1991 was a full year's worth of immersing myself in music that I was finding myself. Me and my brother were listening to the Evening Session on Radio 1, I think I used to listen on a Tuesday evening and he would probably listen to it every other night as well as some other radio stations. Being the older brother he was into it more and listened to a wide range of indie from baggy to shoegazing and all points in between. And of course I'd listen to some of those bands too from simply being there when he was playing songs, stuff like the Stone Roses, Charlatans, Inspiral Carpets to others like Lush, Slowdive and Chapterhouse were bands I was hearing second hand. Some of it I liked, others I didn't (*cough*, Slowdive) and I was on the lookout for bands that I could claim as my own.
Albums number 10, 11 and 13 in my collection would become those bands - namely The Farm's Spartacus, EMF's Schubert Dip and Flowered Up's A Life With Brian, all on vinyl (if you're wondering what album number 12 was it was covered in the 1990 chart - Extreme's Pornograffiti). Singles by all three of those bands were also added to my collection along with Nine Inch Nails' Sin and The Black Crowes' Seeing Things to bring my collection up to 29 singles and 13 albums by the end of the year. So while I was listening to a lot of new music, I wasn't particularly prolific in my record-buying during that year (probably because I was still only 13).
There were a lot of bands that missed out due to a huge shortlist this time around and I'll take the unusual step of listing them all this time. So here we go: The Prodigy, Primal Scream, Ride, Inspiral Carpets, Top, Anthrax/Public Enemy, The Wendys, Curve, Lawnmower Deth, 2 Unlimited, The Waterboys, Chapterhouse, Carter USM, Skid Row, Five Thirty, Napalm Death, Scorpions, Northside, Mock Turtles, Wonder Stuff, Teenage Fanclub, Cicero, KLF and The Shamen. Many of the songs concerned would have got into the top 50s of previous years and in fact for some bands they did have inferior songs which had been in those charts. It was just their luck to hit an overcrowded year full of great albums and songs. One good example of this is in the Senseless Things top 50 I did previously - When You Let Me Down made only no. 48 in the Senseless Things top 50 but was as high as 15 in the 1988 top 50. However, Ex-Teenager was 25 places higher at no. 23 in their own chart but didn't even get in the 75 here.
Of the bands that did make it, it tended to be the indie ones that I was actually listening to in 1991 itself. The chart that I compiled at the end of 1991 can be found here and its noticeable that bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. that take up a decent chunk of this chart are absent. The rock and metal bands mostly caught up in 1992, in some cases because they took that long to become hits over here, but also because I started to search further afield than just what my brother was listening to and find my own tastes.
So 1991 was the year music blew apart for me, but 1992 would end up being the year where I really started finding my pieces in the resulting wreckage.....
1. Manic Street Preachers - Motown Junk
2. Senseless Things - Easy to Smile
3. Pearl Jam - Alive
4. Pearl Jam - Black
5. Mega City Four - Words That Say
6. Metallica - Wherever I May Roam
7. Pearl Jam - Jeremy
8. Senseless Things - Got it at the Delmar
9. Metallica - Sad But True
10. Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
11. Metallica - Enter Sandman
12. Senseless Things - Should I Feel It
13. Manic Street Preachers - You Love Us
14. The Farm - Love See No Colour
15. Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Happy
16. Pearl Jam - Even Flow
17. Soundgarden - Jesus Christ Pose
18. Senseless Things - Everybody's Gone
19. James - Sit Down
20. Sepultura - Arise
21. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under the Bridge
22. Pearl Jam - Porch
23. Pearl Jam - Once
24. Soundgarden - Rusty Cage
25. The Farm - All Together Now
26. Chesney Hawkes - The One and Only
27. Senseless Things - Can't Remember
28. New Fast Automatic Daffodils - Man Without Qualities One
29. EMF - Children
30. Nirvana - In Bloom
31. Sepultura - Desperate Cry
32. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
33. Pearl Jam - Why Go
34. Flowered Up - Take It
35. Metallica - Through the Never
36. Metallica - The Unforgiven
37. Temple of the Dog - Hunger Strike
38. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give It Away
39. Rollins Band - Tearing
40. Smashing Pumpkins - I Am One
41. Smashing Pumpkins - Siva
42. Rollins Band - Low Self Opinion
43. Swervedriver - Sandblasted
44. Smashing Pumpkins - Rhinoceros
45. Carcass - Corporal Jigsore Quandary
46. Paradise Lost - Gothic
47. Nirvana - Lithium
48. Metallica - Of Wolf And Man
49. Paris Angels - Perfume
50. Blur - Bang
51. Manic Street Preachers - Sorrow 16
52. Jesus Jones - Real, Real, Real
53. Catherine Wheel - Shallow
54. Ugly Kid Joe - Everything About You
55. Guns N' Roses - You Could Be Mine
56. Nirvana - Territorial Pissings
57. Nirvana - Breed
58. The Farm - Groovy Train
59. EMF - I Believe
60. Nirvana - Come As You Are
61. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Breaking the Girl
62. Soundgarden - Outshined
63. Pearl Jam - Garden
64. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss
65. REM - The One I Love
66. Senseless Things - Wrong Number
67. EMF - Unbelievable
68. Charlatans - Over Rising
69. REM - Losing My Religion
70. Red Hot Chili Peppers - If You Have to Ask
71. Red Hot Chili Peppers - I Could Have Lied
72. Ugly Kid Joe - Sweet Leaf/Funky Fresh Country Club
73. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
74. EMF - Lies
75. Sepultura - Dead Embryonic Cells