Friday Flashback 1993

FRIDAY FLASHBACK: Every Friday we set the Hot Tub Time Machine to one year in rock history and give you the best (and worst) music from that year, all day long beginning at 1:00 AM EST and running for 24 hours on Jivewired Radio powered by Live365.

This week: 1993
Next week: 1971

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Album art from 1993 - Click album cover to purchase at Amazon.com



1993 Album I Wish I Owned: Return of the Boom Bap by KRS-One
1993 Album I'd Give Back If I Could: "The Spaghetti Incident?" by Guns 'N' Roses
1993 Most Underrated Song: Fade Into You by Mazzy Star
1993 Most Overrated Song: What's Up? by 4 Non-Blondes
1993 Most Memorable Song: Man On The Moon by R.E.M.
1993 Most Forgotten Song: Two Steps Behind by Def Leppard
1993 Fan's Choice For Most Popular Song: Runaway Train by Soul Asylum
1993 Please Don't Play Anymore Song: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) by Meat Loaf
1993 Song That I Like More than I Actually Should: Pets by Porno For Pyros
Overplayed In 1993: Spin Doctors
Not Played Enough In 1993: Afghan Whigs
Greatest Single Chart Re-Entry from 1993: Into The Mystic by Van Morrison
Best Cover Song Of 1993: Mrs. Robinson by The Lemonheads
An unheralded great album from 1993: The Whole Of The Moon by The Waterboys
An unheralded great single from 1993: Find The River by R.E.M.
Best Soundtrack of 1993: Dazed And Confused


Our Top Five Songs Of The Year
01. All Apologies by Nirvana
02. Fade Into You by Mazzy Star
03. Daughter by Pearl Jam
04. Can't Hardly Wait by The Replacements
05. Creep by Radiohead

Our Top Five Albums Of The Year
01. Vs. by Pearl Jam
02. Automatic For The People by R.E.M.
03. Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins
04. In Utero by Nirvana
05. The Chronic by Dr. Dre



1993 was the birth of alternative music as an accepted and defined genre. That's a loose definition, however. Alternative rock is essentially an amalgamation for underground music that has emerged in the wake of punk rock since the mid-1980s. Throughout much of its history, alternative rock has been largely defined by its rejection of the commercialism of mainstream culture. Alternative bands during the 1980s generally played in small clubs, recorded for indie labels, and spread their popularity through word of mouth. The term basically became the accepted genre for a combination of sub-genres that includes college rock, post-punk, brit-pop and new wave among many others. Alternative can describe music that challenges the status quo and that is fiercely iconoclastic, anti-commercial, and anti-mainstream, so the genre has always theoretically existed. But in 1993 the music marketing machine decided we needed alternative music as a definitive genre, thus commercializing the anti-commercial and making mainstream the anti-mainstream. History lesson over. Thanks for playing.

However, the alternative movement was chastised by many journalists and artists alike. The New York Times declared in 1993, "Alternative rock doesn't seem so alternative anymore. Every major label has a handful of guitar-driven bands in shapeless shirts and threadbare jeans, bands with bad posture and good riffs who cultivate the oblique and the evasive, who conceal catchy tunes with noise and hide craftsmanship behind nonchalance."

Robert Smith of The Cure rejected genre labels like alternative, gothic rock, and college rock applied to his band. He has said, "Every time we went to America we had a different tag ... I can't remember when we officially became alt-rock".

So there.

Nirvana, Pearl Jam and R.E.M. were the standard-bearers musically in 1993. In particular, R.E.M.'s success had become a blueprint for many alternative bands in the late 1980s and 1990s to follow; the group had outlasted many of its contemporaries and by the 1993, with the release of "Automatic For The People", had become one of the most popular bands in the world. Thanks to PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Belly, Luscious Jackson, Juliana Hatfield, and the Breeders, 1993 was named the year of Women in Rock — so coined by the trade magazines looking hard for a trend.



On the flip side, debut, major label releases by bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Urge Overkill, Counting Crows and The Afghan Whigs, as well as a break-out releases by Radiohead and The Smashing Pumpkins indicated that the industry was embracing it's alternative image. As a reaction, a flurry of defiantly British bands emerged that wished to capitalize on the movement, taking the public and native music press by storm. Dubbed brit-pop by the American media, this movement represented by the bands Blur, Oasis, Suede, and Pulp was the British equivalent of the alternative explosion.

At the MTV Video Music Awards, Pearl Jam was music's undisputed champion. The Seattle-based band performed "Jeremy" a year earlier on the VMAs and came back to collect and armful of awards for its Mark Pellington-directed clip: Best Group Video, Best Metal/Hard Rock Video, Best Direction and Video of the Year. Interestingly, it wasn't long after this success that the band gave up making videos entirely.

The Grammy Association avoided the alternative movement almost completely, giving the award for Best Alternative Performance to U2, which is clearly an anthem-rock band, and giving Whitney Houston the coveted Album and Record Of The Year Awards.

Creep On Creepin' On:



Both Radiohead and Stone Temple Pilots had varying degrees of success with songs entitled "Creep" in 1993. The Radiohead version was actually released as a single in 1992 but had little success. However, it proved quite popular in Israel thanks to DJ Yoav Kutner, who played "Creep" incessantly on Israeli radio. He had been introduced to the song by a local representative of EMI. The song soon became a national hit, and it had similar success in New Zealand, Spain, and Scandinavian countries.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco, California radio station KITS added the song to its playlist as the calendar turned to 1993; and soon other radio stations along the American west coast followed suit. A censored version of the song was made available to radio stations, and by the second half of 1993, the song had become a number one hit nationwide. In December 2007, the song was ranked at #31 on "VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90's".

The Stone Temple Pilots version climbed as high as number two on the Rock Tracks Chart in 1993. There were two videos shot for Creep, the first by director Gus Van Sant but that video was originally shelved due to its drug and sexual references.

The song's lyrics were written by lead vocalist Scott Weiland and bassist Robert DeLeo. DeLeo also wrote the song's music. DeLeo stated the following about "Creep:"

"Musically speaking I was thinking about a song along the lines of 'Heart Of Gold' by Neil Young, which is in the key of D-minor, the saddest key of all. Scott was thinking about the lyrics, and at that time in our lives we were struggling very much. What Scott was writing about was a real-life situation. Also about me, the thing about the gun. 'Creep' is a very demeaning word. It was one of those instances where we looked at ourselves, looked in the mirror."


It is commonly referred to as "The Spaghetti Incident":



On July 17, 1993, Guns N' Roses played the final gig on their Use Your Illusion Tour. It marked the last time the original band play together on stage for over a decade.

On November 23, 1993, Guns N' Roses released a collection of glam rock covers entitled "The Spaghetti Incident?". Despite protests from Rose's band-mates, an unadvertised cover of the Charles Manson song "Look at Your Game Girl" was included on the album, at his request. Years later, Rose said he would remove the song from new pressings of the album, claiming that critics and the media had misinterpreted his interest in Manson. Axl can be seen wearing a black Manson shirt in the video for "Estranged" from Use Your Illusion II. He also can be seen wearing a red Manson shirt in footage from their show in Milton Keynes, England, in 1993, with the additional text on the back, "Charlie Don't Surf". The song "Look at Your Game Girl" has actually never been removed and is still featured on pressings of the album. Its release consequently led to increased tension within the band.

Allegedly, and unbeknownst to his band mates, Rose had actually hidden the track "Look at Your Game, Girl" on the CD release, which he intended as a personal message to his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. A Charles Manson-penned song always makes a wonderful parting gift, don't you think? Controversy ensued, and the band in it's original form slowly began to dissolve, with Rose being the first to go.

Manson does earn royalties from the song, in case you were wondering.

How does that appear on his drivers license?



On his 35th birthday, June 7, 1993, Prince announced that he was changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol, which is a combination of the symbols for male (♂) and female (♀). Because the symbol is unpronounceable, he was often referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince." My personal take is that it was his subtle way of referring to himself as a "sex symbol" that was blatantly non-gender biased. You say metro-sexual, I say androgynous. Draw your own conclusions.

The usual ASCII representation of the symbol is: O ( + >


Go forth, for you are the future of rock & roll....


KoRn

The following bands all formed in 1993: Wilco, Ben Folds Five, Spoon, KoRn, Daft Punk, Jimmy Eat World, Modest Mouse, The Donnas, Blonde Redhead, Sister Hazel, Veruca Salt and Filter. Sadly, 1993 also gave us The Backstreet Boys.


Playlist Adds For Friday Flashback 1993:

001. Star Me Kitten by R.E.M.
002. There She Goes by The Las
003. Cannonball by The Breeders
004. Ignoreland by R.E.M.
005. Cantaloop by US3
006. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite by R.E.M.
007. If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night) by Me'Shell NdegéOcello
008. Everybody Hurts by R.E.M.
009. Man On The Moon by R.E.M.
010. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by Crash Test Dummies
011. Find The River by R.E.M.
012. These Are The Days by 10,000 Maniacs
013. Rooster [Live] by Alice In Chains
014. Creep by Radiohead
015. All Apologies by Nirvana
016. 36-24-36 by The Violent Femmes
017. Push Th' Little Daisies by Ween
018. Northern Sky by Nick Drake
019. Gin & Juice by Snoop Dogg
020. Informer by Snow
021. Mr. Jones by Counting Crows
022. Get Off This by Cracker
023. Nuthin' But A G Thang by Dr. Dre feat. Snoop Dogg
024. Fade Into You by Mazzy Star
025. Nearly Lost You by Screaming Trees
026. Oh Carolina by Shaggy
027. All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow
028. Runaway Train by Soul Asylum
029. Little Miss Can't Be Wrong by The Spin Doctors
030. Loser by Beck
031. Laid by James
032. Mrs. Robinson by The Lemonheads
033. Harvest Moon [Live] by Neil Young
034. Trout by Neneh Cherry feat. Michael Stipe
035. Regret by New Order
036. Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana
037. Jimmy Olsen's Blues by The Spin Doctors
038. Can't Do A Thing To Stop Me by Chris Isaak
039. A Murder Of One by Counting Crows
040. A Thousand Miles From Nowhere by Dwight Yoakam
041. Bad Girl by Madonna
042. Rain by Madonna
043. Dyslexic Heart by Paul Westerberg
044. Animal by Pearl Jam
045. Kiss That Frog by Peter Gabriel
046. I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers
047. Today by The Smashing Pumpkins
048. Fields Of Gold by Sting
049. Creep by Stone Temple Pilots
050. My Insatiable One by Suede
051. Sister Havana by Urge Overkill
052. The Whole Of The Moon by The Waterboys
053. Rebirth Of The Cool by Afghan Whigs
054. Feed The Tree by Belly
055. She Don't Use Jelly by The Flaming Lips
056. Bad Time by The Jayhawks
057. My Drug Buddy by The Lemonheads
058. Help Me Mary by Liz Phair
059. Kite by Nick Heyward
060. Go by Pearl Jam
061. Rearview Mirror by Pearl Jam
062. Soul To Squeeze by The Red Hot Chili Peppers
063. Connected by Stereo MCs
064. Lo Boob Oscillator by Stereolab
065. If I Ever Lose My Faith In You by Sting
066. Animal Nitrate by Suede
067. Brother by Toad The Wet Sprocket
068. Them Bones by Alice In Chains
069. Mr. Wendal by Arrested Development
070. If 60s Was 90s by Beautiful People
071. Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel) by Billy Joel
072. Human Touch by Bruce Springsteen
073. Rain King by Counting Crows
074. Sullivan Street by Counting Crows
075. Insane In The Membrane by Cypress Hill
076. Walking In My Shoes by Depeche Mode
077. Ordinary World by Duran Duran
078. Check Yo Self by Ice Cube
079. Beautiful Girl by INXS
080. Rubberband Girl by Kate Bush
081. It's A Shame About Ray by The Lemonheads
082. Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz
083. Believe by Lenny Kravitz
084. Fuck & Run by Liz Phair
085. Move With Me by Neneh Cherry
086. Rape Me by Nirvana
087. Glorified G by Pearl Jam
088. Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town.... by Pearl Jam
089. Rid Of Me by PJ Harvey
090. Killing In The Name by Rage Against The Machine
091. Strong Enough by Sheryl Crow
092. Possession by Sarah McLachlan
093. Cherub Rock by The Smashing Pumpkins
094. Break It Down Again by Tears For Fears
095. Mary Jane's Last Dance by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
096. Sober by Tool
097. Cryin' by Areosmith
098. Gentleman by Afghan Whigs
099. No Rain by Blind Melon
100. For Tomorrow by Blur
101. Shine by Collective Soul
102. Will We Be Lovers by Deacon Blue
103. Two Steps Behind by Def Leppard
104. Start Choppin' by Dinosaur Jr.
105. The Chronic (Intro) by Dr. Dre
106. Come Undone by Duran Duran
107. I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) by Meat Loaf
108. I'm The Only One by Melissa Etheridge
109. Needle & The Damage Done [Live] by Neil Young
110. Buddy X by Neneh Cherry
111. Daughter by Pearl Jam
112. Steam by Peter Gabriel
113. Pets by Porno For Pyros
114. D'yer Mak'er by Sheryl Crow
115. Plush by Stone Temple Pilots
116. Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins
117. (I Can't Help) Falling In Love With You by UB40
118. Big Day Coming by Yo La Tengo
119. Do You Right by 311
120. Bed Of Roses by Bon Jovi
121. December by Collective Soul
122. Anna Begins by Counting Crows
123. Fuck Wit Dre Day by Dr. Dre
124. Lyrical Gangbang by Dr. Dre
125. That's The Way Love Goes by Janet Jackson
126. Blue by The Jayhawks
127. If You Have To Ask by The Red Hot Chili Peppers
128. It's Martini Time by The Rev. Horton Heat
129. Leaving las Vegas by Sheryl Crow
130. Rocket by The Smashing Pumpkins
131. Another Sad Love Song bu Tomi Braxton
132. What's Up? by 4 Non-Blondes
133. The River Of Dreams by Billy Joel
134. Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat) by Digable Planets
135. Human Wheels by John Mellencamp
136. World Class Fad by Paul Westerberg
137. Suck My Kiss by The Red Hot Chili Pepppers

Previous In This Series: Friday Flashback 1987

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