Jonathan's 1992

1992 – By this time puberty had fully kicked in and I was probably going through my most ginger phase. I spent Saturdays going to see Sheffield Wednesday with my dad and camped out at the local field with friends, drinking and causing havoc (intermittently). Note to editor, as Michael Jackson would say, if he weren’t dead and was performing one of (s)hits...You Are Not Alone, I’m writing with you!

Sonic Youth – Wish Fulfilment

Sonic Youth are yet another group introduced to me by my elder brother, following his musical ventures at university. I saw them live at Reading, ’96 I think it was but I wasn’t impressed; too much arsing about making noise than actually getting on with playing some music. I don’t like DIY, so a drill-fuelled guitar solo lasting 15 minutes gets me about as excited as putting up a shelf on a Friday night. However, there are some Sonic Youth moments when they got that balance right between noise and music. Wish Fulfilment is the stand-out track for me on one of their most consistent albums. It’s by far my favourite SY song, though there are plenty of others I really like. It’s the track I always put on compilations, however, that was a bit unfair of me because it does not really represent SY. I never get tired of those noisy explosions and I love the lyrics. A lot of my favourite songs follow a quiet, loud, quiet formula and this never deviates from that path. Sonic Youth are definitely not one of my favourite bands, but Wish Fulfilment is a favourite song of mine.

Sugar – A Good Idea

Bob Mould’s indie band, following the punk of Husker Du, were, you guessed, another band Jim introduced me to. From the album Copper Blue, Sugar’s strongest and most accessible album, A Good Idea is the second track in and is based around the bass line of Pixies’ Debaser. In spite of its obvious rip-off opening, Sugar managed to take the song into a totally different direction from that of the Pixies. Although you could argue that both songs occupy an area of madness. A tale of murder, sung to sweet, catchy melodies is always a winner for me. It’s just a damn good indie pop song. I remember going to Stomp, a club in Leeds that occupied the Leeds Met venue and later became Star, hearing it and dancing to it during my first ever time in a club. Underage and dressed in my brother’s grungy clothes (tie-dye shirt, army boots, combats) I managed to get in to the club and I suppose hearing all those tracks left its mark. Copper Blue is an album that I still happily return to from time to time and it hasn’t lost any of its quality. A Good Idea is the brilliant single from the album and I’d still put it on a compilation tape, if only I could find one!

Coleman's 1990's; Part six - 1995

Wow. Two months? Really? And a half? And it only feels like three...

Lame jokes aside, the summer break (not that there was supposed to be any summer break) is over and more than ever it feels that I'm just left on my own on this project. Which beats the point in a way but I'm reluctant somehow to switch off the lights just yet. Who knows, maybe the prospects of fame, money and occasional pint of gratitude are not completely lost yet. Besides, it's only 1995, can't give up before the end of the decade!

Of which '95 was just another year full of fantastic music. Something, you should be well used to by now... Have a little look then.

Coleman's 1990's; Part five - 1994

Since waiting for others to catch up (or even start for that matter) may result in me getting much to old to type, I think I'll just carry on regardless. Turns out the 1994 was again a little bit on a short side. But should you conclude from this fact that it had to be some bad year in music, don't let the numbers fool you. It may fall short on quantity but the quality is simply unparalleled. It may only be five songs but in terms of importance four of those five could be made of pure uranium. Or something even heavier. For very personal reasons, of course, but not without critical merit. Read on to find out why.

Coleman's 1990's; Part four - 1993

Wow. It feels like on this blog all years go pass like weeks. We've only just started and it's 1993 already (or again, depending how you're going to look at it). And it looks like for me things got a little bit heavier. They actually got far, far heavier than this selection shows as one of my friends at that time was a very dedicated metal fan (a doctor nod to Seba) and I would borrow a lot of music from him to have a try. I got introduced to bands like Samael, Paradise Lost, Cathedral, Moonspell, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Sepultura and god knows what else. Some of them, I go back to now and again but as you can tell, none of them made it to my very top of the 'most important' pile. But fear not, there is still plenty of good music to go round. Now, I don't really want to make anyone upset or cause any metal heart a torrent of rusty tears, but I would probably go as far as to say that there is still plenty of MUCH BETTER music to go round. And the best examples await you just after the jump.

Kuba's 1990's. The end of the beginning. 1991

1991. Oh, that was the year. Or maybe I should say The Year. It really changed my life with music. To tell the truth I discovered 1991 about a year later. I mean I was aware of bands like Pearl Jam or RHCP but it was really 1992 – when I started my secondary school – when I discovered how important they are. For me, not for the world. But it doesn't really matter now. Anyway 1991 starts with my a bit softer side.

Coleman's 1990's; Part three - 1992

Since 1991 was such a short year in music (only 2 songs worth remembering, huh?) it seems that the 1992 was trying hard to make up for it and then some. I've just had a quick peek - ten songs and artists varying from Bel Canto to Laibach, from Alice in Chains to Leonard Cohen. Wow, I must have been taking a lot in that year. To think of it, it was still my first year at secondary school (the old system in Poland was completely different with 8 years of primary and 4 for secondary), still surrounded by fairly new people, and still clinging to a bunch of the old ones. And some of that bridging seems to be present in my music choice of that year. Let's see how many memories I'm going to be able to dig up then.

Jonathan's 1990s; Part 2, 1991

My Bloody Valentine – Only Shallow

In all honesty, I expected a lot of songs to be here ahead of MBV, but here they are nonetheless. MBV are an Irish group almost solely responsible for creating shoegaze. I am not an avid MBV fan. And I’m certainly not one of those devout fans who headed out to rediscover the old days of shoegazing (a pastime now being perfected by emos so fucking depressed they can’t stare beyond their footwear – what is the footwear choice of the emo?) whilst still believing that MBV are the greatest band to grace this planet when they recently went back on tour. Their live performances are renowned for being ear-splitting and listening to some of the material from their two albums, that hardly requires a stretch of the imagination. There are only a few tracks I truly enjoy listening to by MBV and admittedly I bought the albums on the strength of what I had heard about MBV, rather than what I actually heard, musically speaking. However, I am still here with the aim to justify my decision, ahem. Underneath the layers of distortion and reverb you find some wonderfully ear-catching melodies, and no more than in Only Shallow, the opening track on Loveless. I love the Sonic Youth style overkill on the distortion, then adding masses of reverb to provide the layered soundscapes that makes MBV simultaneously suffocating and airy. This is the kind of track you would only hear at weird indie nights full (?) of people whose only friend is the Internet (back then comics or Dungeons and Dragons) or are seriously considering serial killing as a hobby, or both...hobbies are healthy. It’s not an immediate track, in fact, MBV through their choice of production seem to try to test the listener, alienate them and make it a difficult record to swallow. They are a bit of a ‘marmite’ band, but if you persist, there is a rough diamond to be polished. Perhaps the critic got the better of me. I really do like the song and I love the melodies and the driving rhythm, how the song hovers, swoons and dives, but in comparison to others here in my top 50, it’s one of the runts of the litter, but a classic runt of my litter.