Jamwise #39 - Best of 1992, Pt. 1

Featuring: Dr. Dre, R.E.M., Pavement, Rage Against The Machine, The Pharcyde, Mary J Blige, Tori Amos, Sade

I’m starting to realize that the best part of poring through lists of the best albums ever isn’t necessarily the lists themselves. The more fun part is the endless debate over what else should have been included, or are included on other lists. The list I’m following at any given time is arbitrary - it’s the discussion afterwards that really makes this fun. Maybe the real “best albums ever” list is the friends we make along the way.

Part 1 of my examination of the year 1992 includes the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums entries from the year, and part 2 (and maybe part 3?) will include a selection of albums that were left off and perhaps shouldn’t have been. 

As always, I’d love to hear your favorite albums from 1992 that didn’t make the list!

The Chronic - Dr. Dre

This is the album that helped launch Snoop Dogg into the world - and funnily enough, I’m writing this during what can only be called Snoop Dogg’s Olympic Games, which might be launching his fame even higher worldwide.

Look, I get that times were very different in the 90’s, and the heroes of gangsta rap had an image to uphold - but these lyrics haven’t aged great. It’s the classic problem of trying to appreciate art from a different time that has elements today’s society doesn’t like - although to be fair, it’s not like sexist lyrics have disappeared from music today either. And maybe fair is the wrong word.

This album was a huge moment in music production - the beats are phenomenal, original, full of musicianship and swagger, trailblazing the G-funk style. It was influential, and inventive, but the glamor of the gangster references has pretty much worn off for me. I love it as a history lesson, and for the funk-tinged production, but not so much for the content.

Jams

• “Nuthin’ But A G Thang”

Automatic For The People - R.E.M.

I’ll make an admission that the internet will likely roast - I held a long, powerful dislike of REM for years. It’s undoubtedly been over ever since I listened to Out Of Time as an adult many years ago, but I still think back on that time with interest. Listening to this album made me think a little deeper about why I missed out on REM as a kid - and I think I have the answer.

I grew up with no internet, a desire for new music, and a $5 a week allowance. So I had to make judicious decisions about what music I bought. This led to a massive collection of greatest hits CD’s, including REM’s greatest hits, which I recently dug out of the closet as I thought about my relationship with the band more deeply.

I listened to every CD I owned on repeat. For the most part this led to an appreciation of the artists I chose - best-of CD’s often led to my enduring love for bands whose albums, while great, don’t appear on any best-album lists, like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Boston and the Marshall Tucker Band. Some of these bands, I’d argue, are almost better appreciated through greatest hits than their individual albums. Or at least, if you have a time or money constraint like I did, you’re not missing out on as much as you could be. 

The best of REM, however, had the opposite effect on me. You’ll note that the disc above has a few songs from Automatic For the People, which is widely considered one of the band’s best albums, but they’re in totally random order, with Man on the Moon and Nightswimming totally separated to the first and last songs on this compilation as if just for fun. Maybe there’s a designed flow to this greatest hits thingy, and maybe it’s just a collection in whatever order the producers thought would sell the most. 

Either way, this greatest hits album made me think I didn’t like REM very much. Their silly poppy songs were at the forefront, with zero context that their full albums would have provided. For example, I still can’t stand the song “Everybody Hurts” thanks to this CD. In a vacuum it sounded so inane and silly and cheesy - its sound was totally ruined to me because of endless listens to this CD. I can’t explain it further, honestly. It just didn’t sound good in this greatest hits context - remember, this was my first exposure to the band ever - and I think the format is to blame. It’s similar with “Man On The Moon” - you have to hear the band’s other songs to know how tongue in cheek the song is. “Stand” has a similar out-of-context feel on this disc that makes it frankly annoying. 

To my credit, I got over my misguided lack of enthusiasm for REM pretty quickly after actually digging into their discography as an adult. But man, I wish someone had told me back then just to buy their dang albums and skip this best-of nonsense.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot - Automatic For the People is great, and is helping me recover from my greatest-hits-induced trauma.

Jams

• “Drive”

• “Try Not To Breathe”

Songs I can never listen to again thanks to Warner Bros Records:

• “Everybody Hurts”

Slanted and Enchanted - Pavement

The early 90’s indie rock parade continues! This album was Pavement’s debut with a now-familiar slacker rock feel; somewhat sloppy out of tune guitars, bored-sounding vocals, production that makes it sound like it was recorded in a basement with moldy gray carpets and a cracked leather couch. And you know what? Together, those traits add up to a refreshing and enjoyable album.

I think this is the kind of music that AI will never be able to create. How can you add up such a discordant and imperfect set of inputs to create the vibe of this album? The individual parts could have been recordings of some teenage kids noodling around at Guitar Center, yet the ultimate effect is so much more than that. The equation doesn’t make any sense. It’s like how mathematicians couldn’t make their equations work so they made up imaginary numbers so the equations actually worked out (don’t quote me on the history of imaginary numbers, it’s been years since I was in a math class). There’s an imaginary number at work here, and I think it takes the form of the complementary nature of the individual components - the playing, singing, recording, and production all point the same direction, towards the ultimate vibe that’s been labeled “slacker rock.” It’s a 1+1 = 3 scenario - the music is more than the sum of its parts, somehow. This album would sound worse if they were trying harder - compared to the too-polished music everybody’s cranking out in 2024, it’s extremely refreshing.

Jams

• “Trigger cut/Wounded-Kite At :17”

• “Here”

Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine

Rage Against the Machine’s debut album is a combination of genres that captures the best of each of them. Unforgettable metal guitar riffs. Lyrics delivered with unmatched energy and passion and, well, rage.

So why does this album make me so damn happy? I’ve frequently complained about music that sounds, well, complainy in the past. That’s not a vibe that I can get onboard with. But there’s a big difference between complaining and Raging. Complaining is often relegated to small issues - girls don’t like me, my truck broke down, nobody gets my tattoos, my parents don’t like my music. But Raging… Raging is for when the problems are bigger. It’s for when the problems are on a societal or global level, so big that there’s literally no point in getting down in the dumps about them. You just have to rage, and if you can do so with a guitar in your hand, so much the better.

A life jacket in a sea of greatest hits CD’s

Conveying emotion is one of music’s main jobs, and this does it extremely well. I think the true signal that you’ve found a favorite song or artist is when that emotion rings a bell with you - that could mean it matches your mood, or even contrasts with it. Does my liking this album mean I’ve got some rage against the system buried somewhere? Probably, and I’ll bet we all do. Music is teaching me about myself as much as anything else. But hey, I’m no psychiatrist, I just dig music. 🤘

Jams

• “Bombtrack”

• “Killing In The Name”

• “Freedom”

Little Earthquakes - Tori Amos

This album is very obviously genius. I’ll admit I found myself disliking small, surface-level things - I’m not a fan of her frequent over-emoting or her unusual vibrato, for example - but at the same time I realize that level of critique is way too reductive for songs of this scope and magnitude, not to mention that these are beloved traits for many people. More importantly, I’ve learned that when I zero in on the surface level details of music and ignore everything else, that means I’m not really getting the bigger picture - or in this case, that I don’t want to because of how depressed the music makes me feel. I’m diverting my attention to something I can get my head around, and that usually means something simple like a tone or a few singular moments in the music.

The subject matter is varied, if consistently a bit downcast for my taste; raging against prettier girls and bullies, lamenting loneliness and emotional distance, exploring the struggles of leaving home. There’s dense poetry, raw emotion, and incredible talent on display here. You could call it angst, but that word is somehow too small.

It’s interesting to know how powerful and brilliant an album is while simultaneously having zero desire to listen to it ever again. I chalk that up to how emotional Tori Amos’ songwriting truly is - it has the power to force emotions on the listener, and for me that means it has the power to put me in a shitty mood. This album is a massive thundercloud - it’s beautiful, impressive, and harnesses the power of emotion in an epic way; some people like chasing storms, but I personally don’t want to go outside until the lightning and thunder have passed.

Love Deluxe - Sade

I did Sade a disservice last time I listened to them by not taking the time to sit down and appreciate their music. But in the meantime, and while listening to this album, I think I’ve started to understand why - Sade sounds amazing, but I have some subliminal BS going on that’s made it hard to connect with their music without repeated listens.

There are several factors at play here that have tainted my initial impression of this album and smooth soul as a genre. First, for some reason this style of music (and in some ways, the saxophone itself) has been turned into a parody by popular media. Smooth soul/jazz has turned into a joke for many, and I’ve fallen prey to that almost subliminally, which is a complete shame. Second, this is the kind of music that requires you to slow down and pay attention, two skills that the e-generations have started to lose, if not lost outright. You have to kind of let go and let the music carry you forward, and I’ve got issues letting anyone take control, coming from the generation who has never felt what control over the future even feels like. 

These songs are beautiful, the bass lines are intoxicating, and the vocals are beyond relaxing. This album, and the broader genres it dabbles in, are going to be the subject of further study for me. The main reason is to unlock an entire spectrum of music that my mind has reflexively much blocked off in the past, simply because a few stupid sitcoms and movies and who knows what else turned the saxophone into a joke. I hate that I still get the eye roll reflex when a smooth soul or smooth jazz song comes on. It’s totally irrational and it’s not related to the music at all. 

I wonder how many other genres, musical styles, artists I’ve been dismissing because of stupid genre biases that I can’t even remember forming. That’s a rabbit hole of epic proportions. 

Jams

• “No Ordinary Love”

• “Like A Tattoo”

Check Your Head - Beastie Boys

It feels like the Beasties just do whatever the hell they feel like. This album is all over the place - they funk and they groove and they party, and they even alt-rock a little bit. That might explain why, aside from “So What’Cha Want”, there aren’t many radio favorites on this album (from my radio experience, anyway) but it seems like there should have been. The mixing was a little off for me on the remastered version, which could have been any number of things, from Spotify to my headphones / car stereo or anything in between. But it’s a start-to-finish enjoyable experience, and the experimentation is what makes it fun rather than a plethora of singles.

Jams

• “Funky Boss”

• "So What’Cha Want”

What’s The 411? - Mary J. Blige

I reviewed this one before and couldn’t get into it. A re-listen improved nothing for me. It’s a showpiece for Mary J’s amazing voice, designed to launch her career, and nothing more. To many that’s a positive, but to me it makes the music feel meaningless. I’m rarely a fan of the “I’m more important than the song” style of musician, even a virtuoso like Mary J. So I’m not saying it’s bad, because that’s an invalid way to describe music. I’m just saying it doesn’t move my personal emotional needle whatsoever. 

Bizarre Ride ii the Pharcyde - The Pharcyde

This is where listening to albums alongside their peers really pays off. The Pharcyde feels like such a breath of fresh air compared to the gangsta rap that was prevalent in the early 90’s. The music sounds like a “chill out, man” kind of reaction to the anger and swagger of Ice Cube and Public Enemy and the more combative side of the broader genre. It’s got a bizarro feel that seems like part of an intelligent plan that’s just out of reach, and whoever is designing your experience is a little annoyed with the world trying to force them into any semblance of normal. 

It would be shallow to compare this to the Beastie Boys, but I can’t get away from the comparison. Maybe it’s the punky attitude, like a bunch of school kids rapping on the playground, and maybe it’s the ridiculousness lurking around every corner, the complete lack of taking themselves seriously. If I’m a sucker for anything, it’s an artist who doesn’t take themselves too seriously, especially a group as talented as The Pharcyde. 

This one is a hell yes for me.

Jams

• “Oh Shit”

• “Soul Flower - Remix”

• “Passion’ Me By”