1991
By You Can't Hear it on the Radio
October 18, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
My father is an avid Bob Dylan fan, but aside from taking my brother and I to a Dylan concert when I was about ten, he never pushed Dylan on us. In fact, the only Dylan-related album I can remember listening to as a child was the Traveling Wilburys - Volume 1, which came out when I was 11. While both of my parents like music, there was never a lot of music played in our house. As a result, like many of my generation, my early music tastes were formed by MTV and top 40 radio.
The first album I asked for (and got) was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I also memorized the words to “We Are The World” – I was seven. After that, music was never much of an influence until junior high school. I do remember having copies of U2’s Joshua Tree and Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever in the intervening years, but my musical taste just never congealed as a kid – not that it should have. I never had an influential music fan to guide me, only peers, MTV and the radio.
In the fall of 1989, I was a new student at a small urban public K-8 school mostly populated by upper middle class white kids. But that didn’t stop us from loving hip hop and R&B – Vanilla Ice, Kid ‘n Play, Kris Kross, Bell Biv Devoe, Tony Toni Tone, Color Me Badd, Another Bad Creation – you name it, if it was popular (and, in retrospect, terrible), we loved it. I had never listened to much hip hop, but MTV and everyone in my school liked it and I was along for the ride. Trying to fit in as a the new kid in school is never tougher than in a small junior high where all the kids have been together for years, so I rationalize my terrible taste in music by claiming I was peer pressured into it. Some kids are peer pressured into having sex too young – I listened to terrible music.
That changed during the summer of 1991, I was between junior high and high school and visiting my aunt in Seattle. While I was there, I saw a story on the local news that caught my attention about a local band with an album coming out in August. I liked the music they played during the story and remembered the name of the band…Pearl Jam. When I got home, I heard “Even Flow” on the radio and vividly remember forcing my mother to take me to the Sam Goody in the local mall to buy Ten. What I didn’t realize at the time is that – starting with Ten - the next eight weeks would see the release of four albums that would be hugely influential in shaping my musical taste.
While their actual release and effect on the musical landscape is well-trod ground, as I entered high school and discovered that things like music could help you make friends, these albums were revelatory. This isn’t a particularly unique experience, and none of these albums are surprises – especially if you were listening to music in 1991 – but for a 14-year-old, they were monumental. Even now, they’re the foundation of much of my current musical taste. I won’t bother doing any sort of review of these albums, as I’m certain there isn’t much new to add to that discussion.
Pearl Jam’s Ten (released August 27, 1991) was the first album I remember knowing I had to have. I remember picking the tape off of the shelf in Sam Goody and taking it home. I remember listening to it repeatedly and trying to mimic Eddie Vedder’s deep, anguished howl. This was the first album that I turned to in moments of teenage angst and one that I still go back to if I’m in the right (wrong) mood. The best representation of this is that I remember being on vacation with my family and furious with my mother when I was about 15 or 16 (though I have no idea why). As usual, I turned to Ten for solace, turned up my Walkman and started to listen. This time, however, I decided to sing along…at the top of my lungs (and, no doubt horribly). I believe my howling made my mother cry.
Ten is one of the few albums I’ve purchased multiple times – tape, CD, and reissue. Pearl Jam, aside from being the first band I ever skipped school to go buy music for (their second album – Vs.) also led me to Neil Young, who led me to Bob Dylan who led me to everyone. I’m still a big Pearl Jam fan today, they have been a consistently interesting and evolving part of my music life since I first heard them.
The least influential of these four albums, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik (September 24, 1991) is also the only album (and group) from which I’ve long since moved on. But at the time, I remember being amazed by it. For whatever reason, I strongly associate this album with the historic cemetery near my high school. I believe I was listening to it while we were touring the cemetery with a class.
In any case, Blood Sugar Sex Magik is still the only album from the Chili Peppers worth listening to again, something I don’t actually do. I’ve moved on from the Chili Peppers, but this album helped lead me to Jimi Hendrix, who led me to Led Zeppelin…
I don’t remember where I was when I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, but like everyone else, I remember hearing it. Nirvana’s Nevermind (September 24, 1991) was the first album that nearly everyone I knew had and could agree on. Aside from providing a cultural touchstone that brought Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Chili Peppers along with them, Nevermind is one of the few albums that topped charts and was actually outstanding – and remains so nearly 20 years later.
Like Pearl Jam, Nirvana is a band I turned to in teenage angst (it did, in fact pay off well) and the death of Kurt Cobain, while unsurprising even then, was the first time I remember feeling like someone I’d never met but “knew” had died. Didn’t he have a responsibility to keep speaking to and for me? Apparently he didn’t think so, but I suspect Nevermind is an album I will hear blasting from my son’s bedroom in about 10 or 12 years. Nevermind led me to Soundgarden, The Violent Femmes, and R.E.M.
Having been a fan of 1987’s Joshua Tree, U2 was the only band on this list I was familiar with before buying their album in the fall of 1991. So I knew that U2’s Achtung Baby (November 19, 1991) existed, but hearing The Edge’s opening riff to the first single – “Mysterious Ways” – and thinking “WHAT THE #$%& IS THAT!?!?” was an experience only “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had given me to that point. Still completely cutting edge in 2010, Achtung Baby is probably the album on this list that has endured as one of my all-time favorites. It would almost certainly be in my desert island top five and my obsession with this album was the metaphorical fifth gear for my newfound love of music.
Achtung Baby also was the first album that made me want to see a concert. The Zoo TV Tour came through my hometown, but being 14 and not schooled in the ways of buying concert tickets in 1991 (standing in line at the venue or a Ticketmaster outlet), it was also my first Ticketmaster phone experience – made up almost entirely of busy signals. U2 was also the first musical obsession I shared with my best friend. My best friend growing up had an older sister, which resulted in much better musical taste. I still remember our disappointed repeat dialing for tickets. I’ve since seen U2 three times (and hold tickets for the fourth), but missing the Zoo TV tour is one of my great musical regrets. U2 led me to The Beatles, Dylan, Brian Eno, Radiohead, and Johnny Cash.
In the age of the Internet, access to music is so easy you almost suffer from an overabundance of choices – the selection is a little bit overwhelming. In the fall of 1991, with no Internet, no driver’s license and no older siblings to influence me, the radio and friends at school were all I had. All that considered, what’s most amazing to me is that none of the four albums I mentioned would sound particularly out of date if released today – 19 years later. In particular, Achtung Baby would be as much a revelation today as it was in 1991.
With technology, the new musical landscape and lack of commercial radio as a powerful force in music, I’m not sure it’s possible anymore for four albums in two months to be such critical and commercial successes. Maybe I was just lucky to hit a musical sweet spot at such a formative moment in my life. It would be impossible to remember exactly the path that led me from Pearl Jam in 1991 to Jonsi, Arcade Fire, Wilco, Ra Riot and The National in 2010, for me all roads still lead from these four albums.
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--Noah