March Reviews:
Thank you all for joining me again on Flocked Media for another month's worth of my ramblings on When You Were Young. I had to take off for the month of February due to my hectic school schedule and, of course, my birthday and subsequent recuperation, but I am disappointed to say that I did in fact survive the celebration, and so will continue to be able to spew forth my rank obscenities upon your eyes and ears! Oh, the joy...
The first part of March is going to be a celebration of twenty years ago, 1990 for those of you who have difficulty with calculators. And what a mess it was musically. March 1990 saw the release of, among other putrid trash, M.C. Hammer's Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em, Nine Inch Nails' Head Like a Hole E.P., and the filth and fury that was Celine Dion's English-speaking debut album, Unison. There were others of course, but thankfully those are record which we will ignore; I just wanted to give you, dear reader, an idea of what a turmoil there was in popular music at a time when there was no definition to actual scenes, being in between the 1980's post-new wave hair rock period and the early 1990's grunge/alt-rock period. It was a SHAMBLES!! And many wanted the homogeneity to continue
Thankfully, we here at Flocked Media and When You Were Young have no such compunction, as we love to pigeonhole artists. Of course, I am kidding. But I HAVE located House of Love, released by the London-based band House of Love. To clarify, this album was the band's second album, but House of Love never titled their first two full-length releases, so this particular release is commonly referred to as either Fontana or Butterfly, the former because that was the name of the record label which released this album, and the latter due to the cover art. For posterity's sake, we shall call it Butterfly.
The second half of this article will address a major breakthrough album in the dance music/techno scene, which occurred in 1996, March 19th to be specific. That particular date saw the release of the record Second Toughest In the Infants, by the English electronic/dance trio known as Underworld. It was a major breakthrough in the music scene for electronic musicians, and gave a massive amount of credibility to that genre in the popular world. But enough foreplay! Shall we revisit, then?
Here is your favorite part of the article: the history lesson. Since we are culling albums from two particular years, let's first see what was happening in 1990.
Billy Idol suffers a serious motorcycle accident in February, which results in his only having a bit part in the movie The Doors, instead of a previously planned major role.
The Stone Roses hold the legendary "Spike Island" concert, in May.
Stevie Ray Vaughan dies in a helicopter crash in August.
Milli Vanilli's notorious lip-synching fiasco occurs, and of course they lose their Grammy award as a result.
Now let's look at 1996.
Snoop Dogg and his bodyguard are acquitted of murder in February.
The Sex Pistols 20th anniversary tour opens in Finland, in June.
MTV2 launches in the beginning of August.
Slash and Guns N' Roses officially part ways, on Devil's Night (October 30 for those of you not living in Detroit).
Max Cavalera officially leaves Sepultura.
Now that we have aged about seven or eight years, I want to thank you for joining me on this time machine that we call When You Were Young. Next month we will do our best to help you grow a beard longer than Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top in less than a half-hour! So long!
-SPS
