I mean, this is really embarrassing.

I’m afraid that I miscalculated on my budget, and couldn’t afford an actual “grand opening” poster. A big shout-out to all of the gang at Sam’s X-Press Car Wash And Detailing for allowing me to repurpose their signage.

Hope to see you all on our off-day tomorrow, as we cut the ribbon at tnocs.com .

One of my younger brothers and I are, in many ways, complete opposites: in physical appearance; demeanor; and, yes, music. Growing up, we did not talk much to one another. There was an unspoken understanding that I was who I was and he was who he was. I did my thing. He did his thing.
But there were two songs where we found common ground. The first was this track. The other is a Madonna song that, I believe, will appear shortly.
Hearing this song again brings me back to those rare moments when my brother would be sketching or painting–and I would be playing video games–and one of us would say “turn it up” and they other would smile and nod.
9/10 for me.

And Now For Something Completely Different: By this point, Britpop was in full effect, with new classics being released nearly every week: Elastica’s “Connection,” Edwyn Collins’ “A Girl Like You,” and the song I want to profile today, Supergrass’s debut single “Caught by the Fuzz.” It’s only 2 minutes and 20 seconds, but it manages to pack in a whole gripping story of a drug arrest, great harmonies, and some crunchy, chugging guitar bits.
https://youtu.be/uJ-mpul94eo

The 792nd Hot 100 Number One
“On Bended Knee” – Boyz II Men
342 #1s away from March 11th, 2022

https://youtu.be/jC9AUR-iTo0

‘On Bended Knee’ was another number one that had its run in nonconsecutive weeks. It was #1 for 2 weeks Dec 3rd and Dec 10th, then the next number one took over for two weeks and then On Bended Knee returned to #1 for an additional 4 weeks Dec 31st, Jan 7th, Jan 14th and Jan 21st.

This will cover only the six week that it was #1 and the remaining two weeks of 1994 will be covered Monday.

40 songs peaked during the six weeks “On Bended Knee” was #1
33 on the Hot 100, 7 Airplay-Only songs

38 are on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Thq4OERfcY1MiP9XOnWvu?si=991bc1e0edd34540

WEEK 1
Songs that peaked on the Hot 100 the week ending December 3rd, 1994
#1 On Bended Knee – Boyz II Men
#16 I’ll Stand By You – Pretenders
#20 Living In Danger – Ace Of Base
#62 Get Up On It – Keith Sweat (Featuring Kut Klose)
#71 I Can Go Deep (From “A Low Down Dirty Shame”) – Silk
#84 I See It Now – Tracy Lawrence

AIRPLAY-ONLY (Radio Monitor Chart)
#30 Landslide – Smashing Pumpkins
#45 Self Esteem – Offspring
#52 Sweet Jane – Cowboy Junkies

WEEK 2
Songs that peaked on the Hot 100 the week ending December 10th, 1994
#4 Always – Bon Jovi
#18 Practice What You Preach – Barry White
#29 Be Happy – Mary J. Blige
#37 Fa All Y’all – Da Brat

WEEK 3
Songs that peaked on the Hot 100 the week ending December 31st 1994
#6 I Wanna Be Down – Brandy
#48 Blind Man – Aerosmith

AIRPLAY-ONLY (Radio Monitor Chart)
#66 Rain King – Counting Crows

WEEK 4
Songs that peaked on the Hot 100 the week ending January 7th, 1995
#7 Before I Let You Go – BLACKstreet
#8 Tootsee Roll – 69 Boyz
#14 Short Dick Man – 20 Fingers Featuring Gillette
#27 New Age Girl (From “Dumb And Dumber”) – Deadeye Dick
#37 I Never Seen A Man Cry (aka I Seen A Man Die) – Scarface
#42 Do You See – Warren G
#55 Sympathy For The Devil (“Interview With The Vampire”) – Guns N’ Roses
#57 Black Coffee – Heavy D & The Boyz
#60 Pickup Man – Joe Diffie
#75 Redneck Stomp – Jeff Foxworthy*
#78 Till You Love Me – Reba McEntire
#91 The Santa Claus Boogie – The Tractors

AIRPLAY-ONLY (Radio Monitor Chart)
#38 I Alone – Live

WEEK 5
Songs that peaked on the Hot 100 the week ending January 14th, 1995
#58 Doll Parts – Hole
#73 Tic Toc – Lords Of The Underground
#78 Biological Didn’t Bother – Shaquille O’Neal
#97 Whoomp! (There It Went) – Tag Team, Mickey, Minnie, And Goofy*

AIRPLAY-ONLY (Radio Monitor Chart)
#53 Seether – Veruca Salt
#54 Fell On Black Days – Soundgarden

WEEK 6
Songs that peaked on the Hot 100 the week ending January 21st, 1995
#8 I’m The Only One – Melissa Etheridge
#28 I Belong To You/How Many Ways – Toni Braxton
#67 (I Could Only) Whisper Your Name – Harry Connick, Jr.
#71 Don’t Say Goodbye Girl – Tevin Campbell
#92 Down 4 Whateva (From “A Low Down Dirty Shame”) – Nuttin’ Nyce

My Picks:
WEEK 1 – Ace of Base/all three of the airplay songs are great but Cowboy Junkies if it had charted
WEEK 2 – Bon Jovi
WEEK 3 – Brandy
WEEK 4 – Guns ‘n Roses/Live it it had charted
WEEK 5 – Hole/Veruca Salt if it charted
WEEK 6 – Harry Connick Jr.

GLOBAL SUCCESS

On Bended Knee – Boyz II Men: #1 for 9 weeks combined
#1 for 6 weeks in the US
#1 for 3 weeks in Canada
#4 in New Zealand
#7 in Australia
#20 in the UK
#24 in Ireland

Spreadsheet link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qq1zr12uhqj2YTxPC3xy-nmwKkrZHe19vVCyClqaoXM/edit?usp=sharing

January 1995- how is this possible?

I like “Creep” a lot. As several people have commented, it really sounds modern; and it’s interesting and it nags at your brain and it’s a little unsettling. I don’t have remotely as many direct associations with 90s #1s as with those of the 70s and 80s, but this one does happen to bring back a particularly memorable New Year’s Eve.  

We had been living since mid-1991 on the first floor of a two-family house downtown. I loved that apartment. It had a lovely sunny front room full of windows, a green-and-black-tiled bath with green fixtures and lily-pond wallpaper, a little kitchen with floor-to-ceiling cream-painted cabinets and a metal-edged red counter, open to the dining room with its stained-glass window.  And it was just a few blocks from my grandmother’s house, with the Hot Grill (iconic Texas Weiner joint) and a park right down the block.

The problem was the landlord. I liked him in the beginning; he was an elderly Austrian with a thick accent, and at first he’d leave us homemade jam or pickles, and I’d reciprocate with cake and cookies. But he was lonely and needed to talk. He’d shuffle downstairs, knock on the door, and whoever answered it was stuck there for a good half hour or more. I didn’t love it- Kevin would get into things as I stood there; once he dumped out my Chanel No 5- but it absolutely infuriated my husband, and once they began to argue over repairs Mr. J insisted on doing himself at a snail’s pace, things deteriorated. I gave birth to our daughter in August ’94. Right after Thanksgiving, Mr. J announced that his daughter wanted the apartment, so we’d have to move out by the first of the year.  

At this point, nothing nearby was close to our price range. I recall a couple of weeks of driving around outer counties, looking at apartments in what seemed like the middle of nowhere and crying. Then my grandmother called to tell me she’d seen an apartment-for-rent sign in the window of the paint store around the block from us. I still think about that, how she didn’t want us to go too far.  

On December 31, my cousin Glen’s wife’s brother-in-law came with a truck and some guys and they moved as much of our stuff as would fit. Then we moved the rest, my father and my sister’s fiance and H and me, driving back and forth and back and forth, climbing up and down and up and down the stairs above the paint store. When we got back to my parents’ house to spend the night they ordered Chinese food, which H and I ate in the foldout bed in the back room with the baby. We were asleep long before the ball dropped.  

With all that getting in and out of cars there were a lot of songs I didn’t particularly like or know, but I did know and like “Creep,” and when I think of that long day I think of it, and “Fade into You” and “Doll Parts” and “I’ll Stand by You,” and Biggie’s “Juicy” and Mary J’s “Happy” and Mellencamp’s “Wild Night” cover with Me’Shell Ndegeocello, and yes, Hootie. The new apartment would present its own problems, but I will never be sorry we took it, given what was coming.

On the Alternative Side…
Let’s discuss the #1 song(s) from the Billboard Alternative chart.  I’ll align these to Tom’s Hot 100 #1 column as best I can.  

Song:  About A Girl
Artist(s):  Nirvana
Time at #1:  One week 

We’ve covered Nirvana before, so let’s jump right in to their next Modern Rock #1…

This is one of those “we have to go backwards to go forwards” deals… work with me…

Kurt Cobain wrote “About a Girl” in 1988, after spending an afternoon repeatedly listening to “Meet the Beatles!”.  The “girl” in the title was Tracy Marander, Cobain’s then-girlfriend, with whom he lived at the time. The lyrics address the couple’s fractured relationship, caused by Cobain’s refusal to get a job or share in the cleaning duties.  It was recorded for Nirvana’s debut album, “Bleach” in 1989.

Cobain had been trying to conceal his pop songwriting and was apprehensive the song risked alienating the band’s fan base. He explained:  “Even to put ‘About a Girl’ on Bleach was a risk. I was heavily into pop, I really liked R.E.M., and I was into all kinds of old ‘60s stuff. But there was a lot of pressure within that social scene, the underground – like the kind of thing you get in high school. And to put a jangly R.E.M. type of pop song on a grunge record, in that scene, was risky.”

Skip forward to November 1993, and Nirvana is recording a performance for the television program “MTV Unplugged”. They broke convention for the show by choosing not to play just their best known songs. Instead, they performed several covers, and this (relatively) obscure song.

On March 4th 1994, Cobain was rushed to the hospital after an overdose.  He was persuaded to enter drug rehabilitation. After less than a week, he left the facility without informing anyone.  One week later, on April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound.

Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl started preparing material for a comprehensive live album, which would include songs from the Unplugged session, but they were soon emotionally overwhelmed, so the label just released the entire Unplugged session as its own album.

So, the MTV Unplugged album became the closest thing fans had to a funeral service – we were looking for something to hold on to after Cobain left us in such a sad, hopeless fashion.  The Unplugged version of “About A Girl” reminds me of Cobain’s potential to make music that wasn’t always so miserable, that, maybe, could break free of some of the more aggressive aspects of Grunge culture.  It was poppy, light and, dare I say it, fun.  How it charted is besides the point – this wasn’t released for that reason.  It’s a fond reminder of unknown potential, and a way to start to say goodbye.  Nirvana will be back one last time, in eight virtual years.  10/10

https://youtu.be/AhcttcXcRYY

Paraphrasing Tom  “I’ll Make Love to You” was an almost anachronistic title in the time of “Knockin’ Boots” but in a way “I’ll Make Love to You On Bended Knee” might be more oral specific than the Number Ones has ever seen, even if it took two songs to do it.

Meanwhile, at the catching up part of town . . .
Hole released Live Through This.
Courtney was angry and she had every right to be, they accused her of taking drugs and took her daughter away, they accused her of using Cobain to ghost write the band’s album and when it finally came out, it was 4 days after Cobain’s body had been found. Her bassist, Kristen Pfaff, died two months later. She was also angry at the double morals that permeated music: men could be transgressive, unruly, and they would be admired for that, any woman that fell out of line automatically was called shrill, neurotic, a troublemaker, she could not be a mother and an artist at the same time and yet she became both. She was whispering into our ears and when she got our attention, she screamed her lungs out to make her point. She was used to the male gaze, having worked as a stripper, and turned that to her advantage with her kinder dresses, her disheveled hair. She also paved the way for the female musicians that would follow with her uncompromising vision. She had the last laugh for a while. 
 (Violet, Miss World, Doll Parts and Rock Star are all 10s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS1Ckczz0LQ

While “On Bended Knee” was at #1, I fell in love for the first time.  It wasn’t a “forever love” like Bix and GBear’s, but it was the first time I was head over heels, and the feeling was reciprocated.  
 
It also fucked me up for about 10 years after.
 
On our first date I took her to see Les Miserables on Broadway, ate dinner, then walked to Times Square where I kissed her for the first time.  On our second date, we went to South Street, then wandered into a music shop and perused the CD bins…but not Tower Records – there were too many recent memories of drunken purchasing.
 
On our third date (December 22nd), I had a Christmas present for her, and after she got in the car, I handed a wrapped CD and a rose to her.  “Thank God”, she said, as she reached into her purse and pulled out a CD.
 
We’d both paid attention to each other’s interests when looking thru that CD bin.
 
Because of my difficult relationship with my family growing up (TL;DR:  mother joined a cult and left when I was 8, and my father taught me at an early age not to trust women, as all they could do is break your heart), I hadn’t been able to become vulnerable in a relationship, which I think is a key component to love:  to be able to share all of one’s faults, and still love and be loved.
 
And here I was, under Monday’s #1 song, in love.  Third date. 
 
Just one problem, and maybe the reason I was able to commit as well as I did:
 
I was leaving.
 
During the previous summer of debauchery, I had taken a moment and driven to an interview for an overseas teaching position.  I was told I was a good candidate, and was invited to the job fair held in Boston in February.  On our second date, I told her I was leaving the country in the fall, and I never wavered from that, though looking back I should have.  But again, maybe knowing I was the one leaving was WHY I could commit the way I did.  After all, I was the one who would, as usual, break hearts.
 
Her father hated me, as he should have.  One, I was leaving his daughter, so how could I possibly care for her the way she cared for me?  Second, I didn’t feel I was worthy, that a parent couldn’t ever believe me to be “good enough” for a woman, so I treated him like shit.  
 
So many issues…
 
In February I received my posting:  Damascus, Syria.  We dated until the day I left – August 4, 1995.  She never wavered in her affection for me, even after all of it, but it wasn’t until 1997 when I came home that I realized what I had lost, and I tried to win her back…and failed.

To my relatively untrained ear, “Creep” is the most contemporary-sounding #1 that Tom has covered thus far…

It’s starting to feel as if we’re no longer in the (virtual) distant past, especially if you’re as old as I am, and the mid-90s seem to be not that terribly long ago…

Maybe Tom Hanks said she had “dead eyes.”