re: Amazing music footnote from 1991

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This is true but you won't hear them on the radio. You have to do a lot of digging around online and weed through a lot of meh.

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You had to do that in the 90's as well.

And I think there is some romanticism going on in this thread. Here's the Top 100 albums sold in 1991. Lot of crap on this list. The first two months of the year, Vanilla Ice had the top selling album.

Wiki

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opening act for a show that had Smashing Pumpkins and RHCP for $15 at the municipal auditorium.

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Was at that same exact show! December 1991. Didn't know it at the time, but for my lifetime that will easily be in the top three shows I've ever been to.

I remember thinking that Eddie Vedder was a stinky sweaty hippy with a deep voice. If you remember, he dove into the crowd and instructed everybody to pass him to the soundboard and back, and "don't drop me!" He was such a prima-donna even back then.

I recall that. He did the same thing at Tip's and hung on the basketball rim for a bit.

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Dead, empty, soulless lyrics. It’s pathetic

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Agreed. We used to get "I know some day you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be the star in somebody else's sky. But why, why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?" delivered with a ferocious power and heartache.

Now we get "Whores in this house
There's some whores in this house
There's some whores in this house
There's some whores in this house (Hol' up)" delivered by a barely literate gutter tramp.

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In 1991, rock was on such a roll that Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” and Soundgarden’s “Badmotorfinger” — now considered classic albums of the era — all came out on the very same day: Sept. 24. The week before that, Guns N’ Roses dropped not one but two blockbuster LPs: “Use Your Illusion I” and “II.” And in the previous month, two monster rock albums arrived in Pearl Jam’s “Ten” and Metallica’s self-titler, known as “The Black Album,” which turns 30 on Thursday.

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I graduated in high school in 92 so I listened to all of those. Not surprising although I wasn't aware they were all released so close together.

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Pop had been around. Rap happened. The industry realized that it's easy to keep pumping out illiterate buffoons rhyming to a drum machine or over an old pop lick than musicians who are good enough to potentially set their own terms.

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This. The industry has total control over the "artists" because they're all dependent on technology. Take it away and the "artists" are exposed as frauds.

The boy bands are also a prime example of that. A couple got through on real talent, but for the most part, they were professional dancers owned by the studios.

The proliferation of the internet, and free or pay online music seems to have coincided with the downward spiral of rock.

Rock has always been more about the album, compared to other genres.

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Saw a video of a young black guy on youtube learning that Metallica was a band and not a brand of fashion tshirts.

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I've said it before and I'd like to reiterate it here again, but one of the best YouTube rabbit holes you can go down is watching black dudes react to metal songs. I don't really care all that much for reaction videos as most are fake or set up in some way. But watching a young person who doesn't know a whole lot of music outside of SoundCloud rappers genuinely vibe with some old school metal is awesome. The expressions in their faces as they go from "WTF is this" to having their face melted by someone shredding a solo or jamming to a badass riff is absolutely a guilty pleasure of mine.

I totally agree. I was just listening to the whole album last night and it brought back some good times in college.

Autotune heavy recordings led to a homogenized, synthetic sound