1994

Sadly, no.

Jeff Buckley played in my local pub - the Red Lion - in Stevenage Old Town in the spring of 94, as a very weird date on his mini-tour to promote the Sin-e ep. Well, he played a lunchtime gig in the pub, had a kip under his big fur coat, and then played third on the bill to some local punk groups at the Bowes Lyon Youth Club in the evening. He was gorgeous.

Yeah, thought it was gonna be Buckley, but more Grace love makes us gladder.

Select magazine is pretty pivotal in all of this, from my vantage point

"Closer," Nine Inch Nails
"The Big Empty," Stone Temple Pilots
"Come Out and Play," The Offspring

http://wizardishungry.com/mp3z/Teenage%20Bondage.mp3

OTMFM

I made this into CD, I started a trhead about it. Anyway, this is what I liked in 1994.

The untitled GMS and 6FS songs were from the "Declaration of Techno-colonial Independence" split-single.

Did the White Birch by Codiene come out in 1994?

I remember it being an identity-crisis kind of year, musically--not for me personally but because the post-Nirvana alt-rock glut had cleaved a space between indie and mainstream-alt, and I f'in' HATED a lot of what got popular that year (Collective Soul, for one; NIN for another). Hip-hop lost me because I distrusted the "keepin' it real" aspect of it; it seemed more austere and less fun than it had been the previous few years. And dance music seemed less juicy, less fun, moving toward arena-techno and stadium house instead of the goofier, more fun stuff I'd been into. Then I went to First Avenue on the last Sunday of the year for their "best of 2004" night and was blown away by how much of the music was really good. I still prefer '91, '93, and '95, but yeah, great year.

"best. fucking. year. ever."

couldn't have put it any better.

Also 1994 was the first time I heard Scooter...

pre-1994: Italo House, Kiddie Rave, Stadium Techno, Ragga Jungle
post-1994: Big Beat, D'n'B, Trance, Trip Hop

actually I think it was when it started getting serious that I went off dance music completely for a few years.

May '93 to May '94 was my year off from dance music. I spent most of it listening to Pearl Jam, STP< Soundgarden and Senser. It didn't take much to get me into Jungle from Autumn '94 onwards but it wasn't until the following Summer that I started to like House and heard stuff like 'Acperience' and 'Higher State Of Consciousness' and even 'Strings Of Life' for the first time (shockah)

Wasn’t 94 also the start of the rise of handbag/glam house, the superstar dj and the return of dresscode elitism?

I don't really remember Detroit Techno making that big of a commercial impact - it stayed underground. I guess Big Beat was a bit silly but it was featured in Q and Select and other supposedly "proper" music mags whereas Black Box wasn't. I'm just saying that suddenly dance was recognised as "proper" music as opposed to throwaway rubbish that was beneath song-based pop and rock.

I think two meanings of 'serious' are getting mixed up a bit here though. I would dispute that idea that dance music was not taken seriously by the music press until 1994.

This was manifested with Melody Maker putting Underworld on the front cover and introducing an expanded dance section in early 1994. They had a big issue on electronic/ dance music.

Indeeed this proved so successful that a year later in Spring 1995, Muzik magazine was launched by IPC Media.

[In 1993, Melody Maker's dance music coverage was limited - and they were relatively slow on the uptaking of Brit Progressive House Scene which can be traced back to early Summer 1992 and Mixmag]