Revisiting SPIN's 1991 New Music Preview

The music industry is broken, print media is a shell of its former glory, and digital distribution has made it impossible to stay on top of the constant torrent of new releases. This is not an era that lends itself to comprehensive new music previews, in other words. But we still have back issues of the magazines that were once brave enough to prognosticate — like SPIN, whose self-assigned mantle as Rolling Stone's scrappier cousin enabled them to occasionally color a little outside the lines.

Senior Archival Friend of Jefitoblog Tim Ryan sent me a bunch of links to SPIN issues from the early '90s, and we both thought it might be fun to take a look back at the acts they identified as up-and-comers, as well as the albums they picked for the best of their respective years. To begin, here's a rundown of the artists listed in the magazine's 1991 new music preview.

Danzig - It wouldn't be fair to call this pick a miss, because the band was definitely poised for greater success — including a near-Top 40 single with "Mother" a couple of years later — but nothing they ever did justified the breathless profile in this issue, which also features Glenn Danzig on the dover. Declaring that Danzig's music "embodies both rock's past glories and the promise of its future," the feature goes on to add, "It's not heavy metal. No boring guitar bullshit, indecipherable thrash, or high nasal screams. Just loud, evil rock 'n' roll with a bluesy edge."

Danzig's stuff was certainly loud and bluesy, but the band wasn't built to last. By the middle of the decade, the lineup completely imploded, and a jump from American Recordings to Hollywood Records produced one of the most hilariously ill-fitting matches between artist and label in recent memory. Danzig's most recent album, Danzig Sings Elvis, was released via Cleopatra, which feels about right.

Deee-Lite - SPIN's coverage of Deee-Lite here is just as overheated as the Danzig article. Witness: "Just as Run-DMC reinvented hip-hop as an album medium as much as a singles medium, so Deee-Lite — with its astonishing debut album, World Clique — is doing the same thing, making the music intelligible to the masses without misrepresenting its essence; turning what was once a minor language into a major language."

That obviously never really came to pass, but it's easy to understand the willingness to believe. As we discussed recently, Deee-Lite were one of a handful of acts making house music safe for the suburbs in the late '80s and early '90s; the key difference with them was that they also made it seem purely fun. I remember the optimism that suffused the moment in which this issue was published, so I'm not going to poke fun here, despite the inclusion of quotes like "It's that something in the air — that distinct sense of positivity and possibility. That feeling that the technology of sampling is about to give birth to a new psychedelia."

Alice in Chains - Well, this one is an obvious home run. This also marks the spot where we move from multi-page profiles to paragraphs, so there's less room for SPIN writers to get absurdly effusive; really, this entry is just a brief, appropriately appreciative ode to a group that would soon become one of the era's most widely praised — and then lamented — acts.

Monie Love - On one hand, it's nice to see Monie Love here; even though she never really broke through in the States and her recording career has mostly been a sporadic dribble of EPs, she probably deserved better than she got — and she certainly deserved better than this feature referring to her as a "20-year-old English hip-hop doll." Best part of the article: Finding out that Love's drumming heroes are Sheila E. and Vicki Peterson of the Bangles.

Funk-Metal - This part of the issue focuses on Primus, but it also name-checks an array of at least vaguely like-minded acts, including Mind Funk, Limbomaniacs, and Electric Boys. (Money quote from Primus frontman Les Claypool: "Our drummer's into Eastern music and our guitar player's a Deadhead, so we have a lot of different influences. Between the three of us, we're able to come up with some weird shit.")

Rather than pointing out that this scene was always destined to do its booty-bumping largely at the commercial margins, I'm inclined to compliment SPIN for being brave enough to predict that it'd be the next big thing. And since everyone has heard Primus' biggest "hits," let's instead listen to what those other bands were up to around the same time:

These guys were apparently snapped up by Epic before they'd even played a date, which sounds like a mistake in retrospect. I don't know what the rest of the record sounds like, but it feels like "Sister Blue" got the nod for the single/video treatment mainly because it has acoustic guitars and feels a little like an '80s power ballad, only a lot less interesting.

This is more like it. I mean, it's still pretty corny, but at least it manages to blend the group's influences without trampling any of them. Limbomaniacs never went anywhere as a band — a fate fairly easy to predict as soon as you find out the lead singer went by "Butthouse" — but they're more than a mere footnote: Drummer Bryan "Brain" Mantia went on to work with a slew of huge artists, and on an unhappier note, these guys are also apparently responsible for Buckethead's entire career.

The only rock band of the era to have a sitar player in the lineup, Electric Boys hailed from Sweden, where they enjoyed some success before inking with Atco, a label whose early '90s resurgence was pretty much entirely owed to Bad Company's unlikely comeback. All of which is to say that it's unsurprising that Atco never really knew what to do with Electric Boys — not that any amount of record company mojo would have helped them once tastes shifted at rock radio. Still, this song is dumb fun, even if it offers absolutely zero indication that Electric Boys should ever have been discussed in the same article as Primus.

The Veldt - In retrospect, it seems laughably unlikely that any band would ever be able to make a household name for themselves by blending soul and shoegaze, but you can also absolutely understand why North Carolina's the Veldt would be heralded by rock critics thirsty for new sounds. By the time this issue was published, the band had already endured the highs and lows of being signed to Capitol, only to be dropped before their debut album was finished — which may account for the give-no-fucks attitude on display in quotes like this one from drummer Marvin Levi: "We're not into that Southern rock sound like Mitch Easter and R.E.M. That's all very good for picking cotton, but those days are over."

The Veldt didn't get around to releasing an album until 1994, so here's a fairly rare early track, culled from a compilation focused on North Carolina artists. It isn't super shoegazy, but after hearing some of their later stuff, I'm inclined to chalk that up to a young band finding its sound. They're still around, and based on what I've heard here, I intend to investigate further.

Primal Scream - Much like Deee-Lite, Primal Scream were handed a bunch of bonus points in the early '90s for positioning themselves on creative ground that seemed far more commercially fertile than it actually was — at least in terms of achieving mainstream success in the United States. During this period, the band abruptly overhauled its sound, going from a typical college rock aesthetic to one that incorporated acid house overtones, and they were immediately rewarded with a pair of hit singles in "Loaded" and "Come Together." They've since enjoyed a lengthy run at or near the top of the U.K. charts, but they never really got going here. Money quote from singer Bobby Gillespie: "I'm through being cool. Ecstasy and the rave scene got rid of everybody's inhibitions. Strangers started communicating. Rock used to be a medium for people to talk to each other. But it's not anymore, and that's sad. The future lies with dance-floor culture."

Soup Dragons - Like Primal Scream, the Soup Dragons hailed from Scotland; also like Primal Scream, attempts to crown them any kind of Next Big Thing in the States proved futile. Along with a number of other artists listed here, they raised their profile by fooling around with techno-infused rock, an approach that yielded early dividends with a cover of the Rolling Stones' "I'm Free." They scored a Top 40 American hit a couple of years later with "Divine Thing," but disbanded in 1995. (They reunited in 2023, and have released a handful of singles since.) "At last it's apparent why the Soup Dragons never sounded like any particular type of band," their SPIN writeup enthuses. "They never wanted to."

Brand Nubian - Here we can give SPIN shit for describing early Brand Nubian co-producer Teddy Riley as "little-remembered," but there's no shame in picking Brand Nubian as one of the acts most likely to make a name for themselves in 1991. They got off to a pretty solid start with their debut album One for All, which arrived in late 1990 and included the hit singles "Wake Up," "All for One," and the Edie Brickell-assisted "Slow Down"; unfortunately, album sales never really caught up with radio rotation, and although their 1993 follow-up In God We Trust charted higher, it was ultimately hampered by the absence of lead MC Grand Puba (who quit) and public pushback against some of the lyrical content (which I will not get into here). By the time the original lineup got back together in 1998, it was too late to restore momentum. Money quote from MC Lord Jamar: "I don't give a fuck about the English language. It ain't mine; it's stiff as a piece of frozen shit; it's mostly used to fuck with me, and I'm gonna do anything I can do to cold-wreck the shit."

Urge Overkill - With Butch Vig behind the boards, Urge Overkill's sophomore LP Americruiser pointed to bigger and better things for the band. But did anything here earn praise as effusive as "Urge Overkill may be the future of American rock"? The answer is a hearty no, although their profile gets Nostradamus points for casually mentioning that the guys in the group had been listening to a lot of Neil Diamond.

The Jack Rubies - Purveyors of occasionally cheeky British jangle pop, the Jack Rubies were never going to be anyone's idea of a platinum act, but still — bonus points to SPIN for making room in this issue for music that's this cheerfully unconcerned with the future. Their brief, one-album stint on TVT failed to produce any hits, and they disbanded shortly thereafter, although they were never forgotten by the small yet persistent fanbase who welcomed their reunion (and new full-length album) last year.

Blues Traveler - First of all, no. Second, fuck this magazine for publishing the sentence "Popper lifts the blues harp to the demonically celestial realms of Charlie Parker." I will acknowledge that "But Anyway" is a thousand times less irritating than "Hook," and of course I can't deny that Blues Traveler went on to sell millions of albums in open defiance of common sense and good taste. That's as nice as I'm getting.

Liquid Jesus - SPIN hailed these guys as the next Jane's Addiction. They were not, although if time has taught us anything, it's that missing out on being the next Jane's Addiction might not be such a bad thing.

Gang Starr - Score one for SPIN here. Gang Starr had a rap hit with "Positivity" from their 1989 debut LP, but nothing they'd done suggested that they were poised to blow up with Step in the Arena, which arrived in January of 1991 and is now widely acknowledged as one of the greatest hip-hop records of all time. At their peak, these guys were so good, they got Branford Marsalis to see the light about a genre of music he'd been publicly deriding for years. Sure, things got messy for Gang Starr in later years, but that's how it tends to go where groups are concerned.

Sister Double Happiness - SPIN wasn't alone in predicting big things for the vaguely bluesy Sister Double Happiness — after releasing their major label debut, 1991's Heart and Mind, they toured as openers for Nirvana and Soundgarden. Those high hopes never really panned out, however, and after jumping to Sub Pop for 1994's Horsey Water, they broke up. Money quote from frontman Gary Floyd: "I left the band for a year and went into a Hindu monastery. But I discovered I'm not a monk, I'm a rock 'n' roll singer."

Teenage Fanclub - This marks the spot where people started predicting worldwide fame for Teenage Fanclub. As SPIN put it here, "You'd better catch Teenage Fanclub soon — before the band's crushed to death by the pop machine." If you know anything about this band, you know they spent the next few years seemingly on the verge of a commercial breakthrough... and spent years after that on lists of bands that should have made it big. But even if Stateside audiences never truly cottoned to Teenage Fanclub, they've still developed enough of a following to keep going; their 12th studio album, Nothing Lasts Forever, was released in September of 2023.

Masters of Reality - Their first record didn't really do anything on the charts, but it attracted enough positive notice to be snatched away from Def American by Delicious Vinyl, who reissued it in 1990. And then Ginger Baker joined the lineup, all of which was more than enough for SPIN to see major possibilities here... albeit ones that never materialized. Masters of Reality continue to soldier on under the leadership of sole remaining original member Chris Goss, but it's been quite a while since the public at large gave any thought to this band.

Subterranean Sky - Described as making "moody and churning music with a U2-meets-the-Pretenders flavor," this is the first band on the list that appears to have come and gone without leaving an internet footprint, so I can't tell you if that description was accurate — but I can tell you that lead singer Dominique Meeroff, now known as Dominique Mali, is here to help you find and follow your soul's true calling.

The Gladstones - I'm not sure the SPIN of 1991 could bestow higher praise than "If you like R.E.M., you'll love these guys." I'm not sure how accurate that really is — this band's stuff was jangly enough to provoke a lazy comparison, but it was also far more straightforward — yet in a different world, it's quite possible to imagine the Gladstones making a go of it. Alas, this is not that world.

The Good Guys - Here's another act that hasn't left any records for us to stream, which bums me out, because they seem like they must have been a great time. SPIN describes them as "perfect party music," which is just about how you'd have to sum up a six-piece band (with horn section!) who also happened to be members of the Black Rock Coalition. By the time this feature ran, it appears the group had already run its course; their sole album-length release, Thanks for Dancin', is a best-of set that arrived in the late '90s. Alas.

Snatches of Pink - A sort of Southern version of the Replacements, Snatches of Pink acquired their first burst of notoriety courtesy of MTV News, which led to the release of a live EP that fed drunkenly into their growing rep as a group you had to hear if only because of their unsteady teetering on the line between brilliance and disaster. SPIN called them "Rock 'n' roll you can sweat to," which is accurate; unfortunately, they ended up signing with Hollywood Records, where they sat helplessly while their A&R guy took off to host a VH1 show and the label sat on their work. That album, Bent with Pray, didn't come out until 1992, and the following year, they fucked their momentum completely by rechristening themselves Clarissa. That lasted for a couple of albums before they briefly returned to Snatches of Pink, then broke up, then reunited in the early aughts before finally quitting for good in 2007.

Osgood Slaughter - SPIN called this act's music "metal with a message: A twisted one." The 1990 live performance embedded here doesn't dispute that assessment, and it also goes a long way toward explaining why a major-label signing wasn't in their future. Their 1992 self-released LP Take This All of You, and Eat It seems to be all that remains of their time together.

Sloth - This nearly impossible-to-search band is described here as "Guns 'N' Roses caked in Bowery grit." I don't hear it in the little bit of music I've been able to find, and listening to "Hands On" — embedded below — doesn't do a lot to explain why SPIN decided to devote space to the group in this issue. Not bad at all, but also not remarkable in any way.

Funhouse - SPIN wrote that "Funhouse makes it its business to fuse kick-ass music with funked-out fashion," which was a nice way of saying they were basically Enuff Z'Nuff. Again, this isn't bad, but its inclusion on this list is mildly perplexing, particularly given that most of the issue strenuously avoids placing any bets on emerging glam metal acts. The band's 1990 album Generation Generator was released by Caroline, and it's kind of fun to imagine what Funhouse might have gotten up to with a major-label budget; still, one senses that they were probably always destined to be a downmarket Mötley Crüe with a slightly sillier wardrobe.