h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The 90's saw the end of hair bands like Poison and the introduction of grunge rock - read Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Music seemed to start relying more on lyrics and less on gloss and stadium show production value (more matter, less art). Then there were the Red Hot Chili Peppers who try their best to defy categorization.

Pulp, Ash, Oasis, Blur - there seemed to be a rule against having too many letters in the name of the band.

They all made good, guitar-and-lyric-based pop music though. Which was nice..

RF

The musicians of the 90's have forgotten how to spell (or never learned how in the first place, which is just as likely).

It's interesting to note how Heavy Metal bands of the 80s experienced a wane in exposure - and to an extent, popularity - and yet have witnessed a resurgence at the tail-end of the 90s.

My favourite band, Iron Maiden, started the decade still perceived as gods by many, despite releasing what in my opinion is their worst album ever (No Prayer For The Dying). Hell, they even had their first #1 single from that album - two weeks in December 1990, no airtime from Radio 1, lowest ever selling #1 single at 10,000 units. When Bruce Dickinson left the band in 1993 and Blaze Bayley joined there was a backlash would I guess could be attributed to peoples' changed attitude to Heavy Metal as much as to loyalty to their old singer. Certainly, the two Bayley albums were the lowest charting in the band's career. There was a definite change of attitude when Bruce came back in '99.

Funnily enough Judas Priest experienced almost the same. Untouchable during the 80s. Singer quits early 90s. Seven year hiatus. New singer. Largely ignored by the media until old singer rejoins last year.

A trap I think a lot of people fall into is confusing the 80s hair bands with Heavy Metal. The mainstream press presented them as such so the mainstream audience believed them. So some of the backlash against that would have affected the traditional Metal crowd. Regardless of your opinions you have to admit that the Hair Metal scene was get overplayed, overexposed and completely overindulgent. Bear in mind that the earliest hair bands like Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, Ratt etc had been going since the beginning of the 80s. Hell, Kiss and Alice Cooper were there from the 70s. That's a lot of time to be overexposed to something. And with each successive generation of bands, the songs get more commercial, more stereotypical, the hair gets bigger, the live show gets more theatrical than musical. When grunge came along it was taken as an alternative and a chance to say Enough Is Enough, I guess.

The hair bands pretty much died, traditional Metal went underground again. It's interesting to note the emergence of some new scenes during this time. Norway produced Black Metal heavyweights such as Emperor, Darkthrone, Satyricon, Burzum and Mayhem. All are major names in the scene, in fact Satyricon followed Cradle of Filth on to a deal with a major label, though this has only occured after the 90s. Burzum and Mayhem of course brought the scene much notoriety with their involvement in church burnings and murders, though sadly there are many misconceptions surrounding these as the most accessible information about this is the book Lords Of Chaos, which is full of inaccuracies, hyperbole and general lies. It is very clear that the author has a grudge against Burzum's Varg Vikernes.

The Florida Death Metal scene also took off during this time, Deicide and Obituary being the only names I can remember off the top of my head.

Like I said, funnily enough the Metal scene has taken an about turn since the 90s and seems to be becoming somewhat fashionable again. I guess it's a mix of influence on new fashionable non-metal bands, some well-chosen reunions, clever bmarketing and a backlash against what replaced it!

Metal and hair are definitely not the same thing, but I'd agree that metal suffered by association when hair bands went down the tubes.

You can't forget the Spice Girls. I rember how much everyone was obsessed with them. Everyone mostly being 10 year old girls, but still.

There seemed to be 2 tracks to take in the mainstream music world - 'alternative'/grunge (ironic that it was iconoclastic and mainstream at the same time) and bubblegum pop - think Hanson and 'Mmmm Bop' or any of the rash of boy bands that sprang up - N'Sync, 98 Degrees, Backstreet Boys, etc.

True. I was a 10 year old girl at the time of the spice girls. I knew their names and their songs, and I had a massive poster of them on my bedroom wall. I guess it was the girl-power thing that appealed to us... it can't have been the actual music

It's sad when people "like" music because it's popular.

Here are a few acts which some up the 90`s for me.

Saint Etienne, Underworld, Massive Attack, Portishead, Pulp, Primal Scream, Beck, Nirvana, Radiohead, and The Spice Girls (they did release "Say You`ll Be There" which really is the most crackin` tune).

To be fair, I had a big Spice Girls poster, but that was because I fancied the pants off the ginger one. Hmm, the foolishness of youth...

Musical high spots
Vanessa-Mae released "The Violin Player"
Meatloaf released "Bat Out of Hell 2"
Guns N' Roses had a few good albums out and in my opinion, the longer the track the better they got.

But the low point has to have been 24th November 1991 when Freddie Mercury died. (btw, is there anyone else out there that sings "I want to break free" when they do the hoovering, or is it just me?

I don't, but I do always put on I Want It All on the jukebox when I'm down the pub

Keeping the Queen theme going, wasn't Bohemian Rhapsody a number one, thus becoming the first single to achieve number one twice over? Or something like that anyway...

It was indeed actually! Thanks to its appearence on Wayne's World - another 90s fad! Wayne's World is so cool, Mike Myers is yet to top that

It was the only song to be number 1 at Christmas twice (other songs have been number 1 twice before).

It has also been number 1 in 4 different years: 1975, 1976, 1990, 1991. Which is more than any other song.

RF

In my view, the 90's were notable for a few different musical movements. Apart from the gradual decline of the New Romantics (Duran Duran, Flock of Seagulls et al), hair metal (G n' R, Poison et al) and synth pop (Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, Human League, amongst others) there were a few major developments:

Grunge - Kickstarted in the city of Seattle, Washington, this new take on punk rock was catapulted into the mainstream, via the record label Sub Pop and MTV, by bands like Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. For the first few years of the 90's it was impossible to go anywhere without hearing the loud, distorted guitars and angst-ridden vocals. Some musical historians put the resurgence of the punk ethos down to the American recession and the Reagan/Thatcher-driven inequalities in society. They were young, they were poor, they were angry, and now they had major label recording contracts. Grunge slowly fell off the radar as Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1994, ans Soundgarden disbanded in 1997.

Britpop - Began originally as a reaction to the almost entirely American-led phenomenon of grunge. The (perhaps misplaced) optimism generated by the impending election of New Labour produced the self-consciously British Blur, the self-confident Oasis and finally produced the right conditions for the rise of Jarvis Cocker and Pulp. Linked in with the guitar-based revival came a wave of engineered pop bands led by the Spice Girls, who were unashamedly shallow but were enormous fun nonetheless.

Angsty female singer-songwriters - the trend had perhaps begun earlier in the decade with Liz Phair and PJ Harvey, but in the same way that Nirvana precipitated an explosion in grunge, Canadian Alanis Morrisette (?sp) launched the female singer-songwriter into prominence in 1996. Without Alanis, there would have been no Jewel, Tracey Bonham, Aimee Mann or Fiona Apple.

Gangster rap - Following on the trail blazed by NWA in the late 1980's, the predominant theme in popular hip-hop became more brutal, aggrandising thuggish behaviour, drug dealing and misogynistic attitudes. In America, the posturing of West Coast and East Coast rappers led to the murders of the Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur, prominent members of both groups. The other big development in hip-hop was the rise of the producer, with big albums from former NWA member Dr Dre (who also sponsored a young rapper called Snoop Doggy Dogg) and Notorious BIG producer Puff Daddy setting out on his own.

The rise of dance music - in the late 80's there was acid house. But in Manchester and Detroit, instrumental music based on beats and breaks was slowly seeping into the public consciousness, reaching its minimalist conclusion in the accurately named genre of drum n' bass. But it was the decade that dance music came of age and the superclubs began their meteoric rise.

That'll do for now. That might be a reasonable start for a 90's music Entry, but I'm sure there's heaps I've left out...

Matt

the beginning of the '90's saw the release of 2 of the most influential albums in music history (both released on the same day, 21st of September if I'm not mistaken) namely: Blood Sugar Sex Magik by The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nevermind by Nirvana both opened the door for other bands into the mainstream. The Red Hot Chili Peppers would end the decade with another classic album 'Californication' of '99 .
In that year they also topped the bill of Woodstock 2 which of course turned out in a disaster with the audience responsing just a little too enthusiasticly on RHCP's cover of Jimi Hendrixx's "Fire"

I dunno, I really like Blood Sugar Sex Magick but I wouldn't describe it as one of the most influential albums in music history. Nevermind you could make a case for (although Pearl Jam, Soundgarden et al were already doing their thing by that stage) but can you name a major group that has been markedly influenced by the RHCP sound? In fairness, every other school rock band I grew up seeing covered about five Chilis songs each (badly ) but I'm scratching around for some heavyweights who count RHCP as major influences (Goldfinger doesn't count).

1991 actually saw the release of lots of albums that have rightly gone on to become 90's classics - Nevermind, Blood Sugar, Metallica's black album (yes, yes, And Justice for All was better, blah blah), Soundgarden's Bad Motorfinger, Pearl Jam's Ten, Primal Scream's Screamadelica... the list goes on.

Matt

And I forgot trip-hop in my post above. Told you I'd miss something.

Matt