The Factual Opinion

The Best of 1992: #9

The Black Crowes
The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion

In more ways than one, this album is a sort of death knell for 1992.  Not in it's musicality, it's lyrics; not even in it's feel.  But after '92, what was "cool" (meaning what was selling itself as "cool") wasn't white guy rock bands anymore--sure, Nirvana still had legs, but with the release of the Chronic (and specifically, the video for "Nuthing But A 'G' Thing"), intimidating, forceful black rappers took over the top spot.  To some extent, rightly so: a determined, masculine minority with definite beliefs (in most cases, women and money) is always going to seem strong to people to busy to look beyond the surface.  (Again, the problem with music criticism v. popular taste is, in This Factual Opinion, isn't that the popular taste is stupidly embracing banal retreads because they like banal retreads, but because banal retreads are both easily accessible as product, and easily discoursed upon because of their widespread nature.  Attacking people's taste because their too busy to pay attention to what's fresh and new was out of line in 1992, when finding music could take up money and time if one didn't live in LA or NYC.  Nowadays, with file-sharing, it's less true: still, some people are just too busy to keep up.)  1992 was the time period when the white-boy rock groups (with long hair) went to war against black men with Starter jackets.  Starter jackets won, and the guys at your high school who were cool became the guys who listened to rap (it wasn't until the late stage of 2001 that hip-hop became the phrasing of choice, and in all honesty, hip-hop is still a really idiotic name.) 

That's not really the point though: Southern Harmony isn't about any of these things.  It's a rock and roll album, through and through--and it's a great rock and roll album.  It's got gospel back-up singers, it's got a Bob Marley cover, and it has the fascinating quality of becoming exponentially better for every decibel it's turned up.  It's an album consisting of ten tracks, all of which could have served as hit singles if they'd had Jay-Z's marketing team.  Southern Harmony is so firmly rooted in an idea of place (a mythical South that probably seems right below the railroad tracks even to people in Alabama) yet seems absolutely timeless.  These are the things that make a decent album better: but in this case, Southern Harmony started from good--which means that by the end, it became amazing.

-Tucker Stone, 2006

The Best of 1992: #10

Tom Waits
Bone Machine

Tom Waits is only 57 years old.   He hasn’t even reached the optimum age for his point of view yet.   At 24, Waits was a craggily old man.   When he made Bone Machine in 1992, he was 43 years old—which is funny, because he sounds like Yoda.   Funny, also, that so much of Bone Machine talks about screaming—“The Earth Died Screaming,” “Such a Scream”—because you couldn’t imagine Waits working up a scream even if he were drowning in a swimming pool.   Then again, if you know anything about Tom Waits, you already know all of this.   You know about that bedraggled voice and the subterranean, oldster perspective.   You know this because Tom Waits has become more mythology than man.   Bone Machine is his time on Ogygia, held captive by Calypso.   We lost him for 7 years after this—maybe because Bone Machine reaches the apex of Waits’ sound, simplifies and deepens his aesthetic.   “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” encapsulates his career perfectly—a nursery rhyme that doubles as a plea from an octogenarian.   More importantly, it’s a kick ass tune.

-Marty Brown, 2006

The Best of 1992: #11

Neneh Cherry
Homebrew

She came, she saw, she recorded, she released: Blew up like Nagasaki.  (Off "Buffalo Stance," the song your little sister knows real well, and also the song that was not on this album.)  Homebrew was the "Neneh's coming back from Lyme disease" album, Homebrew was the "remember my hit single" cuts, Homebrew was the this-is-what-i-learned while working with Massive Attack piece of vinyl.  Needless to say, it didn't sell.  Of course, it did have modest success on college radio (back when that might have meant something, although '92 was, admittedly, near the beginning of the downturn of college radio--and that success was mostly due to Neneh's "Trout" duet with Michael Stipe.)  Homebrew, however, is a lodestone, a foundational record: it's also an experimental album crafted with intelligence by a black female artist that received wide release.  If that's not a definition of "rare" in most people's vocabulary, that's probably because they haven't bought an actual dictionary in a while.  Homebrew, while still stuck firmly in the critically acclaimed bracket of Low Selling Albums 14 years later hasn't aged a day: it's a totally accessible, excellently crafted pop album.  Each song is perfectly realized, full of all the requisite hooks and imagination that evades today's artists in our .mp3 environment: put it simple, this album is perfect.  Saddling it with the unfortunate title of a "trip-hop masterpiece" doesn't do it justice.  Homebrew is the album that people are going to the store looking for every week--except they keep checking in the new release section, which is where Timberlake, Aguilera and Shakira go to hide from the shadow of Neneh Cherry. 

-Tucker Stone, 2006

The Best of 1992: #12

Rage Against The Machine
Rage Against The Machine

The best protest music is plain-spoken:  “We shall overcome;” “The times they are a’ changin’;” “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.”   Zack De La Rocha only repeats six lines in “Killing In the Name,” but those became Rage Against the Machine’s mission statement and primary MO.   Without shying away from provocative subject matter (check the empathy with the gang banger narrator of “Settle For Nothing”), Rage kept their lyrics accessible enough to draw in even the most apolitical listener.   Two years later, those who didn’t care about caring could turn to KoRn’s chanted nursery rhymes.   But in 1992 it was all or nothing; fight or turn the music down.   Rage didn’t allow for anything less.   A sound so combustible could never last—after having their blueprint co-opted by every angry white dude with a grudge against his ex-girlfriend (redundant?), Rage retired at the top of their game in 1999.   Even so, their debut album remains their most urgent.  How badly did we need Rage Against the Machine in 1992?  So badly that they had to invent their own genre because nothing else could say what they had to say.  How did they do it?  Anger is a gift.

-Marty Brown, 2006

The Best of 1992: #13

PJ Harvey
Dry

While other so-called feminists frequently exploit and subconsciously reinforce the very stereotypes they rail against—namely, that women are fragile victims—the real work gets done by those who reclaim and explode those stereotypes.   In music, it’s the difference between getting your audience to imagine a rape and getting them to physically experience the emotionality of rape.   One evokes sympathy—an inherently condescending emotion—the other, true understanding.   PJ Harvey loads her debut album, Dry, with the sound of womanhood charging in every direction at once.   She channels joy, anger, and every gray area in between.  Then, she backs it up with lyrics filled with mythological, historical, and even pop-cultural references.   Who else could turn “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair” into a rallying cry?   On “Dress”—simultaneously the album’s most accessible and scathing song—the titular object becomes sexual power, a leering taunt, and indescribable loneliness.   Every word, every turn-of-phrase overflows with multiple meanings.   Even the album’s title has vaginal undertones.  And don’t even get us started on the sheela-na-gig.  You are either a Tori Amos person or a PJ Harvey person.   We here at The Factual Opinion are not ashamed to say that we have chosen sides.

-Marty Brown, 2006

The Best of 1992: #14

Diamond and The Psychotic Neurotics
Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop

One wonders if hip-hop artists are out for legacy or fame: Diamond D seems to have been saddled with the former.  Stunts is another hip-hop album, like Mecca and the Soul Brother that was saddled with the uncomfortable memory of being released near the beginning of Dr. Dre's run on hip-hop, a time period when what really mattered was what MTV video was attracting the suburbs to your CD.  Of course, it wouldn't matter if Diamond had made an album that wasn't as good as The Chronic, but the truth is that he did: Stunts is stronger, funnier and just all around more cohesive than Dre.  While the lyrics are a bit lacking at times, the tight, economic beats stand in stark contrast to what was getting ready to take over the entire west coast for the next six years.  (Diamond just showed back up this year, courtesy of Busta Rhymes beat-biting attempts to revive a justly-fading career.)  The Factual will, regardless of its hopes and dreams, never be able to give success to a forgotten hero, but that doesn't mean we have to join the rank and file and pretend that there wasn't a whole lot of great stuff going on in hip-hop in 1992.  So here it is: a hip-hop album that producers and archivist know all about, still available to all the cats who missed out 'cause we were too busy with the Twenty Dollar Sack Pyramid.

-Tucker Stone, 2006

The Best of 1992: #15

Sonic Youth
Dirty

Now that Sonic Youth have been around long enough to prove, again and again, that they're more creative, more talented and just all around "more" in every sense of the word, it's probably good to reflect that on that time back in 1992, when Dirty was their second album on for DGC and they had, according to a bunch of musicians who've since changed their tune, "Sold Out."  The fact that Sonic Youth was opening doors, literally, for just about every one of the up-and-coming bands on the Geffen label was totally ignored (even though one of them was Nirvana); just because it was more fun when Thurston and Co. belonged to the select few in the turtleneck set.  Daydream Nation had announced their presence a few years earlier, Goo had put them in high schools and with the release of Dirty, a Spike Jonze video (starring My Name Is Earl's Jason Lee) ensured that when people talked about rock music (which in '92 was referred to as "alternative"), they talked about Sonic Youth, Nirvana and Pearl Jam.  Of course, sales never bore it out--but considering that Def Lepperd outsold REM until they sang about religion, sales figures are a chumps game.  Sonic was operating in the shadow of an elephant named Cobain when they released Dirty: that doesn't change the fact that Dirty was off the motherfucking chain.  An aptly named excursion in sludgy, heavy sound, Dirty was a combination of the black ops maneuvers from EVOL and the pop-goes-the-sweater that propelled Daydream Nation.  While Dirty may never be the album that Sonic Youth fans call their favorite, it's probably because the whole thing still reminds them that in 1992, we all really needed a better haircut.

The Best of 1992: #16

Gang Starr
Daily Operation

There's a time in every hip-hop listener's life when they first hear a classic turn of phrase: the first "No shame in my game" or their virgin "yo, flip the script."  There's a time when every pot-smoker first throws on a track that indicates to him he should "take two and pass."  Now, if all three of these happened while someone was also experiencing pure New York Grit-Hop, straight out of Brooklyn, and it all went down back in 1992, it's because said listener was listening to DJ Premier and Guru's masterpiece of turntables and a microphone, Daily Operation.  (Hey Beck. Fuck You.)  Regardless of the hints of criminology, Gang Starr have always been the kings of the working man's hip-hop, the form of rap shorn of DMC style-antics, PE style-politics and Dre style-comedics: a pure, undistilled form of bass, vinyl and gravel-velvet vocals.  If the Full Clip compilation ain't convinced the 'heads that Daily Operation was/is/forever shall be the best Gang Starr album ever, than it's because 'heads be lying.  Innovation doesn't always come in the forms of beeps, whistles and theremins: sometimes innovation means you do what you do best, and you do it better than anyone else. 

-Tucker Stone, 2006