4 from 1991-3

by The Brit

The best thing about moving home after a long stay abroad are all the boxes with things you’d forgotten you’d missed. Among a bunch of dusty CD’s, I found the following gems, all dated 1991-93:

L7 Bricks are Heavy. Grunge girlies from LA. Wargasm (a screed against Gulf War media saturation) is sadly prescient 15 years later. But forget the big words — L7 rocked!

The Breeders Last Splash. Dreamy, creamy Indie.

Nirvana Incesticide. Too-cool revisionists can kiss my flanneled arse. Nirvana were the DB. This collection of B-sides and miscellanea proved Cobain was not just a Butch Vig-polished pop-punk. RIP, Kurdt (sic).

Sonic Youth Dirty. Thurston/Kim/Thurston/Kim/wall of noise/rinse/repeat.

Other early 90’s faves?

10 Comments

  1. I was not old or kewl enough to have picked up Goo back in 1990, so pishoff with your “their older records were better” poo. Yes, I’m looking at you.

    Comment by The Brit — October 31, 2007 @ 2:26 pm

  2. I’m woefully ignorant of the early 90s. I was too busy with personal tragedy (and way too poor) to pay attention to what was going on in music. (I basically only listened to the classic rock station.)

    Some of the albums I love from ‘91-’93:

    Terence Trent D’Arby - Symphony or Damn
    Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary
    Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Toward Ecstacy
    Red House Painters
    Quicksand - Slip
    Paw - Dragline
    PJ Harvey - Rid of Me
    Melvins - Houdini
    Eyehategod - Take as Needed For Pain (is this really from 1993? holy cow)
    Screaming Trees - Sweet Oblivion
    KD Lang - Ingenue
    Gruntruck - Push (a girl from my high school is the naked girl on the cover)
    EBTG - Acoustic
    Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes

    Comment by Susan M — October 31, 2007 @ 2:30 pm

  3. Achtung Baby.

    Comment by Supergenius — October 31, 2007 @ 5:36 pm

  4. I hate U2, but Achtung Baby is a great album.

    I’ll also throw Dirt by Alice in Chains into the pile of great albums from that period.

    Comment by Brian V — October 31, 2007 @ 8:07 pm

  5. Ehem… Soundgarden?

    Comment by tracy m — October 31, 2007 @ 8:47 pm

  6. That was a magic time for music!!!

    Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted!
    Beat Happening - Dreamy
    Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
    My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
    Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend
    Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience
    Trash Can Sinatras - Cake
    Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville!
    Pearl Jam - Ten
    Hole - Pretty on the Inside
    The Sundays - Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
    PJ Harvey - Dirty and Rid of Me
    Sonic Youth - Dirty
    REM - Green
    Sinead O’Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
    Alice in Chains - Dirt
    Screaming Trees - Sweet Oblivion
    Temple of the Dog
    Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger
    Breeders - Pod
    Nirvana!
    Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood sugar sex magik

    In 1991 at Lollapalooza I saw Lush, Pearl Jam, Jesus and Mary Chain, Soundgarden, Ice Cube, Ministry and Red Hot Chili Peppers. I paid like $20 for that ticket - I would pay 50 times that now to go back in time and see the whole thing again!

    Comment by wendy — October 31, 2007 @ 9:04 pm

  7. other than whatever fugazi was doing (cause they don’t really qualify as an “early 90s band”), the best album of that time period (90-95), and really, the most representative of that time’s sound, is Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. regardless of what some say, it’s way better than Slanted. however, it came out in 94 I think, so it doesn’t quite fit your time slice. in that case, Slanted I guess.

    Comment by Jeremy — October 31, 2007 @ 9:09 pm

  8. The early 90’s were a great time for music. Sadly I missed a lot of it for similar reasons to Susan. I was kind of in my classic rock phase. But I rediscovered most of it in the late 90’s. Great period.

    As great as grunge was I really dug trip-hop as well. (Which lasted into the late 90’s)

    Comment by clark — October 31, 2007 @ 10:47 pm

  9. Lithium, the 90’s Alternative/Grunge channel on my Sirius Radio is incredible.

    Comment by Tim J — November 1, 2007 @ 7:03 am

  10. I agree re: Crooked Rain. That is one of the best albums of all time. I also wanted to include Pixes - Doolittle, but it came out in 1989.

    Comment by wendy — November 1, 2007 @ 8:06 am