Sunday 4 June 2017

25 Years Since....May 1992

Forgot about this when it was still May, but near enough 25 years since these tunes:

Guns N Roses - Knockin On Heavens Door

The fifth single form the "Use Your Illusion" albums and the highest charting of them all. In fact this was the highest charting of all Guns n Roses singles reaching number two.

I can't remember when I discovered this was a cover, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't aware of it being a cover at the time. What stands out about this particular live version in the video is despite it being almost 13 minutes long, include a large segment of Axl getting the audience to sing "Knock knock knockin on heavens door" after he sings it, I don't get bored at any point.

Richard Marx - Hazard

Did he or did he not kill her?

To be honest, I couldn't really give a shit. I didn't really pay too much attention to the lyrics when I first heard this, first and foremost I liked the tune. What caught my attention the most about the lyrics in the beginning was that he was singing about a river a lot.

As times gone on and I've paid more attention to the lyrics, what I take from them is not the murder mystery, but more to do with how bad it is to live in a small community full of judgemental people. As someone who comes from a village in the middle of nowhere originally, I can totally relate to that. Fortunately I went to the other extreme and moved to London.

En Vogue - My Lovin

I first heard this on the radio in the car on the way to Cornwall for a holiday. What threw me somewhat was the bit where the man say's "and now its time for a breakdown" which I thought was the radio DJ announcing the next song. Took me a while to get used to that.

The was the first single from the "Funky Divas" album which I bought several years later.


Kris Kross - Jump

One day in 1992, I was round someone's house and they asked me if I'd ever heard of Kris Kross. I said do you mean Christopher Cross? They said no, Kris Kross and put on a tape of this.

As it happened, I had heard it before but hadn't learned what it was yet. As a rule, when someone under a certain age releases a rap record it's quite dreadful. Fortunately I was just a kid myself at the time of this so it actually sounded quite good.

Metallica - Nothing Else Matters

The first time I heard this was at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert. It stood out as being very mellow by Metallica standards, which is no bad thing in my opinion.

Around a year or so later, it was very much cool at school to be listening to Metallica and I was a part of that. I did ruffle a few feathers though by saying my favourite Metallica song was "Nothing Else Matters", people would say "what? you don't prefer any of the heavier songs?". I even had one person speculate it was the only Metallica song I knew despite that for example "Enter Sandman" reached number 5 in the charts and was known by pretty much everyone.

The reality is that I'm not a big fan of Metallica and I do prefer it to the heavier ones, because generally I don't think the heavier ones are much good. But most people have one good song in them, and this is Metallica's.

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