Pop Culture Ponderings #1: Music From 1987-1993

Many great conversations and pop culture theories have been born during late night walks and wanderings in Bellingham, Washington, the rainy, windy, and often completely miserable northwestern corner of the US so unsuited to late night adventures. Reasons for 1984 as the single most entertaining year for movies, how every superhero movie ever should end with the protagonist awaking from a coma, Lady Gaga is the female Michael Jackson and Bad Romance has and always will be the most exciting song to hear at a party, we should go to Hope, British Columbia to reshoot the opening scene from Rambo: First Blood or Vancouver to find Smallville landmarks…the list could go on. Most drag on far longer than they should, and few, if any, have any viability (except for the new dating system surrounding Rambo: First Blood, beginning with 1982 as 0 AFB. For example, I was born in 1989, or 7 AFB. I really, really want this to work its way into mainstream usage. I’d also love to open a restaurant based around pudding (ideally called the Pudding Pagoda) above my marshmallow themed nightclub (ideally called Shmore. It’s a place for Lindsay Lohan to bitch out waiters for not sneaking any cocaine into her drink and Paris Hilton to canoodle and “forget” to wear panties)).

One night, in between telling homeless train hoppers that we don’t have any more fuckin’ change, we formulated a legitimate theory. It began as a simple conversation about 1980’s action movies and evolved into a two hour long argument over music in the years 1987-1993, specifically its massive influence on music in the present. This argument is not for quality. I’m not trying to say that all the best stuff came out in those six years. There was great music before and after. There were more influential records before and after. Evolution occurred before and after. Quality aside, it was the beginning of the current micro era of music and the concentration of influence was incredibly high.

The theory begins with punk rock and no wave, their evolutions, splintering and eventual deaths. The No Wave scene itself was short and confined to specific geographical locations, but both the flash-in-the-pan bands and the ones that lasted had a profound influence on later music in both the underground and mainstream. The importance on Sonic Youth, especially Daydream Nation (released in 1988), can’t be (and really isn’t) ignored by anybody. It’s a perfect balance of restraint and self-indulgence, one that thousands of records have tried to emulate since.

Punk continually evolved over its entire existence, but its complete transformation and assimilation into the alternative rock landscape begins to become apparent in 1987. The Pixies released their debut EP, C’mon Pilgrim and one of their two masterpieces, Surfer Rosa; The Replacements evolved from punks to proto-indie darlings with Pleased to Meet Me. The Pixies are the apex of alternative rock, and I’m willing to bet all the royalties Rick Astley got from his 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up that you can’t find a single indie or alternative rock band that wasn’t influenced by them (by the way, I stumbled upon this utterly repulsive but incredibly addicting video of Black Francis dancing in just a towel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0). The Pixies mastery and influence continued with 1989’s Doolittle and 1990’s Bossanova. Fugazi also released their notably important 13 Songs in 1989, an album that would come to have a heavy influence on hardcore and its subgenres over the next twenty years.

Grunge begins its meteoric rise towards short dominance in 1988 with the release of Mudhoney’s often overlooked but incredibly important Superfuzz Bigmuff EP. The rise continues until 1991, when Nirvana released Nevermind (Pearl Jam’s 10 and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger also came out this year, but who really gives a shit?). Kurt Cobain was vocal about the influence the Pixies had on his music, and he hired Steve Albini to produce In Utero in 1993 because of his work on Surfer Rosa. Sonically, Nirvana had more in common with a punk band than a grunge one. It thrust punk far into the mainstream, far enough to kill it entirely. Green Day, Blink 182 and others would carry the torch under the big tent of alternative rock. They would be joined by the likes of Marcy Playground, The Goo Goo Dolls, Nickleback, Puddle of Mudd and many, many other awful bands. The initial mainstreaming of the style allowed for further breakdowns into post-hardcore, straightforward alternative acts like The Foo Fighters and the dismal neo-emo of Panic! At The Disco, My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World and others.

Our journey continues with Hip Hop and Rap, which solidified into a consistent and more consumable sound throughout our period of focus. Hip Hop was reasonably stagnant for most of the 1980’s, releasing the occasional dance-focused single but never becoming more than a novelty. It was slower, often overlong and lacked the defining concepts and production that would prop it up in the coming years. 1988 saw the release of both Public Enemy’s …It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and NWA’s Straight Outta Compton. The pace was picked up, the production smoother and the songs shortened. There were other albums before this period that began to nail down this style (most notably The Beastie Boys 1986 debut), but its proliferation rose significantly starting around 1988. Hip Hop started putting out albums that were critically compared to those in competing genres. A Tribe Called Quest released The Low End Theory in 1991. Tupac put out 2pacalypse that same year. Trip Hop bands began to become common place as well, adding influence to the production stew. By the time 1993 rolled around and Wu Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers was released hip hop had gone from sideshow to credible genre was beginning to sound like what we hear today.

Rap and rock also combined forces in this time period. Rap-Rock was almost universally terrible and pretty much dead by the end of the 1990’s, but it did churn out a few mentionable moments. The Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) is a pretty entertaining album from a future massive fixture of alternative rock. Besides the always fantastic and sorely missed Limp Bizkit, the only decent band they influenced was Rage Against The Machine.

It is at this point that we return to the indie universe, the place were all comfortable, where we know we have good taste because no one has the slightest idea what we’re talking about. The various underground scenes that were prevalent in the 1980’s slowly coalesced under the indie umbrella throughout the 1990’s. The lines between genres became increasingly blurred. The theory does not fit nearly as neatly into music that occurred off the mainstream’s radar, there are more outliers in the years surrounding 1987-1993 than any of the other genres examined. The three most noteworthy indie events were shoegaze as a whole, the increasing presence of IDM (Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1 was released in 1992) and the birth of post-rock as a standalone genre with the release of Slint’s Spiderland in 1991. The influence of shoegaze is heard everywhere throughout 2000’s indie, from Deerhunter to Beach House to A Place to Bury Strangers. IDM is still producing great music in a reasonably similar form to twenty years ago and post-rock has splintered in a thousand different directions while maintaining a strong presence and giving critics like me a catch-all genre classification. Other lasting releases that appeared in the time period included The Stone Roses debut (1989), Tom Waits Bone Machine (1992), and the early work of the still great and conspicuous indie godheads Yo La Tengo. Pavement became the benchmark for everything indie rock could be with Slanted and Enchanted in 1992. Radiohead also began releasing EP’s and put out their mediocre debut in 1993. Its sub-par quality doesn’t diminish the incredible heights the band would later achieve.

The idea deals not only with the beginnings and evolution of genres but the demise of others. Hair metal and new wave both came to an abrupt finish, ending their mercifully short period of dominance. Most of the classic rock dinosaurs had either stopped working or were putting out low key solo albums consumed only by people with mustaches. Eric Clapton put out his last classic rock radio staple, the acoustic version of Layla, in 1992. It is the sole reason I can’t avoid his stunningly average and overrated guitar work.

1987-1993 is inescapable. The influence that the time period had on music today is massive, on and off the mainstream radar. It wasn’t the best period for music, but it was an important one, providing us with unavoidable genre combinations. Where would Big Mouth Billy Bass be without Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy (1988), and where would the entire indie universe be without Loveless? I can tell you that the former would be about half as obnoxious and the latter would have less guitar layering. I could elaborate, but then I’d be pulling even more ideas out of my perfectly sculpted ass. I’ve already done almost 1,500 words of that, so I’ll leave you to ponder the rest. Let the debate begin.