About This Time 30 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of July-ish 1994!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet:

Rarely has a band’s name so perfectly encapsulated the band’s music quite as well as Wet Wet Wet. This made Wet Wet Wet the perfect band for the soundtrack of a movie like Four Weddings And A Funeral, aka ‘The Movie That Made Hugh Grant Famous…’

I mean, sure – Wet Wet Wet chose their name because, when they had started a decade earlier, it had been during the era of double-barrelled names such as Duran Duran and Talk Talk. Figuring that triple-barrelled names were the next logical step, they decided to get in before the rush. But which word would they repeat three times? What word would perfectly describe, both their music and their natural surroundings.

Wet Wet Wet came from Glasgow.

The triple-barrelled band name trend never really took off. Later there would be the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and, um, does Tony! Toni! Tone! count? –  but a decade later Wet Wet Wet were still kicking around. And so were Duran Duran, who, rather appropriately, had recently released their own Wedding Album. That’s the one with “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone” on it. “Ordinary World” is an 8.

Looking solely at their chart positions, an argument could be made that Wet Wet Wet were already the biggest band in Britain – or at least Scotland – even before they released “Love Is All Around.”

Look at these stats:

Two Number One singles! Sure, one of them was a cover of “With A Little Help From My Friends” which was also a charity single for ChildLine, a counselling service which, according to Wikipedia, gives advice to children suffering from “child abuse, bullying, mental illness, parental separation and or divorce, teenage pregnancy, substance misuse, neglect, and the psychological abuse created by listening to Wet Wet Wet covering “With A Little Help From My Friends.””

Poor kids. They deserved better. They also deserve better than that joke. Child abuse is no laughing matter. (Wet Wet Wet’s cover of “With A Little Help From My Friends” is a 2)

Wet Wet Wet also released two Number One albums and a Greatest Hits compilation, and that also went to Number One at the same time “Love Is All Around” scaled the singles charts. Take that Blur and Suede!

Come to think of it, take that, Take That!!

Wet Wet Wet seemed to think they were a soul band. After all, they called their first album – their first Number One album – Popped In, Souled Out. But, as one glance at the video to “Sweet Little Mystery” proves, lead singer Marti Pellow made Mick Hucknall seem like Otis Redding.

FFS, Marti stop smiling so damn much!!!

And then: “Love Is All Around” happened.

“Love Is All Around” elevated Wet Wet Wet to the Bryan Adam’s tier of chart-hogging pop balladry, like they were the British Boyz II Men, but with instruments. “Love Is All Around” was Number One in the UK for 15 weeks – also Number One on the Eurochart for 15 weeks! – before they decided enough was enough and stopped manufacturing it.

It didn’t have to have been “Love Is All Around.” Wet Wet Wet were given three options of songs to cover for the Four Weddings And A Funeral soundtrack. The other two were “I Will Survive” and “Can’t Smile Without You.”

Marti says they chose “Love Is All Around” because they knew they could make it theirs. I say they rejected “Can’t Smile Without You” because Marti realized it would mean he couldn’t smile in the video. I do really wish they’d had chosen “I Will Survive” though, even though the world doesn’t really need another cover of that.

Given that “Love Is All Around” is about happy things:

– it’s deeply ironic that the record, at least by Wet Wet Wet standards, is rather glum. The band spends much of the video sitting in the dark, although yes, I understand, this is so they can watch the movie.

As if to further underline the video’s moodiness, Marti has decided to embrace grunge by growing a goatee. Which means that somehow, in defiance of all the laws of nature, Wet Wet Wet’s version of “Love Is All Around” somehow sounds darker than the 60s original, which you will remember was by The Troggs – aka the “Wild Thing” guys – a band whose aesthetic was so primitive and loutish that their original name had been The Troglodytes!

The Wet Wet Wet version of “Love Is All Around” seems torn between the band trying to make something at least vaguely epic and the inner turmoil of Marti trying to hold back a big goofy grin. The result just feels like a cynical subliminal suggestion to buy movie tickets, or, perhaps, to hire Wet Wet Wet for your own wedding.

It’s not exactly rock’n’roll is it? And it’s a 3.

Honestly, a far more enjoyable listening – and watching – musical experience is Hugh Grant bumbling through the title of The Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You,” so here’s that…

Clearly there was something in the air that summer – quite possibly love – since the other contender for Hottest Hit On The Planet was the equally, even potentially more, soppy ballad “I Swear” by All-4-One, a song that was played at infinitely more than four weddings that summer, although probably not so many funerals. It’s a 4.

*Actually there’s lots of words. I Googled “describe Glasgow” and found myself on a Reddit discussion on “discuss Glasgow with one word” and, whilst to be honest I didn’t recognise half the words, “damp” was definitely up there. Along with “litter.”

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Meanwhile, in Brit-Pop Land:

On June 4th 1994, Oasis landed on the cover of NME.

The headline?

“Oasis: What The World Is Waiting For”

‘What the world is waiting for’ was, I’m sure you’ll remember, a Stone Roses song. The B-side to “Fool’s Gold,” in fact. That wasn’t a coincidence. The journalist even quotes the song in the article. The inference being that Oasis were as exciting, as important, and were about to become as big as The Stone Roses had been in their prime. Oasis would of course, very soon, become very, very, very much bigger than The Stone Roses ever had. Quite an achievement.

Although sometimes it feels as though the biggest achievement was that they managed to become the biggest band in the world without killing each other first.

“My head’s in ruins” Liam says, as the article begins, in a manner that regular readers of the British music press would soon become all-too-familiar with. “So’s my shirt.”

As the article goes on to reveal, they were both mad c***s. They had, the previous night, plundered the hotel bar when the bartender went out for a ciggie, threw all the hotel lobby furniture in the pool, and then proceeded to have a fight over an ex-girlfriend. Hence the condition of Liam’s shirt. For Noel has torn it.

Y’know, typical rock’n’roll shenanigans. The kind of rock’n’roll shenanigans that might get you deported from Europe. As had occurred a week or so earlier.

Maybe “from Europe” is overstating the extent of their continental adventures just a tad, since Oasis didn’t even make it to the continent.

But Oasis never made it to Europe. They had been deported from the ferry on the way over. To be fair they weren’t the only ones. The ferry passengers had also included amongst their number a gang of football hooligans. Naturally they started a fight, as football hooligans are prone to do, and Liam – having indulged in a few too many lagers himself – thought it might be fun to join in.

That Liam might have been a bit of a hooligan ought not to have been a surprise.

The official story though is that the name came from a different venue, one which had been listed on an Inspiral Carpets tour poster that the brothers had posted on their wall.

Or perhaps they named themselves after a sneaker store in the Manchester markets. Or maybe, as some have suggested, they gave themselves that name because they felt they were an oasis of rock in a desert full of shit. Honestly, that last option feels as though it might be the right one.

Anyway, Oasis’ debut single – “Supersonic” – had only been out for a couple of months, but Oasis was already living the rock’n’roll lifestyle, leaving a trail of rock’n’roll mayhem.

Alan McGee, who’d signed the band to Creation Records was delighted by these developments: “F***ing hell, man” he is said to have said “I’ve been trying to make Teenage Fanclub interesting for five years!”

Making Teenage Fanclub interesting was a challenging job, but this was no problem for Oasis. By August – following another controversy surrounding the similarity between their follow-up single “Shakermaker” (it’s a 7) and a well-known Coca-Cola jingle – they would simultaneously be on the covers not only of NME, but Melody Maker and The Face as well! That’s the sort of publicity you get, once you get deported from Europe for participating in a drunken riot. And, also, if you write a bunch of top tunes.

And, also, if you give the tabloids a constant stream of stories and quotes to fill their pages with. Many of those stories and quotes would be about how much Noel and Liam hated each other. It was a lot. Such as the story a few months later, in September, that Noel was threatening to quit the band because Liam hit him over the head with a tambourine during a gig in Los Angeles. It really is amazing how they kept it together long enough to become the biggest band in the world!

But the most pertinent argument, at least for our purposes, was over what was more important to the spirit of rock’n’roll – the music or the stupid, reckless behaviour – and hence, who’s contribution to the band was more important.

Noel, being the sole songwriter, believed that the music was all important. Liam, as lead singer and master of mayhem, disagreed.

The most eloquent – no, maybe that’s not quite the right word – synopsis of the two conflicting opinions can be found on “Wibbling Rivalry:”

It’s an interview between Noel and Liam and NME journalist, John Harris, taking place just a few days after the ferry incident. This interview is an important document. And not only because the resulting record reached No.52 on the UK charts!

John suggests that “the reason people are writing about you I’d say musically it’s about 70% of it. The other 30%, the reason that you get in the press and the people go, f*ckin’, and looking at you and all that is coz you do seem like a band that wherever they go summat’s going to happen.”

It appears that the Gallagher way of speaking is contagious. Noel and Liam have, um, different perspectives on that. Such an argument was of course just another day for the Gallagher brothers.

One thing that Noel and Liam did seem to agree on however, was on how much they hated Blur. That’s right, it was early days yet, the great big Blur vs Oasis chart battle was over a year away, but Noel and Liam were already dissing Blur at every available opportunity. They’d gather around a piano to sing – to the tune of The Small Faces’ “Lazy Sunday” – “”Wouldn’t it be nice to be a f***ing cock-er-nee / wouldn’t it be nice to be in f***ing Blur.”

To be fair, nobody really knew what Oasis songs were about either.

“‘Supersonic’ is” according to Noel, who should know since he wrote the thing “about some f***ing nine-stone geezer who got Charlie’d off his nut one night… it’s not about anything!’

“Supersonic” was the perfect debut single for Oasis. In four and a half minutes it summed up everything that their fans love about the lads, and everything that their detractors hate. There’s gibberish lyrics – about doing it with a doctor in a helicopter – and random Beatles references – in this case “Yellow Submarine.” Why? Why anything about this song?

It only took half an hour to write! Noel wrote it while the rest of the band were off getting Chinese takeaway! It sounds like a song that only took half an hour to write! But it’s also a gloriously exciting noise made by four lads playing with a scowl on their faces, standing as still as they possibly can.

The gibberishness of the lyrics may itself be a symptom of Noel’s confidence in his own genius. The sheer idea of introducing yourself to the world with half assed lyrics like “She’s sniffing in a tissue, selling the Big Issue” seemingly based on the argument, “hey, if it was good enough for John Lennon on “I Am Walrus,” is the pinnacle of self-delusion. Or at least it would be if not for the fact that he was 100% correct!

“Supersonic” is a 9.

All that before they released what may be their biggest and most arrogant claim to greatness ever: that you and I are gonna “Live Forever.”

So many of the early Oasis singles can be read as masterplans for rock’n’roll domination – “you can have it all, but how much do you want it?”, “Toniiiiiggght I’m a rock’n’roll starrrrrrrr” – but “Live Forever” – rumoured to have been written as a riposte to Nirvana’s “I Hate Myself And I Want To Die” – comes across as an indie-rock version of Irene Cara’s “Fame.”

Maybe Liam/Noel just wants to fly. Liam/Noel wants to live, doesn’t wanna die. Maybe Liam/Noel just wants to breathe etc etc you and I are gonna live forevrrrrrrer… a couple of short months after Kurt Cobain’s suicide, rock’n’roll was in need of a hopeful message. With “Live Forever,” they got it.

“Live Forever” is a 10.

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Meanwhile, in Ravey Land:

Brit-Pop wasn’t the only thing happening in the UK. There was also a fierce feud between East 17 and Take That for the title of Britain’s Best Boy Band.

In amongst all the other feuds Liam Gallagher was fighting, he is known to have sat down with the East 17 lads to help them strategize how they could take Take That down. Oh to be a fly on that wall! – which I shall surely cover at some point. Probably when they drop “Back For Good.”

There was also a vibrant rave scene, a scene based on 20,000 people standing in a field, the leading figure in which was another Liam:

And, in the course of reinventing themselves, also reinventing the entire concept of rock and dance.

This kick-started one of the 90s more-annoying genres, “toytown techno”, a genre which peaked a few months later when Smart-Es took a rave version of the Sesame Street theme to very near the top of the charts (it’s a 6). Some ravers were raving with pacifiers in their mouths, which was probably taking the concept a tad too far.

But The Prodigy wasn’t just about speeding up old children’s television advertisements. They were also about speeding up old reggae classics (“Outta Space” is a 9) whilst dancing like total nutters. Whereas Madchester bands like The Happy Mondays had included a non-instrument playing but completely cuckoo dancer as an official member of their group, The Prodigy took the concept to a whole new level by having two! At one point they’d had three!!

That was in 1992 though. Now it was 1994 and things had changed. Toytown techno had mercifully died, but it had been replaced by equally cheesy Eurodance, of which more in a future instalment. Also, the drugs weren’t what they used to be. What had initially been pure MDMA was now cut with, who-knows-what?!?!? No wonder Liam had “decided to take (his) work back underground to stop it falling into the wrong hands”.

Since the resulting album was a UK Number One, you’d have to conclude that he totally failed.

Eurodance and increasingly dodgy drugs may have been challenges for The Prodigy, but Liam also had other problems on his mind. The Prodigy was also facing an existential threat to their entire way-of-life – not to mention the way-of-life of quite possibly everyone they knew – with the introduction into Parliament of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which would become law by the end of the year.

But, what with it being introduced by the Conservative Party, an institution with a large component of fox hunters, it also included a section against people protesting such hunts, as well as another section outlawing squatting.

That the Prodigy were deadset against all of this was made clear by the artwork on the inside of the album Music For A Jilted Generation.:

Alternative titles are said to have included Music For The Cool Young Juvenile and Music For Joyriders.

When The Prodigy weren’t protesting the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, they were fighting the encroachment of Eurodance. And the best way to do that, they appear to have decided, was to take an old sample – from early house record, “You’re No Good For Me” by Kelly Charles – and speed it up until it sounded as though they’d placed their collection of 2 Unlimited, Urban Cookie Collective and Culture Beat records into a blender. That’s how you defeat Eurodance; by beating them at their own game!

The Prodigy did not just rely on sped-up vocal samples to defeat the forces of Eurodance. That keyboard hook is the biggest slab of hardbag house – like handbag house, but harder, handbag house being house music for groups of female office-workers to dance to, in a circle, with their handbags placed carefully in the middle – since Felix’s “Don’t You Want Me.” Whigfield would have killed for a hook like that!

“No Good (Start The Dance)” was a huge hit across Europe – the fountain from which “shit Eurodance stuff” sprung – but the brute force of a single record was incapable of destroying the combined forces of the continent of Eurodance (particularly since half the Eurodance stuff actually came from the UK), as future instalments will show. A brave and hearty effort though.

“No Good (Start The Dance)” is a 10.

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Meanwhile, in Gangsta Rap Land:

It was a clear black night. Just like any other clear black night on the east side of the LBC. That’s Long Beach, California to you. Except it wasn’t just like any other clear black night, since Warren G was getting jacked.

Just to clarify, this does not mean that Warren G had been working out and now possessed impressive upper-body strength. If he had, he may not have been in this predicament. No, some dice-playing brothers had pulled some gats on G, and Warren was, as he instantly recognized, “stuck.”

N-A-T-E and Warren to the G deliver this tome in a calm and measured tone, as though simply describing to their homies what they got up to on the weekend. As if this was the sort of thing happened all the time. Presumedly however, it did not. Otherwise Warren would have believed that this was happening in his own town.

The corner of 21 and Lewis was the centre of Warren G’s world. He, Snoop and Nate used to hang out there as teenagers. You could find them there, all the time. This means that not only was Warren getting’ jacked in his own town, he was getting’ jacked in his own neighbourhood. Possibly on his own street!  

For anyone wondering what such a famed intersection, so iconic in the annals of hip-hop, is like, well… it’s an incredibly nondescript suburban corner. Nice palm trees on Lewis though.

The view down E 21st Street:

Except that when Warren was hooking that left, it was a clear, dark night – with a clear, white moon – not an overcast afternoon. Warren also gives us no indication as to whether or not it was garbage day. I’m sure you imagined something far more interesting.

Despite having top billing, Warren G is clearly “Regulate”s weakest link. After all, it’s Warren who gets jacked.

To be fair, Warren didn’t even want to be a regulator. According to an L.A. Times article published a year later, Warren just wanted to hang out with his homeboys on the corner of 21 and Lewis. But then his homeboys were all like “you gonna have to start making some money, ‘cause you just can’t be sitting here with us.” Next thing you know, he’s rollin’ with Snoop in the Long Beach Crips and getting shot at. Then he got arrested for illegal gun possession. He was just 17.

Because there’s something so cold about the way Warren and Nate tell the story of both (a) a near-death experience, in the case of Warren, and (b) laying all ‘em bustas down, in the case of Nate. There’s something so cold about the way that, despite all these bodies having been turned cold, Warren and Nate, instead of going home to mentally recuperate, as you or I might, instantly switch their mind back into freak mode. And off they go, with a car full of girls, to the East-s-i-i-i-ide Mot-e-e-e-e-e-l.

Whilst the corner of 21 and Lewis is a very real place, there is no Eastside Motel in the LBC. There are, however, several theories as to where Warren and Nate and the freaks proceeded to, with the most credible being that it was the Colonial Motel, just around the corner.

According to one review “After paying I was able to mark a crack dealer, and two low end hookers right outside my door.”

This must be the place.

And there’s something so cold about the fact that, right in the middle of these freaky celebrations, Warren and Nate take some time out to explain to us the musical theory of g-funk; to answer the question “what makes g-funk, g-funk”?

Ironically, for a scene obsessed with Parliament-Funkadelic records the main sample on “Regulate” is amongst the least funky imaginable: Michael McDonald’s yacht-rock classic “I Keep Forgetting (Every Time You’re Near)”

“I Keep Forgetting (Every Time You’re Near)” does not however feature any Wild West whistling. That Wild West whistling sample is not actually a Wild West whistling sample. I know, you probably thought it was some Ennio Morricone shit. But no, this ain’t no Ennio Morricone shit.

It’s “Sign Of The Times” by Bob James.

Bob James was a jazz pianist and he has been sampled on an insane number of hip-hop records, a fact that he seems to find even more mystifying than you do, for he doesn’t possess a single hip-hop bone in his body.

DJs mostly sample the bell-sounds from his cover of Paul Simon’s “Take Me To The Mardi Gras.” That sample can be found in everything from Run DMC’s “Peter Piper” to LL Cool J’s “Rock The Bells”, to Missy Elliot’s “Work It.” I’m pretty sure you’ll recognize it:

The other sample of course is from “Young Guns, a sample that they kept so uncut that you can even hear the pig snorting in the background.

“Regulate” is a 10.

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Meanwhile, in Punk Pop Land:

When discussing slacker anthems in 1994, the media usually looked to Pavement .

Much to their chagrin. Or Beck – even more to his chagrin. But if you were looking for the ultimate portrayal of the slacker lifestyle, you couldn’t really go past “Longview” by Green Day.

Check out this opening stanza:

“I sit around and watch the tube
But nothing’s on
I change the channels for an hour or two
Twiddle my thumbs just for a bit
I’m sick of all the same old shit”

Or how about this for a chorus:
“I’m so damn bored, I’m going blind
And I smell like shit
I got no motivation
Where is my motivation?
No time for no motivation”

I beg to differ, Billie Joe Armstrong. It sounds as though you have heaps of time. You’re literally doing nothing! It’s a miracle really that Green Day managed to become one of the biggest bands in the world, with an attitude like that.

But Green Day did become one of the biggest bands in the world, and much of that was due to “Longview.”

Naturally, it was written whilst they were on acid. It probably sounded even better when they were on acid, but the riff we ended up with is just what they could remember of it after they came down.

Green Day, like Offspring who would very soon emerge in their wake, were from California. There are a lot of punks in California, and there always have been. All the way back to Dead Kennedys and X and Black Flag.

More skateboards for one thing. More anger. Also – at least initially – more politics.

Green Day – at least initially – didn’t bother with the politics. Instead Billie Joe sang catchy tunes about being a stoned teenager in a snotty punk accent. You could practically smell the bong. They named their major-label debut album Dookie, aka slang for shit. It could have been “liquid dookie” since it was a reference to the diarrhea they had whilst they were on tour.

Green Day looked and sounded like a comic strip version of a punk band. Naturally the hardcore punk clubs in which they had previously played banned them for life. Someone scrawled, in graffiti on the wall, “Billie Joe must die.”

That seems unfair. After all, they were a band who managed to get philosophical statements such as “when masturbation’s lost its fun, you’re f*ckin’ lazy” on the radio. And truer words hath never been spoken.

“Longview” is a 9.

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