Playboy Music

Seattle Grunge hits big, rap rages, Madonna is everybody's business and billy ray aches

Like San Francisco in the Sixties, Seattle in the Nineties is a state of mind. Seattle is music: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone and Temple of the Dog. And as Haight-Ashbury was home base to hippies, Seattle is the birthplace of grunge. As in the Haight, fashion, art, style and a new vocabulary dominate the scene. What's grunge power? Pearl Jam, Nirvana et al. overwhelmed the music charts in 1992 and the big screen in Singles, a romanticized movie about grunge and its followers. Even the birth of grunge baby Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love, of Hole, was big news. Can this sustain itself? In some other town, in other garages and small clubs, we'll be learning a new word for it. And just as hearing White Rabbit on the radio brings to mind the Airplane, Smells Like Teen Spirit will be playing on some oldies station 25 years from now.

What else happened in 1992? Sex, money, censorship and country. As in other years, Madonna and Prince commandeered the sex and money stories. Time Warner coughed up a $60 million package for her and a $108 million one for him. But Madonna's book, Sex, and the accompanying CD, Erotica, and Prince's CD and video, Sexy MF, pushed their fans' sexual buttons more than those of cash registers.

Rap is a big tent now and it covers the angriest artists, such as Ice-T and Ice Cube, with the same canvas it does the newer faces: Arrested Development, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, P.M. Dawn and even Marky Mark. If you listen carefully, you'll discover similar messages coming from completely different messengers. Some menace, some cajole, but all tell us things we need to know. If you had listened to West Coast rappers before the South Central riots, you would have heard the warning shots. At issue again is the First Amendment. What can an artist say and how free is his speech? Ice-T voluntarily took Cop Killer off his Body Count CD, but Ice Cube's The Predator spared no one and shot to the top of the Billboard charts, anyway. Don't think we're selling women rappers short. Salt-N-Pepa, TLC, Monie Love and Ya Kid K are making music to balance the battle of the sexes. TLC, however, had a hard time getting their responsible-sex message across on the public airwaves.

Don't assume for a second that all the energy coming from African-American artists is coming only from rappers. The beautiful harmony sung by Boyz II Men, especially on End of the Road from Boomerang, filled up the airwaves and made it the top-selling single of the year. More sweet sounds came from Jodeci, En Vogue, Vanessa Williams, Whitney Houston, Caron Wheeler and Mary J. Blige.

Soundtrack LPs were major sellers, thanks to the musicians who were willing to make a great song and not put it on their own albums. End of the Road, I'd Die Without You, Forever Love and I Wanna Love You come immediately to mind. As we go to press, Whitney Houston's single I Will Always Love You from The Bodyguard has gone triple platinum. But the champ on the charts and with our readers is Wayne's World, which spent 44 weeks on the charts in 1992.

Music never just stays in its own place. Consider Sinéad O'Connor's visit to Saturday Night Live in October 1992. She tore up a picture of the Pope, blaming him for the world's problems. Two weeks later, after being booed at the Bob Dylan tribute concert, she announced her retirement from music. Maybe it's just a hiatus. Who knows more about taking a break than Elvis, who is still dead but is a marketer's dream? In 1992 the postmaster general appeared on Larry King's show to announce that people would be able to vote for the Elvis stamp they liked best, and they did. (The young, sleek Elvis won.)

Just as R&B was stuck in a musical ghetto until Motown--Marvin, Smokey, Stevie and Diana--pulled it into mainstream America, country was stuck in a world of cowboys, steel guitars and the Grand Ole Opry. Not anymore. The new kids--Garth Brooks, Clint Black, George Strait, Trisha Yearwood, Mary-Chapin Carpenter and Vince Gill--took traditional country subjects and broadened and modernized them. The result was an explosion in ticket sales and in spots on the charts. Brooks had five LPs on the charts at the end of 1992 for an incredible combination of more than 350 weeks. Even Achy Breaky Billy Ray Cyrus had legs. His album Some Gave All went platinum five times over. Further proof of country's newfound mainstream acceptance are its young women, who have put the wigs and sequins on hold to tackle love and loss in a more contemporary vein.

Contrary to the gloom-and-doom crowd, rock isn't dead or even bleeding. Rock is annoying, challenging, loud and occasionally boorish, but in 1992 it went a long way toward electing a new president. Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop was President Bill Clinton's campaign theme (his Elvismania, by the way, is real). More important, Clinton took his case to MTV, faced a tough audience and prevailed. Is it a coincidence that first brother, Roger Clinton, reportedly got a record contract and sang a Sam Cooke ballad at the MTV Inaugural Ball? We may not see a White House rap concert, but we're not ruling it out. It was also a solid year for the perennials--Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton. In fact, Clapton's Unplugged LP (taken from the MTV series) was a major hit, and he earned nine Grammy nominations. R.E.M., U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Spin Doctors, Genesis and Bon Jovi all kept the concert halls and the charts rocking.

If we overpredicted jazz's mainstream success, it's because we're wowed by the Marsalis brothers, Wynton and Branford, and we've kept a close eye on Harry Connick, Jr.'s hold on concert audiences. But the truth seems more modest. Sade, Kenny G, Tony Bennett and Shirley Horn pushed through, but no revolution is in sight.

Other highlights in 1992: no more free sampling (rappers will have to pay for what they borrow), no more CD long boxes (who needed them, anyway?), no more stiffing Fifties acts out of their original royalty payments (Frankie Lymon's Teen Agers may soon get theirs) and no more Judds' farewell concerts. Things that music lovers ought to own: Motown's Hitsville 1959-1971 CDs; the video of Bob Dylan's payper-view 30th anniversary tribute concert (a.k.a. Bobfest), laced with a few gems from old friend--Lou Reed, Johnny Cash and Neil Youngmdash;and new ones--Eddie Vedder, Chrissie Hynde and Shawn Colvin; k.d. lang's latest incarnation, Ingenue; anything by Stevie Ray Vaughan and the memorable boxed set by the great Bob Marley, Songs of Freedom.

The past year closed the songbook on Roy Acuff, Mary Wells, Eddie Kendricks, Jeff Porcaro, Roger Miller and the great bluesmen Albert King and Willie Dixon. Death took them but not the music. Finally, every year we check out where the music has been and where it's going. Well, it's going strong. It's slammin', jammin', rockin', rollin'. It's even wearing its clothes backward, like Kris Kross. It's getting older and getting younger. Keith Richards turns 50, Tevin Campbell is 16. It's only rock and roll, but we like it ... still.