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Red Hot Chili Peppers’Blood Sugar Sex Magik Turns 30: Artists Reflect on Its Legacy
“There’s the thing with the Chili Peppers: We put socks on our dicks, and we’re never going to outrun it,” Flea told GQ in 2019. “People are always going to think of that. I feel that ultimately the measure of art that we or I created, as good as it is, over time will stand for what it is. The core essence of it, the cerebral part of it — the emotional, spiritual, and physical — are things that will always survive.” With the Red Hot Chili Peppers, there’s always been that delicate balance of junk-swinging funk-rock jock and peace-promoting psychedelic muso. And no album better represents that symbiosis than the group’s 1991 blockbuster, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. While it may be forever remembered for a handful of massive singles (the pulverizing “Give It Away,” the pensive “Under the Bridge”)...
September 24, 1991: A Banner Release Day for Musical Masterworks
I walked into Rhino Records in New Paltz, New York on September 24, 1991, with one mission in mind: copping the new cassette by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. After months of reading about the band working on the follow-up to their 1989 breakthrough LP Mother’s Milk with Rick Rubin, the time was finally nigh. Heading into the store after school, the metallic gray Rock and Roll Over-evoking cover art for Blood Sugar Sex Magick was staring right at me from the new releases shelf. I snatched up the cassette, along with Ceremony, the new Cult album, which had come out that day as well. I lumbered over to the counter and was greeted with a side-eye from the store manager as he surveyed my purchase choices. “So you’re not getting Nevermind?” he asked. “Huh?” “The new Nirvana album,” he s...
41 Artists Reflect on Nirvana’s Nevermind Turning 30
The world changed 30 years ago today. Though it took a few months before the proverbial train left the station, the rumblings from the underground completely blew up when college rock and punk blended to form alternative rock, with Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl serving as the conductors. Nevermind’s legacy is firmly and safely entrenched in music history. It’s been discussed so many times before, but here’s the CliffsNotes version. All of these years later — even though Nirvana burned out instead of fading away — Nevermind continues to resonate. Cobain’s powerful lyrics are still influencing people of all generations (maybe not Boomers, but Gen X and beyond) and their musical tastes. It still serves as the gateway to rock for countless fans. When SPIN spoke with Nov...
30 Years Ago, Nirvana Unleashed the Game-Changing Nevermind
Heavy Consequence contributor Greg Prato is the author of several rock books, including 2009’s Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music. Here, Prato looks back at Nirvana’s groundbreaking 1991 album Nevermind on its 30th anniversary, sharing quotes from his aforementioned book. Few albums have played a major role in changing the direction of rock music. Not only did Nirvana’s Nevermind do just that, it also started a cultural revolution. Upon the release of Nevermind on September 24th, 1991, it seemed like almost immediately, hair metal was pronounced dead, as radio and MTV suddenly embraced likeminded bands hailing from the Seattle area. Beyond the music, young people began adopting “grunge fashion,” while also embracing the more progressive and introspective thinking ...
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine on Collaborating on A Beginner’s Mind: There Was “Mutual Trust and Respect”
For fans of both Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, it might come as a shock that it’s taken them until 2021 to put out a collaborative album together. The two prolific indie-folk titans have been associates of sorts since at least 2017, when Stevens proposed releasing De Augustine’s second LP, Swim Inside the Moon, on his own Asthmatic Kitty Records. De Augustine, whose featherlight vocals and gently-plucked acoustic guitars echo those found on Stevens’ beloved 2015 album Carrie & Lowell, is such an on-the-nose disciple of Stevens’ that it was only natural for the duo to pair up on their new album, A Beginner’s Mind (September 24th). With each track inspired by a film they watched while holed up at an upstate New York cabin together — ranging from Bring It On ...
The Fugees Shine at NYC Reunion Show, Despite Ms. Lauryn Hill’s Chronic Lateness
There was obvious excitement when The Fugees announced their long-awaited reunion earlier this week, along with understandable doubt that we would finally see it happen with our own eyes. Yet we did, at a secret pop-up show on Wednesday night (September 22nd) atop New York City’s Pier 17, as the three members of the Fugees (Yes, Lauryn Hill included) put aside their differences to celebrate one of the greatest albums of all time, The Score. It was a 25-year reunion, and with the time it took for them to arrive on stage, it was truly as if Ms. Lauryn Hill was time-traveling from the year 1997. Never one to be fashionably early, Hill, along with bandmates Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel, sauntered on stage almost four hours past the scheduled start time. Advertisement Related Video It was clear ...
MMA Prodigy Christian Lee Discusses What It Takes to Become the ONE Lightweight World Champion
In just under a day to go, ONE Championship will be holding its ONE: REVOLUTION event which will see three main event world title fights. On top of Bantamweight Kickboxing World Champion Capitan Petchyindee Academy defending his title against French-Algerian veteran Mehdi “Diamond Heart” Zatout, and Strawweight World Champion Joshua “The Passion” Pacio defending his strap against the No.1-ranked Yosuke “The Ninja” Saruta in a trilogy fight, Christian Lee will face his toughest test to date — No.3-ranked lightweight contender Ok Rae Yoon. Born into a family of martial artists, Lee sits in the middle of three siblings that are currently signed to ONE Championship — His older sister Angela (the youngest person to ever win a world title in MMA) is just 25 while his younger sister, Victoria, si...
Weezer’s Pinkerton at 25: The Band Has Moved On, Though We Never May Do the Same
Weezer isn’t giving interviews about Pinkerton for its 25th anniversary. There’s no big press push promoting a deluxe vinyl reissue of the album celebrating its quarter-century of existence. (As of press time, you can’t even buy Pinkerton from the band’s merch store, though it is readily available elsewhere.) This relative silence about an auspicious milestone (which will officially occur on September 24th) for one of their best-loved and most influential records might seem a little odd. But maybe Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, whose intensely personal songwriting drives this 10-song, 34-minute record, doesn’t feel like there’s any advantage to speaking further on the subject. Clearly, the band has moved on; though they took a five-year break after Pinkerton that was, at the time, commonly ...
Conor McGregor’s Viral off-Target First Pitch Draws Comparisons To Worst in MLB History
Conor McGregor can throw a mean left hook, but when it comes down to sending out the first pitch at an MLB game, the UFC star might have been a little off-target. The MMA fighter was honored with the opportunity to throw the ceremonial first pitch at the Chicago Cubs‘ game earlier this week. However, his attempt sent the ball sailing high and right into the stands. The outcome immediately became an internet moment, with UFC fighter Justin Gaethje even taking to Twitter to write, “I cannot stop laughing at this. Every MMA fighter that has represented us doing this has looked terrible but this takes the cake.” In a post-throw interview, McGregor admitted that the throw was not his best work, but he did not seem too torn about it. McGregor summarized his particularly bad efforts when asked ab...
On A Beginner’s Mind, Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine Use Fiction as a Guide and a Salve
Sufjan Stevens is nothing if not prolific. The experimental artist has released a ton of albums over the past few years, each one a unique effort at navigating his emotional state and the state of the world at large. Almost one year ago to the date, Stevens released The Ascension, an expansion exploration into love, death, apocalypse and nationality. The Ascension was preceded by Aporia, a collaborative album with Stevens’s stepfather, Lowell Brams. Earlier this year, Stevens unleashed Convocations, a five-volume instrumental exploration of grief in the wake of the death of his biological father. We’ll do the math for you: A Beginner’s Mind marks Stevens’s fourth album in two years. This time, he’s collaborated with Californian Angelo De Augustine, who has an indie-folk style complementary...
Whatever Happened To: The Polyphonic Spree
We’re reviving our Whatever Happened To series after a decade-long break. To kick things off, we’re going on a search to find The Polyphonic Spree, a choral rock band from Dallas formed by Tim DeLaughter in 2000. Nirvana changed music in the early ’90s with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and their landmark 1991 album Nevermind. Dozens of unlikely underground bands (Butthole Surfers, anyone?) leapt into the mainstream as grunge and punk became the dominant rock ‘n’ roll trends. After the death of frontman Kurt Cobain, Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl hunkered down and formed a solo project he dubbed Foo Fighters. A quarter-century or so later, the Foos are now the biggest (and most consistently awesome) rock band in the world, thanks to a catalog overflowing with radio hits. However, Nirvana wasn’t th...
Blast Rites: Unto Others’ Enormous Goth-Metal Gives Them Strength to Carry On
September saw two high-profile metal releases from Iron Maiden and Carcass, plus a reissue of Metallica’s “Black Album,” one of the best-selling metal records in history, complete with a tribute so ill-conceived it’ll make you want to invest in oil companies to hasten our demise. But Blast Rites is more about legends in the making, the groups should have their own dubious tribute albums in about 30 years’ time. (That is, if metal still exists 30 years from now.) Portland’s Unto Others already had a sound poised to elevate them from the underground, a melodic machine driven by both NWOBHM’s raw-hewn leads and Sisters of Mercy’s more rocking edges. Vocalist Gabriel Franco practically slips into Andrew Eldritch’s slithering charisma when he dons shades, and guitarist Sebastian Silva wou...
