25 Years Since....April 1993

A bit late this month, but here's what I was enjoying in April 1993:

Jade - Don't Walk Away

We begin with a record that entered the Top 40 in March but reached the Top 10 in April. This record simply had the feel good factor when listening to it.

I'm not sure whether I actually knew who this was by at the time. When this was covered by Javine in 2004 it reminded me of this records existence and I looked up who it was by. When I saw it was by Jade it didn't ring a bell at all.

This was the only Top 10 hit for Jade but they had another four Top 40 hits, all of which are quite good but probably none of them as good as this. Probably the most underrated female R&B group of the 90s.

Sonic Youth - Sugar Kane

There were lots of cool bands that people should have been listening to at the time and Sonic Youth was one of them and probably one of the better ones.

This was the second out of three Top 40 hits for Sonic Youth who arguably became popular over here because of the popularity of Grunge music without being Grunge music itself. Ironically for a group with youth in it's title, they were a fair bit older than the other Grunge and Grunge related bands. They formed in 1981 and bass player Kim Gordon turned 40 in April 1993.

The Almighty - Addiction

As mentioned above there were lots of bands that people at school were introducing people to, but The Almighty was a band I introduced to everyone else.

It was the older kid who lived on my street and didn't go to my school who introduced me to The Almighty and gave me a copy of their "Soul Destruction" album.

At the start of 1995 I was no longer listening to this kind of music, but I learned they were going to appear on Top of the Pops which annoyed me somewhat as I was still proud of the fact they were the band I discovered amongst my peers, and now anyone could discover them. I had always assumed they were American but later discovered they were British which may explain why they never became household names like Metallica.

East 17 - Slow It Down

This is the East 17 single that only I seem to remember. Some only remember "Stay Another Day" but then you mention songs like "Steam", "House of Love" etc and it all starts coming back to them. Mention "Slow It Down" though and they haven't got a clue.

Although this never made the Top 10, it's not their lowest charting single with "Gold" and "Someone to Love" charting lower.

Prodigy - Wind it Up

The final single to come from "Experience" which was an album I was familiar with thanks to many trips in the car of someone who kept playing it.

I therefore already knew this when it was released and I like most of the tracks on the Prodigy album.

It was later on in 1993 that I learned one of the rules of being a Grunger according to me peers is to despise all things Rave, so I followed suit until the end of 1994 when I became a Raver and bought both Prodigy albums.