the biggest post-Nevermind hits on Modern Rock radio by older artists who began disappearing from the chart

Peter Pumpkinhead

came quite close to voting for Paul Weller to my surprise

The B-52’s – “Good Stuff” (#1, 1992)
The Church – “Ripple” (#10, 1993)
Crowded House – “Locked Out” (#8, 1994)
David Bowie – “Jump They Say” (#4, 1993)
David Byrne – “She’s Mad” (#3, 1992)
Depeche Mode – “I Feel You” (#1, 1993)
Duran Duran – “Ordinary World” (#2, 1993)
Electronic – “Disappointed” (#9, 1992)
Kate Bush – “Rubberband Girl”
Morrissey – “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” (#1, 1994)
New Order – “Regret” (#1, 1993)
Squeeze – “Everything In The World” (#9, 1993)
Sugar – “Helpless” (#5, 1992)

^^^ all good

would've gone for Lloyd Cole's "She's a Girl and I'm a Man" over "Tell Your Sister" though.

there are some good, good songs here

there is also Morrissey

I really, really want to vote Sugar or Duran Duran, but it's really New Order.

making a playlist and forcing myself to listen to this fucking Adam Ant song again

for nearly maybe half these artists these songs were like my first exposure to them, which in some cases is pretty laughably unrepresentative

I listened to so much modern rock radio at the time, but I never heard Poison Heart.

that Adam Ant song was actually a top 40 hit!

i know! it was everywhere! and awful!

I like "Friday, I'm In Love" a lot but it would never, ever occur to me to vote for it here given some of the other choices

leaning towards "I Feel You" but "Regret" and "Disappointed" are both fantastic as well

was pretty confused when my other exposure to Adam Ant at that time was a NIN cover

oh fuck I missed "Disappointed."

I literally know barely any of these by name. Assume I'd recognise them if I heard them.

some dude, is this playlist on Spotify?

I owned the cassingle to "Wonderful" because it was on sale as a promotional item for 75 cents and I wanted to know how he'd sound in '95.

I could have bought a pack of gum.

also love "Ordinary World" and "Walking On Broken Glass"

So much of this is "lol college radio" for me. This was basically my station's playlist!

Oh shit, I missed Nick Heyward on there. Great song. And that Kate Bush is not to be overlooked, either.

Please tell me "Thomas Dobly" is a Spinal Tap homage and not a typo.

some dude, is this playlist on Spotify?

― Gandalf’s Gobble Melt (DJP), Monday, November 5, 2012 10:53 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

will be, still workin on it

haha oops, sorry Thomas Dolby

I stopped paying attention to Thomas Dolby after "Airhead" so I had no idea this song existed

My college station played 90 percent of these hits. Every #1 and top ten from summer and fall '92.

lolnineties moment: the station played "These Are Days" when the election was called for Bill Clinton.

assumed Thomas Dobly was a Tap-ism tbh

polls like this always make me think "wow college radio was odd" but not in a good way

wanna make some kind of Yacht Rock comparison but can't think of a suitably crappy malfunctional replacement for the Yacht

not found on US spotify: the B-52s, General Public, Ian McCulloch, Love And Rockets, Peter Gabriel, and The Psychedelic Furs (who have the distinction of not having their biggest late period hit on ANY best-of collection!)

http://open.spotify.com/user/1219464571/playlist/5ZAp98Gvmy0q8L8ztt26SM

it's weird to finally hear the entire David Byrne song from one of my favorite Beavis & Butthead segments

I loved that Byrne album at the time and the tour was one of the five or six best I've ever seen but, wau, that cover

pretty sure you just made up 90% of these

I don't know if any of us could make up the chorus of Murphy's "The Sweetest Drop" (CONCUR AND SWALLOW MEEEE)

I have never not voted for "The Globe" on an ilx poll and this ilx poll is no exception. But "Walking On Broken Glass" is honorable competition for this one, and unlike much of the stuff on this list was a massive hit outside alt-rock circles. Was Annie Lennox solo actually big before this album?

i could only hum less than 50% of these before making the playlist so i may as well have made the other half up

"Walking" is from Lennox's solo debut -- she's grandfathered in on the basis of her previous group, like Westerberg and Byrne, etc.

this playlist has confirmed at least one thing; this Adam Ant song is TERRIBLE

no one really wanted to here him Adam Anting all over a Sundays instrumental, right?

the LALALALALALIED part is the grossest thing I've ever heard.

Crowded House, "Locked Out"
Duran Duran, "Ordinary World"
INXS, "Not Enough Time"
10,000 Maniacs, "These Are Days"

imo these tracks stand with the artists' best work. leaning toward duran on the basis of: a quality single, adult contemporary or no, was the last thing anyone expected of them when this thing dropped.

Erasure, "Always"

Dark horse imo. Not quite their best but p damn good and should get a lift in the poll thanks to Robot Unicorn Attack.

oh wow I'd forgotten how much I hated "The Globe" until right now this second

I quite like "Not Enough Time," shufflebeat and all. I prefer "Come Undone" these days but "Ordinary World" was a well-written hair metal ballad filling a gap.

"Locked Out" rode a bit of the Reality Bites wave.

xp: it's like that song that was designed off of focus grouping to be the most annoying song in the world, only without ending up hilarious and awesome

HOLY FUCK THIS SONG IS STILL GOING, WHAT THE HELL

who knew 6 minutes could last several lifetimes

Okay "Always" is like the goddamn Candyman but worse. Say it just once and it is in your head all day.

May have to vote for it on the basis of Respect The Earworm.

huh, "Always" isn't on the playlist

I'm shocked you can't immediately recall it from memory!

I tended to avoid Erasure like the plague after hearing their non-"Chains of Love" material; in fact, there are probably only 3-4 Erasure songs I've heard that don't make me hate everything in the world (CoL, "Chorus", "Love To Hate You", "A Little Respect" if I'm in the right mood or hearing the Wheatus cover)

"Always" has a lovely chorus but the electronics....

Erasure has always struck me as everything I disliked about Speak and Spell-era Depeche Mode refined and crystallized into its purest, most aggravating form

the cover of this David Byrne album is the funniest thing I have ever seen

Why do I not remember this Squeeze song? Like at all?

jesus the leap in "pandering-to-DJP"-ness that occurs when this playlist hits "I Feel You" is staggering

this is the only Squeeze song I can listen to from this period.

xxpost What shocks me is that Robot Unicorn Attack slipped past your radar!

Robot Unicorn Attack: http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html

The mad, mad original video: youtu.be/eSMeUPFjQHc

Full disclosure: I'm cool with Erasure through Wild!, with a dispensation for "Chorus" (the single, not the zzzzz album). "Always" is really something else though. Apparently they've covered "Solsbury Hill" but I'm not sure I want to know.

Oh I knew that an Erasure song was the music for RUA, that was the #1 reason why I never bought it

what are these songs even

missed Erasure accidentally when putting together playlist, it's in there now

xpost that's extra funny bc it's free!

anyhoo...

Sugar, "Helpless"

i missed this one... guess I don't think of Sugar as precisely an older artist who began disappearing from the chart, right? Mould was always around and never really went away. Other than to write for WWF for a while...

no Mould project has appeared on the Modern Rock chart since those early 90s Sugar singles

and obv Sugar was grandfathered in here on the basis of earlier projects just like Westerberg, Byrne, etc.

RUA wasn't free when it first came out, there was a huge ad campaign on Adult Swim about how it was going free etc etc etc

I am shocked that I had forgotten this INXS song considering how much I loved them through high school

Gonna be hard for me to not vote for "13 Steps Lead Down," the song that intro'd me to Costello (!!), but I either don't know or have forgotten enough of these that I should check them out before finalizing.

"The Other Side of Summer" and "Veronica" did that for me but "13 Steps" led me to the Rykodisc reissues.

i went through my Costello phrase later and had Brutal Youth for years before learning that "13 Steps" was its big single, which surprised me

surprised "helpless" was sugar's biggest chart entry, would have voted for "if i can't change your mind" or "a good idea"

for a long time i thought inxs was singing "we'll make time stop for the two hours"

xpost
Yeah, I dunno what's weirder to me know: discovering Elvis via that track, or it getting significant airplay alongside Nirvana and Pearl Jam in '93.

i saw costello play "13 steps lead down" on letterman but the "progressive" station in bloomington played "a kinder murder" way more

*now

didn't Costello appear twice on Letterman on that same tour? Dave kept complimenting C's guitar playing, which surprised Elvis as much as the rest of us.

as a kid i owned the b-52's, cure, inxs, lou reed, midnight oil, morrissey, peter gabriel, paul westerberg, sting, sugar, talking heads and 10,000 maniacs albums represented here, as well as the Until The End Of The World soundtrack that featured the lou and talking heads songs. also checked world party, elvis costello, xtc and new order from the library

between the aforementioned progressive radio station and issues of rolling stone swiped from the library, i was all about these intelligent rockers

i only got the B-52s album. my dad had the Sting and Peter Gabriel and Tears For Fears records, though. one of my future polls will probably be "new albums my father bought from 1990 to 1999"

also my mom had a cd club membership and this is the kind of stuff that filled the section that would be labeled something like "on the cutting edge"

voting lou reed because someone has to and man did i rock that cut-out cassette of Magic & Loss in 7th grade

mayonnaise soda!

At least this confirms for me that I still don't like Peter Murphy, and never have.

"Cuts You Up" pwns

Don't know if Suzanne Vega really counted as an older artist at the time, but "Blood Makes Noise" sounded pretty brave given her demographic (shared with Edie Brickell etc) at the time. Its really between this and NO's "Regret" for me.

I'm a pretty serious Furs head and yet have somehow never heard "Don't Be A Girl" (or anything else off World Outside). Shocked that it charted anywhere.

That Vega album holds up imo

The Cure – “Friday, I’m In Love”
Electronic – “Disappointed”
The Jesus And Mary Chain – “Far Gone And Out”
New Order – “Regret”
Pet Shop Boys – “Can You Forgive Her?”
Suzanne Vega – “Blood Makes Noise”

All top tier material from those artist's caltalogs. I might give it to Vega so she gets a vote (and it's a really great song).

"Until She Comes" hit #1 and actually got airplay but that's before Nevermind.

yeah generationwise Vega's prob younger than almost everyone else here, but as a vestige of a quickly fading idea of 'modern rock' and given the fluke-like nature of that particular song it seemed right to put her in the mix

vega definitely belongs in this mix if sugar does

yeah exactly, it's a loose tent

had a long boring post that basically was eclipsed by croup/some dude, but they're OTM

though some dude i have a nitpick for you...

drum roll...

if sugar counts then what about the #3 hit "Am I Wrong" by Love Spit Love in 1994?

IMO if you have to pick between the Furs and LSL, always go Furs

oh i totally forgot about the existence of Love Spit Love, would've definitely included them if i hadn't stopped browsing top 10s somewhere midway through '94

haha going from Morrissey to New Order feels kind of like being released from a POW camp and running into the arms of your loving wife

it's not like anyone's heart was broken by their absence, just proud to be one of an elite group of people who will ever get to say "you forgot love spit love"

just added "13 Steps" to the playlist btw, must've missed Elvis in the same brain fart that made me miss Erasure

Why did Morrissey turn into such a turgid, plodding bore after The Smiths broke up? That totally deadly, aging dude mid-tempo death trap everyone seems to fall into after they turn 40 that only a few ppl actively try to pull themselves out of (prob why I still listen to New Order, The Cure and Depeche Mode tbh)

i still dig your bona drag, arsenal and southpaw

xp: Regret, with half the cast of Baywatch

the ones out of this bunch that managed a top 10 after '93 are the ones that really beat the odds. Love And Rockets way out in '96!

i also like stray songs from the other albums before southpaw, but honestly i heard all that stuff before becoming familiar with the smiths

Viva Hate made me question and the Bona Drag/Kill Uncle 1-2 combo made me decide to never, ever EVER give dude any of my money again

If I'd heard a lot of solo Morrissey before encountering The Smiths, I never would have given them a chance

also I really wish I liked OMD more than I do; the songs of theirs I like I REALLY LOVE but then other songs, like "Stand Above Me" are just irritating

i remember getting Erasure and Electronica and Enigma confused a lot because the softest shit on the WHFS playlist was always by someone whose name started with an E

XP: I'd already gone through The Police breakup, so I was wary enough to never buy a singer's solo output unheard...

if i'd started drumming a few years earlier i would've been impressed by the time signature in the chorus of "Always" instead of just finding it cheesy

I was young enough for the Police breakup that I thought I liked a lot of Sting's solo stuff (and to be totally honest, I do still like "We'll Be Together" and "Set Them Free" a lot)

"Not Enough Time" is not my favorite of the later INXS hits but it's still pretty good!

Erasure is one of those groups where my tastes align with mainstream america's and i only care about the three songs that actually made our top 40, even though i've tried to check out the umpteen hits they've had elsewhere

if sugar counts then what about the #3 hit "Am I Wrong" by Love Spit Love in 1994?

― da croupier, Monday, November 5, 2012 10:19 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

IMO if you have to pick between the Furs and LSL, always go Furs

― Gandalf’s Gobble Melt (DJP), Monday, November 5, 2012

I hear ya but "Am I Wrong" is awfully good Butler. Still haven't heard "Don't Be A Girl" tho...

i thought of a 'only one song by related acts/solo careers' rule but ultimately decided both Byrne and Heads should be in there so it's not an either/or thing

lol Spotify lists The Jesus And Mary Chain as "The Jesus, Mary Chain" with links to 2 different artists named "The Jesus" and "Mary Chain"

also this just in JAMC were awful

i "reverence" was the option i would have voted for that

if "reverence"

okay that is so completely wrong, at least as far as Honey's Dead is concerned

"Reverence" pwns

i mean i really hope the guy wrote some kind of elaborate code that pulled up these things w/o much effort, the idea of working for hours upon hours on this is mind-boggling,

sadly, I chuckled

the silence about the Kate Bush track is amusing given her stature on ILM, but not as amusing as actually listening to it

you can't just excise the 2nd half of the post where i make fun of myself to leave the fun for yourself!

the Kate Bush track is ignorable

oh fuck "Dyslexic Heart", another song I have loathed for decades

'ignorable' is not the word i would use for the hilarious last minute of "Rubberband Girl"

well it's Kate Bush, it's ignorable in the same way "Declare Independence" is an ignorable Bjork song

songs by these folks that might have made me reconsider voting for "a styrofoam lover with emotions of concrete"

INXS, "Heaven Sent"
Jesus & Mary Chain, "Reverence"
Morrissey, "Tomorrow"
Sugar, "A Good Idea"
Paul Westerberg, "World Class Fad"

and actually, when i did my modernrock4eva countdown some of those available ranked considerably higher than "what's good". but this time i'm voting for Song I'd Least Like To See Get Zero Votes so Lou gets the nod over "Pumpkinhead" and "Regret" who I'm sure already have friends

seriously though, can I go back to the early 90s and dickpunch Paul Westerberg

i def was tempted to make "Digging In The Dirt" the Gabriel pick

DON'T LOOK BACK
DRIVE THE CAR
PUNCH THE DICK
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE

If he was from Venus
would he punch us in the penis?

songs that i thought i'd never heard but when they come up on the playlist they sound familiar: Crowded House, Lloyd Cole, Living Colour

paul westerberg already got dickpunched in the '90s when the goo goo dolls broke through

hahaha

lol the Lou Reed track started and i genuinely assumed it was still Living Colour

though if "we are the normal" is on their hits comp Paul may have actually seen some royalty money from the Goos the long run

is now a good time to say I have always despised the cover of the PIL album

haha it is and apparently the Goo Goo Dolls released a greatest hits record with the title What I Learned About Ego, Opinion, Art & Commerce (xpost)

polls like this always make me think "wow college radio was odd" but not in a good way

Mostly just make me thankful that the Ottawa campus stations were nothing like this.

TS: Kate Bush imitating a donkey vs Kate Bush imitating a rubberband

yeah "we are the normal" is on that Not-Really-A-Hits-Comp album from '01 but left off the OK-This-Is-Really-A-Hits-Comp finally dropped in '07

still remember SPIN's review of "We Are the Normal" -- "1-900-DIAL-A-ANGST."

member/collaborator of several bandson this list Johnny Marr just announced his first solo album to capitalize on the attention brought on him by this thread

Marr Of What You're Looking For

wow Midnight Oil are good at making a lyric like "I hear much support for the monarchy" catchy as hell, those guys deserve every cent they ever made

might have voted for "digging in the dirt." "steam" was wack from day tho and i say that as a PG stan.

day 1 obv

speaking of Johnny Marr, I suppose "Sexuality" is juuuuust outside the parameters of this thread...

I think that and Rush dropped just before Teen Spirit

I'm the only Gabriel fan I know who likes "Steam," maybe because the album it's on is half a stone bore.

"Steam" is kind of unforgivable

I def dug "Truganini" and "Drums Of Heaven" off that Midnight Oil album. "Steam" is fine if you're looking for another "Sledgehammer" but so few are today.

the thing about looking for another "Sledgehammer" is that you still have "Sledgehammer" and it's still way way WAY better

like, just play "Sledgehammer" twice, gtfo with this "Steam" shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpFLhpaAGxc

cover it up with bubble bath

GET A LIIIIIFE

jump to 1:30 for the removal of the shirt

like, just play "Sledgehammer" twice, gtfo with this "Steam" shit

YOU KNOW YOUR CULTURE FROM YOUR TRASH

the video for "Steam" is a much sadder attempt to retread "Sledgehammer" than the song itself, which is just mediocre. "Kiss That Frog," on the other hand.

plus it's old dude with a fringe haircut in lolnineties shirt

oh god I'd forgotten about "Kiss That Frog"

I would love to send that song back to the "Games Without Frontiers" recording sessions and be all "THIS IS YOUR FUTURE"

Lou Reed vs. Suzanne Vega

apparently the line isn't "bubble bath" after all

Everybody nosedive
Hold your breath, count to five
Backslap, boobytrap,
Cover it up in bubblewrap
Room shake, earthquake
Find a way to stay awake
It's going to blow, it's going to break
This is more than I can take

I'm the only Gabriel fan I know who likes "Steam," maybe because the album it's on is half a stone bore.
--the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Bah. The only dispensable tracks are "steam" and "kiss that frog." everything else either rules, works in context, or both.

xgau:

US [Geffen, 1992]

His voice permanently hoarse--sounds like he's been campaigning for president since he dropped So in 1986, which in a sense he has--Gabriel deploys a multihued battalion of respected professionals into wave upon wave of overkill. Though the sonic layering isn't devoid of interest or even originality, the problem goes way beyond a grandeur that seems inauspiciously egotistical on "his first real record of love songs"--these arrangements would obtrude into any musical event more low-key than an Olympic anthem or a massed May Day choir singing "The Internationale." "Steam"'s googolgroove overwhelms its petty sexism, but "Kiss That Frog" wrecks a funny little idea about Pete's penis by asking it to hold up the weight of the world. And "Kiss That Frog" is the other fast one, plus one makes two. What you mean US, white man? B-

ha the reference to "context" made me think of xgau's "olympic anthem" zing too

oh man I dig this Sting song too

and I'd forgotten exactly how great this Suzanne Vega song is

"The Globe" might be my favorite Clash-related song.

that's just sad

actually i assume anyone with that opinion is very happy. like "better not be driving" happy.

prefer "All This Time" because I like Sting imitating Paul Simon.

everything DJP hates on this thread i like, plus I hate that Sting song.

I remember going to Waxie Maxie's and picking up "London Calling". I had heard it had one of the Big Audio Dynamite guys in it.

"Rush" is my BADII jam.

Listening to "The Globe" as I type, for the first time in years. Not my favorite BAD song by a long shot, but I still like it.
Ditto Talking Heads, New Order, XTC and B-52's
Had no idea "Good Stuff" made it to #1
Lots of these I don't remember.

was there anyone besides payola guys who cared about Ian McCulloch in 1992?

808 State?

Actually since "Rush" was a #1 Modern Rock hit, shouldn't it be here instead of "The Globe"?

I really, really want to vote Sugar or Duran Duran, but it's really New Order.
― C-3PO Sharkey (Phil D.), Monday, November 5, 2012 10:49 AM (3 hours ago)

Oh wait, it was pre-Nevermind. Never mind. xp

Honeydrip got a ton of play on my local modern rock station, but I don't know if anyone liked it.

oh shit I had completely forgotten about "Dogs of Lust"

why does this Thomas Dolby song sound like "I Want Candy"

I got that The The album thanks to "Dogs of Lust." The album should have been titled Songs To Spit In Your Ear.

IIRC Dusk was super boring but NakedSelf was fantastic

man 10,000 Maniacs... I always found them boring on record but even the small amount of joy I got from their SNL performance of "Like The Weather"/"What's The Matter Here?" was taken away by going on the internet and reading from an active Usenet poster who managed LA bands of what a horribly difficult person Natalie Merchant was to work with

the Maniacs were the first non-pop act I listened to but my affection barely outlasted the Bush I era.

actually I really liked "Eat For Two" on record

I have never heard this Violent Femmes song before in my life and I'm one of five ppl who thinks Hallowed Ground is their best album

wait till you get to that World Party song.

oh god, fucking World Party

dude used up all of my affection with "Whole of the Moon"; I've pretty much despised everything else I've heard from him

Erasure – “Always” (#8, 1994)

boom.

Actually that's probably not actually what I think but I don't have time to really think about this and so that jumped out at me and got my vote even though I'm not sure I even like it that much.

I've had too much coffee today. Sorry for not making sense.

haha I feel like that actually encapsulates American politics in general

lol

General Public – “I’ll Take You There” (#6, 1994)

iirc this was on the Threesome soundtrack with which I was, in retrospect, rather embarrassingly obsessed with as a teenager. God, that movie.

I keep forgetting that "Peter Pumpkinhead" and "Mayor of Simpleton" were on different albums

"These Are Days" is as pure in its particular feeling as "Lithium."

haha I bought the Threesome soundtrack just to own "Is Your Love Strong Enough" #preinternetdays

Actually since "Rush" was a #1 Modern Rock hit, shouldn't it be here instead of "The Globe"?

if both were on here I would have broken my perfect streak of never not voting for "The Globe" on an ilx poll

I have never heard this Violent Femmes song before in my life and I'm one of five ppl who thinks Hallowed Ground is their best album

I think any choice other than s/t for "best album" is nuts but I sure do like a lot of what they produced afterwards, including "Breakin' Up" -- but "I Held Her In My Arms" might be my favorite, can't really justify it, it's just pure joy

I love the s/t as well, don't get me wrong! I just think "Never Tell" is the best thing they ever did.

i havent heard a lot of these but i went with Sugar

Hmm. Didn't realise "Eastern bloc" was on the Thomas Dolby album, I always knew it as the b side to "I love you goodbye". In fact whoever was the breakfast show DJ on Radio 1 at the time it came out played both the a side and b side straight after each other one morning, which persuaded me to buy the single. Wikipedia tells me Eddie Van Halen is playing guitar on it. Hmm. Gets me vote, out of sympathy.

Gets *my* vote, obviously.

(also "Country Death Song" is amazing; basically I love the punked out attitude of the first album but I REALLY love the insane hillbilly vibe on the second album intercut with the punked out attitude)

How come I've never heard "The Globe" before? Its great!

i feel like "The Globe," far more than anything here or of the grunge zeitgeist, was the song i'd hear on WHFS more than anything else when i started wanting to actively listen to alt-rock radio. i probably knew that song before "Should I Stay Or Should I Go," weirdly.

jesus christ, how YOUNG are you ppl ;_;

b 1982 homie

lol "i knew bad II and morrissey before the clash and the smiths" is a pretty plausible early 30s experience

i may have already known the clash by the time of "rush" but only in the vaguest "rock the casbah" sense

xpost Im 35, that song got absolutely zero radio play on this side of the atlantic

I remember being dismayed that "Rush" and "The Globe" were ostensibly done by the same group responsible for "E=mc2", then being relieved when I realized that almost the entire band was different

ironically i'd be more likely to have my mind blown if someone in their twenties knew BAD II before the clash, since who the fuck was rocking Big Audio after the early 90s

that was not a "mind blown!" reaction, that was a dismayed "you did it wrong, oh no!" reaction btw, followed swiftly by a "where's my rocking chair, all this yelling about my lawn tuckers me right out" reaction

Rush will always be a jam.

Ian McCulloch featuring Teddy Riley – “Honeydip” (#6, 1992)

FIXED

Love everything up through The Globe, but am thinking they should now change their moniker to Big Audio Mistake.

-- Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, April 4, 2003 8:10 PM

SEARCH: "The Bottom Line," "E=MC2", "Medicine Show," "Contact," "Rush" "The Globe."

DESTROY: "C'mon Every Beatbox," "Just Play Music", their silly hats circa #10 UPPING STREET, the title of that album, their annoyingly cumbersome habit of changing their name (first Big Audio Dynamite, then Big Audio Dynamite II and the simply Big Audio) and everything they did after 1991. Everything after THE GLOBE was a....wait for it....Big Audio Mistake!

-- Alex in NYC, Tuesday, May 7, 2002 12:00 AM

Also, changing their name from Big Audio Dynamite to Big Audio Dynamite Two to simply Big Audio was a....

....wait for it.....

Big Audio Mistake

-- Alex in NYC, Thursday, August 15, 2002 12:00 AM (Thursday, August 15, 2002 12:00 AM)

can we bring Alex out of retirement for this thread?

from my kiddie chair, big audio didn't change over time so much as their fans did

it's not so much "when did big audio start sucking?" as "when did you decide not to listen to mick jones over twerpy beats?"

I have never heard Big Audio Dynamite to my knowledge and I'm not sure I want to

omg

'i've made a huge audio mistake'

every time Morbs made a comment about "BAM," he meant Big Audio Mistake, not Obama

tempted to make an "i'm the ocean" vs "rush" thread for the slim slice of ilx pie that hits the venn diagram of Neil Young Thread People and Early '90s Thread People

"people my age don't do the things i do" vs "somehow i stayed thin while the other guys got fat"

"Rush" is a song i equate with movie trailers even though i have no idea what movie(s) it may have been in the trailer for

Rush Rush > Rush

I have no idea why but when I was 13 it was my favorite song and all my friends and I loved it to pieces. If I were to go on FB right now and post the vid I can think of about 5 girls who've probably long since forgotten about it but would flip their shit.

And after not listening to it in years and years I randomly played it while I was getting ready this morning so this is particularly weird timing.

Oh wait. I think I played it because I saw this thread. Never mind - not that weird.

lol

It's far less of a transition to become a Smiths fan after hearing Morrissey solo (as I and a few other posters have pointed out) than going from BAD back the Clash.

it's either Erasure or Annie Lennox for me. Walking on Broken Glass is great! But maybe it's Erasure. Yes. Erasure.

"Little Bird" got more airplay on my station than "...Glass" and "Why," the two pop hits.

Old guard hits from '93 or after are a bit more curious and interesting, as (the end of)'91 and '92 were chronologically after Nevermind, but not completely culturally post-Nevermind yet. It did take a minute for the oldies to get blacklisted!

Vote? The Church!

Annnnnnnd, people like Mould and Westerberg actually benefited from Nirvana's success, no?
That's how I remember it. It was like "oh hey, cool uncles!"

Mould yes to a degree, Westerberg not so much.

Mould/Sugar won the acclaim/granny cool points early and got his best sales ever and if you believe the reviews for the Sugar reissues has won the historical battle too; our generation now writes the reviews.

I don't have access to Soundscan but 14 Songs looks like it might in the same ballpark as the last two Mats albums.

*sales ballpark

but but but... Westerberg benefited from Singles. That's V. grunge!

all this vitriol towards BA(etc), the the, and no love for a rather lovely thomas dolbly track.

sigh.

guess this is not the thread for me.

i.e. you folks are nuts.

dogs of lust is fucking amazing (as is the whole album), and in any sane world would be on any radio stations a-list until mitt blows the planet to fuck.

as for dolby : its a lovely track that revisits past glories in a very cool way, and rush is just a pop fix of fun. nothing too serious.

I don't think I said sounding like Bow Wow Wow was a bad thing!

"Rush" is horrible tho

yeah Pixies (and later Frank Black solo) charted a little after "Teen Spirit" broke too and it's maybe arbitrary to not include them but throw Mould and Westerberg in, but that was my gut feeling.

14 Songs doubled All Shook Down's sales.

Just for perspective:

Don't Tell A Soul: #57
All Shook Down: #69

14 Songs: 44

I had a huge crush on that Paul Westerberg song.

in my world sounding like bow wow wow is a bad thing ..

and i really don't hear the connection (have tried just now)

the density in the recording that matt and marr did for the 'dusk' album, makes it sound amazing.

but then i have to admit that am biased.

as with BA(etc), however, i totally understand why people hate BA(etc)

.. as it is very lightweight.

whereas when it comes to 'dusk' - no such get out clauses apply.

fucking immense late night album.

14 Songs doubled All Shook Down's sales.

it did? wow. the early '90s were definitely alright for paul - soundtrack appearances, does what he wants with the whole advance, etc - but he never did get past "big promo push for the first single or two, finish south of gold" status

wait. don't listen to me. a fair amount of ASD's sales would be pre-soundscan, so... disregard the "doubled" comment above.

"Finish south of gold" is the tragedy of his career aspirations, I guess.

I made the connection to "I Want Candy" too but that's really just a standard Bo Diddly beat. Not a bad thing but kind of unusual for Dolby. Also if you haven't heard "Europa and the Pirate Twins" you probably wouldn't really get what the tune's about as it kind of lifts a lot of pieces from it.

this is my especially corny top 10 out of these mostly corny songs:

Tears For Fears – “Break It Down Again” (#1, 1993)
The Pretenders – “Night In My Veins” (#2, 1994)
Annie Lennox – “Walking On Broken Glass” (#7, 1992)
New Order – “Regret” (#1, 1993)
XTC – “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” (#1, 1992)
Sting – “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” (#1, 1993)
INXS – “Not Enough Time” (#2, 1992)
Violent Femmes – “Breakin’ Up” (#12, 1994)
Crowded House – “Locked Out” (#8, 1994)
Big Audio Dynamite II – “The Globe” (#3, 1991)

still jogging my memory or hearing a lot of these for the first time on the playlist, though -- dug the Lloyd Cole and Nick Heyward and O.M.D. songs

oooh .. i got confused.

i thought the bow wow wow connection was for the the, not dolby.

yeah, totally re the dolby track.

but thats purposeful innit.

thats dolby playing genre games ..

and frogs is spot on re the historical aspect hence why i love it ..

I thought Lloyd Cole benefited more from the Sweet-Quine-Maher assist than Sweet did.

hahaha no wonder you were acting like I was insane

@djp ;

:-)

too much vino as usual ..

Many of these songs were either entry points to a back catalog (Elvis C, Pretenders, Sugar, Bowie) or reminders that new entries to the catalog weren't terrible (Tears For Fears, Annie Lennox, Crowded House, Byrne).

tbh I am probably harsher on Dusk than I normally would be because I think I wanted Infected Part 2 from it and I was still not completely over "The Violence of Truth" off of Mind Bomb

(actually I'm still not really over "The Violence of Truth" if I'm being honest; it really speaks to how amazing an album Infected is that I was actually able to listen to it after getting n bombed on my first exposure to Matt Johnson)

I lost interest in Dusk as soon as I heard the spoken word intro in which Johnson asks rhetorical questions ("Have you ever wanted somebody so badly that you'd whisper moistly in her ear?" or something) that I thought Madonna had decisively answered in "Justify My Love."

no one should do anything moistly in anyone's ear EVER

keep your laws off my body

Now imagine Vanilla Ice and Matt Johnson posing like Ice and Madonna in Sex.

;_;

haha.

i hear you.

but dusk is a total late night dark soul heartbreak soundtrack, and is truly amazing

(oh and you have mis-remembered the spoken intro, as its nothing to do with moist in ears etc .. )

get beyond the cheesey opening, and the album just gets darker and darker.

love it (but then it suits my current mood !).

Mark E, my problem with it was Mark's equating of lust and existential loneliness when, I dunno, eighty percent of pop songs do it already without being so literal.

but matt has always been literal.

that's his point.

the man doesn't do humour.

not to everyones taste, but fuck, when the mood hits, nothing fits quite as well as matt and his doom laden self loathing.

Mark = Johnson

I was still not completely over "The Violence of Truth" off of Mind Bomb

ahhhh .. of course ..

forgot about you and your issues re that track.

have to admit, that's not an easy one to reconcile.

however, dusk far far surpasses mind bomb in every aspect as far as i'm concerned.

but i am happy to accept that could be just my current mindset and that in a few years time i will think 'wtf !' re my passion for this 40 minutes of excessive emo shyte.

"Sax and Violins" is the only one of these I've ever knowingly heard

so many british bands on here that britain stopped giving a shit about seemingly years before these records came out (honestly amazed to see nick heywood there). not sure now though if maybe it was only me that stopped giving a shit, or maybe it was just that the uk music weeklies stopped writing about them and their popularity here just went unnoticed by me. on the other hand i'm thinking that some of these artists started getting somewhere in the US and then just concentrated on that market or in some cases americanized their sound a bit and totally gave up bothering with the uk (psych furs and love & rockets are definitely examples of this i think). and then there's maybe a third thing going on where US audiences are rather more loyal or patient, or perhaps they get into an artist later when they're a bit further along with their career and so the difference between what one first encounters and what that artist then becomes isn't quite so pronounced and that rate of evolution starts slowing down too... i dunno, i'm just brainstorming here but it's just boggling that some of these were hits of one sort or another. probably had this exact conversation before, and i do remember talking about where this sort of thing had happened in the other direction with old guard alternative acts but can' think of any relevant examples right now (iggy maybe?)

V important to remember that a placing on this chart does not mean that most North Americans gave a shit. I've never heard of half of these.

of course another thing is that some uk things happened that made some of these guys less relevant to uk audiences but which had little of the same impact on US tastes - e.g. baggy, the crossover of dance music into indie territory, shoegaze, the general death of goth as a major subculture here...

xp that's true!

"I Feel You"

yeah something like 2/3rds of these acts are british, to the point that i thought of just making that its own poll

the nick heyward thing is crazy, but the modern rock chart is still kind of bananas to me pre-dookie, like how "there's no other way" and "girls & boys" peaked higher than "song 2." it's probably part that alternative radio hadn't blown up yet (more songs that weren't mtv hits charted high), also i think my hip radio source in the early '90s was dancing to its own beat more than my hip radio source was in the mid to late '90s

this whole era was kind of the death knell of American rock fans paying close attention to the UK, between the alt-rock explosion being really US (and Seattle)-centric, Metallica supplanting all those British bands as the mainstream face of metal, and Britpop not really crossing over here (xpost)

i honestly don't think we missed much. maybe should have let pulp and supergrass have one bonafide hit, but otherwise we cherrypicked alright

both bands also had songs they tried to push here and not in the uk oddly enough, "like a friend" and "cheapskate"

All we missed were Tricky, Pulp, and Tony Blair.

we didn't need maxinquaye we had the romeo & juliet ost

American R&B and hip-hop (and dance culture to an extent) far more interesting than Britpop and college faves in America from 1994-1996.

oh i definitely am not saying we missed anything. imo there's a huge dividing line between the wealth of british rock before a certain point in time and a near total dearth afterwards. for me the Stone Roses debut is the dividing line (or just after it, i guess).

and at any other given time xp

Nick Heyward was MIA for a while, so I'm happy that this prompted me to google, and lo and behold he has a website and a bunch of his CD's reissued with bonus tracks last year. His "The Apple Bed" is kind of obviously the Beatles album, but it's pretty great and kind of under-appreciated. "The Goodbye Man" is his should-have-been-a-hit, I think...
http://nickheyward.com/recordstore/

Duran Duran gets the vote.
Also good INXS, 10,000 Maniacs, Annie Lennox, XTC, Big Audio Dynamite, Sting

newsflash

Dusk is at LEAST the second-best The The album, and amazing at creating a consistent oppressive emotional vibe, mark e OTM

dude used up all of my affection with "Whole of the Moon"; I've pretty much despised everything else I've heard from him

WRONG DUDE

from my kiddie chair, big audio didn't change over time so much as their fans did

this is wrong_as_heck, they changed gradually over the first three (from good to shit), then had an amazing reboot thanks to acid house on the fourth, then every single album afterwards basically changes style as the backing band or name changes. apart from Kool-Aid to The Globe, as the latter is more or less a radio remix of the former.

look basically what I'm saying is the beats behind Jones were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT kinds of twerpy at different times


anyway this should have been a ballot poll - I f/w

Big Audio Dynamite II – “The Globe” (#3, 1991)
The Cure – “Friday, I’m In Love” (#1, 1992)
Depeche Mode – “I Feel You” (#1, 1993)
Electronic – “Disappointed” (#9, 1992)
Elvis Costello - "13 Steps Lead Down" (#6, 1994)
The Jesus And Mary Chain – “Far Gone And Out” (#3, 1992)
Kate Bush – “Rubberband Girl” (#7, 1993)
New Order – “Regret” (#1, 1993)
Pet Shop Boys – “Can You Forgive Her?” (#10, 1993)
Siouxsie & the Banshees – “Face to Face” (#7, 1992)
Suzanne Vega – “Blood Makes Noise” (#1, 1992)
Talking Heads – “Sax And Violins” (#1, 1992)
The The – “Dogs Of Lust” (#2, 1992)
Violent Femmes – “Breakin’ Up” (#12, 1994)
XTC – “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” (#1, 1992)

look basically what I'm saying is the beats behind Jones were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT kinds of twerpy at different time

lol i can accept this

and sometimes there were more guitars

making a playlist and forcing myself to listen to this fucking Adam Ant song again

I had an Adam & the Ants best of CD which was sequenced non-chronologically and 'Wonderful' followed 'Stand and Deliver'. Always guaranteed a frantic scramble for the skip button.

My POX of these (all of which I actually remember from the first time around):

1. Duran Duran – “Ordinary World” (#2, 1993)
2. New Order – “Regret” (#1, 1993)
3. Sugar – “Helpless” (#5, 1992)
4. World Party – “Is It Like Today” (#5, 1993)
5. Erasure – “Always” (#8, 1994)
6. Morrissey – “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” (#1, 1994)
7. Electronic – “Disappointed” (#9, 1992)
8. Pet Shop Boys – “Can You Forgive Her?” (#10, 1993)
9. David Bowie – “Jump They Say” (#4, 1993)
10. Depeche Mode – “I Feel You” (#1, 1993)

but matt has always been literal.

that's his point.

the man doesn't do humour.

Matt J was on Mike Read's Superstore as a featured guest. I forget the 'write-in' prize, but his question was: "As it says in the song, this is the 51st state of the USA, but Which was the 50th? Answers on a postcard to..."

i think i'm liking the cheesier side of this stuff too. i'll probably go with either lennox or new order, but surprised how much i still dig the tears for fears, inxs, duran duran and sting tracks

i remember watching MTV in 1993 waiting for Pearl Jam videos to come on and being really annoyed that '80s pop bands like Duran Duran and INXS were still getting ballads in heavy rotation, surprised me later to realize that those songs were big on alt radio and not just adult contemporary

this is my third attempt at listening to the Peter Murphy song, hopefully i can soldier through it and move on to the rest of the playlist

i had a Daniel Ash solo single on early drafts of this list btw, it's amazing how much cheeseball bullshit on the modern rock chart came from Bauhaus alumni

this playlist may have set back my "i should listen to some of their albums one of these days" aspirations for PIL and Pet Shop Boys by years

I can't look up its chart position now but Daniel Ash's "Get Out of Control" got mucho airplay here in spring '93.

yeah that was the one i was going to include

i've never really heard these final Talking Heads songs before, "Sax And Violins" kinda blows

it's pretty weird that the soundtrack to a William Hurt movie spawned three modern rock hits

OK, so there are at least five songs (Midnight Oil, Westerberg, Sting, The The, XTC) on this list with prominent harmonica parts. i blame these guys for prepping the alt rock charts for the Blues Traveler/Alanis takeover that would soon follow.

it's pretty weird that the soundtrack to a William Hurt movie spawned three modern rock hits

pretty sure the four-star front-of-section rolling stoner review that made me snag it (used i believe) mentioned wim wenders but not hurt. loved the soundtrack at the time, still never seen the movie.

I was real stoked when the movie finally got to my local video store, because I had been all amped up by months of Talking Heads, U2, and Lou Reed on the radio. It didn't really speak to me as a 13-year-old or whatever.

yeah i know i stared at it at blockbuster many times but could never close the deal

"Until the End of the World" Soundtrack POLL

wtf at the k d lang-Siberry collab winning

oh sure yeah Wim Wenders makes it less of a stretch, i'm just saying the words "William Hurt movie soundtrack" make me think of The Big Chill

13 Steps Lead Down

funny thing about some of the songs I heard many times when they were new but not much since then ("Breakin' Up," "The More You Ignore Me," "Night In My Veins") is how I managed to remember how the tunes go accurately but the production and instrumentation kind of surprise me by being of a distinctly different texture than how they'd come to sound in my head.

btw some dude, IMO Very is a much better album than "Can You Forgive Her?" (and "Go West") would lead you to believe, I recommend it

yeah but what album should i start with if every song besides "West End Girls" makes me go hey why isn't this as good as "West End Girls"

hmm

Their best album hands down is Alternative, which is all b-sides and rarities up through the Very era. Of the actual studio albums, I ride hard for Please, Actually, Behaviour, Very and Nightlife. In a lot of ways their first album is a creative mission statement for what the group is all about, so even though I hesitate to say it's their best, if you don't dig what's happening on Please there's probably not too much point to digging into their catalog; on the other hand, they definitely evolved with club music even though they held onto their lush synth foundation, so the style of dance pop they're doing in the Please/Actually-era is markedly different from what's going on circa Nightlife, and Alternative has a bunch of their experiments/diversions/covers/demos of tracks written for other people.

I'm no Bowiephile, but is "Jump They Say" considered all-time for him? Because I love it almost as much as, say, "Heroes" or anything on Lodger.

Also, it's got a Lester Bowie solo, so it automatically gets my vote.

Start with Actually, sd. (Alternative isn't a bad shot to follow up with, but it obviously doesn't have a coherent album sound.)

ha I wanted to say Actually but I second-guessed myself

so what sic said, start with Actually

Behaviour, Very Actually, Please in that sequence imo.

"Jump They Say" was my New Bowie intro and it still hold sup.

Black Tie White Noise was the first new Bowie album i remember hearing about when it came out, but at the time i only heard the title track w/ Al B. Sure, which is kinda dope

After a few "Tin Machine" years, "Jump They Say" was very "Bowie Is Back" big-event. I don't think anything else Bowie did since, had that.

It's crazy how much of a grower Behavior is. I really did not like that album at all on first listen but it really sneaks up on you.

video for "Jump They Say" is one of his very best

oh I loved Behaviour immediately, "Being Boring" is a fantastic album opener and kind of an encapsulation of their entire career aesthetic up to that point in 7 minutes

Outside and Earthling both seemed to make a big overall splash in America than Black Tie White Noise, if not on the modern rock chart per se

There's a discussion on the Bowie blog on this very point. Those of us who discovered Bowie in the earl nineties were in for a shock: he was never more uncool and ridiculous. But by the time Nirvana covered "The Man Who Sold The World" the plates started to shift so that by the time the nineties ended his influence was almost overstated.

yeah that rings true w/ how it felt to me. the co-headlining tour w/ Nine Inch Nails felt like a big moment of generational acceptance.

even so SPIN voted Bowie "Most unwelcome comeback" or something in its year-end '95 issue

Earthling seemed pretty welcomed at the time, and marketed as a proper comeback record.

Depeche Mode and The Cure had a bunch of top 10's after the songs mentioned here. "Only When I Lose Myself" and "Wrong Number" come to mind.

yeah as i mentioned, maybe in Alfred's 93 thread, i thought about taking Cure and Depeche out of the running on an REM/U2 tip.

I still can understand why they're mentioned here.

it's probably just post-election glow but f it "these are days" is killing me and imma vote for it.

ha 10kM did play that song at Clinton's inaugural ball

The run from Morrissey through Paul Westerberg is my favorite part of the Spotify playlist so far.

Hey ship, here's another old timer who scored a couple hits pre-Nirvana: Richard Thompson ("I Feel So Good" #15).

although Wiki's not showing it I thought one of the Mirror Blue singles charted.

ahh yeah i should've remembered that he was in the mix. stuff that never made the top 10 was harder to find without knowing what to look for, though.

billboard.com doesn't have anything charting after "i feel so good," which i think was just before Nevermind

a british guitarist who did technically get left out (though obv i don't actually care) - Robyn Hitchcock, who made it all the way to #19 in 1993 with "Driving Aloud (Radio Storm).

really if you couldn't crack the top 10 of the alternative chart, nobody at your record company thought you had a "big post-nevermind hit"

ahhh Hitchcock definitely had wanted to include him to.

don't really care about whether the hits were big, the biggest of small hits is enough.

So apparently Nick Heyward first metamorphosed into Sam Rockwell:

http://nickheyward.com/w/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/nickheyward-portrait-on-yellow-paulashby.jpg

then into Fat Brad Pitt:

http://media.monstersandcritics.com/galleries/1310282/LMK-00462850085.jpg

RIP HAircut 100

for nearly maybe half these artists these songs were like my first exposure to them, which in some cases is pretty laughably unrepresentative

otm!

these were my first couple of years of obsessive radio-listening so there are many nostalgic and somewhat guilty pleasures here, but even after all this time I still like that Duran Duran song more than their properly huge 80s hits

I know/hope this has probably just made several people sigh and shake their head and mutter at the screen, but still, voting for that

Why not? It's a good song.

The "papers on the roadside tell of suffering and grief" middle eight kills me -- so unexpected.

the sugar is the only one i knew or liked much at the time. but now, either "regret" or "walking in broken glass" i think.

solo annie lennox blurgh

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wau @ Suzanne Vega

90 votes! can i now get away with dropping my challop that "Regret" >>> "Blue Monday"?

i got your back, man.

haha nice. i feel like i shoulda gone w/ my gut that The Cure and Depeche Mode had too many post-91 hits to count, feel like they sucked up a lot of votes from more interesting songs.

My vote was for Poison Heart, but I had forgotten how much I used to love What's Good. It would have been close.

OK, so there are at least five songs (Midnight Oil, Westerberg, Sting, The The, XTC) on this list with prominent harmonica parts. i blame these guys for prepping the alt rock charts for the Blues Traveler/Alanis takeover that would soon follow.

― ICY BRO (SPECIAL GUEST) (some dude), Tuesday, November 6, 2012 8:16 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

only 10 votes for the harmonica gang

these were my first couple of years of obsessive radio-listening so there are many nostalgic and somewhat guilty pleasures here, but even after all this time I still like that Duran Duran song more than their properly huge 80s hits

That is perfectly understandable, it's a great song!

"Come Undone" has grown on me over the years but i still just shudder at "Ordinary World"

at the time it was the single most distasteful thing in heavy rotation on MTV to me

"Come Undone" is a better song, yeah

re: results, "Dyslexic Shart" is fucking terrible, shame on 4 of you

Thank you.

so is "Peter Pumpkinhead." As if our generation gave a shit about JFK after JFK.

aw, i love peter pumpkinhead - i love what a broad cartoon of messianicism it is, catchy too

favorite song that got zero votes: "Is It Like Today?"

was going to make a joke about Alfred being one of the people who would keep us on our knees, but I can't just hand innuendo to him on a silver platter like that

voted for Suzanne Vega over JAMC & New Order. Blood Makes Noise is such a great track!

ugh this thread has forced me to remember that erasure song and for some reason it has lodged itself in my brain and it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere anytime soon

Fave song that received no votes: "Sweet Lover Hangover"

Pushing Ahead Of The Dame's entry on "Jump They Say" is A++. Made me revisit the song: http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/jump-they-say/

was going to make a joke about Alfred being one of the people who would keep us on our knees, but I can't just hand innuendo to him on a silver platter like that

get a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiffe

hey, ship, what about Jesus Jones' "The Devil You Know"? It actually hit #1 in early '93.

jesus jones first hit the modern rock chart in the year of nevermind though

they're not really an "older artist" like anyone here - i think the newest group included is living colour or world party

oh true

that said it's crazy "devil you know" hit #1. must have been quite the promo push.

It must have been a one-single push because the album vanished (I owned it lol. The sleeve claimed it was the "first album ever recorded on computer" or something.

i think i saw the video once as an MTV exclusive, back when they would play that and like mick jagger's "sweet thing" for a few days before forgetting it ever existed