Revisiting SPIN's 1992 New Music Preview

Well. Revisiting SPIN's New Music Preview from 1991 was fun, but I'd be willing to bet that this is the one a lot of you were waiting for, and for very good reason. When people talk about the sea change in mainstream musical tastes that took place in the '90s, they're talking about the bomb from Seattle that blew up in early 1992 — specifically January 11, when Nirvana's Nevermind came seemingly out of nowhere to knock Michael Jackson's Dangerous out of the No. 1 spot, declaring a whole new rock 'n' roll regime in the process.

Because it was published on the cusp of history being made, this issue is a fascinating artifact — but it's also a lot less fun than the '91 edition, mainly because there's no room for the array of wholly independent artists who were tabbed as potential next big things in that issue. I think we covered 25 artists in the '91 post, and we only have 14 to look at here. A sign of an increasingly corporate-focused approach? A harbinger of dwindling editorial resources? I guess we'll have a better feel for all that once we get to 1993. In the meantime...

Nirvana - I don't know enough about SPIN's concept-to-press speed at this point to have a solid feel for when Nirvana was picked as this issue's cover act, so it's difficult for me to say how big of a swing they were taking when they anointed the band. I'm guessing, however, that this issue was in the process of being put together when Nevermind was released on September 24, 1991, debuting at No. 144 — not exactly the type of splash that tends to inspire prognosticators. Let's give some credit, then, to the magazine for tabbing Nirvana as the biggest new (or new to most, at least) act of the year, even if we dock them some points for referring to the band as a "triumphant bliss-rock combo." Whatever the hell that means.

Though they'd yet to truly pop, Nirvana already seem pretty cagey in this feature, with Kurt Cobain complaining that "with all these people paying attention it feels a little like being in the zoo." They also joke about burning labelmates Matthew and Gunnar Nelson in effigy before taking the stage — which is ballsier than one might think, given that Nelson's most recent single at that point had only just concluded its Top 40 run.

We know how all this turned out, and I have no interest in rehashing it here. Let's just pause together to remember this moment, when everything seemed possible for three kids who upended a decade-plus of established rules at radio without really meaning to.

Teenage Fanclub - Excuse me, SPIN, but this is rampant cheating. You picked Teenage Fanclub as one of your best new artists in 1991! Did you think we'd all just fucking forget? Bah. I will concede that I'm glad to read this entry, if only because it credits the Fanclub's Bandwagonesque with saving rock 'n' roll at a moment when "U2 lost its clue and G 'N' R lost their nerve." No one really cared — the record peaked at No. 137 — but I appreciate the effort, as well as the casual dismissal of at least one album that's now acknowledged as a classic.

American Music Club - This is clearly a pick that didn't pan out, but it's easy to understand how it happened. American Music Club had been releasing records since the mid-'80s at this point; their fifth album, Everclear, reached stores in October of '91. (I'd completely forgotten that the band was on Alias at this point. Poor bastards.)

The album failed to chart while still outselling its predecessors, which tells you everything you need to know about the state of the indie sector of the music industry at this point. This feature describes Everclear as sounding like "Roxy Music's Avalon with hints of Nashville thrown in," which is exactly the kind of mostly meaningless crap that people who hate music critics like to trot out as proof that music criticism is mostly meaningless — but it also isn't entirely inaccurate. Everclear's production has been endlessly shit on by people who seem to be allergic to reverb; I suspect time will eventually heal those wounds. Anyway, AMC split in '94, reunited a decade later, and have been defunct for the last 15 years. I'm not sure any of their nine albums charted in the States.

Superchunk - When I evaluate most of these picks, I'm thinking strictly in commercial terms: Did the artist in question ever achieve the sort of mainstream breakthrough that would justify their inclusion in an issue like this? With Superchunk, however, it's a little trickier — despite their perennial status as Billboard also-rans, they've had a huge impact on music culture by virtue of the fact that bassist Laura Ballance and guitarist Mac McCaughan co-founded Merge Records, one among a very small handful of indie imprints that have remained both independent and worth a damn since their launch. (Far more important than being "leaders in the corduroy revolution that is fast sweeping the nation," at any rate.)

As previously noted, that doesn't mean that any Superchunk record has made much of a dent in terms of sales — and that includes 1991's No Pocky for Kitty, which accounted for a lot of the impetus behind including them in this feature. That being said, they were well-positioned for the pending Buzz Bin generation, even if it didn't translate to gold records; as guitarist Jim Wilbur put it, "We're pretty cuddly. They call it Muppet rock. No matter how loud the guitar is and how much you jump around and sweat and get angst-ridden, eventually you have to go home, be polite, and kiss your mother on the cheek."

Main Source - Here's a pick that must have seemed extraordinarily safe in 1992. While Main Source's 1991 debut LP Breaking Atoms didn't move a ton of copies — it peaked at No. 40 on the rap chart — it definitely seemed destined to be the first volley in a lengthy discography. These days, Atoms is chiefly recognized as an early footnote in Nas' career, thanks to his debut appearance on the track "Live at the Barbeque," but if things had turned out differently — if personality conflicts hadn't interfered, if their label hadn't gone belly up, if if if if if — Main Source might be regularly mentioned in the same breath as their better-remembered hip-hop contemporaries. If you were listening to rap radio back then, you'll probably remember this record's breakout single, "Looking at the Front Door." If not, you'll definitely be able to hear how it influenced acts like Digable Planets.

White Zombie - When he was interviewed for this piece, Rob Zombie was still going by Rob Straker — which is still not his birth name. I mention this as a way of illustrating how White Zombie was still fundamentally in flux when SPIN picked the band for this issue; more importantly, the band's brand of "groove metal" was still so many miles away from established Top 40 sounds that picking them as any kind of best new anything must have seemed at least faintly ludicrous. Times changed quickly, however; the band's next album, the colorfully titled La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One, went Top 30 after its release in March of '92, giving White Zombie the first of its two multi-platinum LPs. These days, Rob Zombie is probably better known as the director of a wildly uneven series of exploitation films, but he's continued to regularly release a string of goofily titled "groove metal" LPs, even though he'll never release a song that comes close to the cultural penetration achieved by 1995's "More Human Than Human." With its weird costumes, psychedelic camera bullshit, and desert landscapes, the video for leadoff Sexorcisto single "Thunder Kiss '65" laid the template for everything that was to follow.

Helmet - "Simple not stupid, repetitive not repetitious." As overheated as these SPIN writeups could get, that's a pretty fair summation of Helmet's entire deal, and their inclusion in this issue neatly dovetailed with their ascension to the major-label ranks (after a bidding war that netted the band members a rumored $1 million) as well as their brief flirtation with the mainstream. Although 1994's Betty charted higher, it's probably still 1992's Meantime that represents their finest commercial hour; it's the only Helmet record to go gold, first off, and it also includes "Unsung," which remains arguably their best-known single.

As I said, Helmet's time in the commercial sun was fairly brief, which makes plenty of sense; Top 40 made a small amount of room for serrated metal acts like them in the '90s, but they were never destined for platinum sales. After an acrimonious breakup in 1998, frontman Page Hamilton revived the Helmet brand in 2004; the band continues to release new music every so often, to diminishing commercial returns. (There are those who credit Helmet with helping to create the nü-metal sound, but I don't want to be mean here, so I'm not going to talk about that.)

Pavement - I suppose every installment of this series will include at least one "new Velvets," an act whose minimal sales were dwarfed by the long shadow they continue to cast over like-minded artists. This list's VU has to be Pavement, who were poised to release their debut LP, Slanted and Enchanted, at the time of this issue's publication. While one SPIN writer described their sound as "like Ray Davies being sick," the rest of this writeup evangelizes for their stuff in genuinely eloquent fashion. "What comes out," wrote Jim Greer, "is kind of like a great big ball of varicolored Play-Doh forced through one of those star-shaped Play-Doh holes. Rainbowed and seamless, but still rough-edged."

More poetic than these slouchers really deserved? Perhaps. But this was their time in the sun, and I'm not here to begrudge anybody a little bit of critical tanning.

Ingrid Chavez - Imagine you're an unknown artist who gets mixed up with Prince, Lenny Kravitz, and Madonna in the late '80s. How do you think this is going to turn out for you? Regardless of how you answered that question, the truth probably lies closest to the experiences of Ingrid Chavez, who spent four years working on and off with Prince on her debut LP — only to see him take a hike when the label insisted it be something other than a spoken-word poetry album — and in the meantime, got mixed up with the other two artists when "Justify My Love," a song she'd written about her affair with Kravitz, ended up being credited solely to him and Madonna when it was released as a new track appended to Madonna's Immaculate Collection. By the time this issue went to print, Chavez had already tussled with Kravitz and Madonna over her songwriting credit, but as SPIN noted, most Paisley Park artists failed to go far on the charts. Her self-titled debut followed that pattern, which makes this pick a well-intentioned miss.

Think Tree - The most interesting thing about Think Tree's writeup here is the opening sentence, which makes passing mention of "alternative rock's brief and perhaps inconsequential reign." Snake eyes on that roll, SPIN! As for the band itself? They were one among dozens of Caroline acts mentioned in these features, and their brief time together amounted to very little in terms of sales or influence, despite this article's somewhat desperate argument that they were "a neck's length" ahead of their time. Listen to this and see what you think about that.

Ween - I acknowledge the Ween army and I admire their tenacity, but I don't get this band and I never will. I'm not going to bother getting into the absurd backstory outlined in this feature, nor will I delve into the mystery of whether or not their 1990 album The Pod was well and truly recorded while the band members were high on Scotchgard. If you're really into this, then I don't know what to say to you.

Army of Lovers - After incorrectly predicting lasting Top 40 dominance for Deee-Lite in 1991, SPIN found a different dance group to bet on in '92: Army of Lovers, whose second album, Massive Luxury Overdose, was then in the process of spawning a pair of international club hits with "Crucified" and "Obsession." Like almost every other post-ABBA act that's been lucky enough to get a little Hot 100 momentum with Eurodisco, Army of Lovers were quickly forgotten here — although they had far greater chart success overseas, Massive was their only studio album to gain U.S. distribution. Given that Stereo MCs were arguably the winners of the Top 40/house crossover sweepstakes in '92 — and certainly attracted more mainstream attention — I'd say it's safe to call this pick a miss, but "Crucified" is still a groove.

Unrest - Despite their prolonged failure to sell a bunch of records, Unrest were something of a quintessential '90s band — they mashed up pop hooks with experimental weirdness, they claimed a bewildering array of influences, and they spent years seemingly on the verge of a commercial breakthrough, only to fall apart and fade away, leaving a small but passionate group of fans to lament what might have been. When this issue was published, Unrest were a couple of months away from releasing their sixth album, Imperial f.f.r.r., which has since been hailed as one of the greatest records of the decade. This might be overstating things just a little, but listening to "Suki" is enough to make a person believe this band really could have achieved household name status.

Blake Babies - Well, this had to be awkward. From the outside, the Blake Babies really did seem to be a terrific pick for this issue — they'd been steadily building momentum since releasing their first LP in 1987, and their most recent, 1990's Sunburn, made them prime targets for major-label A&R execs shopping for future hits. When they spoke to SPIN for this feature, they said their next album would be out "in late spring" — following the March release of singer Juliana Hatfield's solo debut, Hey Babe.

Of course, that isn't the way it turned out. The timeline is hazy, but it seems like the Babies were likely no more by the time this issue hit stands, although it wasn't announced until early the following year. They've reunited sporadically over the years, and released a long-awaited fifth album in 2001; Hatfield, meanwhile, endured a messy, Icarus-style relationship with Atlantic during her brief tenure as a major-label artist. Since returning to the indie/fan-funded ranks, she's released a slew of solo and assorted band projects, most of which have been well-received by fans and critics.