Jukebox Junior: Playing records to a girl called Junior
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Singles Of The Year 1992
[1] Jamiroquai, 'When You Gonna Learn?'
September 1992, my dad’s driving me down to university for a term of astonishing endeavour, the Essential Selection is on the radio so it must be Friday night, Pete Tong is playing an amazing record I haven’t heard before…
This, according to historians, is the exact moment when Jamiroquai were good.
It’s a brilliantly funky record, not a spare note in its six minutes or so. It even has didgeridoos and monkeys at the start. It throws horns, flutes and bongos into the mix and gradually whips up a feverish storm that has you regretting the fade. And, in the midst of this, is a young cat who comes on like a new Stevie Wonder.
Crucially, we hadn’t seen him. And we hadn’t heard the following year’s album. You see, Jay Kay duped us. He was a div, a boor, an infuriating jazz buff-oon. In the last 14 years he’s made endless records so flaccid, so pompous, so boring, so smoothly polite, they could stand for election.
But I won’t deny him his moment. And his moment is still great. I listened out for Tong naming the artist, and popped into Music Stop on the Monday to ask for the new single from Jamerica. The owner and I thumbed through the catalogue, found the lad, and I picked the record up on its release a few weeks later. A couple of years later I bought the ‘Half The Man’ single. These two are a big enough Jamiroquai collection for anyone.
I know a girl who’ll give any good groove its due, and Junior was true to her maxim. She danced all the way, both with me and without, and I spared her any pictures of twats in hats. That helps.
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[2] Flowered Up, 'Weekender'
A grand folly, a swansong, 12 minutes and 53 seconds of ADD genre-surfing and speedfreak tomfoolery. They did so much on this one side of vinyl (the other side blank) that they didn’t bother making another record. The track veers through rock, acid, funk, rock again until spiralling away on its millionth guitar squall; this is after it’s nabbed guitar solos from Bocca Juniors’ ‘Substance’, U2’s ‘Bullet The Blue Sky’ and another I can’t place. Always something around the corner. Its lyrics are facile but biting, and you leave feeling like you’ve been put through the wringer.
Junior wigged out to the rockier passages, happily flew around with dad assistance and careered from wall to wall with her walker. More contemplative moments were spent combing her hair, and my hair, and moaning about the trike. It’s a long record.
I picked her up at the end and asked, ‘Did you like it?’ She stared, transfixed at the run-out groove.
‘Do you want some breakfast?’ A nod.
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[3] Martine Girault, 'Revival'
Obviously, in daylight-saving, ‘the next hour or so’ can take up to a whole day. And- cunning link this- Martine Girault’s languid modern rare groove beauty makes time stand still anyway. So, better late than whenever, 1992’s No.3.
It heps up with a barked ‘One! Two!’, which fascinated Junior, then the crisp jazzy beats clicked in to make her tick-tock side to side. Girault’s voice defines ‘smoky’ and the record is absolutely timeless, comfortable in a hip 60s club and nestling next to D’Angelo and Badu’s nu soul. The worn sticker on the sleeve says it won DMC’s Soul Record of the Year. Is there a higher accolade?
Maybe the Junior seal of approval would trump it. Sadly, she turned to trying to walk around the living room holding the football and basketball simultaneously. It’s quite a feat, requiring unprecedented levels of concentration, and leaves no room for appreciation of undersold soul classics. Soz, Martine. Better luck, erm, next time.
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[4] Sophie B. Hawkins, 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover'
I ignored this on its smash hit Top 20 dash to No.14, but it kind of snuck into my affections as an extra track on another single. And still, I like it more every time I hear it. Moral is: listen again, unless you already think it ace. There was more to Sophie B than met the eye, you see. First up, she seems a slightly wonky-looking MOR American soft rock bore, then you see she’s done some nude shots (really), then you hear the funk in this record, the pounding Led Zep drums, the weirdness, the ever so exciting line about lying ‘by the ocean, making love to her’. It rocks, but lasciviously.
Junior recognised the rock with a few nods of the head, and gazed in wonder as Dad sang bits of the verse (not rude bits). When the record finished, I asked her if she liked it- see, Jukebox Junior is starting to evolve- and she just grinned at me. Silly Daddy.
I’ll do No.3 in the next hour or so. Give us a fighting chance of finishing this week, laziness permitting.
‘Cos we have to start the HOTLY anticipated 2006 rundown.
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[5] Saint Etienne, 'Avenue'
A 90s countdown wouldn’t be the same without some wistful, powderpuff pop from the Etienne crew, would it? ‘Avenue’ is one of their very best, redolent of autumn leaves and fusty nostalgia and young love. It mentions ‘Maurice’ too. There’s a Maurice in Junior’s nursery class, who’s very fond of her. He always calls her name when we arrive in the morning. He even shouted the name at Junior’s mum when he and his mum saw her on the train the other morning. Clever lad. I don’t know if Junior will form a lasting attachment with him; he seems a bit keen.
Junior enjoyed the record anyway, gracing it with a shoulder-shimmy and a blanket Weetabix refusal. She especially liked Sarah Cracknell’s miaows in the chorus- which apparently say ‘young heart’, but I’ll never be convinced. Not all that convinced about ‘oh, the clown’s no good’ in the fade either, although I can agree that no clown is ever good.
Four days for THAT, eh? No refunds either.
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[6] The Black Crowes, 'Remedy'
Tray drums, double-fretted air guitar, bib-wearing headbanging and highchair wriggling were all achieved today, accompanied by the Black Crowes’ once-in-a-lifetime pitch-perfect pastiche of early 70s rawk. Too safe on their debut, too boring on their later albums, they successfully resuscitated Rod and the Faces for second set ‘The Southern Harmony & Musical Companion’ and made THE album of 1992. There, I said it. R.E.M. can whistle.
So Junior loved it, as is customary with The Riff and The Drums. ‘Remedy’ also has southern-fried funk and gospel vocals, a simmering stew of snake-hips and bare feet on ornamental rugs. The dream started to go sour for the Crowes after the pubic (sic) furore of ‘Amorica’’s cover, and, in the face of dwindling sales, Chris Robinson could only comfort himself at the bosom of his Hollywood starlet wife Kate Hudson.
She’s since ditched him and he’s reduced to changing his name to Ben and trying to win the disaffected rocker vote in this year’s X-Factor. Between him and Taja Sevelle, I reckon.
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GUEST REVIEW
by cigarette-sigh
[7] Manic Street Preachers, ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’
As girls go through their pony phase, so middle class teenagers go through their communist phase – this is the natural order of life. I escaped both of these stages by dint of being a) male and b) preternaturally cynical. Marx had a very attractive beard and wrote some very fine aphorisms but, ultimately, his theories were a big load of guff as proven by Uncle Joe Stalin (who easily makes the top 5 biggest bastards of all time). The Manic Street Preachers (or more precisely hoovering fan Nicky Wire and carving knife enthusiast Richey Edwards) never really grew out of this phase. Their liner notes showed how well read they were and their lyrics were filled with allusions that put them on an entirely different level to the June Brides or Ride.
But just as Nicky’s penchant for outrageous comments- “I hope Michael Stipe goes the same way as Freddie Mercury”- and Richey’s taste for self harm often seemed faintly ridiculous, the band’s politics have always seemed faintly teenage – like a bunch of teenagers loitering around the charts to remind you how awful the world is. But they had a secret weapon – the matinee idol good looks and unique set of pipes wielded by Rhonda rock god, James Dean Bradfield. Back then, before he discovered the wonder of pies, Bradfield looked as hard as a bucket of extra strength nails but had the guts to wear eyeliner like the rest of his gender bending band.
I was eight years old when ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ was released, just a few years past suffering tricycle emptiness and the sheer upset of being ousted from the sandpit during free play. While the song passed me by first time around, it became a slight obsession when I came across it, preserved like a fuming fly in amber, revolving on the conveyor belt of MTV. Richey, Nicky, James and Sean, the pretty but podgy afterthought drummer, sealed in time at their best: beautiful and bizarre in Bangkok, mooning round the streets, frightening and fascinating. In a few years time, after the triumph of the Holy Bible, Richey would disappear – from man to myth in one rash moment – James would balloon and Nicky would become faintly embarrassing in polyester frocks. But at that time, the band was a juggernaut of half thought out politics and riff-tastic Guns ‘n Roses worship.
‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, from the band’s wilfully ambitious (and in places woefully inadequate) debut ‘Generation Terrorists’, is a classic rock curio littered with land mines of half formed polemic. Each line includes far too many syllables (a very common Manics trait) and the song vibrates violently with ideas but James cleverly disguises this beneath layer upon layer of guitar. The song is a radio friendly hit, a Trojan horse that slipped poetry and politics onto mainstream radio. Years before I was forced to trudge through Das Capital or fight three rounds in the ring with Sartre’s Being And Nothingness, it allowed me to wallow in my own concept of existential angst, even though, I already suspected it was all just a little bit silly.
The good Doctor reports that Junior was not as easily fooled as I once was and was initially unmoved by James’s insistent riff or his desperate Welsh wailing. But the Manics are a persistent bunch and having been momentarily distracted by the literary genius that is the touchy-feely farmyard book, she was inspired to consider the nature of consumption in a capitalist society by…eating grapes and feeding them to her dad- Chairman Nicky Wire comments: “Look how she grasps the nature of sharing amongst the proletariat”.
She then disappeared to get her shoes (Chairman Wire notes: preparing herself for the long march of Communism against the Capitalist oppressor). Near the end of the song as James hit the heights of “his Brian May-isms”, she rushed back into the room to dance and sway. Clearly Junior is no fan of the fascist groove thing or its near cousin the communist foot stomp but she knows a good bit of axe-wielding rock when she hears it. All in all, a poor performance from the Valley boys! Had Dr TS played ‘Slash And Burn’ or the mighty (but Stones aping) ‘You Love Us’, the result could have be oh so different.
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