Awesomeness, B.N. (Before "Nevermind")

A month from now, 20 years ago, the David Geffen record company released an album that would change the landscape of pop music forever - "Nevermind", by an underground band in Seatlle called Nirvana. Which means that, 20 years ago today, the pop music world was on the final throes of the Dark Ages.

For those of you who were too young to remember what life was like in Manila in 1991, I invite you to join me in a journey through time...

Imagine a world where Facebook didn't exist yet, where the whole concept of social media wouldn't even make sense to the average person, where the whole internet or the concept of "going online" to be updated on things hadn't happened yet, where the term "personal computer" still sounded like an oxymoron, where a "computer" was just something you found out from the movie "Weird Science" can help you create the perfect girl and not some appliance you can find in your house or in anyone else's house. Imagine a world where the only way you can watch foreign TV shows was that if they were at least a year delayed and that you could only watch eight to ten of them at any given period of time, because there wasn't even cable TV, which was something you just heard from people who've been to the States, and there wasn't even UHF, or at least UHF that wasn't completely worthless. Imagine a world where 14-hour blackouts happened on a daily basis for an entire summer, to the point where the only memorable TV experience you could have was with "Cedie: Ang Munting Prinsepe", which went on air between 10 to 11 in the morning, before the electricity disappeared for the rest of your waking day. Imagine a world where music video channels didn't exist, only 30-minute music video programs like Video Hit Parade and Video Hot Tracks, only you suddenly couldn't watch them anymore because there was no electricity in your whole fucking district.

Before Nirvana happened, Manila was in the dark ages, literally. So imagine what life was like for a young music fan who had absolutely no means whatsoever to be aware of bands like Beat Happening, My Bloody Valentine, or Dinosaur Jr. Before Nirvana opened the floodgates and made it easier for music fans to discover these bands, things were pretty grim.

In retrospect, it's so easy to say that pre-Nevermind 1991 sucked, but that sentiment only resides now, in retrospect. In 1991, the blackouts didn't make us indignant; sure it was a constant pain in the ass, but by then we've already been conditioned to take it as something that was normal. We also had to project our youthful joy and exuberance on something, so we got excited over Michael Jackson's "Black or White" and C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat" because what else was there?

In a few weeks, the music media will be commemorating the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana's "Nevermind", and rightfully so. It was an instant game-changer, the last of its kind, for there will never ever be another paradigm shift that dramatic in this day and age where the constant deluge of information prevents any paradigm to be set in the first place. But in order to fully appreciate the true import of this record, those skeletons we buried in our closet along with our neon-colored Maui and Sons shirts and cycling shorts must also be put into light. The fact that they embarass us today doesn't undo all the enjoyment we experienced 20 years ago and it certainly doesn't make them any less interesting.

So let me present to you my Five Most Awesome Songs in pre-Nevermind 1991. After all, it's been twenty years. It's time to come clean.

5.) "Silent Lucidity" by Queensryche

We now derisively refer to it as "Hair Metal" or "Glam Metal", but I promise you that everyone loved it as it was happenning. Here's another fact that never gets mentioned in all the retro-hate towards this lost genre: no one called it "Hair Metal" or "Glam Metal" then; not even "Heavy Metal" (that term was reserved only for bands like Metallica and Megadeth). Back then, it was just "rock", plain and simple. When you said "rock" in 1991, everyone automatically assumed you were talking about bands like Warrant or Bon Jovi and not Duran Duran or The Outfield, which everyone insisted were "New Wave", which of course they weren't. But that's just the product of the narrow paradigm of the late 80s, before it was shattered into pieces by Nirvana. Today, when you say "rock", everyone would say, "be more specific" because you could be referring to anything from Kings of Leon to Coldplay to Incubus.

Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity" blew me away when I first saw its music video because it was unlike any other "rock" song I've heard at the time. It sounded deep. It looked deep. When you're thirteen and you're totally convinced that you're a poet, your awkward, heavy-handed, pretentious pseudo-poetic instincts start to develop and they need something to latch on to. Unfortunately for me, Tori Amos wasn't around yet in 1991, so I had to make do with a bunch of sad-looking dudes.

4.) "Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)" by the Pixies

I discovered this through the "Pump Up the Volume" soundtrack (mentioned in passing in this blog post) that also featured "Titanium Expose" from Sonic Youth and a really angry version of "Kick Out the Jams" by Henry Rollins and Bad Brains. Raised as a New Wave kid in the 80s, I was weaned on the music of The Smiths, The Wild Swans, and The Railway Children. Sonic Youth's "Dirty" and The Rollins Band's "End of Silence" would eventually become fixtures in my stereo a year later but in 1991, I wasn't quite ready to "Kick out the jams, motherfucker!" just yet. But this soft, sedated version of "Wave of Mutilation" - the first Pixies song I ever heard - was right in my wheelhouse.

In a revionist history version of this list, this song would either be number 1 or 2. Music history judges the Pixies as true rock originals and one of the most influential bands of all time. But this is a historically-accurate list, and in 1991, they just weren't as awesome as the next band.

3.) "Don't Cry" by Guns N' Roses

The cliche goes, "Nirvana's 'Nevermind' was the most important record of 1991". That statement is true today, 20 years later. But that would be a complete and total lie if you said it in the last day of 1991 because everyone was still going crazy over Guns N' Roses' double album - "Use Your Illusion I" and "Use Your Illusion II". When they were finally released in the middle of the year after months of anticipation, it was such a huge momentous event that I don't remember chuckling even once when I saw their video for "Don't Cry" for the very first time. Which is astounding considering that this has got to be one of the funniest music videos ever. The fact that Axl Rose is totally not kidding makes it even more astounding.

Listening to this song again brings me back to those days when waiting for an album to be released actually happened. As I hear Slash's overwrought guitar solo now, I am momentarily transported back to that time when I was waiting in front of the radio with my sister because 99.5 RT might play "Don't Cry" in a few minutes. And when they finally did play it, I got so excited I got goosebumps. Jesus, I can't believe I just typed that sentence. Am I positive I wasn't born in the 50s?

People make a big deal now about how none of "Watch the Throne" by Jay-Z and Kanye West got leaked, like we can't even remember those days when songs never got leaked because it was the normal thing to expect. But the minute "Watch the Throne" was released, you could already download it through iTunes, watch their video on Youtube, or illegally download it through some torrent site. Oh and yes, it's also available in those unnecessarily bulky things called CDs, I guess. What? You have to go to an actual record store to get those things? Well, screw it then.

2.) "Epic" by Faith No More

Some local channel (probably Channel 9) showed the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards in 1991. That's the kind of shit we were dealing with back then. Today it would be impossible not to see a much talked about Katy Perry performance within the same week that it happened.

Seeing this performance by Faith No More a year late didn't make it any less mind-blowing, though. You have to understand, this was a full year before the world went apeshit with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers' "Give It Away", years before Rage Against the Machine, before Korn, Limp Bizkit, and whatever other crappy rap-rock group showed up in the 90s. In 1991, nothing prepared you for seeing Faith No More do this in your TV screen. Absolutely nothing. Just look at that audience - it's the MTV fucking Music Awards and they're all sitting there like they're in a PTA meeting. The one guy who's totally digging the song doesn't even know how to respond. All he could do was stand and clap along awkwardly. Even if he knew what a moshpit was, he couldn't just throw his body around those stationary, stunned people.

Sitting at home, back in the Philippines, a year later, this was still exponentially earth-shattering considering that rap was still relatively new in the country at this time. It was still cool, still rebellious; not like its reputation two years later when all the "Pangks nat ded" imbeciles declared war on "heep-hap" for no good reason.

So seeing this live performance of "Epic" by Faith No More at the time was like seeing Marty McFly perform "Johnny B. Goode" at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance in 1955. Seriously, that's the only available analogy.

1.) "Here's Where The Story Ends" by The Sundays

There is actually nothing to be embarassed about here, 20 years after the fact, that I first heard this song on NU 107 at around February or March of 1991, during the last few weeks of elementary school, and loved it instantly. I still love it now and The Sundays are my all-time favorite band and unless a time machine is involved, they will always be my all-time favorite band.

And here's how I know why: I will never be 13 again, alone in my room, trying to get some sleep with the radio on because that's how I taught myself to not be afraid of the dark years before. I will never go through another three-year period of asking "meron po kayong The Sundays?" in every record store I set foot in only to see the saleslady look at me as if I just spoke in Aramaic. And I will never hold my first ever Sundays CD ever again in awe because I will never be 16 again, putting "Blind" on the CD tray for the first time, then playing the whole album over and over again because I can't bring myself to sleep late at night when I just listened to the best collection of 12 songs I have ever listened to in my entire life.

People my age romanticize the 90s and all its inconveniences when the present day is just clearly far superior in every aspect, if we're being totally honest with ourselves. Because what we're really romanticizing is the experience of being young, the excitement of experiencing something for which there is no precedent, the very idea of a "first time". We loved all those crappy pre-Alternative bands because we loved their newness then with the same intensity of how much we hate their datedness now.

And that's what sets this particular song apart from the rest - it never gets dated. I've listened to it too many times over the last 20 years for it to be frozen in any specific era. Every time I listen to "Here's Where the Story Ends", I am no longer transported back to 1991 - I am just securely curled up in this tiny timeless space in my mind, where things are good not because they're new but because they're simply good, and good forever. Which is kind of sad because I want to be constantly reminded of the first time I heard it, when I was 13, and it was 1991, and it was impossible to take little things for granted, like the songs you hear on the radio.