Tag: 90s Music

Automatic for the people and me

As any music lover of the 90s, who was plagued by the MTV fever, you have to start off with Michael Jackson – and when I entered my teenage and when MTV entered India, one of the videos of Dangerous (a popular album by Michael Jackson or MJ as he was popularly known in those times) always on TV, whether it was either MJ jumping around in a basketball court with another MJ (Jordan this time) or MacCauly Culkin – who was transporting his parents off to another continent using ‘Are you nuts’ feature on his guitar amp.

But being a serious guy since childhood, you realized that you needed something more to your musical catalogue than the crisp beats of Michael Jackson – not as if I had anything against it but as you grow, you realise that you need something more in sync with your emotional maturity.

By the time I was 14 years of age, I decided that I would started exploring music other than Michael Jackson. In early 90s, ironically, I did not have a lot of people to discuss the kind of music I listen to with (except my younger brother who was 9 by then). Also, since internet was relatively new (and not so easily available), there was no way you could read about music and find out which one would suit your pallet.

Around October-November of 1994, REM came out with their new album called Monster. The first song released from the album was “What’s the frequency Kenneth” which was a green coloured video, a lot of distortion and the lead singer dancing away to glory with a mic. So I decided to invest in an album which was other than a Michael Jackson, Ace of Base or Enigma.

On November 22, 1994, I went to the music shop and bought Monster more as a birthday gift on my 15th birthday. After a small birthday party at the local fast food chain, I was back home and decided to give the album a listen. First time I played the album, the first track was fine (which was the same “whats the frequency… track). But to my surprise, the remaining album had that similar distortion (and no plausible rhythm) which I was not much used to – except by Eddie Van Halen on Beat it or Slash on Give in to me.  All and all I hated that album – I hated it so much – I visited the music shop the next day and requested him if he could change it. And this was not a typical practice with the music shops – to replace the tapes after few days of use. This goes against the very fabric of the music business and once you have bought an album – you are stuck with it whether you like it or not. It’s like Forrest Gump saying ‘Life is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you are going to get.’

But I hated that album so much that I pleaded that guy to replace it – After much pleading – he agreed to replace it (with a 25% discount on the price) and asked me to choose another album – I do not know what happened – but the video of the song – ‘Everybody Hurts’ flashed into my mind. With a sea of cars on a freeway jam and people’s feelings are shown as subtitles – and in the end – all those people just get out of the car and start walking. The eerie slow guitar rhythm further pierces into your brain and lingers on forever. I asked the music shop guy to give me Automatic for the People by REM.

The album had a beautiful grey, black and white cover with a weird cross like structure. When I checked the tracks names there were few tracks that were familiar but the others had a weird sound to it – such as Nightswimming (more like a soft porn video), Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite (No idea what this guy wanted to say – had to pick up dictionary to check the meaning of sidewinder – which is supposed to be some animal), Monty got a raw deal (sounded like a song about Jimmy Hoffa and one of his associates Monty who got wasted by the Don) etc.

While walking back on the cold evening of late November 1994, there was a fear in my mind that this album could potentially be worse than Monster since it had some of the most twisted names that you can call a song.  

  • As soon as I played the album, the first song – Drive was quite familiar – It had a beautiful acoustic guitar opening which graduated as the song moved along. To top it all – the voice of the singer – which was like a recent crack in the voice box having varied bass and treble modulations, haunts you long after the song ends. And I vaguely recalled the video also – a black and white video with a guy being carried on by a sea of people.
  • The next song – Try not to breath sounds like an aching ballad of a person who is in pain but would like to cross the line to the threshold to be happy. Its like a song of an old person who had a great life and is now longing for a great death – and his description of great death would be to have someone who can cry over his grave.
  • Sidewinder sleeps tonite sounds like a happy song. Atleast the beat is – Since the song was sung too fast – I used to mishear it as “Calling try wake her”. In those days, we did not have any access to internet and most of the tapes did not have lyric leaflet, I could not figure out what this song meant (ironically the band is also not sure what this song is all about – it’s supposed to be a spoof on ‘Lion Sleeps Tonite’) but this was one of the happiest song on the album.
  • New Orleans is the instrumental track on the album. The best part about the song is that you can hear when the singer says (1-2-3 at the back) and the music starts in a deep bass tone. If you can manage to hear this song in complete silence of the start of winter – this song can be a boat to your drift in the endless memories of childhood, old friends, lost love and all the other beautiful things in life that you cherish in your memories, but owing to the cacophony of our daily routine, are not able to hear them clearly.
  • Nightswimming, evidently is my favourite song on the entire album. It is a song about friends reminiscing about their childhood and their experiences of swimming. The best part of the song is the beautiful and consistent piano rhythm coupled with the heart piercing lyrics which are so intensely carried on the voice of the lead singer.

My favourite lines of the song are ‘You, I thought I knew you..You I cannot judge…You, I thought you knew me…This one laughing quietly.. Underneath my breath’. I do not completely understand the meaning of these lyrics but its sounds like someone is trying to take stock of a past relationship and figure out what went wrong with it.

It’s been over 25 years that I first bought this album… during this period I have listened to so much more music, but this album knows how to stand the test of time. From 1994 till 2000, I could not figure out the lyrics of most of the songs but was not clear about all of them.  In the year 2000, when I got access to the internet, I could figure out the complete lyrics but to my surprise, my estimation of lyrics while hearing this album over and over again was almost accurate.

When I read some of the other reviews, or what the band has to say about this album, this album is about death, mortality and gloom that lingers in one’s life as we move on from one day to another. But for me, this album is much more than the gloom because those days were the start of my emotional venture into the world of adulthood with adult problems. Whenever I think about those years, I could not help but wonder that how can an album so beautiful could appear in my life at such an important juncture that it would become a lifeboat in the tough times to come. There have been times when I was happy and content with my life and this album goes to the backburner and more upbeat songs take its place. However, in the hours of sadness, I could not help but cling to this album as my guiding star or more so as a teleportation to those years where it all started. Although the lyrics and music remain the same, as you grow up, the meaning of the music and lyrics tend to fit in the situation that you have been facing and somehow ease the suffering of the situation.

MTV and the case of the long winding mixed tapes

I always thought that I am one abnormal and weird bloke. Sitting on the sofa, minding my own business, suddenly there is a flash and I am teleported back to June of 1994. I am coming back from those damn extra classes which our (and I bet all the other schools) used to conduct for 10th standard boards – the heat of the afternoon felt like Dante’s Inferno – and mind you this is the time much before the Uber, Delhi Metro or any other of the logistical comforts without which we now cannot even imagine how life existed on the earth.

I put on the TV at 2 PM in the afternoon – wanted to see what’s on MTV – and I see Green Day in a green coloured video, at a hospital riffing away to glory in Basket Case…I know, most of you millennials would say – MTV and music?? Isn’t MTV synonymous to Hindi curses on Roadies and soft porn on Splitzvilla? To give you some insight – MTV was the only western music channel that was available across the world (including in India) – The ‘M’ in MTV means (or at least meant) ‘Music’.

And I am talking about times when bands used to release Music albums out of which few of the songs were handpicked to be converted into videos which could be popularized across Music channels (such as MTV). And man there were some good videos in those times. From November Rains by Guns and Roses where the red roses bled out on top of a piano in rains to Mr Wendel by Arrested Development with few black guys dancing around singing about a homeless black guy.

I was never one of those outdoorsy guy and was not at all into sports. My sole goal in life was to watch MTV and gather as many albums as I can (with little or no pocket money we used to get). Now – to give you a perspective, I am talking about times before Google, Facebook, Spotify or Apple music – even before Napster, Winamp and MP3s were invented (Im sorry Millennials for you may not have heard of these ghosts – pls use google or this blog could turn into a book which obviously is a horror to most of you)… There were only three sources through which you could extract music – 1) MTV – where you were at mercy of the power companies and cable guys 2) One channel on FM radio – where they played some awesome music when you in a rush and 3) Tapes and tape recorders where you could control when and where you played music.

Those days, buying tapes used to put a heavy dent on your pocket – the albums which were 45 bucks in 1993-94 suddenly shot up to 125 bucks by 96-97 – Thanks to MTV – and 125 bucks was a lot of money those days (mind you a bottle of coke was only 5 bucks). So you had to improvise and innovate – at this stage – the music shop pirates helped a lot – they used to charge 5 bucks a song to record music on a tape which either you provided or they did – blank tapes were quite cheap – anything between 15 bucks (for a T Series) to 40 bucks for a Sony – and voila – we had mixed tapes. And I was the king of mixed tapes – making them for myself (and most of the times for the girls I trying my shot with). I bought a box of blank T Series tapes with 20 tapes for 300 so buck and converted them into mixed tapes in 2 weeks. Some of them were had those obscure songs which nobody listened to from REM, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Green Day or it was a mushy mushy compilation for my girl with Kenny G, soundtrack to Dirty Dancing etc. And obviously – 90s teenage cannot be complete without rock music creeping into your soul – so we had GnR, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mother Love Bone, Firehouse, Mr Big and the list goes on.

And as one wise man has said that it’s the journey that matters and not the destination, visit to the music shop in those days was nothing less than a trip to a music concert. And mind you this is before times we have dedicated music shops in the mall such as Planet M etc. My favorite music shop was 5 kms away from my home and me and my friend used to walk all this way without breaking a sweat. Most of the times I barely had enough money to buy one tape – but I loved asking the shop owner to pull out at least 30 tapes which I would love to buy. Gauging the threshold of the shop owner’s irritation, I used to put an end to my drill of pulling out more tapes and pay for the one I wanted to buy.

When I tell my son these stories he can’t even start to imagine that finding music was so hard which is so easily available now at the click of a button on your phone. But I think that struggle made it worthwhile. It’s fun when you know that all the albums that you ever dreamed of are now available at a click of a button – anytime you want. And it’s much cheaper and much better quality than those tapes…But I think after sometime, you hit a roadblock – what should I listen to now? And when it’s this dilemma for a man who has been listening to music 3-4 hours each day average for the past 20-25 years, then something is not right.

In the albums that we used to buy in those days, for obvious reasons, not all the songs were great or featured on a music video. And to add to the joke, these songs were placed as the last song of the album. The reason was that before you reach the best song, you could listen to the entire album. Although not all the songs were great but every album told a story and sometimes the pieces of these stories fit into your own life or situation like your child fits a piece of a puzzle into place. And there were times when you bought an album because you liked a particular song on MTV – you ended up with a favorite song which is not as popular or not turned into a music video. This struggle to reach to your favorite song always had the sense of excitement, the pleasure of delayed gratification which is somehow missing when you click a button to play the music. But as all good things came to an end – tapes graduated to CDs which further graduated to computer music and winamps and now we have Spotify – genie for instant musical gratification. Although I have gotten used to the new technology and ways of listening to music but there are moments when I look back and couldn’t help but smile – thinking about times when finding and listening to music was a project – when getting an album was not less than getting a gold mine – but all and all – we loved those projects