Top 75 of 1991

All of the previous charts were looking back in a way.  Even though the last one covering 1990 had some songs in it that I liked at the time it was still mostly looking back, even if in some cases it was just a year or two.

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

Top 50 of 1989

All of the preceding charts were a mixture of childhood pop reminiscence and time-travelling discovery at a later date, but by 1989 the pop had dried up.....or maybe it hasn't stood the test of time particularly well. Perhaps I was also growing out of it as the likes of Stock/Aitken/Waterman were taking over the charts.  All the songs that made it onto my pop shortlist ended up losing out including Technotronic's Pump Up the Jam, Bobby Brown's My Prerogative and On Our Own and the one that came closest, Jason Donovan's Too Many Broken Hearts (perhaps assisted by my later cover), the latter two expanding my ever growing 7" collection.

In 1989 I turned 11, so I don't think I was aware of most of the songs here in that year but I certainly became aware of most of them over the next 2 or 3 years.  Many of these songs and albums were part of my grounding in music even if it didn't necessarily take place in that year, in fact a few of the albums featured here didn't actually break over here until subsequent years, with an accompanying breakthrough single.

So with pop gone and the two bands that dominated the 80s charts, Iron Maiden and Metallica, between albums it allowed other bands to shine.  Bands like Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Sepultura and Soundgarden produced very good albums in 1989, in all cases they would follow it up with one even better that would further shape my tastes in years to come.  The Senseless Things' Postcard CV in particular was a huge influence on my own songwriting and was another that was to be followed up by even greater songs.

The musical landscape, as well as what would become my musical taste, was starting to change, definitely for the better with a new rock/alternative slant and a healthy dose of indie pushing its way in.  My musical awakening was beginning.....

1. Senseless Things - Too Much Kissing

2. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Higher Ground

3. Faith No More - Epic

4. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Knock Me Down

5. Nine Inch Nails - Head Like A Hole

6. Faith No More - From Out of Nowhere

7. Senseless Things - Teenage

8. Stone Roses - I Am the Resurrection

9. Senseless Things - Standing in the Rain

10. Nine Inch Nails - Sin

11. Carcass - Reek of Putrefaction

12. Nine Inch Nails- Terrible Lie

13. Faith No More - Falling to Pieces

14. Extreme - Mutha (Don't Wanna Go To School Today)

15. Faith No More - The Real Thing

16. Stone Roses - Waterfall

17. Manic Street Preachers - Suicide Alley

18. Sepultura - Inner Self

19. Sepultura - Beneath the Remains

20. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Taste the Pain

21. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Nobody Weird Like Me

22. Faith No More - Woodpecker From Mars

23. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stone Cold Bush

24. Soundgarden - Loud Love

25. Senseless Things - Girlfriend

26. Senseless Things - Back to Nowhere

27. Carter USM - Sheriff Fatman

28. Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored

29. Senseless Things - Trevor

30. Stone Roses - Made of Stone

31. Nirvana - About a Girl

32. Soundgarden - Hands All Over

33. Extreme - Play With Me

34. Senseless Things - Someone in You

35. Stone Roses - She Bangs the Drums

36. Extreme - Flesh 'N' Blood

37. Nine Inch Nails - Sanctified

38. Faith No More - Zombie Eaters

39. Inspiral Carpets - Find Out Why

40. Pop Will Eat Itself - Def.Con.One

41. Wonder Stuff  - Don't Let Me Down, Gently

42. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Johnny, Kick a Hole in the Sky

43. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Subway to Venus

44. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Good Time Boys

45. Nine Inch Nails - Down In It

46. Bolt Thrower - World Eater

47. Sepultura - Mass Hypnosis

48. Extreme - Kid Ego

49. Extreme - Little Girls

50. Nine Inch Nails - Ringfinger

Red Hot Chili Peppers Top 50

If my announcement that my next top 50 would be the Red Hot Chili Peppers is anything to go by, they're definitely a band that polarise opinion.  Some of you were really looking forward to this one, others poured scorn on them as a one song band or a bit of a joke.  Probably a hint of truth in both of those criticisms, but as I'm here doing this chart I obviously see it from a different angle.  Yes, the lyrics were quite often daft rhymes and in-jokes that most people wouldn't dare utter in public, but despite the socks, lightbulbs and flaming helmets etc. they have always made people move and have always been extremely good at the art of "the song", as many of the higher entries in my chart demonstrate.

I may have heard bits and pieces here and there but I first got into the Red Hot Chili Peppers when I saw a piece on Raw Power in 1992 promoting 'What Hits?', which showed clips from videos throughout their career so far.  I promptly bought said album (nestling in the chronological paper record of my early collection between 'Stigma' by EMF and 'Broken' by Nine Inch Nails) and took it from there.

Alongside listening to the songs, as a 14 year old I remember studying the sleeve and working out which member was which and who were those people who didn't look like Anthony Kiedis, Flea, John Frusciante, Hillel Slovak, Chad Smith or Jack Irons?  Buying 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik' shortly after and trying to match the tattoos on the inner sleeve to the band members.  Buying the first four albums and discovering that, despite being in the original lineup, that Slovak and Irons weren't on the first album and first two albums respectively and that the mystery men were Jack Sherman and Cliff Martinez.  All the details that matter, all before Google was around to help me out.

Those first two albums, the first self-titled from 84 and 'Freaky Styley' from 85, were very patchy, hence their under-representation here.  'The Uplift Mofo Party Plan' was where the "proper" lineup came back together and where they hit their stride, but Hillel Slovak's tragic death interrupted that progress.  Enter Frusciante and Smith and the classic line-up was born.

Career highs of 'Mother's Milk' and 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik' followed and fame was assured, but the guitarist curse struck again as Frusciante departed from the limelight and after a few stops and starts Dave Navarro finally joined for the underrated 'One Hot Minute' album.  Some good songs were produced with Navarro but he never really fit in and it wasn't long before Frusciante was back and the band were reinvented.

Out went the brash funk-rock and bravado on the whole and in came a slightly introspective twist which reintroduced the band to the mainstream with a series of hit singles and the ever-bonkers videos that accompanied them.  I'm sure there were many that abandoned the band at this point, but just as many (if not more) would have joined the story and, like me years before, delved into the rich and variable back catalogue of an excellent band.

1. By the Way

2. Otherside

3. Higher Ground

4. Knock Me Down

5. My Friends

6. Under the Bridge

7. Give it Away

8. Jungle Man

9. Backwoods

10. Blood Sugar Sex Magik

11. I Could Have Lied

12. Breaking the Girl

13. Taste the Pain

14. Stone Cold Bush

15. Suck my Kiss

16. If You Have to Ask

17. Soul to Squeeze

18. Nobody Weird Like Me

19. Parallel Universe

20. Fight Like a Brave

21. Nevermind

22. Warped

23. Me and My Friends

24. Sir Psycho Sexy

25. The Righteous and the Wicked

26. Funky Monks

27. Apache Rose Peacock

28. My Lovely Man

29. Aeroplane

30. The Greeting Song

31. The Power of Equality

32. Can't Stop

33. Cabron

34. Coffee Shop

35. Naked in the Rain

36. Catholic School Girls Rule

37. Good Time Boys

38. Around the World

39. Californication

40. One Big Mob

41. Get Up and Jump

42. Subterranean Homesick Blues

43. Shallow Be Thy Game

44. Dani California

45. Johnny, Kick a Hole in the Sky

46. Organic Anti-Beat Box Band

47. Behind the Sun

48. Scar Tissue

49. Subway to Venus

50. No Chump Love Sucker

By Era

Red Hot Chili Peppers 1

Freaky Styley 3

The Uplift Mofo Party Plan 7

Mother's Milk 8

Blood Sugar Sex Magik 15

One Hot Minute 6

Californication 5

By the Way 3

Stadium Arcadium 1

I'm With You 0

Others 1