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  1. Today is my 52nd birthday. How the fuck did that happen? I’m 8 years away from a senior citizen’s season ticket at Oakwell. I guess 52 is the midpoint between the age I feel and the age I act.

    But crikey, 1991 was 30 years ago. The KLF’s The White Room, a very important album in my life is 30 years old. As is Blue Lines by Massive Attack, 24 Years of Hunger by Eg & Alice, Astronauts by The Lilac Time, Overstanding by Alpha & Omega and Step in the Arena by Gang Starr. That’s my top 6 of 1991, by the way. The quality doesn’t drop all the way through my top 40. 1991 was a great year for music.

  3. Happy Birthday as well – you, me and Rob are late sixties September types. I had my big day yesterday.

    My choice of albums from that year are
    the last from Spacemen 3: Recurring, Peggy Suicide, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, Screamadelica (of course), and Every Man and Woman Is a Star by Ultramarine – a good crop, though 1986 is my year of choice

    • Happy Belated Birthday to you too, Sal. I turned 53 on the 14th.
      > Pixies/Trompe Le Monde
      Primal Scream – Screamadelica
      Throwing Muses – The Real Ramona

  4. Happy birthday!

    Getting towards the end of the years where I bought lots of music, here’s what I picked up that year (approximately)

    Singles Collection – Specials
    Peggy Suicide – Julian Cope
    The White Room – KLF
    Kill Uncle – Morrissey
    Bootleg Series (Vol 1-3) – Bob Dylan
    Flashpoint – The Rolling Stones
    The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Underworld – The Orb
    Spartacus – The Farm
    The Best of The Waterboys (1981-90) – The Waterboys
    De La Soul is Dead – De La Soul
    Mighty Like a Rose – Elvis Costello
    Unplugged – Paul McCartney
    Seal – Seal
    Electronic – Electronic
    The Mix – Kraftwerk
    The Globe – B.A.D. II
    Into The Great Wide Open – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
    James – James
    Woodface – Crowded House
    Blue Lines – Massive Attack
    Metallica – Metallica
    Leisure – Blur
    Tin Machine II – Tin Machine
    Laughing Stock – Talk Talk
    Don’t Try This At home – Billy Bragg
    Still Feel gone – Uncle Tupelo
    Screamadelica – Primal Scream
    Tromp Le Monde – The Pixies
    Blood Sugar Sex Magik – Red Hot Chilli Peppers
    Hymns to the silence – Van Morrison
    Diamonds and Pearls – Prince
    Nevermind – Nirvana
    Weld – Neil Young
    Bandwagonesque – Teenage Fanclub
    Discography – Pet Shop Boys
    Achtung Baby – U2
    30 Something Carter USM

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_music#Albums_released

    Yep, a good year! Probably Peggy Suicide the winner for me, really loved Nevermind and Achtung Baby at the time (30 something also)

    • Thanks for the birthday wishes all. My wish is that I hadn’t decided to shove two fingers up to the diet for the newly diagnosed yeast intolerance for the day and stuff my face with exactly what I want. The toffee yum yums were divine, but my stomach is now bloated beyond belief and I’m giving serious condition to sleeping sitting up on the settee. When I think of what I used to consume on birthdays in the past and now just a few pastries does for me!

      But wow, 30 years since the Bootleg Series kicked off. Hearing the 1-3 boxed set for the first time was so exciting.

    • Can’t believe I missed REM – Out of Time, certainly my most listened to album of the year. Probably played Losing My Religion about 5 times a day

  5. @dai I have 17 of those – yes a good year. Blue Lines, Screamadelica and The Orb for me, oh and Teenage Fanclub, oh and Pixies. So yes a good year! Nevermind doesn’t make my top 5 (would make my top 10).

  7. Album of 1991 for me was Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk, which still sounds in places like somebody throwing a mountain down a metal staircase while SHOUTING!

    Mrs M: Darling, was that World War 3 in the living room this afternoon?
    Me: No, that was just me listening to Son of Bazerk.
    Mrs M: Righto!


    They would say the Son of Bazerk….

    Change the Style!

    Git wiiiild!

    Change the style!

    WIIIIILLLD!

  8. In September 1991 I’d just started a one year diploma course in Publishing Production at the (then) London College Of Printing. I had a decent sized £40 per week room in a large shared house in a residential square off the Walworth Road, Elephant & Castle. Life was good, although I didn’t know it. One precious memory is watching the moon rise out of my window overlooking the back garden and railway line, incense burning, candles lit, getting stoned with my then beautiful girlfriend who I was too young and stupid to appreciate properly. These two pieces of music bring it bad so vividly. A different life. A different world. A different me.

    • Galloway & Porter for books, followed by a few pints in that wonderful crypt like pub with all the candles that I can’t now remember the name of.

      • The Flying Pig? It’s not long for this world now, having fought off the developers for years. I’ll be sorry to see it go.

        Galloway & Porter is much-missed. I used to work in walking distance of their warehouse, their everything-is-£1 Saturday sales were legendary.

        • Some of my most cherished books were from there. I re-read the Richard Holmes Coleridge biographies over lockdown summer 2020. Masterpieces. As for the pub, I think it was The Mitre. I think name and location fits but it seems all gentrified now when I googles it. It definitely had a boho goth vibe back in the early 90s. Lots of candles.

          • Yeah, it could well have been the Mitre. It was given a makeover in the mid-/late-90s, sadly.

            I either take people to the Eagle, to see the airmens’ signatures on the ceiling, or to the Free Press.

            • That’s sad to hear. It had a lovely vibe. Yes, The Eagle was/is a great pub. I haven’t been back to Cambridge since ’93. I’m not one for revisiting a past that’s gone. So many places I know have changed and not for the better.

  10. Now, I may be mis-rembering this but ver kids didn’t really go mental for Nirvana til spring 92.
    On first release in the UK, Geffen only shipped about 10,000 copies (possibly even less).
    It’s release and subsequent reverence was/is no doubt a shifting sands moment, but is it really that good?
    Another monumental 1991 release that isn’t as good as the myth was Metallica’s Black Album

    • You’re right, Nevermind came out in late Sep but Grunge as a ‘thing’ didn’t really take off until the following year. I’d seen Nirvana at Reading Festival a month earlier (“like a cross between Pixies and the Police”) and was keen to hear the album. Of course, the next August they headlined Reading.

      They apparently only pressed up something like 10,000 LPs, one of which I bought, not expecting it to be much more than a niche thing.

      • You’re right that Nevermind wasn’t a hit album immediately, but it didn’t take that long, and Nirvana were certainly a big deal by winter 1991. Teen Spirit was in the top ten in November, and that’s the period the notorious TV appearances on Jonathan Ross and The Word etc happened in.

        My sixth form mates and I were Sub Pop kids pretty much from when the NME started writing about the label, so we all had Bleach early on (I have the original Tupelo green vinyl pressing, which would be worth a bit if my brother hadn’t scratched it as soon as I went to uni). First time I saw them was at Nottingham Polytechnic in October 1990, which was chaotic messy fun. Then the Reading 91 appearance, famously below Chapterhouse. I was in the front three or four rows of people going mental while the rest stood and watched. And then Nevermind and Teen Spirit happened.

        It was a strange experience to watch something I knew and loved explode so quickly. I’m not being Mr Indie Wanker, it was also great. Loads of great memories from the time, like watching them on Jonathan Ross in my mate’s bedroom when they played Territorial Pissing instead of whatever had been announced, laughing as the campus glam rock band started covering Teen Spirit instead of the Black Crowes, watching the yellow corporate whore T-shirts appear all over the city (I will admit to being bit of an indie wanker by loudly preferring my original white circles of hell crack smoking motherfucker version). Nirvana were everywhere that autumn and winter, and I was loving it. It was kind of like a slow motion version of the euphoric rush you get from Nirvana’s best records. I saw them again at Rock City in December (luckily I’d bought the ticket months in advance) and that was the last time I ever saw them. I remember being offered stupid money for that Rock City ticket, which I declined, knowing that I would be able to boast about it on minority interest music forums several decades later.

        • Teen Spirit was in the top ten in November, and that’s the period the notorious TV appearances on Jonathan Ross and The Word etc happened in.

          Yeah, I remember that all being compressed into the space of about a week. Plus TOTP. Was there a Rapido appearance as well?

        • Yes. But I had a great record player and I didn’t earn a regular wage until Sep ’91. A new vinyl album was less than half the price of a CD.

          The last new release album I bought on vinyl on release day was PJ Harvey’s Dry (with the demo LP, which I had hoped until recently would fund my retirement) in late March 1992.

          Later in 1992 I struggled out of my local record shop with four carrier bags full of clearance vinyl, each priced at 50p.

  13. Carter USM – 30 Something was (for me) the best album of the year.
    Not far behind: Saw Doctors – If This Is Rock and Roll, I Want My Old Job Back
    Screamadelica makes the list too.
    As does the Stiff Little Fingers comeback album Flags & Emblems (don’t worry, only about 17 people bought it)

    Looking at my database (or glorified spreadsheet) I notice that there were an awful lot of Best Of comps in that year. Best Best Ofs for 1991 – The Pogues, The Specials – Singles, Waterboys – 81 to 90

    I remember an issue of Select which reviewed The Specials offering – it suddenly felt like it was OK to talk about the (near) past in glowing terms again

    • An Andy’s opened near us in 1991 and the first thing advertised in their window was, er, The Jam’s Greatest Hits.

      Almost the best thing about the 90s was that the cupboards of the past were being thrown open by CD reissues and the liberating influence of acid and Madchester. I know what I mean by this.

  14. Nevermind and The Black Album both great albums in my book.

    Smells Like Teen Spirit was a very deliberate attempt to mine the quiet/loud Pixies sound, but it features one of the great drumming intros of all time, a riff bigger and more memorable than anything found on any Pixies record, a brilliant vocal and a lyric that – for better or worse – defined its generation in a lot of ways.

    Everyone’s heard it too many times now and the shock and awe has dulled, but I can still recall the first time I encountered it, and the electric jolt it sent straight through me. That song was an asteroid strike, plain and simple.

    The album from 91 that hasn’t been mentioned so far and which combines being quite influential with having aged beautifully is The Low End Theory. Love it.

    • After hearing it the day before (or possibly seeing it on The Word on TV), I was in a Manchester record shop (upstairs in the Arndale) trying to get the bloke behind the counter to sell me a copy of the single, when I didn’t know the name of the band, the name of the song or any lyrics from the song. Indeed, by this time I could only just about remember the melody. So there I was, in front of the counter, saying, “it goes like this – nah nah nah nah, NAH NAH NAH NAH, nah nah nah nah, NAH NAH NAH NAH, etc”, practically inventing a round on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. He looked at me like I’d just fallen out of a tree, but the manager was pissing himself laughing and knew what I was attempting to sing, so I got the single. Imagine the surprise when I got home, put it on and realised how close my lyrics were to the real thing.

    • Our daughters were born the very same month. But they had Van and Poetic Champions Compose inflicted on them in the hours before they were delivered. They are indeed my Queens of the Slipstream and they thank me every time I mention this. Possibly.

  17. Best song of 1991? Probably Cream by Prince. A fine album too. I also thought Banwagonesque an impressive take on grungey guitars with added melody. The Concept is superb. I never enjoyed Nevermind as much as these releases. In Utero is the uncompromising, full on Nirvana statement I think.

  18. In 1991 Frank Zappa released two double live CDs of material from his 1988 tours of the USA and Europe, the last tours he ever did. “The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life” and “Make A Jazz Noise Here”.
    The fourth 2-CD volume of his “You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore” series of live archive recordings (six double CDs in all) was also released.

    • Played his last gigs and participated in the Yellow Shark performances. Finally, almost before it was too late, some ‘classical’ musicians who understood his work. There’s a really schmaltzy Hollywood movie to be made about this which would have old Big ‘Tache rotating in his grave at 78rpm.

        • Definitely superior to all the other orchestral Zappa albums. The musicians sound (and look, if you see the relevant YouTube clips) like they’re enjoying playing the music rather than just churning out the score.

          • It’s almost as if people who care make better music…. His account of working with the LSO* in his book is rather sad. They were expensive, they didn’t care, they were a bit drunk. Actually not more professional than rock musicians, which is counterintuitive – or am I being sentimental?

            (* I think… some Briddish jokers, at any rate)

            • The LSO story encapsulates what was wrong with orchestral hack musicians and conductors of that time. These days the players and conductors tend to be much broader-minded and more professional in their attitude. The repertoire is a lot broader too.

              • Last album released in his lifetime (I think), and the last track on it, G-Spot Tornado, is the best thing he ever did (I think).

                They played it on Radio 3 after he died. My flatmate at the time worked there and knew I was a fan and told they were going to play something about a G Spot. I figgered it was either that or Dina Moe Humm.

  19. I was in my final year at Uni after having spent a year working at Reading University. I quite enjoyed that year in Reading as it was my first experience of living on my own. It ended a bit badly with the council taking our landlord to court for basically being an arse. My one and only time in a courtroom.

  20. 1991 is dominated by two events for me: I moved to IoM in September, to work at the local hospital – needed a job, meant to stay for a few years then maybe move back to Glasgow. Thirty years later, I’m still here…

    But July 1991 – I saw Kraftwerk at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom. The album of 1991 for me is The Mix – I know it gets a bit of a kicking from the ‘70s purists, but I’ve loved it from day one – having it reinforced live probably helped…

    Girlfriend by Matthew Sweet still gets played around here…and the Wir album…

    • Is this the first mention for Foxbase Alpha? Still not noticed anyone mention A House’s best, I Am The Greatest, or – amazingly – Loveless.
      ‘91 was catastrophic for me personally (although nothing I didn’t eventually get over) but it was the year my favourite Fall LP – Shift-Work – came out.
      Nevermind always sounded a bit too FM metal for my ears – I should probably seek out some concert footage to “get” this band..
      *edit* Oh, and there was Billy Bragg’s terrific expansive Don’t Try This At Home too!

      • Billy’s best. Great songs and beautiful production.

        Foxbase Alpha invented hauntology, pointing forward and backward at the same time.

        Shift-Work was the first Fall album I heard all the way through because Peel used his then-new three-hour programmes to play the whole thing over a weekend . He played each side without interruption, a home-taper’s dream.

    • Innuendo is an interesting album: it’s 50% really really good and 50% really really not. And it does not sound like an album by a band whose singer is at death’s door.

  24. I do like both Nevermind and In Utero and Live At Reading and Unplugged are great live albums. However no mention so far for Ten by Pearl Jam. The other ‘monster’ grunge album of 1991. Completely passed me by at the time and had PJ pegged as too rocky for me in the 90s. But every time I listen to it it gets better and better, and a shout for amongst the best debut albums.

  25. Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 came in September 91 too- the week before Nevermind I think.
    Right at the start of the month was Tin Machine II, but the big release of the year- a true era defining moment – came the next month … Status Quo Rock Til You Drop

  26. Had family down – quite nice, sort of, but the most trying part of the exercise was BBC6 Music and Sat Nav… which over a 48-hour period were each competing to be more shite than the other.

    Even the driver didn’t seem to reckon the 1991 stuff and kept the voice of Sat Nav (which was to navigation what Wayne Rooney was to scoring goals at World Cups) constantly above it… and he’s a dodger once removed. If he didn’t rate it…!

    Recognised one song in two tortuous days… James Brown… one of the hundreds of songs never played on UK Radio by the Hardest Working Man in Show Business on our prestigious music radio station? Don’t you believe it… “I Got You”… one of the 5 (and only 5) James Brown songs ever played on UK radio.
    You wonder why he bothered… should have just stuck to recording those 5!

    In fairness, it beat the visit a few years ago when two of the BBC6 Music DJs asked the listeners to confirm for them that Jimi Hendrix had played at Monterey.

  27. I’d like my hamper to include the last thing I ate before leaving university in 1991, which was everything I had left if the kitchen cupboard (I’d long since spent my grant on records):

    Tinned peaches on toast.

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