1990
The Full Roster
David Bowie, Changesbowie
Galaxie 500, This Is Our Music
Gang of Four, A Brief History of the 20th Century
Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings
Pixies, Bossanova
The Pogues, Hell's Ditch
Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
Lou Reed & John Cale, Songs For Drella
Shadowy Men On a Shadowy Planet, Savvy Show Stoppers
They Might Be Giants, Flood
They Might Be Giants, Istanbul (Not Constantinople) [EP]
Yo La Tengo, Fakebook
Another seven albums for consideration in 1990, amid the requisite compilations (and an EP as well). Savvy Show Stoppers is about as fine a compilation of Canadian instrumental surf-y music as you'll find, but it's a compilation, so no dice. Fakebook is an album of mostly covers and some originals, which is interesting to listen to but as a whole suffers a bit from its split personality. Amongst the remainder, there is again a clear winner, and if you're uncertain at this point what it is, you probably haven't been reading the previous entries. So you're in good company, is what I'm saying.
Favorite Album: They Might Be Giants, Flood
TMBG makes it three-for-three, taking home the prize yet again with Flood, which straddles the line nicely between their early, goofy, DIY sound and the more fleshed-out, full-band approach they would soon take. Their first album for a major label (Elektra), Flood is much cleaner-sounding and somewhat less off-the-wall than their first two efforts, but their songcraft remains at the same high level and shines through it all. Pre-teens of the early '90s might recognize their cover of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" or the self-penned "Particle Man," both of which featured on an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures that set cartoon videos to popular songs, kind of like MTV used to.
Both those songs engage in the kind of kid-friendly goofiness that would foreshadow TMBG's later-career foray into actual kid's albums, but the rest of Flood hews pretty close to the style of their previous work. "Birdhouse In Your Soul" is the album's anthem, sung from the perspective of a bird-shaped night-light: "There's a picture opposite me / Of my primitive ancestry / Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck-free." "Dead" ruminates on death (what else) in the form of a piano ballad: "Did a large procession wave their torches as my head fell in the basket / And was everybody dancing on the casket?" Elsewhere, "We Want a Rock" engages in some folksy nonsense, "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love" is a synth-pop ditty as gloriously cheesy as its title suggests, and "They Might Be Giants" lives up to its eponymity with its unabashed weirdness. But it's not the oddest song on the album...more on that later.
Honorable Mention: Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
Some albums have a reputation that somewhat exceeds the actual content of the album itself. Fear of a Black Planet nearly falls into this category. There are enough solid tracks on it to merit a recommendation, but really it's three or four bonafide gems that do most of the heavy lifting. So while it might seem a bit odd to rank the revered and unarguably hugely influential Fear of a Black Planet behind a They Might Be Giants album featuring a song about someone moving someone else's chair, in all honesty I just like Flood more. Quite a bit more, in fact.
Admittedly, I am no expert on hip-hop. It is a genre I came late to, when I was in college, and I became exposed to music from the genre that you wouldn't hear on an awful commercial radio station. Fear of a Black Planet isn't the album that won me over--stay tuned for that one in a few years--but it's a perfect early example of what the genre could be and, more often than I once gave it credit for, aspired to be. Its most impressive songs are also its most famous; "Fight the Power" is maybe the greatest closing song in hip-hop history, and "Welcome to the Terrordome" exemplifies the album's somewhat more philosophical take on the same issues addressed more aggressively by the emerging gangsta rap groups. "Who Stole the Soul?" is my second-favorite song on the album, a more directly angry lament of racial inequality and institutionalized prejudice: "Why when the black moves in, Jack moves out? / Come to stay, Jack moves away / Ain't we all people? / How the hell can color be no good for the neighborhood?" But the song that will indefinitely have a special place in my heart is Flava Flav's career highlight, "911 Is a Joke," a satirical song that would be laugh-out-loud funny if it wasn't so unfortunately inspired by reality: "I call a cab 'cause a cab will come quicker / The doctors huddle up and call a flea flicker."
Most Ridiculous Song: They Might Be Giants, "Minimum Wage," from the album Flood
Normally I wouldn't pay too much heed to 47-second, almost-entirely-instrumental piece of music that's clearly meant to be something of an oddity. But it's a credit to They Might Be Giants' skill that this particular 47-second piece of inconsequentia never fails to bring a smile to my face when I hear it. That fact alone would qualify it for ridiculousness as well as perhaps a Nobel prize, but throw in the opening bellow of the song's title, the whip crack, the bouncy, artificial big-band sound...and all of a sudden, here's 47 oddball seconds that aren't leaving my brain any time soon. I'll play it over and over and over again in my mind, and it won't even bother me. Now if that's not insidious and worrisome, I don't know what is.
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