Center Of The Universe #30: Elevator Music

Giant Sand, “Center Of The Universe”
Zhane, “Hey Mr. DJ”
MC Lyte, “Ruffneck”
Sunscreem, “Love U More”

Welcome to the Center Of The Universe! After our theme song, which turns 31 this year, we’ll be playing nothing but music celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2023. If you were a kid in 1987, kids today experience this music as you experienced Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock.” If you were a kid in 1993, kids today experience this music as you experienced The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” They're golden oldies. It’s nothing but love, though, with two women from Temple University (produced by Naughty By Nature) giving it up for Mr. DJ, MC Lyte letting the world know she has zero problem with necks even ruffer than Naughty By Nature stepping into the limelight, and Sunscreem helping techno cross over to the US Top 40 with lyrics like “you can make the sky turn purple/ you can make the sea turn turtle/ but you know you can never make me love you more.” The song was actually a year or two old when it hit stateside, but I love the track too much to disqualify it.

Unrest, “Make Out Club”
Onyx, “Slam”
Liz Phair, “Stratford-On-Guy”
Lemonheads, “Style”

DC goofballs Unrest were this close to a major label act in 1993, getting Simon Le Bon to visit them during the five-day recording session for Perfect Teeth, giving him with a producer credit for the honor. Jam Master Jay was more of an actual producer for Onyx, alongside his mentee Chyskillz, demanding the group return to the studio after recording their debut album Bacdafacup to give it a hit single. They did. “Slam.” I don’t believe Matador demanded any re-recording before releasing Exile On Guyville, having signed Liz Phair off a homemade Girlysound cassette. The song “Style” appears twice on Come On Feel The Lemonheads, the second version named “Rick James Style” after the guest vocalist. I find the less Superfreaky version more affecting, Dando conveying a problematic, indecisive search for cool that can lead to stoned inertia or worse.

Girls Against Boys, “Billy’s One Stop”
Fugazi, “Instrument”
Lungfish, "Instrument”
The Bats, “Drive Me Some Boars”

Former harDCore kids Girls Against Boys had long moved to NYC by the time they made Venus Luxure No.1 Baby, but they recorded the album in Baltimore with Ted Niceley, a little after he recorded In On The Kill Taker with former harDCore kids Fugazi at Inner Ear in Arlington, Virginia. The bands had toured together in 1992, though where Venus Luxure shines like a big city at night, “Billy’s One Stop” suggesting a high-speed cinematic car chase complete with skids and sparks, In On The Kill Taker is resolutely the sound two guitars, bass, drums and agonized vocals. Baltimore’s Lungfish recorded Rainbows From Atoms with Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye at Inner Ear after In On The Kill Taker had already been released. I haven’t been able to find out how both albums have a song named “Instrument,” and if there’s any relationship between the two. New Zealand’s Bats have nothing to do with Washington D.C., but they did record Silverbeet outside Boston with Lou Giordano, not long after that guy had done Sugar’s Copper Blue. It’s a little more powered and polished than their previous albums, though still jangly as hell after two songs released by Dischord in 1993 both named “Instrument.”

Salt-N-Pepa, “Shoop”
Wu-Tang Clan, “Method Man”
Babyface, “Never Keeping Secrets”
Dramarama, “Incredible”

Is “Shoop” the greatest hit of 1993? The song where, if you know it, you probably know every word? I’m at a loss to suggest an alternative, and if I ever was in a bachelor auction, this would be my entrance song. After all, I was once was asked by two handsome guys to do the anonymous dude’s verse at karaoke, a story I’ll be telling in the old folks’ home (“for the smell of it!”). Not a lot of boys my age gave the song that kind of love when it dropped, though. Going to middle school in south central…Indiana… most of my experience with hip-hop culture came via magazines and MTV. A kid on my bus Jeff, though, I’m pretty sure he had older brothers or cousins that kept him up with the culture. So a few months after hearing him scream “BACDAFUCUP! BACDAFUCUP!” every time he got on the bus, he started shouting “WU-TANG, MOTHERFUCKER! WU-TANG!” alerting me that the group I’d read about in Rolling Stone was getting big. I’m sure Salt-N-Pepa fans would forgive Method Man that “feeding you! And feeding you!” intro, just as they’d forgive Babyface for having kept secrets ('twas “momentary insanity” on his part, you see). The narrator of Dramarama’s “Incredible” has nothing to apologize for, as long as he can provide the “angel in his kitchenette” with their shared brand of cigarettes and pay the electric bill. That way they can sleep with the radio on (“our great expense/ 12 dollars, 37 cents/ so it’s affordable”).

Slowdive, “Altogether”
Tony! Toni! Tone!, “Fun”
Bob Dylan, “Love Henry”
Yo La Tengo, “Sudden Organ”

I don’t understand why Slowdive’s 1993 album Souvlaki gets more love than 1991's Just For A Day - I guess the affects I find overwhelming about the latter, fans of the former find corny? It’s all good, though. I’m just glad Slowdive is appreciated. My perspective on which Tony! Toni! Tone! albums are best doesn’t match up with conventional wisdom either, as I prefer uptempo new jack syntheses like “Fun” over their homages to R&B past. But again, I'm happy as long as they can get decent tour guarantees. Bob Dylan would get good tour guarantees if he croaked “Strangers In The Night” with his lips up to a jug for a half hour. I can barely spend any time with his 21st century work, for the hype, making 1993’s World Gone Wrong, ten solo acoustic folk covers, my favorite Dylan album of my lifetime. Like many, Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo would probably think that’s nuts, which is his right. Especially if he works out his frustration on an Acetone organ like he did in 1993.

Janet Jackson, “Any Time, Any Place”
Swervedriver, “Duel”
Giant Sand, “Elevator Music”
Nirvana, “All Apologies”

If you watched MTV in 1993, you knew one thing for certain: Janet be fuckin’. If you were paying attention to college radio in 1993, you knew one thing for certain: guitar heroics were back. And while fuzzed-out instrumental pyrotechnics and declarations of sexual confidence and agency can still delight the young and old today, it’s hard to pretend we're not with these thrills where Howe Gelb found himself in “Elevator Music” (from Giant Sand’s Purge & Slouch, which once looked like their indulgent farewell to indie rock, the band having signed to Imago. Anybody remember Imago?): “we got Dylan in the elevator…distortion at the supermarket.” But then raging in vain against the co-option of the light was already the move in 1993, Nirvana never promising anything more than the occasional glimmer of unexpected beauty before an inevitable end, when not settling for an ironic smirk. And on that happy note, we leave 1993 and the Center of the Universe. Thanks for your time!