PixlBit

Doesn't sound as good as nineteen eighty-four probably because it doesn't have the literary reference of Adolus Huxley's [George Orwell dummy] book to make it sound important, but I like it well enough. This year I was doing temp office work and hated it. I got offered full-time jobs but turned them all down. In retrospect, it was stupid, but then I was still in my twenties and didn't want to commit to anything. Sound familiar twenty-somethings out there? This below is the music I listened to. I made a list of 77 albums I want to hear now, but these were the 14 I heard then and liked, in no particular order.

Clapton, Eric	From the Cradle
Cranberries	No Need to Argue
Green Day	Dookie
Jordan, Sass	Rats
Live	Throwing Copper
Mathews, Dave Band	Under the Table and Dreaming
Nirvana	MTV Unplugged in New York
Phish	Hoist
Portishead	Dummy
Seal	self titled
Smashing Pumpkins	Pisces Iscariot
Soundgarden	Superunknown
Various	Nativity in Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath
Veruca Salt	American Thighs

 

Clapton's From the Cradle was a blues cover album. It really showed off his prowess as a guitar player. I was learning some music at the time and was considering the blues. I subsequently learned it but didn't fall in love with it. This was a great album though. 

I love the Cranberries for their bass sound but, more importantly, for the voice of Dolores O'Riordan. She goes from very high, high notes to gutteral bass notes, and I like that. You can hear that clearly on the song Zombie on this album. You don't hear range like that on a rock album very often. 

Green Day was all over rock radio that year. The song Welcome to Paradise was the big hit and I liked it, but I liked the up front bass line in Longview better. I even learned that one when I started playing bass a year later. 

Sass Jordan was a blues/rock singer with some guts. I liked her singing a lot and it rocked. High Road Easy was the track played on the radio but I liked the whole album. She kinda faded from view pretty quickly after this, but I see she's done albums up to 2009. 

My favorite album that year was Live's Throwing Copper. They're from York, PA, not far from where I live. Local connection aside though, I really dug this album. Lightning Crashes was on the radio a lot and I never got tired of it. White Discussion was really great too and featured some really angry vocals similar in my mind to O'Riodan's Zombie track. 

I thought Dave Matthews was the next coming of. . . whatever great thing you can think of. When I heard and saw him play Satellite on. . . was it Late Night with David Letterman? I don't know, but when I saw that, I was so excited. I got it into my head that he studied with Robert Fripp at his Guitar Craft class in West Virginia (which he may have. I couldn't confirm it though.) and thought I noticed it in his accoustic guitar playing on that song especially. There was something about the pattern he plays, and the kind of finger stretching he does, on Satellite that made me think of Fripp's Guitar Craft. Anyway, I loved this album a lot, but in subsequent projects, I fell quickly out of fandom. After this his vocals seemed unintelligible behind a cool mumbling style and his band was so sharp it could've cut metal. I find too much professionalism in music comes out a bit dull to my ears. Eh, that's just me. Give me flaws. I love flaws. 

Nirvana's unplugged set got me interested in them especially their rendition of Bowie's Man Who Sold the World. I even learned the bass line to that a year later. It's still my favorite Nirvana album. Nirvana fans, stop throwing things at me!

Phish I never really got into in a big way, but their song Down with Disease on this album Hoist peaked my interest. That rockin' hollow body electric guitar he plays really stands out on that track. I always loved that big resonant sound. 

Portishead had this track Sour Times that I really liked on this album Dummy. It was slow and plodding and mysterious. 

Seal was all over the radio with Kiss From a Rose. It was used prominently in the film Batman Forever and suddenly Seal was a superstar. His passionate singing is irresistable. 

Never really got heavily into Smashing Pumpkins but this one song off this B-sides collection Pisces Iscariot, called Frail and Bedazzled, I really liked. Maybe because it was one of their heavier guitar driven tracks. 

Soundgarden's Superunknown was all over the radio, especially with Black Hole Sun. I may have gotten a tiny bit sick of that one after a while, but the album is excellent. I still like their previous album Badmotorfinger better, but this was their biggest album yet. I learned Fell on Black Days for bass while in my band a year later. 

I discovered these tribute albums in the 90s that really had some good tracks on them and introduced me to some new bands. The Bullring Brummies did a great job on Black Sabbath's Wizard on this Nativity in Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath. 

Finally there's Veruca Salt and their song Seether that was bouncing around the radio airwaves. I loved the bassy intro and learned that one right away. 

That be 1994 music for me. Onto games.