a primer to music pop culture from the eighties to the noughties

Category: 1993

Songs published in 1993

Abrupt Assemblage

As we have already ventured all the way back to the 60ies this week let’s have a quick look at the cover of Jimmy Hendrix’ third and last studio album, Electric Ladyland, which was released in 1968. The British cover, that is. Hendrix had quite explicitly asked for a specific picture taken by Linda Eastman (later McCartney) depicting the Jimmy Hendrix Experience sitting on the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in New York’s Central Park, surrounded by children. However, his American label, Reprise, used a blurry concert-picture of his head in yellow and red instead – and British label Track Records used a picture of 19 naked women. Hendrix was not amused and several record dealers did not sell the album or only wrapped in brown paper, calling it pornographic by nature.

The cover would be referenced a couple of times over the years, for example by German Punk-Rockers Die Toten Hosen, who used a similar cover for their 1993 Best-Of album “Reich & Sexy”. Or, earlier the same year, by the British New Wave band The Beloved, whose video for “Sweet Harmony” made quite a stir. Contrary to Hendrix’ album cover they used high contrast, over-exposure, hair and extremities to cover all private parts and singer John Marsh called it “as asexual as you can get”, but at least Beavis & Butt-head are on tape as liking it for all the “nude chicks”…

Derailed Desires

There are many things one can do on a Tuesday night. Some people choose to do sports, others might be in a book club, and some have to do the weekly maintenance. In the early 1990ies, a group of musicians around Kevin Gilbert used the night to meet in Pasadena, California and casually write and play songs together. When Gilbert started dating singer Sheryl Crow the club soon turned into a means to develop her “second first” album – the first one had been scrapped, as both her and her label found it lacking – which when eventually completed was named Tuesday Night Music Club after the group.

Unfortunately the relationship turned sour when Crow claimed all songwriting credits for herself in an interview and disputes about copyrights broke out. The album had a slow start, with three singles released without gaining much popularity (among them Leaving Las Vegas, which later would become quite a big hit as well), until All I Wanna Do was released as the fourth one. Ironically, that song which finally helped the album to it’s breakthrough in itself is based on a poem by Wyn Cooper, who earned quite a bit of royalties for it – but faced a lawsuit of his own over the first line: “All I want is to have a little fun before I die”, the inspiration for the poem, happened to originally have been a line uttered by his friend Bill Ripley while they were out drinking…

Broken glass notwithstanding the song – and eventually the album – went on to be hugely successful and Crow would go on to have a string of hits. As well as famous boyfriends, among them Eric Clapton, Owen Wilson and Lance Armstrong.

Yes, Lenny, I Will!

When the first single from Lenny Kravitz’ third studio album “Are You Gonna Go My Way” was released – the song bearing the same name – critics were holding back with neither superlatives nor comparisons to one of, if not the greatest guitarist there ever was: Jimi Hendrix.

The accompanying video – shot by Mark Romanek who certainly directed his fair share of famous music videos – features Kravitz in a modern version of an amphitheatre, complete with sophisticated lighting rigging and a crowd going properly wild for what is probably the most eclectic of his songs.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén