Happy 35th Anniversary

Today is the thirty-fifth anniversary of a watershed day in music.  On that day, September 24th, 1991, not one, not two, but THREE iconic, genre-defining albums were released:  The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik, A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory, and, of course, Nirvana's Nevermind.  A recent Rolling Stone article called it "probably the best day ever for new albums in music history", an assessment that is difficult to refute.

In the past, I've already said my peace about The Chili Peppers, and how I wrote them off after their third album, 1987's The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, and thus missed their ascent into popular and critical acclaim - starting with Mother's Milk in 1989 and peaking with BSSM two years later.  I was late in acknowledging the band and giving them their due, I'll admit that.

As for Nirvana, I've written extensively about them here over the years.  Don't think I need to rehash my stories about/memories of this group - if you want to reprise them, the posts are here and here. 

Regarding ATCQ:  I've never been much of a hip-hop aficionado.  To me, a lot of that genre consists of a bunch of posturing and braggadocio, heavily laden with profanity to make it "sound like the STREETS" (whatever that means) over the same tired, repetitive beats.  A Tribe Called Quest, however, was one of the very few hip-hop artists that broke out of that mold.  Their musical influences were vast, incorporating elements of jazz, funk and soul into their sound.  To call them a "hip-hop group" diminishes their output and importance; in many ways, A Tribe Called Quest's artistry transcended rap.

The only Tribe Called Quest story I have is that I was in the crowd for their final East Coast show and one of their last ever live performances, at the Panorama Music Festival on Randall's Island in New York City on July 30th, 2017.  Someone gifted me two tickets to the concert; I ended up selling one at the gates for almost three times the face value!  I went to the festival mainly to see the reemergence of Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails to the stage after a long hiatus.  But Tribe, who went on immediately before NIN as the sun went down, immediately grabbed my interest.  

Group mainstay Phife Dawg had died earlier that year, and the band decided to call it quits soon after.  For the New York performance, an empty mike stood on stage the entire time in tribute to the deceased group member.  The remaining members (Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi White) left it all on the stage for their last show in their hometown, belting out classics like "Check The Rhime" and "Electric Relaxation".  Here's a live sample of "Buggin' Out" (off The Low End Theory) from a video I recorded that day:

 

All in all, a great show.

Well, I won't belabor the point here regarding these three monumental albums; after 35 years, you all are already aware of the greatness of them.  So, here you are, the releases from that red-letter day, September 24th, 1991:

• Nirvana - Nevermind, put out on DGC Records (what I'm offering here is the four-disc 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe edition, released in 2011.  There was also a five-disc 30th Anniversary edition released five years ago. but most of the additional discs include full live band concerts from that era, and seems a little redundant.  Trust me - this is the version you want);
• The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik, released by Warner Bros. Records (Here's the Deluxe edition, containing two extra songs not included on the original album); and
• A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory, released on Jive Records.

I'm sure that most of you already have these albums, or some version of them.  If not, here, enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

(And yes, yes - I'm fully aware that both Primal Scream's Screamadelica and The Pixies' Trompe Le Monde also came out on that fateful day as well (as I recall, the Pixies disc was the only one I actually purchased on its release day...).  These albums have their fans, but in my opinion come nowhere close to the impact and influence of the three discs mentioned above.  If we were gonna

include ALL of the albums released that day, I would have included MOR dung like Bryan Adams' Waking Up The Neighbors here as well - that damn thing ended up selling 16 million copies!  But that's not happenin'!)

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

• Nirvana - Nevermind (2011 Super Deluxe Edition) (4 Discs) Send Email

• The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik (Deluxe Edition) Send Email

• A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory Send Email

The Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Plasma Shaft

A moment of silence, please, for the old Echo Records store in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Back in the day, Echo was the greatest record store in all of New Zealand, in my estimation. When I lived in Christchurch, the shop was located in the Cashel Mall area on High Street, facing the now soon-to-be-demolished Hotel Grand Chancellor. Echo always had a great stock available of indie/alternative CDs from U.S. and British bands, and their local music selection (stuff like JPS Experience, Tall Dwarfs, The Clean, Chris Knox, etc.) was superb. There was another record store, Galaxy Records, further down High Street, only a few doors away. Galaxy generally had cheaper stuff available. But in terms of size and selection, Echo ran circles around this other shop. I didn't purchase many tunes in New Zealand; I've mentioned before in previous posts how ridiculously expensive CDs were in Christchurch. I preferred to buy the discs I wanted during my visits back to the States or over to Australia. But whenever I did want or need something, Echo was the venue of choice.

They used to have a frequent purchasers promotion there, that came with a little card you got punched every time you bought a full-priced album; after ten purchases, the eleventh album was free. Shortly before I left New Zealand for the first time in 1995 for grad school in Virginia, I found that I needed only two more buys to get my free CD. So, about ten days before the movers came to box up my stuff, I went downtown for my last visit to Echo.

I went into the record store with one goal in mind - I wanted Nirvana's MTV Unplugged In New York, released in November of the previous year to rave reviews, to be my free album. Other than that, I had no real idea of what else I wanted, or really any real desire to get anything else. But I hated the thought of being on the cusp of receiving my 'free' music and leaving it on the table (yeah, yeah, I know that 'free' is disingenuous, since you had to buy something to get it - but, still . . .). So I started browsing the stacks, looking for stuff even remotely interesting. I recalled recently hearing and enjoying on the University of Canterbury's indie radio station RDU the song "Diamond Shine", a cut by the New Zealand band The Clean (which had recently reformed). So I went looking for that album, 

Vehicle, and quickly found it. One down, one to go. But the second one to complete my set of ten was going to be tougher. I started running through the stack alphabetically, hoping something would jump out at me.

I got to the "R"s, and into the Red Hot Chili Peppers rack. Now, when the Chili Peppers first came on the scene, I thought they were the Second Coming. The first I'd ever heard of that band was on Christmas Day, 1984, when I saw the video for "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes" on MTV, and practically levitated off of my chair - they were THAT awe-inspiring. I woke up early the day after Christmas and drove through a snowstorm to the local record shop to pick up a cassette copy of their first album, featuring that song. I played that album to death, and initially became a devoted fan. Over the next couple of years, I picked up their follow-up albums (Freaky Styley (1985) and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987)) practically the moment they came out.

But I quickly began to notice that, beginning with Freaky Styley, the RHCP began to sound a litte repetitive and formulaic to me. On their first album, the band put out what, in my mind, was a very original and exciting sound - hard rockin', with a big dollop of punk and a measured dose of funk mixed in. With Freaky Styley, and especially on The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, the band seemed to radically skew that blend, heavily emphasizing the funk sound to the detriment of everything else (I guess the move to heavier funk on the former album should have been any surprise, considering that it was produced by legendary funkmeister George Clinton). I didn't want to give up on them, and I tried really hard to like the latter album. But songs like "Fight Like A Brave" and "Funky Crime" just sounded tired and contrived, and did nothing to draw me in or retain my interest. In my opinion, the Chili Peppers were trying too hard to be something they weren't, and it was a turn-off. By the late 1980s, I had pretty much thrown in the towel on the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Of course now, looking back, I see that I made a mistake in writing them off so early. Their very next album, Mother's Milk, was the record that really began the Chili Peppers' ascent into superstardom, a rise completed by 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik, in many ways their artistic and commercial peak. I missed out on pretty much all of that as it was happening, since I had all but written the band off years earlier. But the thing about good music is that, sooner or later, it makes itself known to you. By the mid-1990s, songs from BSSM (such as "Breaking The Girl", "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge") were in heavy rotation on radio stations around the globe, and by then even I couldn't avoid hearing them and acknowledging the greatness of this music.

So in Echo that day, I decided to get my own copy of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. I picked up the standard CD copy in the bin, and noticed a black, red and blue box directly behind it. It was for something called The Plasma Shaft, a "Special Limited Edition" two-CD set that included not only a copy of BSSM, but also an additional CD containing eight songs, including "Soul To Squeeze" (another RHCP song I'd recently heard and enjoyed as well). The price for the special edition was about NZ$35.00 (about US$20.00 at the time - I told you these friggin' things were expensive in New Zealand), slightly more than the regular BSSM copy (priced at NZ$29.00). I figured what the heck, that was a good deal for some extra songs, so I put down the disc I had and picked up The Plasma Shaft instead. That made ten (finally). I gathered up a copy of the Nirvana album on my way to the register, paid for my music, and vamoosed - my very last visit to a fine music store.

A few years ago, Echo was bought by a North Island record store chain called Real Groovy, and moved to a new location on Manchester Street. The new location was badly damaged by the February earthquake, so much so that at the end of March, the company put out a press release stating that the store would not reopen. A sad and unexpected end to a city icon. I wish the employees and customers all the best in the future, and want to just say 'thanks' for hooking me up with so much good music when I was there.

I owned this double-disc set for years before I learned that The Plasma Shaft was considered to be a Chili Peppers rarity. Apparently, this set was only released in Australia and Japan in 1994, and has never seen the light of day in the States. It has been out of print for many years; copies regularly sell for $50 to $100.

I'm not going to bother providing Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the first part of the set, here. I'm sure that should be easy enough to track down. Here, however, is the second part, containing hard-to-find outtakes and B-sides from the BSSM sessions, including "Soul To Squeeze", one of the all-time great Chili Peppers songs.

 Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think:

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

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