In which our hero talks nonsense about his favourite records from 1994
I have absolutely no idea how 1994 is suddenly 30 years ago. I see 1994 as my default setting, the time when I woke up and became conscious....like Neo in The Matrix but less Jesus-y
Anyway, I have a theory that 1994 is the core year for where my record collection or musical tastes really become concrete....things I like I'll listen to forever and perhaps more importantly, the things I don't become more certain.
In today's show I go through 30 albums that turn 30 years old this year and try and explain why some of them have stuck for so long.
A few extracts from the podcast….
On Losing Kurt….
So I can't really speak about 1994 without touching on the biggest moment of that year, the death of Kurt Cobain which was a massive deal... a couple of year earlier I I remember my dad being really upset when Freddie Mercury died and I really didn't get how a stranger dying could impact, not until April 1994 anyway...and I think it was the first time I'd had to deal with loss but I remember seeing a report on the news and just thinking "is that it then?" Later in the year Unplugged in New York was released and I've included it in this list because it's Nirvana and losing Kurt was heartbreaking
On some weird choices….
I remember getting on the school bus one morning and Leon being all excited because he'd seen or heard this thing on MTV or Headbangers Ball or something with a really weird title which turned out to be Super Scooper and the Mighty Scoop from Kyuss' Welcome to Sky Valley so while we had the song on one of his taped of the telly mixtapes I got the album a couple of years later and lets be fair...there's not a lot like Kyuss ….. Speaking of weird names, the prize for “most ridiculous band name of all time” goes to.…Toad The Wet Sprocket, who put out Dulcinea in 94 and it's an album I've loved for a long long time.
On another lost soul…
I had a spell around the turn of the century where I just adored Jeff Buckley, like got proper obsessive and I remember when we first got the internet in the house I was lodging at I went onto the scary world of online shopping and buying all these bootlegs and compilations of his stuff in an act of mad completionism...looking back now I realise all we ever needed was on Grace.
So that’s my case for 1994 being THE year but I’m sure you all have cases to make for other years, I’d love to hear them….
Share this post