1994

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I fell in love with Dub Reggae in 1994. That was probably the biggest musical change of my life -- maybe after "Psychocandy". Since then I've felt increasingly indifferent to much contemporary music -- there's still stuff I like, but since entering the world of Scratch, Tubby, Pablo et al., I don't really need any of it. I don't know... dub and reggae really changed my appreciation of music, and most of the stuff that moves me these days leads with a big fat rhythm. It's also probably the reason why I'm so appalled by the likes of Coldplay and Travis.

― Johnathan, Wednesday, 18 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I think Tom only asked this question because he wants to laugh at my answer which is oh-so-expected (think: what seminal British album came out in 1994). SO I WON'T SAY IT. Instead, I'll say Madonna.

I listen to the same stuff nowadays though. My tastes never change. I'm much cooler now though then I was in 1994. I was 14, for christ's sake - how many 14 year olds are cool?

― Ally, Wednesday, 18 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

long fin killie's 'houdini' came out then, so did pram's 'gravity' too pure was still on a roll in 94. other great things from 94 bailter space 'vortura' peter jefferies 'electricity' spectrum's 'highs lows and heavenly blows' heavenly 'decline and fall...' didn't charm of the highway strip come out in 94 too? slowdive pygmalion rocketship 'hey hey girl'.

i think i am always the same. years go by my mental condition does not become altered significantly.

― keith, Wednesday, 18 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

oh wait houdini was 95, maybe buttergut was out by 94?

― keith, Wednesday, 18 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

In 1994 I was listening to Nirvana. Yes, that is a full stop, a friend gave me a tape of Nevermind and In Utero and I didn't listen to anything else. Which is really sad.

― DG, Wednesday, 18 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

That is sad. I listened to nothing but Nirvana in '94 too, and god was I sad. (I listened to Weezer too, actually). Graphing my happiness, it fell lower every year until about '94, and it's been going back up since. I was 14 in '94 too, and Ally's right that 14-yr olds just aren't cool, but some are really, really, really uncool. Some have huge glasses and a geeky haircut and 'integrity' (which keeps them from liking anything but Nirvana) and facial tics and wear tube socks and are just socially incompetent. Okay, maybe I was the only one (seemed it at the time). God knows if I'm particularly cool now (someone just said I look like a "hippie gangsta"), but I'm a helluva lot cooler than I was then. I still listen to Weezer, but otherwise my tastes have done an about-face. Hell, they've probably done an about-face just in the last year.

― Otis Wheeler, Wednesday, 18 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1994 was a bit crap for me too. All my friends were geeks (yes, genuine computer geek types not irritating indie kids who want to be computer geek types) and I was too scared (yes, scared, believe it or not) to investigate any non-chart music, because I had these scary images of all these indie types laughing at me for some unknown taste crime. This may seem silly now, but in my class there WAS a genuinely snobby viscious indie type, and he scared me. As I got older of course I became more confident and became totally indifferent to other people's criticism, but it annoys me that I didn't have the guts to strike out and really develop my own taste at the time. But on the other hand, if I had, I'd probably bought 'indie' music like The Cranberries, and that would have been REALLY embarrassing.

― DG, Wednesday, 18 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

"Hippie gangsta" is EXACTLY how I'm going to describe you from now on, Otie. That's the best description ever. I wish it could apply to me. Alas.

― Ally, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1994. British Pop Hegemony. Like a Risk map full of Union Jacks. "Now my Heart is Full". Flashboys and street preachers. "Babies", of course. That was the time when I started my mixtapes with "Lenny Valentino". I was studying Rimbaud at school for my bac and reading about being 17 years old in 1870 and finding out things had not changed so much as Mtv wanted us to believe. My tastes were exploding exponentially, though. It was more of an inclusive evolution. I mostly accumulated tastes instead of replacing them. There are very little items in my record collection I would not gladly listen to today. The core remains the same, really. I was as cool as I am now. I was a dead ringer for Dave Vanian, and not ashamed of it. I was not happier. I still believed things changed. Bollocks.

― Simon, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

It has nothing to do with it, but as soon as I saw the post beginning with:

1994

some favourites

I intuitively knew it was dj Martian's. (Is that what having "a style" means? ;)

― Simon, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Another 14-year-old with a Nirvana jones. I remember '94 was when Green Day broke through, too, and I *still* love Dookie. Erm, also Soundgarden's Superunknown, Primus' Pork Soda, and other semi- mainstream nonsense. I was also discovering the Sex Pistols and bitching about that fuckin' dance music shit. Say heck no to techno (as the great Ricky Powell once advised). God I was dumb.

Less happy then, definitely, but cooler is pretty tough to judge. Is it ever cool to be an angst-ridden 14 year old, or for that matter a jaded 21 year old?

― Dave M., Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1994. I was 22-23, let's see probably Aphex Twin, Underworld, Plastikman, lots of space jazz, dub and this crazy thing called jungle. All in all a very good year as had been the case from 1991 on, lots of raveing, very good drugs, getting back into reading science fiction, devouring new theory. Seems 1994 laid the groundwork for who I am today. Although in the end not as good as 1995 which had the added bonus of Ajax winning the Champions League, for a brief while it felt like a golden age was upon me :)

― Omar, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

For the first half of the year, loads and loads of post-shoegazing pyschedelia by the bucketload. The whole new crop of Spacemen3 solo projects- Spectrum, Spiritualized, Darkside, etc. Medicine, Boo Radleys, early Verve, that sort of thing.

Then something happened about halfway through the spring (It was probably drugs-related, as it was my "lost year") I suddenly stopped listening to modern music at all, and disappeared back up my own arse in a sea of '66 psychedelia. It started with getting out all my parents' old Beatles and Small Faces and Kinks and Creation records, but then started disappearing down the black hole of the 13th Floor Elevators, Shadows of Knight, The Seeds, the Sonics, and all that sort of thing.

The only modern music that permeated my little paisley partition of paradise until nearly 1996 was Blur, cause most of what they were doing at the time sounded just like the Itchycoo Park anyway.

Acid. I blame acid, completely. It was the year that NYC was flooded with that incredibly cheap, incredibly strong "ant acid" and we had a sheet in the freezer for most of the summer.

― kate the saint, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1994...I was listening to stuff like Frank Black, Teenage Fanclub, Pavement, Lotion, Velocity Girl, Pond, Dinosaur Jr, Buffalo Tom, anything on Subpop! Went to my first gig that year, Dinosaur Jr at the Brixton Academy, it was so loud, I didn't go to another concert for at least a year after that! It was a crappy year, I was a complete misery...it's a good laugh to read now! Was doing my A- levels, and dropping out of university that year...I'm much cooler now! :)

― james edmund L, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1994, I was 16, and recently converted to the smiths faith. So, it was that, the cure, joy division, new order, and lots of synthpop (erasure, psb, dm). Neither cooler or happier.

― fernando, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Urg, 94, happiness is not a loaded gun - april, no music, music died, everything too painful to listen to; later new tori amos, nin, a jjj totally wireless compilation, frente, pogues, u2, los rodgriguez, and my first forays into patti smith/velvet underground...oh yeah, the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. Was i happier then? Drunker, I guess, though getting mouth to mouth from yr mother is definitely a faux pas...no, a lot sadder, I mean fuck - I became an insurance clerk for 6 weeks - there's an indication of a mind in trouble.

― Geoff, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1994, I was 16, and recently converted to the smiths faith. So, it was that, the cure, joy division, new order, and lots of synthpop (erasure, psb, dm).

Sorry to revisit past battles, but isn't this a whopping great non sequitur of the highest order? I would have seen the Smiths as a way of getting out of the Cure, not into them.

Neither cooler or happier. Hmm..

― Nick, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Call me a heartless bastard, but am I the only person in the world to whom Kurt Cobain's suicide meant, well... actually almost nothing? I can remember when it happened, probably most clearly because my housemate and I both actually thought it was some sort of hoax. It didn't affect me emotionally in any way.

― kate the saint, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

To Nick -- eh? Keep in mind that over here in America there was sort of a quartet of Towering British Alt Bands that it seemed (I will emphasize *SEEMED* before people complain) that everybody who was vaguely alternative listened to and obsessed over in equal measure from 1984 to somewhere in the early nineties. And they would be: Depeche Mode, New Order, the Cure, the Smiths. Hell, I got into all them around the same time in 1988-89 because of that, enough people kept talking about them etc.

So no, far from being mutually exclusive, the Cure and the Smiths are actually pretty intertwined here in the States. I know Robert and Morrissey couldn't stand each other, but plenty of fans not only stand them both, but love 'em both. ;-)

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Unfair. I was about 12 at the time, which is even uncooler than 14, and I the only things I remember noticing from that period were SWV and TLC ('cos a friend was in to R&B) and Ace Of Bace and later The Cranberries and Green Day. So it hardly counts. If I knew then what I know now however, I would have been into:

jungle; trip hop; first wave British post-rock; second wave Chicago house; Warp; g-funk.

― Tim, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Kate: No, you have me to back you up in the "Didn't really care about Cobain" sweepstakes. I just didn't much like Nirvana save for a handful of songs, and Cobain himself annoyed me, so it was with a big shrug that I heard the news he shot himself. It's sad but...not really something that I cared about at all.

The funny thing was, at school the next day all these girls, girls I *knew* and hung out with from time to time, kept running up to me, "Keep the faith, thanks for wearing black in mourning, Kurt Cobain forever" and going all hysterical.

The reason this is funny is BECAUSE I WAS A GOTH AND WORE BLACK EVERY BLOODY DAY. And these people KNEW me, and KNEW that I only wore black! Weirdos :)

― Ally, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Prefer not to remember 1994 if I can. What I do remember - re: Kurt - is sitting in the Select office after his Rome (?) overdose and having what now seems an unnecessarily sick conversation about who would get on the cover if they died, or under what circumstances they would have to die to get on the cover. Cobain, of course, did make it on the cover when he managed to kill himself...

― Mark Morris, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Hmm, 1994. I was deep into various techno/hardcore compilations such as the Best of Techno series and the Speed Limit 140+ BPM series. I was also blindly insisting that the second Massive Attack album was bad because the only track I'd heard was "Karmacoma", which got on my nerves. (Big about-face and "OOPS!" on that one.) I also discovered Portishead (like everyone else), Orbital (via the criminally underrated _Snivilization_ and their remix of MBM's "Mindstream"), NIN's _The Downward Spiral_, _Music For The Jilted Generation_, _To Bring You My Love_ (HEAVEN), and some random Cranes album. I was warming to commercial hip-hop but still hadn't really purchased any (I was too busy filling holes in my Severed Heads collection).

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Mainstream alt-rock, which was actually quite good at the time. STP were still producing good singles. The Pumpkins hit with 1979 and the "Tonight, Tonight" video both of which were timeless. Was that the year of the Geggy Tah song about driving in my car? Because that song was crap. Right before the good alternative station in town (KJEE) started to get a bit wack. 14 at the time as well. I got my first pavement album in '94. '94 was also the year of the good Lollapalooza with Sonic Youth headlining, eh? That was good. That album was good. "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" -- yes 94 was the year of the Pumpkins. I got all into indie in the next few years, but now I'm back at pop, and all the better for it. The difference? Now Nine Inch Nails (that was '94, too, eh? Downward Spiral) and crew don't *speak* to me. '94 was also, I think, when I got the best of Lou Reed album.

― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1994? So I was, er, um....15! Or 16, for a bit. You'd never think I did Maths at university. So what was I listening to? Oh, I think Oasis and Blur and The Boo Radleys and Nirvana and Supergrass and stuff, and still REM. I don't listen to some of it now. I still listen to some of it now. I am happier. How do I know if I'm cooler though?

― Ally C, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

You'll always be cool.

― the pinefox, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

geez, 1994...that was the year music broke for me. i was 13, then 14, going from 8th to 9th grade, going from middle school to high school...at the beginning of the year all i listened to was the Who and my dad's woodstock album. i mean, thats ALL i listened to. i was really a late bloomer when it came to music, before that all i listened to was musical theater (dork, dork, dork) and in 7th grade i rented "Tommy" from the video store and fell in love with the Who. then that summer, at camp...a whole new world opened up for me. nine inch nails (which quickly became my favorite band, i was obsessed until 11th grade), green day, violent femmes, they might be giants... my best friend at the time also was going through an awakening, when high school started we used to tape 120 minutes every sunday night and watch it monday after school. every band we liked we'd go out and buy the next weekend. she got really into liz phair, juliana hatfield, belly...i got into other "industrial" bands, operation ivy, the cure, more classic rock, blur, porno for pyros and jane's addiction, i think i started listening to g.love and special sauce around then...basically, anything we could get our hands on. it helped that i started dating this guy who had the largest cd collection id seen at the time (about 300, kinda paltry when i think about it now). i thought i was the coolest, but in retrospect, i was pretty lame. i was just so excited about finding new music to love...its interesting that i saw this post now (i lurk, dont post at all really) because im kinda going through the same thing now...i "discovered" the smiths and morrissey about 4 or so years ago and until this fall listened to nothing else. at all. seriously. okay, maybe a little pulp, and a little manics. but mostly i was in a smiths induced musical coma. then someone handed me a modest mouse cd (interstate 8) this fall and made me listen to it... and i totally fell in love and kinda "woke up"...now im listening to all this new music to me that everyone else has been listening to for years (case in point: i just a month ago started listening to the magnetic fields. im pretty behind.) but im loving it! ill give anything anyone recommends a chance. so thats my story, sad to tell. yay 1994, and yay 2001, for me anyways.

― amy, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I think I pretty much listened to Polvo's "Today's Active Lifestyles" and "Celebrate the New Dark Age" exclusively throughout 1994. Maybe Swervedriver's "Mezcal Head".

― Tim Baier, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1994 was the year I started writing about music. It was also the year before I started using the Internet. I think these two things have a bit to do with the cooler/happier thing and to do with the music I listened to then and now.

A longer post to follow on this sometime soon - I've been remiss in not answering my own question. It was *also* the year I bought a turntable and discovered old records for the first time, so a lot of time was spent in the cheaper sections of the Music And Video Exchange. Had I known at the time about the people who frequented those basements I wouldn't have been so eager.

― Tom, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

so a lot of time was spent in the cheaper sections of the Music And Video Exchange. Had I known at the time about the people who frequented those basements I wouldn't have been so eager. (Tom)

What do you mean by this?

― David, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I listened to little of significance. Utterly uncool, happy at the start of the year, anything but by the end.

― Robin Carmody, Saturday, 21 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

David - worked at MVE for 3 years. A majority of visitors to the basement (& to the shops in general) are occasional bargain hunters. A minority are staggeringly unpleasant / have unspeakable personal hygiene / are borderline nazis / etc. Several of these are regular visitors. Combine that with the knowledge of the horrible state most of the goods that go down there arrive in and it's a wonder epidemics haven't started on Pembridge Road. Certainly the biggest of the bargain basements I've considered to be a no-go area since a customer walked in there and took a shit on the floor. Hope that answers your question!

― Tom, Monday, 23 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Combine that with the knowledge of the horrible state most of the goods that go down there arrive in and it's a wonder epidemics haven't started on Pembridge Road. (Tom)

That's worrying. Are we talking thick coatings of dust or worse? And did you have to clean them up for resale?

One of the oddest (and best) things about those bargain basements were the 'lucky dip' sealed white plastic bags, each containing 100 12 inch records (a pound a bag ISTR).

― David, Monday, 23 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Damp was generally the enemy, both pre-being sold in and in the basement. All very unhealthy.

― Tom, Monday, 23 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Mariah Carey..I was listening to her for a long time from the early 90's to even now...I can't remember what i was listening to anhing else!

― Debbie, Tuesday, 24 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

six months pass...

I was very uninterested in most of what I knew of that was going on at the time. I was absorbed in listening to Arabic music: "New Sound" (a genre of formulaic Egyptian dance music that, for the most part, sucks--I got over it), George Wassouf (a Syrian pop snger who is not particularly well-respected by Arabic music snobs, but who I like at times), too much Warda, late Oum Kalthoum (which isn't really her best material--the best is from the late 30's until the very early 60's), "psychedelic" Abdel Halim Hafez, Samira Tewfic, Milhem Barakat, etc. No matter what I listen to most dominantly, there are always other things thrown in, so I'm sure there was some music from closer to home, but I don't remember specifically. One of my friends would stop by to play me various forms of electronica (actually a fairly narrow range of it), and I would almost always say, "I don't like it."

― DeRayMi, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Nobody's mentioned DI Go Pop. "Footprints In Snow", the most nostalgic sounding song of the 90's.

1994 was the pivotal year of the decade. Agree with all the points DJ Martian made back in April on this thread.

― David Gunnip, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

That was the year I visited Glasgow. "nuff said" - snapshot of 1994: I buy "Transient Random Noisebursts with Announcements" on vinyl and my glue-sniffer friends all assume it's techno.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Trumans Water

― Brian MacDonald, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Velocity Girl, Sugar, Gumball, Soul Coughing, Pearl Jam, Liz Phair, Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Archers of Loaf, and loads of other poop. My cool & happy quotients were @ an all-time low, though.

That was SEVEN years ago. Damn.

― David Raposa, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

three weeks pass...

Tricky, Aphex Twin, Plastikman, Spiritualized, Orbital's snivilization, Medicine, Verve, Underworld, Flying Saucer Attack, Laika, Portishead, Kristen Hersh, Seefeel, Jungle eg 'Spiritual Aura'.

― stevo, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

wow...1994...

::fires up the way back machine of the mind...::

ameri-indie rock, which i had been introduced to (like everyone around my age it seems) via nevermind. big hits at the harvell household in 94: bee thousand, foolish, yank crime, and whatever nation of ulysses album came out that year. hiphop and pop-alternative via the radio, but i don't think i bought any of either. plenty of OLD stuff: old punk and hardcore and proto- indie, esp. - sst records, sonic yoof, the pixies. of course, by the end of 94, i would be taken to a RAVE (do you know where your children are right now?) and given a tape of JUNGLE, and then it was all over.

― jess, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Not sure - definitely not Nirvana or Pearl Jam. Already was on a retro kick and played very little actually from that time I think - except maybe John Wesley Harding? It was probably one of my least music obsessed years ever.

― Kim, Sunday, 2 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I spent the winter 1993/94 with a friend listening to the first Tindersticks album in my kitchen in a cloud of smoke.
I spent the summer of 1994 with the same friend on my balcony in another cloud of smoke listening to Swell's 41. Up the Stairs, In the keys, Music, Phone ringing, Music, Down the Stairs, Into the streets.
Obviously I was much cooler then and happier as well I guess. Yes definitely happier as it was easier to choose what to listen to as I had much less records. ;-)

― alex in mainhattan, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Hmm, to do this I had to think of what girl I was going out with that year and then think of what albums I associate with her (which is always the easiest method for me)
So. Tindersticks, Gallon Drunk, Portishead, Jeff Buckley, Boo Radleys... Strangelove...
I think I first got into Nick Cave this year as well.

― DavidM, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link