jacksign: 20 From 20 Years Ago

I have to admit that 1991 has been on my mind a lot lately. I suppose that is to be expected since I graduated from High School in '91 and my twentieth class reunion just came and went (I didn’t attend btw). It’s fitting that it has been the music of that 12 month period that has been gathering so much attention as of late because, when I think about my life if ’91, it is the music that first crosses my mind. My God, what a pivotal year it was and I was the perfect age for everything that was gathering steam that year from Grunge to Trip-Hop to Shoegazing. Looking back at the recordings that were released in 1991 I am dumbfounded by just how many great albums came out (the list below is just a small sample) and how much my memories of the period are wrapped up in them. I must admit that it has only been recently that I started listening again to so much of the music that obsessed me in that period because I have so many mixed-emotions about my life in the early nineties. I have happily found though that reintroducing myself to a lot of the music again from that important year has proved a rather healing and celebratory experience for me.

I made mix-tapes (remember those) constantly in 1991 for friends, girlfriends and myself. I was John Cusack in High Fidelity struggling for the perfect mix that would somehow communicate whatever particular message I was trying to get across. Thinking back to those tapes and looking at all of the amazing albums released that year brought a flood of memories back. Everything from sitting in sixth period science class passing notes with my long-lost (and much-missed) friend Allyson in that final run of high school, to driving to the first Lollapalooza in Chicago with my friends Brian, Dave and Bryan, to entering college with all of the confusion and expectations that any 18 should have…and through it all was the music and the year that my time finally, for a brief period, caught up with my tastes.

So to pay tribute to a pivotal year in my life, now twenty years gone, I thought I would present my personal picks for the twenty best albums of 1991 and my favorite songs off them. Hopefully some of these titles might bring back some memories for my readers here as well, as I know many of us are about the same age and might be going through the same sort of nostalgia. Perhaps some of my musical heroes from the early nineties might have failed me (turning up dead before their time or, worse, on reality TV shows) but, to paraphrase Iggy Pop, at least when they played their music they played it like nothing else mattered...and, for a time, nothing did.

1. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless