A Top Ten Memoir: 1993 - "You gotta work out your own salvation…with no explanation”
In 1993, alternative music became, for the most part, my primary music genre of choice. I almost exclusively listened to Chicago’s WXRT and WKQX for my music needs. As such, most of the songs in my Top Ten that year reflected this mostly non-Top 40 but somewhat broad genre.
1. Everybody Says Don’t – Barbra Streisand
2. No Rain – Blind Melon
3. Time Capsule – Matthew Sweet
4. The Ugly Truth – Matthew Sweet
5. Slow Emotion Replay – The The
6. All About Soul – Billy Joel
7. I Love You Goodbye – Thomas Dolby
8. Winter – Tori Amos
9. Leather – Tori Amos
10. My Sister – Juliana Hatfield Three
Julianna Hatfield Three released My Sister that year and it immediately struck a chord. Once again I was on the outs with my “Pierce sister” Tony for a now long forgotten reason. He was still living in Florida so these breaks would happen somewhat frequently as we didn’t have the opportunities to confront each other face to face. Similarly, I was still estranged from my sister Judy who was kept from having any contact with our family after the 1991 ordeal with her husband and the rest of us. Still, I was angry at her for allowing this to happen. How could a very intelligent woman who essentially was the breadwinner in her own family allow her unemployed stay at home husband to dominate her life? As such Hatfield’s song resonated with me as I reflected on my relationships with both “sisters.” The song begins with the line, “I hate my sister. She’s such a bitch. She acts as if she doesn’t even know that I exist.” I felt anger at Tony and Judy. Yet by the end of song Hatfield changes directions and realizes that, “I miss my sister. I really miss her.” It was a very fitting set of lyrics for me as I tried to sort out the conflicted feelings I had for both of them. Combining this with a distinctive alternative rock sound, My Sister became an instant favorite of mine.
Matthew Sweet was another rocker who, coming after his previous work Girlfriend, was fast becoming a popular alternative radio staple. In ’93 he released the album Altered Beast. It’s first two singles, The Ugly Truth and Time Capsule, shared some of the elements of Girlfriend but were equally distinctive in their own right. The album featured two versions of the The Ugly Truth, one that had more of a traditional pop/rock sound and the other, Ugly Truth Rock, was the more modern alternative version. I preferred the latter perhaps because it sounded more like Girlfriend but also because it was grittier and reflected more anger. I wasn’t necessarily feeling a sense of overall anger in ’94 but there was a certain dissatisfaction that prevailed. I was working with a “sea of shining faces” at North Central that on some level felt very different than I. Cathy, who I interviewed to be part of my transfer team at the college, became my real ally. We felt a bit like outcasts within our office which was so focused on recruiting incoming freshmen that it felt like we were forgotten about as transfer counselors even though we began bringing in record numbers of students on our own. North Central felt a bit “shiny” to me. The college and neighborhood surrounding it in Naperville was anything but gritty. I rarely wanted to hang out there after work. (Even though the college was only 15 minutes away, the fact that it was south of Interstate 88 gave me a buffer: anything south of it was work territory.) Sweet’s song reflected something more about the “truth” of the world outside of that work bubble and I wanted more of it.
Time Capsule was a very poppy sounding alt rock song that was produced by Richard Dashut who produced some of Fleetwood Mac’s records. This thrilled me as I was already missing one of my favorite bands of the 70s and 80s who were between lineups and breakups by 1993. Everything about this song worked for me: the beat, the hooky chorus, and Sweet’s vocal performance. The lyrics reflected loss and hope: “Then, we were young and strong. Now everything is wrong. Did you want me? Did you need me? Could you not say, you believed me, and our love is in a time capsule. Let’s dig it up.” Directed at no one in particular, I was living in a world disconnected from many of my friends from college and before. I suppose I felt my love for them always existed inside. I still feel that way about the vast majority of people that have had a positive impact on my life.
That Fall, with my interest in film continuing to grow, I enrolled in a graduate program at Northern Illinois University to study film and media studies. The plan was to do it part-time and then eventually start writing about and/or teaching film. The first course I took was on music videos. We studied everyone from Michael Jackson to Madonna. It felt quite cool to be studying something I was so passionate about. One of the big assignments was to analyze a music video. I ended up doing my presentation on the video for Time Capsule. It was a strange piece in which Sweet is tied to the ground singing the song while bugs begin to crawl all over him. The suggestion seemed to be that, while dead or trapped, his love for the person he is addressing will always be there. It was a fun assignment and the course helped me understand some of the mechanics behind music videos and their construction.
Of course, I always longed for the thrill of discovery that was so much a part of my college years. Thomas Dolby was one of those artists who, like Howard Jones and Annie Lennox in my ’92 Top Ten, didn’t sound like anyone else in the 80s. He finally made my Top Ten with I Love You Goodbye, a sprawling tribute to a relationship gone bad in New Orleans. The song was unlike anything he had done in the 80s but it was great to have him represented in the 90s with an original song that was getting airplay on the alternative stations.
Blind Melon’s No Rain was the biggest hit of the songs in my Top Ten. It was an alt rock tune that was surprisingly sprightly given its subject matter and lyrics: “And I don’t understand why I sleep all day and I start to complain that there’s no rain. And all I can do is reach a book to stay away and it rips my life away, but it’s a great escape” and “I just want someone to say to me, oh oh oh oh I’ll always be there when you wake.” Basically, it was a song about depression. As much as my life had improved in the previous few years, I was always prone to dark days and low levels of depression. I was still seeing my therapist Judy, after six years. At one point, she recommended Prozac, primarily for certain OCD tendencies I was experiencing (checking doors, making sure coffee pots were off, etc.) I didn’t stay on it long because Frank was always there to pull me up.
Even though I was doing well at North Central College and in my profession in general, I was still dissatisfied and wanting more from my life. This was one of the many reasons for beginning another Master’s program. I still didn’t have all the answers though. The The’s song Slow Emotion Replay reflected this. There were probably more words I related to in this one than many other songs in the history of my Top Ten:
“The more I see, the less I know about all the things I thought were wrong or right and carved in stone. So, don’t ask me about war, religion, or God, love, sex, or death because everybody knows what’s going wrong with the world but I don’t even know what’s going on in myself. You gotta work out your own salvation with no explanation. To this Earth we fall, on hands and knees we crawl. And we look up to the stars and we reach out and pray to a deaf, dumb and blind God who never explains.”
I was never a big political junkie, I didn’t understand war, and I had serious questions about the existence of a God. I hated the fact that I was constantly around people at North Central who were strong believers. This was just different than what I had been exposed to for most of my adult life up until that time. I didn’t understand the conservative movement and it felt like there were too many of these types of people in my town and work environment. As such, the line “You gotta work out your own salvation with no explanation” became the key sentiment I was feeling. I needed to do what I needed to do. If that meant going for another graduate degree, then so be it. If I wanted to grow my hair out, what difference would that really make to my career? North Central College and college recruiting weren’t my end all.
Along with these ideas came Barbra Streisand’s Everybody Says Don’t. From her Back to Broadway album, the song was from a musical I had never seen called Anyone Can Whistle. It seemed very true to everything Streisand was always fighting for. I related to it because the words expressed the importance of doing what you believe you need to do regardless of what others say:
“Everybody says don’t, everybody says don’t, everybody says don’t walk on the grass, don’t disturb the peace, don’t stake on the ice. Well I say do! I say, walk on the grass it was meant to feel! I say sail! Tilt at the windmill and if you fail you fail” and “Make just a ripple. Come on be brave. This time a ripple. Next time a wave. Sometimes you have to start small, climbing the tiniest wall. Maybe you’re going to fall – but it’s better than not starting at all!” and “Lose your poise! Fall if you have to, but lady make a noise!”
Like Slow Emotion Replay these words were very inspiring to me. I was embracing things that weren’t part of the mainstream. I didn’t want to try and fit into a box.
Tori Amos was another artist I discovered in ’93 thanks to all of the airplay she received on the alternative stations. Her album Little Earthquakes was filled with piano driven, introspective songs. By this point, I was becoming quite fond of the “piano player accompanying a vocalist” sound that we’d hear on our annual trips to New York in cabaret bars. But while those songs were often pop and Broadway infused, Amos created something that was often more oblique. Of the two songs from that album that made my Top Ten, Leather had the clearest meaning to me:
“I could just pretend that you love me. The night would lose all sense of fear. But why do I need you to love me when you can’t hold what I hold dear. Oh, God, could it be the weather, Oh, God, why am I here if love isn’t forever and it’s not the weather, hand me my leather.”
The fantasies were still there in my mind. I was never “into leather” but I could appreciate a man in a dark leather coat, preferably with long hair and a beard! Amos became one of my new avatars. She said some of the things I wished I could say just as others from Whitney Houston to the Pointer Sisters had done in the past. Amos was much more sophisticated though and went deeper than most of the artists I had experienced before. Winter was the first song of hers that I appreciated. It was less about the words than about the grand production of the song. Starting very slow with piano accompaniment, the song gradually builds to include a string section that gets stronger and more prominent as the song reaches its climax. There was something beautiful in the whole production that made it such a pleasure to experience every time I heard it. With her wide-ranging voice, Tori Amos was fast becoming my female singer of the decade. I was fascinated by everything about her. All of what she represented seemed to suggest a rebellion from the status quo while still remaining poetic, polished, and classical sounding.
If Tori Amos was at the start of her very introspective alt-pop career, Billy Joel was nearing his end. It had been several years since Joel had produced an album of pop songs that came anywhere close to his late 70s/early 80s offerings: The Stranger, 52nd Street, and Glass Houses. By 1993 those albums were pop classics and as Frank and I began making yearly trips to New York as part of the Broadway Bound course he was teaching, I was feeling more and more connected to the world of that city which Joel seemed to be clearly a representative of.
So, it was a thrill that he released what would become his last pop album in ’93, River of Dreams. While the title song was the bigger hit, I gravitated toward All About Soul, a big, almost gospel sounding pop tune which seemed to have a deeper, albeit not particularly religious message. In it, Joel sings about sharing a bond with his woman that was more than a shallow fling: “It’s all about soul and a deeper devotion.” I felt I was moving that way with Frank. The surface nature of work and other types of acquaintances couldn’t hold a candle to a true relationship.
Links to my Top Ten of 1993:
Other favorites from 1993:
Sooner or Later - World Party, Break It Down Again - Tears for Fears, Pets - Porno For Pyros, Sunshine - World Party, The Right Decision - Jesus Jones, Girl - Tori Amos, I Have Nothing - Whitney Houston, Go to the Mirror/Listening to You - Cast of The Who’s Tommy, All Apologies - Nirvana, Tomorrow - Morrissey, Is It Like Today? - World Party, Buddy X - Neneh Cherry, Lemon - U2, Regret - New Order
What are your favorites from ‘93? Any good memories associated with those songs?
Finally up to 1993 ...
* I'm the Only One (Melissa Etheridge)
* Because the Night (10,000 Maniacs)
* Wild Horses (The Sundays)
* He Thinks He'll Keep Her (Mary-Chapin Carpenter
* Linger (The Cranberries)
* Run, Baby, Run (Sheryl Crow)
* Cryin' (Aerosmith)
* Standing Outside The Fire (Garth Brooks)
* Everybody Hurts (R.E.M)
* Never Said (Liz Phair)
Others: All Apologies (Nirvana); I'd Do Anything For Love (but I won't do that) (Meatloaf ... but WHAT is THAT? yeah I know he says it in the song); The Song Remembers When (Trisha Yearwood ... hmm.... country sneaking in again)
I'd never heard Thomas Dolby and what a great song "I Love You Goodbye" is. Love the Cajun theme. (I also looked at his wikipedia profile and what an interesting guy.)
Saw Tori Amos sometime in the 90s in an outdoor concert and she was great.
Enjoying your story too!