DaveA wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 5:28 pm

seby wrote: Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:05 pm That an album like The Downward Spiral was as popular as it was makes me happy still. Can you imagine anything like that, with that kind of production, getting big time global radio play today?

A key thing to remember about that vague moment in major label music history, in the U.S., is that it occurred largely amid the void that was left after Nirvana was no more, in the early spring of 1994. By then several bands had helped sell the idea of "alternative" music to the masses, but when Kurt Cobain died, it was up in the air as to who would make good on its promise/carry the torch/etc., at least as far as the mainstream was concerned (nevermind what else had been happening then). Around that time were the major label releases of NIN's The Downward Spiral, Green Day's Dookie, The Offspring's Smash, Soundgarden's Superunknown, Rollins Band's Weight, Hole's Live Through This, Live's Throwing Copper, Pantera's Far Beyond Driven, and I forget what else. Many of these were successful, in no small part, because they were sold as being "the next big thing" in a post-Nirvana "alternative" world, that more major label execs and music fans wanted to hitch their wagon to. That most of this music doesn't do it for me now, is beside the point. At the time, if you were a young teenager in America, it was inescapable, unless you were, I dunno, Amish or Mormon or raised by wolves or something.

Yes, but NIN are great and all of those other bands blow goats! I'll give Rollins Band a pass. Head Like a Hole was _nearly_ Smells Like Teen Spirit there for a moment.

seby wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:17 pmHead Like a Hole was _nearly_ Smells Like Teen Spirit there for a moment.

They had a presence already, sure. It wasn't like NIN were wet behind the ears. But as annoying/clickbait-y as it might sound, there was some sort of post-Nirvana void in 1994, in the mainstream, and some bands' work really got thrust into the limelight, regardless of whatever other qualities it may have had going for it or how hard they might have worked.

DaveA wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:48 pm

seby wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:17 pmHead Like a Hole was _nearly_ Smells Like Teen Spirit there for a moment.

They had a presence already, sure. It wasn't like NIN were wet behind the ears. But as annoying/clickbait-y as it might sound, there was some sort of post-Nirvana void in 1994, in the mainstream, and some bands' work really got thrust into the limelight, regardless of whatever other qualities it may have had going for it or how hard they might have worked.

NIN was underground HUGE well before Nirvana. Pretty Hate Machine and Broken were not obscure records, or missing memorable singles. I never much cared for them, but they were going to hit it big regardless of Grunge.

zorg wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 10:53 pm

DaveA wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:48 pm

seby wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:17 pmHead Like a Hole was _nearly_ Smells Like Teen Spirit there for a moment.

They had a presence already, sure. It wasn't like NIN were wet behind the ears. But as annoying/clickbait-y as it might sound, there was some sort of post-Nirvana void in 1994, in the mainstream, and some bands' work really got thrust into the limelight, regardless of whatever other qualities it may have had going for it or how hard they might have worked.

NIN was underground HUGE well before Nirvana. Pretty Hate Machine and Broken were not obscure records, or missing memorable singles. I never much cared for them, but they were going to hit it big regardless of Grunge.

Indeed

seby wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 8:17 pm
Yes, but NIN are great and all of those other bands blow goats! I'll give Rollins Band a pass. Head Like a Hole was _nearly_ Smells Like Teen Spirit there for a moment.

I mostly agree with this take but it ignores the fact that Superunknown is unfuckwithable.

I've probably said it before on here but it seems important: one can and probably should clown on Hole or Live, cause those records are pretty goofy, but the environment that put bands as peculiar as Live and Hole on regular radio rotation was a very interesting one. The 90's had more unconventional singing voices on the radio than any I can think of. It seems like now autotune and our pop music moment have made it the opposite. Everything you hear out there in mass media land is far too perfect to be interesting.

Back to NiN, I like but don't love the band, but it seems hard to argue against the fact that they were so vividly and uniquely themselves. It is a pretty fully realized vision whether you enjoy it or not.

losthighway wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 2:40 am I mostly agree with this take but it ignores the fact that Superunknown is unfuckwithable.

Challenge accepted, Spoonman has got to be one of the stupidest novelty songs of this era, and I’m including the entire Primus catalogue in there. Im not averse to the charms of Soundgarden but they are spotty at best.

Back to turning soft. It’s lame and backwards. When the cynical 90’s were in full swing, it’s not like we didnt have Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Dice Clay, G.G. Allin, and Too Short stinking up the “crass and rude” approach. But it allowed smart people to pick their own brand of defiance, and it came along with some rough edges. So basically it’s about nuance. Everything is so dull and obvious now. What’s wrong with challenging people to be their best.

I will always die on the hill of the internet, from '95 onwards, destroying the ability for distinct scenes their full, unobstructed, gestation.

zorg wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 8:06 am Challenge accepted, Spoonman has got to be one of the stupidest novelty songs of this era, and I’m including the entire Primus catalogue in there. Im not averse to the charms of Soundgarden but they are spotty at best.

Hard disagree, not one of my favorite SG tunes, but take the spoons out and it'd still a really good track with memorable riffs (some of which in very naturall sounding 7/4, no less), like an updated Zep for the 90's.

Bernardo wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:03 amtake the spoons out

Unless you’re cooking heroin or you’ve reanimated Spike Jones, songs about spoons are outré

zorg wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 10:53 pm NIN was underground HUGE well before Nirvana. Pretty Hate Machine and Broken were not obscure records, or missing memorable singles. I never much cared for them, but they were going to hit it big regardless of Grunge.

The points don't contradict each other, NIN being on the rise and a "post-Nirvana" void enabling their dominance. Tastes and trends and such move in waves. One thing becomes dormant or wanes a bit somehow and it opens up room for something else. Sometimes these things move in cycles, or there's a little overlap. Again, we're not talking about "popular" in a general "well liked" sense, a band playing to rooms of enthusiastic people, of whatever size. No, we're talking "popular" as in "at least one out of every three or four music fans between the ages of 14 and 24 probably owns a copy of a given record." Or something like that.

Hell, I saw NIN on The Downward Spiral tour, just because several friends were fans and it was something to do on a school night. Never owned any of their LPs, but the music was inescapable then, in part, because the timing was right.

Even John Lennon had to admit that the ascendence of The Beatles had more than a little to do with JFK being shot, and their music being a tension release valve. It doesn't mean the Beatles weren't great (largely they were); it doesn't mean they had anything to do with the assassination or there was something opportunistic about their rise in the wake of it; it's just that the circumstances were such that something (their music) was poised to occupy people's minds, pull them out of their funk, whatever.

losthighway wrote:...the environment that put bands as peculiar as Live and Hole on regular radio rotation was a very interesting one. The 90's had more unconventional singing voices on the radio than any [era] I can think of.

This is an interesting point, putting aside how well any of this music has aged, or how good it was in the first place. It was probably less of a liability then for a singer to sound "different," if not out of tune, on their recordings, if a band was looking for radio play/some kind of stardom.

However, I wouldn't lament the nineties as a kind of golden age for popular music, much as I like a number of things from then. If nothing else, that Woodstock '99 doc on Netflix was effective in driving home the point that "it's probably good we've moved beyond this somehow," huhah.