Rock Hits 1994

My family spent spring break 1994 in D.C. with my aunt. While I’m sure we visited monuments and saw historical stuff while we were there, I distinctly remember three things about that trip. First, we watched Arkansas beat Duke in the NCAA Tournament title game (a game in which I wanted both teams to lose), second I purchased the Counting Crows album, August and Everything After, and the third thing was Kurt Cobain’s death. While the first thing wasn’t much of a seminal moment, except maybe for Arkansas fans, the other two were a pretty big deal.

If you have Apple Music, check out the Apple playlist, Rock Hits 1994. It’s frequently updated and songs are shuffled around, but it features songs that were either released in 1994, or songs that were still high on the charts during that year. It’s freaking fantastic, and it brings back a flood of memories for me. I go on a yearly golf trip to Hilton Head with some friends, and one of my favorite things we do there, aside from golf, is sit on their balcony overlooking Shelter Cove, drink some Bowmore 12 year old Scotch, put on the Rock Hits 1994 playlist, and see who can shout out the band name first for each song. You get bonus points for song title and album name. However, as the evening progresses and the Bowmore flows (sometimes it’s bourbon) , no one can really remember the score in the end.

I am one of the youngest members of Generation X, since the cut off for that generation tends to be recognized as those born in 1981, and I feel very privileged to have spent my teenage years during the 90’s. This was a time when I began to move away from cassette tapes of Bel Biv DeVo, Bobby, Brown, and MC hammer, and into CD’s of R.E.M., the Chili Peppers, Nirvana, and the Gin Blossoms. But, nothing to that point had excited me more than buying August and Everything After. This was when MTV Buzz Bin took off, and the first time I heard Mr. Jones, I was hooked. While the record was released in the fall of ’93, I hadn’t gotten around to getting it until that spring break of 1994. I snapped it into my Sony Discman, and I listened to it nonstop during the rest of our trip, on the plane ride back, and then in the car on our way home from the airport. I couldn’t get enough. To this day, it still may be my favorite album, or at least top five.

The death of Kurt Cobain was a bizarre affair. To this day, the circumstances seem somewhat sketchy, but at the time it was like an explosion of emotions. It wasn’t so much emotional for me personally, but it did result in me listening to more Nirvana during that period, and that lead me to check out Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Soundgarden. I remember buying the albums Purple, Superunknown, and Ten all at the same time. The only thing that kept me from wearing flannel shirts all the time was the fact that the climate in the Southeastern United States is much hotter than Seattle. Great new music was being released all the time, and every cent I could get my hands on would go towards new CD’s. I expanded my tastes even further after discovering Radiohead, Weezer, Phish, and Dave Matthews Band. (say what you want about DMB. I’m still a fan) I started 1994 with a small flip book style CD case, and I had to upgrade several times until I had one of those giant binder-like CD cases that held 100 CD’s. It wasn’t all just music from 1994; I started collecting the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and U2. Somehow, despite my age, I even managed to get a hold of The Chronic, by Dr. Dre. (Sorry, Tipper, but that Parental Advisory sticker managed to increase an album’s street cred, while the record store employees tended to ignore it at the checkout counter.) I had no idea that in ten years, Steve Jobs was going to force me into spending hours uploading each of these albums into my iTunes library, and then about 12 years after that it would prove to be a waste of time, thanks to Apple Music.

One of the perks of going to boarding school was the weekend excursions. There was a guy there whose only job was to buy tickets for cool events coming to the general area, and then have boarders sign up to attend them. You’d simply show up to his office in the student center, check out the binder that detailed what was coming up, and then sign up. After you attend the event, the school simply billed your parents. It was fantastic, and even better, my parents encouraged me to go to as many as I could so that I wouldn’t just be sitting on campus, “getting into trouble.” Well, I took them up on it, and I can tell you first hand that one can get into much more serious trouble at a rock concert than one can by sitting in a dorm room. In the fall of ’94 (or possibly the spring of ’95) I went with a group to see Bob Dylan. Our English teacher was our chaperone, and before we got out of the van he said to us, “Boys, when we get in there, people are going to pass you things. I want you to just pass it right along, and it’ll be fine.” (he was right) Dylan was pretty old in 1994, and he sounded it, but it was still a great experience. None of his old songs really sounded the same, and he played mostly “new stuff,” which I didn’t really know. Another great show that year was Dave Matthews Band opening for Phish. This is a jam band fan’s dream. Remember Two Things had come out in November of ’93, and Under the Table and Dreaming was released in Sept. of ’94. People definitely knew who DMB was, but they weren’t too big to open for Phish. DMB played an entire set, then Phish came on with their usual two sets, and then both bands came back out and performed together. This was my first experience seeing either band live, and it may be the best show I’ve seen of each of them. When Trey and Mike jumped on their tiny trampolines while playing You Enjoy Myself, I thought that was the coolest thing since sliced bread. And Carter Beauford’s electric drum set was unreal. He and Fishman did a drum duet towards the end that blew my mind. Oh, and people were passing things, and we just passed them right on.

One thing you may not know about Counting Crows, unless you’ve been to a lot of their shows, is they like to highlight one or two local agencies who provide services for causes the band cares about. One such issue is domestic violence, so when they came to Greenville one year, they picked Julie’s organization to come out to the show and set up a booth. They were happy to oblige, and I got to tag along. After the show, one of the opening acts came out to thank the women (and me I guess, but probably not) for being there, and they invited all of us to come back stage with them. We happily accepted, and on our way in we saw him; Adam Duritz was chilling near the entrance chatting up some dude. As I walked past him I manged to muster, “Great show,” and stuck out my hand. He said, “thanks,” and actually shook my hand. That would have been enough for me, but we kept going inside to hang out.

Let me slow my roll to give you a better image of this “back stage,” we’re talking about. This is a somewhat small venue in Simpsonville, SC, and the “back stage” area resembles one of those temporary classrooms they roll into school playgrounds when they run out of real classrooms in the buildings. Inside, there were two rooms. One room had a bunch of the band members from the opening acts and the Crows, and the other room had a table in the center with a Publix veggie tray on it, and a case of Busch Light underneath. That was it. This endeared them to me even more. So, one room was crowded with rock stars, the other room had raw vegetables and discount beer, and we didn’t know what to do, so we just lingered in the hallway. Adam came in, and we somehow mustered up the courage to ask him for a picture. Being the classy guy he is, he honored our request. If you look closely at the picture above, you can catch the slightest glimpse of a Busch Light can in his hands. We ended up staying there until about 2:00 a.m., but none of us really managed to talk much to the band members, because we really didn’t know what to say. It was fun though, and I’ll never forget it. Who knew, way back when I saw the Mr. Jones video on Buzz Bin, that I would one day drink Busch Light and dip raw carrots into ranch dressing with the guy on TV?