it went into the CD player every night.) And it went on as soon as we woke up.

I'm listening to BSSM right now, for the first time in too long, much like Whitney with 'Nevermind'. Nodding my head like 'yeah'. And remembering my senior year with a smile.

Music as memory.

Not a bad day, September 24, 1991.