- Music
- 16 Apr 01
How was it for you? The assembled Hot Press writers offer their own opinions on 1994 over the next five pages
ROYLE FLUSH!
WHATEVER WAY you look at it, 1994 will go down as the year that Kurt Cobain took the coward’s option and blasted his brains out in Seattle.
Try as I might, the only person I’m able to feel sorry for is Frances Bean who, through no fault of her own, is now damned to growing up without ever knowing her father. As one or two slightly less hysterical commentators observed at the time, it wasn’t the music industry or the press that killed Kurt Cobain but a S1,000 a week heroin habit and a deathwish that probably would have manifested itself even if he’d been a brickie.
If all that Kurt-died-for-us nonsense wasn’t bad enough, we also had to contend with Eddie Vedder whining incessantly about how tough it is to be in the public spotlight whilst adding an extra couple of noughts to his bank balance. I’d have more sympathy for him if Pearl Jam were really the ulcer on the stomach of corporate rock that they claim to be, rather than third-rate Led Zep copyists with the keenest anti-hero marketing strategy since the Pistols.
I could also direct a couple of well-aimed gallons of bile at the preposterous New Wave of New Wave but seeing as nobody was gormless enough to buy the records, why bother? Let’s hope the same fate awaits the New Squad of New Mod which finds the British inkies trying to push their predominantly white-boy readership into yet another prefabricated musical ghetto.
1994 wasn’t all bad, though, as anyone who came into contact with Therapy?, Primal Scream, Massive Attack, Portishead, Manic Street Preachers, Orbital, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Underworld and Jah Wobble will readily testify.
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United by a steadfast refusal to play by anything other than their own rules, this gloriously diverse coalition of young guns and living legends demonstrated that you can be artistically credible and still sell shit-loads of records into the bargain.
Talking of which, Boyzone and The Sawdoctors both confounded their critics by lining-up alongside the more expected likes of Sinéad and The Cranberries on Top of the Pops and seem set to make further headway in 1995. Ash, Pet Lamb, Wormhole, Joyrider and Mo are some of the outfits that could conceivably follow in their wake and if the Divine Comedy isn’t a household name by next Christmas I shall proffer my resignation from the human race.
Other hopes and aspiration for the New Year? Lasting and meaningful peace in the North, the final division of Church and State in the South and a pot in the Goodison Park trophy-room.
Perhaps we should just have done with it and appoint Joe Royle the leader of a united Ireland!
Stuart Clark