Insanely Great Nineties Songs You Aren't Sick Of: 1992

When life gets me down and the walls start closing in, I always reach for a surefire panacea: the coked-to-the-gills King Ad Rock showing off his favorite Flavor Flav moves while the Beasties rip through a frantic, frenetic run-through of their 1992 comeback hit, "What'Cha Want."

If I could recreate that effect in a lab and bottle it, I would.  

Music fans spent most of 1992 hearing all those big 1991 records being played to death, every minute of every day on every station. By Christmas, most sane people ran screaming once they heard those opening chords to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But guess what? It's still getting rammed down our earholes every single day, thirty years later. 

Anyway, the flood of terrible fake-grunge bands was still a ways off in the future, so the excitement and variety of the early 90s was still out in full force. The alternative scene had not yet been hijacked by fifth-rate Green River clones and tone-deaf Jesus Lizard knockoffs, scooped up by clueless major-label bozos.

HOW DO YOU DU?

I was always a bit iffy on Husker Du. Sure, there was a lot for me to like, but their records all sound like hastily-recorded basement demos. And I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Grant Hart was just not a very good drummer. That kind of music lives and dies on the drumming, believe it. 

That said, I remember I did enjoy Bob Mould's first solo album (though I don't remember a single note of it at the moment) and liked a lot of his work with Sugar (AKA "Husker Tu").

Folks seem to like Mould's poppier stuff, but I actually preferred his darker, more metal side. I think his voice and his playing were far better suited for it.

The Lemonheads were fellow travelers with Husker Du in that post-hardcore sub-movement, and began their lurch to the mainstream in 1992. It's a Shame About Ray is not a great record exactly, it's just kind of great-ish. But it is a nice toe-tapping document of a rich and pretty young troubadour who's more interested in getting high than pretty much everything else, including getting laid.

BANGEDY-CLANG-CLANG

Alt.Metal was flowering and branching out in interesting directions, still safely away from the Nu Metal movement that would explode like an overused Port-a-Potty on a hot July day by decade's end.

Faith No More got more than a little Mr. Bungle in 1992, thanks to the increasing power of Mike Patton in the band. They'd make what I thought was their best album which is also their last decent album. It also featured one of my very favorite cuts of the decade, which came complete with a weird and semi-creepy video. 

FNM 86'd guitarist Jim Martin after touring this album, which I think was a huge mistake. They actually invited Killing Joke sonic sorcerer Geordie Walker to replace Martin, which would have been like Devo asking Peter Murphy to become their new lead singer. Just... wrong.

Speaking of which, Martin Atkins' palace coup wrested control of Killing Joke from Jaz Coleman, who was probably off somewhere killing goats with his mind. Atkins then hired Ministry/Revolting Cocks crooner Chris Connelly, who inexplicably went into Bowie-mode instead of flaunting his pitch-perfect Johnny Rotten impression.

Sadly, Atkins' notorious penny-pinching ways resulted in some half-baked and badly-produced recordings. Meaning he hired Steve Albini to do what he does best: make everything sound cheap, muffled and tinny. Which is a shame because Geordie handed over some of his most arcane and sulfurous "riffs" for the occasion ("riffs" meaning "unspeakable channelings from the Old Ones").

NYC art metal outfit Helmet got a cool million clams as an advance for some inexplicable reason, but made the best of it. "Unsung" lightened the mood a bit amongst their major label debut's jackhammering tantrums. They'd have a hit the following year with a Crow soundtrack cut.

America's sweetheart Henry Rollins (AKA Hen'Roid Rollins) didn't get any more musically competent in 1992, but he did get a lot more buff, thanks in large part to the miracles of modern biochemistry. And the Hankster did hire a much more talented bunch of musicians than he played with in Black Flag (AKA Blecch! Flag) and was able to siphon off a bit of that prestige by osmosis.

I saw these guys at the first Lollapalooza and they just went in one ear and out the other. That's a band you need to experience in a dark, sweaty club and not a sun-soaked meadow in the New Jersey Skylands. 

Still, this is quite entertaining in a Full Metal Jacket kind of way.

Industrial dance-rock was waning and industrial metal was rising, so OG Industrialists Meat Beat Manifesto decided to move past one-riff rutters and write some killer tunes with motherphucking phat beats yo. The Beaters even showed off some old-school songwriting chops with this wistful, Wire-like Artpop classic. 

An actual melody, can you believe it? Who'da thunk it just two years prior?

THE SHOES, MAN. THE SHOES!

I know what you're all asking yourselves: yes, yes, but what was up with the Shoegazers, Chris? Well, the movement was running out of stream, with no one quite able to fill My Bloody Valentine's enormous shoes. 

Lush's second album was all swoony and swirly and all - and Miki Berenyi grew more spunkily adorable with every passing second - but I thought the new material paled in comparison with what came before and immediately after. All of which is to say this song is not insanely great.

 Produced by Robin Guthrie while the Sibyl was busy communing with gods and receiving dread portents of days to come.

Catherine Wheel got even more hooky and Rob Dickinson's eyeballs grew even more enormous in 1992. And so it was another bonafide classic was birthed from that alchemical tincture.

Curve released their debut LP, which featured a bunch of mostly-forgettable variations on their earlier material, alongside two mind-staggering pieces of utter musical genius: the druggy, dreamy breakup song "Sandpit," and then the cathartic, psychedelic stormer, "Horror Head."

You've probably realized I'm totally fucked in the head by now, but if you ever saw me play this video 25 or 30 times in a row with tears of elation streaming down my face, you'd realize how much worse I am than you ever dared dream. But I only do so because I reach instant satori when Toni cocks her eyebrows while singing "imagine you and me" in her little rosewater bath there. 

Oh, I can imagine it, Toni, I can imagine it only all too well. That’s the problem. I need help.

The Sundays back-burnered the Smiths influences and went full Cocteau on their second LP. Just how Cocteau did they go, you ask? So Cocteau that I actually thought "Goodbye" was the mighty Twins when I first heard my old pal Matt Pinfield premiere it on WHTG. Not an assumption I'd make lightly, as you surely all know.

Here Harriet asks the unthinkable: she actually tells me to love myself more than anyone else. Which everyone knows is impossible, seeing how I love her far, far more than I love myself. I can barely tolerate myself.

90s Fraserlings are my weakness. I regret nothing.

Daisies were a big theme in 1992, don't ask me why. Daisy Chainsaw were later reconstituted to far greater effect as Queen Adreena some years later, but this is still a fun little stomper. If this looks familiar in any way, I've heard tell that a notorious murderess copped to stealing a lot of KatieJane's look and act. Her name escapes me at the moment.  

I sympathize with KatieJane, seeing as how we're both unfit for the normal world, albeit in different ways. She also always looks to me like she smells kind of ripe, which I reckon fits the vibe. I wonder if any Daisy Chainsaw record covers were scratch n' sniff.

Fun-loving goofballs Tripping Daisy would have a hit a couple years later with some generic pabulum or other, but "My Umbrella" remains their definitive statement. And seeing how I am the final authority with these matters, you agree.

Take the clinical insanity of Daisy Chainsaw and the good-natured tomfoolery of Tripping Daisy and what do you get? 

I have no idea. However, I do know that Ween is both insane and tomfooleryish, and were pushing some fine little daisies up in 1992.

EMINENCES GRISE

What about some of the earnest 80s Indie hitmakers? What were they up to in 1992? 

Well, 10,000 Maniacs cut the last album they'd make with Natalie Merchant, who apparently had grown tired of sharing her royalties with a bunch of freeloaders and dumped them to go solo soon after. It came out exactly how you'd expect but did serve up a couple nice pop ditties.

REM made their last great record, the prodigious hit-machine men call Automatic for the People. You're likely sick to the point of madness of most of the hits, so here's the lovely, elegiac album closer. Wistful harmonica stabs me in the soul, every time.

A more obscure 80s performer named Michael Gira served up another surreal stormer with his reformed Swans. It's hard to pick potential hit single material from any Swans album, but this will do nicely methinks. 

Now get cracking and drop me your deep cuts and closet classics from 1992 down in the comments. And don't you hold out on me now. Don't make me come to your house and force you to listen to Seven Mary Three CDs.

Don't forget The Secret Sun Institute of Advanced Synchromysticism, now holding classes in the highly strange. There's a ton of exclusive material up already and so much more on the way. 

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