Red Hot Chili Peppers - One Hot Minute

This could be called “The RHCP album with Dave Navarro”.  Or more accurately, it could be called “The RHCP album without John Frusciante”.  This album could be used as evidence as why chemistry is so important in a band.  Dave Navarro is no slouch as a guitarist.  He’s got the chops, he’s got the feel, he’s a good songwriter.  But he’s the wrong fit for the RHCP.  When the lead singer and the bass guitarist (one of the best bass guitarists ever at that) are still in the band you would think it would be business as usual.  But something isn’t quite right here.  That’s not to say that there aren’t good songs on this album (My Friends and Aeroplane are both good), but overall it feels like they’re missing an important element. 

Live - Throwing Copper

While it is not fashionable to admit it, the biggest selling artists of the 90s in Australia included Shania Twain and Celine Dion.  Nirvana might be more influential, but they didn’t sell the most albums.   Throwing Copper feels like a cross between Nirvana and these artists.  Hear me out…

If you take the sound of Nirvana, but inject it with the mass appeal of Celine Dion you get Live. 

I was really surprised to learn that Throwing Copper is one of the biggest selling albums in Australia of all time.  It’s not in the top 10, but it’s number 45. So, I guess they were onto a winning formula. 

Let’s be generous here… I Alone, Lightning Crashes, and Selling the Drama are not bad songs.  But if feels a bit like this is the Bon Jovi of grunge.  Again, it’s not worth close scrutiny

Bon Jovi - These Days

When I was in Europe in 1995 I gained an appreciation as to why Bon Jovi was so popular.  No one listens to the lyrics – they barely understand them. But he “sounds” good.  This album was on high rotation when I was there, so I know quite a few of the songs.  They “sound” like good rock songs.  I have to say though, that they don’t bear close scrutiny.  Either now, or then.

 

 

Michael Jackson - HIStory

If anything, this album is proof that Michael Jackson didn’t’ have confidence in his work.  One disk is Michael Jackson’s greatest hits (universally good), the other is full of new material.  You have to be desperate to put a collection of your greatest hits as an incentive for people to hear your new songs. I wonder how many people ever listened to the other disc?  Anyway, it got to number 1, so in terms of marketing it was a genius move.  What of the new songs?  They’re OK.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  They’re not embarrassing, but 25 years later is anyone still playing them?

Pink Floyd - Pulse

A live album, but the twist here is that you get the full Dark Side of the Moon album played in full.  I’m not sure there’s anything else to add here.  If you like Pink Floyd, you’ll probably like this album.

Sheryl Crow - Tuesday Night Music Club

I like that after years of being a backing singer to many artists (including Michael Jackson), Sheryl Crow got her break with this album.  As the title suggests, she got a bunch of her mates together every Tuesday and started writing songs.  Highlight of this is All I Wanna Do, but there’s a lot of really good songs on this album.

Celine Dion - The Colour of My Love

Celine Dion is a really good singer.  No, she’s a really great singer.  For me, this album is perfectly produced, and perfectly played, and perfectly sung.  It doesn’t really connect with me.  Maybe that’s the problem.  It’s too perfect.

The Cruel Sea - Three Legged Dog

Originally an instrumental band, The Cruel Sea took their sound to the next level with the introduction of lead singer Tex Perkins.  Because of this their albums have always been filled with instrumentals, but the addition of vocals on some songs really brings something to the mix.  Their best songs aren’t on this album (I’d argue that The Honeymoon Is Over and Black Stick are the highlights of their career).  Although it could be said that Better Get a Lawyer from this album does provide a template of what the band sounds like. A rootsy and slightly rocking song, with the vocal snarl of Tex Perkins topping things off nicely.

Silverchair - Frogstomp

This album rocks much harder than you think it would.  It’s not really a grunge album, it’s a hard rock album.  Silverchair were called Nirvana copyists, but aside from them both being a three piece that’s kind of where the comparison stops.  This is a really solid album.  It feels unfair to mention their age, but this album shows confidence way beyond their years.  Tomorrow is still a great song.

Green Day - Dookie

I could almost use the same review that I used for Offspring.  Are Green Day punk?  I know they certainly think they are. To be honest this is more of a straight-ahead rock album than a punk album.  It’s got a whole lot of really good rockers and overall it’s pretty good. 

One of my favourite memories of Green Day was when they were on the TV show Recovery.  The band looked bored out of their brains.  They obviously didn’t want to be there and couldn’t be bothered with the inane interview.  They looked across at the house band – asked if the equipment was plugged in – walked across and just played a song.   It was very cool.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet you can watch it here…

It’s about 8 minutes into this clip…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m9CkF8Q240

 

Bruce Springsteen - Greatest Hits

Springsteen is an albums artist.  He likes to make big artistic statements and the album format is best suited to his work.  So, is a greatest hits album redundant?  Die-hard fans would say that if you want to get an appreciation for his work you should definitely start on one of his albums.  Born to Run.  Or the River.  Or Nebraska. 

I could say that this, like all greatest hits albums, is a good intro to his work.  A sampler if you will.  But it doesn’t feature some of his best songs (I’m on Fire and Tunnel of Love are absent) and feels like the worse kind of compromise.  Neither a good selection of his hits, nor a good sample of what he is famous for.  A missed opportunity.

You Am I - Hi Fi Way

This feels to me that the 90s that I remember has finally begun.  You Am I are a band that I’m pretty sure every uni student saw multiple times back in the day. I know I certainly did.  And I’m also pretty sure that while they were so ubiquitous that you never needed to purchase a single album.  They were part of the atmosphere. 

Hi Fi Way features Cathy’s Clown, Purple Sneakers, and Jewels and Bullets and is much like the rest of You Am I’s catalogue, a perfect example of 90s Australian Indie rock.

The Offspring - Smash

Smash is a upbeat, bright and fun album.  The Offspring take the high energy of punk and put a Californian sheen to proceedings.  They don’t have the angst of the original UK punks, but that’s not to say they don’t have a bit of social commentary.  Come Out and Play is about gun violence and Self Esteem is about an abusive relationship.  Not bad for a bunch of Californian punks

The Cranberries - No Need to Argue

The Cranberries were a breath of fresh air when they arrived on the music scene.  Indie pop through an Irish filter.  Their debut album (Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?) is filled with light and breezy melodies that reveals both a vulnerability and a strength of will, all wrapped up in a wistful Smiths influenced package.  Linger and Dreams are the highlights of their debut, but it’s really a good album from start to finish.  

No Need to Argue is the follow up, which features the protest song Zombie that was inescapable in 1995.  Aside from finding a harder sound on Zombie the band don’t veer too far from the sound that made them popular with their debut.

1994

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Michael Bolton - The One Thing 

Mariah Carey - Music Box 

Pantera - Far Beyond Driven 

The 12th Man - Wired World of Sports II

The 12^th man?  Again?  Really?  Come on.

Pearl Jam - Vitalogy

This is the point in their career where Pearl Jam decided to chart their own path.  Obviously their previous two albums had rocketed them into the stratosphere.  They were one of the most popular bands of the time, but I think being one of the voices of a generation really got to Eddie Vedder and he decided to make a stand. 

There’s a lot of great tracks on this album (not the least of which are Better Man and Corduroy), but the key track (at least lyrically) is Not For You.  The lyrics go:

“All that’s sacred, comes from youth

…

With no power, nothin' to do
I still remember, why don't you?
Don't you?

This is not for you”

And he lets out a primal scream.  This was clearly aimed at the mainstream.  I think he was speaking to “his people”, letting them know that he hadn’t forgotten his roots.  But who were “his people”?  When you’re the most popular band in the world and selling millions of copies of your albums your people are, quite literally, the mainstream.  I can imagine that it’s a tough mental balancing act.  Feeling like an outsider, but actually being the person at the centre of things.   

Following this album, the band had a fight with Ticketmaster, and they kind of retreated from the mainstream, but this album is great.  Really great.

Forest Gump - Soundtrack

This is probably the ultimate boomers' playlist.

Nirvana - MTV Unplugged in New York

This is a very “Nirvana” thing to do.  When given the opportunity to play live across America on the high rating Unplugged show what did they do?  Did they play their biggest hit?  No, they did not.  Did they choose a crowd friendly set?  No, they did not. 

They played a bunch of album tracks, a whole lot of covers (half of which were by a band called the Meat Puppets – no I’d never heard of them either) and generally tried to be as contrary as possible.

Having said that, all of these things work in the album’s favour.  It’s actually a really great representation of what Nirvana is.  I still find it strange that Nirvana never had a number one album in Australia while Kurt was alive.  This album is a fitting epitaph.

Madonna - Bedtime Stories

I’ve said it before, that the great secret of Madonna’s success is that she puts at least 3 great songs on each album.  On this album those tracks are Secret, Take a Bow, Human Nature. This album slows things down a bit from her previous work, it has a trip hop feel in places, you can tell she was influenced by Massive Attack and Portishead.  No bad thing in my book.  If it wasn’t such an insult, you’d almost say that this album is Madonna’s “mature” album.
 

Bon Jovi - Cross Road

There is an art to compiling a good “best of”.  I feel there’s a balance in being comprehensive, but not going too much into the weeds.  If you really want to get into an artist, you can just listen to all their albums.  So, a good “best of” really just needs to be a sampler.  It’s about putting your best foot forward.  I think Cross Road does a pretty good job of this.  In fact, some might say it does too good a job.  One would argue that you don’t really need another Bon Jovi album aside from this one (some would say you don’t even need this one…).  This distils all of the hits into one package.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert Soundtrack

A soundtrack that perfectly suits the film.  An album full of camp classics. Definitely an album to put on if you are feeling low.

The Three Tenors - In Concert 1994

It shows a certain lack of imagination that the organisers of the 1994 FIFA World Cup got the three tenors back after their performance in 1990.  To the untrained ear this is pretty much exactly like the previous album.

Garth Brooks - In Pieces

Garth Brooks is really clever.  He took country music and injected it with rock and roll showmanship.  He has said his influences are not only singer songwriters such as George Strait and James Taylor but also Billy Joel and Kiss. 

The excellent Ken Burns Country documentary shows that country music as a genre is an ever evolving artform, from the Carter Family through to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.  Garth Brooks essentially took these raw elements and infused them with the contemporary pop rock music he grew up with, which turned out to be a winning formula.   It’s no surprise that he’s one of the biggest selling country artists ever.

The Rolling Stones - Voodoo Lounge

Man didn’t we think the Rolling Stones were old in 1994?  Boy what did we know?  there’s no way we would have predicted they’d still be playing shows in 2021 (stadiums no less!).  

One of the giants of the rock and roll era.  When it comes time to look back at the music of the 20^th century, The Rolling Stones will be remembered second only to the Beatles. 

This album is pretty strong and while it might not be one of the albums the band is remembered for it can hold its own in the catalogue.  Particular highlights include Love is Strong, You Got Me Rocking and Out of Tears.     

In 2014 I saw the Rolling Stones in Melbourne.  This is what I wrote then. 

The top ticket price to see the rolling stones was around $600.  Well, actually, that's not taking into account the special VIP ticket prices (which gave you early entry and merchandise).  Those cost $1200.  There was no way I was going to pay those prices to see a bunch of old guys play guitar.  But the stones released a thing called "Lucky Dip" tickets, which were a snip at $100.  But the downside was that you didn't know where you were going to sit in the arena until show day.  Well, I didn't mind.  I would be happy to be in anywhere in the room.  

 

I had visions that I would be sitting behind a lighting pole, or up in the gods (although with the average age of the audience, I figured oxygen would be required even in the expensive seats).  

 

So about 10 minutes before the doors open, I pick up my tickets and the official says "oh, you got really lucky - you're in the pit".  The pit!  Seriously!!  The pit is where the above mentioned $600 tickets were.  And also, the $1200 tickets were!  This can't be true, but let's just go with it.  

 

My concert buddy (Rob) and I were kind of speechless.  And I mean seriously speechless.  We hadn't seen each other in months, but we didn't catch up.  Our conversation basically involved Cheshire cat grins, with a mumbled "we're in the pit!  we're in the pit" mantra…  

 

To get into the pit you need to jump through a number of hoops - go through this door, line up in that line, get this wristband, etc, etc.  At each checkpoint we thought that they would say "sorry guys, there has been a mistake, you're up in the gods".  But that never happened!  

 

We make our way into the pit (I should say that those who paid lots of money were already in there) but it seemed that all those people decided that they wanted to be right at the front of the pit.  Expert concert goers like us knew how lucky we were and decided that the back of the pit would be just as good.  I mean, they've got a catwalk there and they wouldn't have built it if they weren't going to use it!  So basically, Rob and I had a front row position (we were on the rail) at the Rolling Stones Concert.  

 

We had Mick Jagger shaking his booty right near us, we saw Keef and Ronnie walk past us.  It was amazing! 

 

And the band?  It is said that the band has more energy than bands half (a quarter?) their age.  This was proved to ample effect on Wednesday night.  Mick Jagger behaves in a way that no 71 year old should.  And by should, I mean should be able to.  He still has the moves (like Jagger - as the song goes) and he still had the voice.  He works the stage like a showman with 50 years’ experience under his (very tight) belt…

 

His partner in crime, Keef (I’m sure he's more chemical than man at this point in his life) amazingly still has the ability to pull off all those signature riffs.  He does lead vocals on two songs (to call it singing would be generous) and he pulls out his usual line of "it's good to be here, it's good to be anywhere" but you get the feeling that while it's his usual shtick, it is also true!  You can sense that he enjoys being on stage and gets a kick out of playing the old songs. 

 

Speaking of the songs…well, no matter what they play they are going to have a hit packed set and they are also going to leave out some you want to hear.  But they hit all the marks you want them to play.  

 

They started with Jumping Jack Flash and end with Satisfaction. Highlights for me were Gimme Shelter (With backup singer Lisa Fisher showing the young diva starlets what it really is to be able to sing.  She raised the roof of Rod Laver Arena and I can't believe she isn't a star in her own right).  Sympathy for the Devil was pretty special but if I had to pick one song as the highlight it would be the little known (to me at least) Out of Control (Google tells me it is from the Bridges to Babylon album in 1997… me neither) that showed off Mick Jagger's harmonica skills and lifted the band to another level.  To say they came home with a wet sail would be an understatement.  Just listing the songs is enough to make lesser bands weep.  Miss You, Gimme Shelter, Sympathy For The Devil, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Satisfaction…

 

Who knows if this will be really the last time the Stones play live in Australia?  All signs point to this being true (they can’t go on forever), but you can tell that they are loving being on stage and they are in such good form, so you wouldn't rule out anything...