I Feel Stupid and Contagious

I used to have a ritual on New Year’s Eve. From the late eighties, for about ten years, I made a tape of my favorite music from the year (I have never been much for New Year’s Eve parties, even when I’m invited to them). Time was I would buy maybe thirty or so records (then CDs) of new music a year. This ritual stopped when I stopped buying so much music, but I still have the old cassettes, which are little time capsules.

I’ve been thinking about 1991 recently, so I popped the tape from that year into my tape-player. 1991 was notable for many reasons, not the least of which is that is one of only two palindromic years I will ever live through (it is doubtful I will make it to 2112). I turned 30 that year. I was living in Jersey City, and comfortably ensconced in my position at Penthouse Variations. I was a few years away from owning a car. I gave up on my unfathomable pursuit of a co-worker named Faythe, and grew deeper into a bizarre, long-distance quasi-relationship with a woman who lived in Florida who ended up leading me down the path to ruin.

For some strange reason I’m looking back at this year, and have lined up my Netflix queue with some of the best films from that year, most of which I haven’t seen since I saw them then. But as for the music, well, listening to that old tape really took me back. While living in Jersey City I was burglarized twice, and both times my entire CD collection was stolen, and there are some CDs that I forgot I owned, by bands I haven’t though about in ages. Do you remember Jesus Jones, Beautiful South, The Tribe, They Eat Their Own, Havana 3 A.M., Innocence Mission, and Kirsty MacColl? There were some groups I liked that slipped into obscurity, like Trip Shakespeare and House of Freaks (a check on Wikipedia reveals that one of the members was murdered, along with his entire family, on January 1st of this year. There goes the reunion tour). There was Matthew Sweet’s creepy stalker love letter to Winona Ryder, and I heard catchy songs like “I Touch Myself,” by the Divinyls, and “Kiss Them For Me,” by Siouxsie and the Banshees, for the first time in years. Some well-known bands like The Pixies, Violent Femmes, U2, and Smashing Pumpkins are also represented on the tape.

The most significant music that year, as far as I’m concerned, is that it was the emergence of Nirvana, and the crowning achievement from R.E.M. My source for music in those days was taping and watching 120 Minutes, a show MTV ran at midnight on Sundays that showcased videos by alternative bands (that was when alternative was actually an alternate to something). I’ll never forget how engrossing it was to see the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit for the first time. It was Nirvana’s second record, but the one that put them on the map, and made them the poster boys for the Grunge sound. But, of course, they were so much better than that. They ended up putting out only one more studio album, and a brilliant MTV Unplugged album before Kurt Cobain ended it all. They are like the James Dean of rock bands.

R.E.M. put out their album Out of Time in 1991. Hard-core R.E.M. fans would scoff, but I think it’s their best album (the hipsters would probably say Murmur). I also think it was their last great album (some might say Automatic for the People). They were the quintessential college-rock band that got so big I think they got bored with the whole thing. I pay no attention to what they are doing now. But my favorite album and song that year were from them—the song was “Losing My Religion,” which has a heart-breaking mandolin riff and uses an old Southern expression to express some sort of sorrow that never goes away. This song also had a great video, using imagery of St. Sebastian. That was when videos meant something. Does MTV still show videos, or just annoying twenty-somethings living together in a house?