The branch never fell, the football never landed

This video for the song Tribal Dance from the 1991 album No Limit was released in 1993. It is the most famous 2 Unlimited song. The cheesy shit that goes on in the video just kills me now. But at the time, there was very little in the video that kept me from staring at Anita Doth's Wild Pair.
Ray Slijngaard's haircut... Damn, that shit is funny.
Temperature: Zero, Energy: Maximum, Video: Dangerously Cheesy
      
EG (Environmental Gaand): Riding the crest of their success in India, 2 Unlimited released Real Things in late 1993. The casette also said something about Coke being the Real Thing, so it was two birds with one stone. Coke was, at the time, all set to take over Indian markets (It wasn't until fall of 1994 that the other soda companies really realized how easy it would be). The first video from this album was the title track, Real Thing,  it featured a bunch of wierdos with pseudo-futuristic getups, including this one guy in a silver thong. We weren't familiar with the term thong, so we just made up our own term for it. We called it EG, the environmental gaand, it was protecting the environment by not displaying his crack.

Another video from the same album, was No One.

Although we had heard of the band, the first AC/DC video we saw was for Big Gun, from the soundtrack of the most awesome Arnie flick, Last Action Hero. Arnie appears in this video. Now THAT's what I call action. Hmph! Big Gun is a really cool song.

1992 was the year that a Swedish pop group Tech Noir (named for a dance club in Terminator), consisting of the family Berggren (Jen, Malinn and Jonas) and friend Ulf Ekberg, released their first album as Ace of Base. From Hyderabad Blues: "What is that song? Aces, Bases...?" "Mommy! Ace of Base!!"
 
I LOVE Ace of Base. I love all their videos from All That She Wants to Cruel Summer. I was in IISc by the time Flowers came out, and there was very little I could do to actually watch any of the other videos. Anyway, here's a list of videos in the order we first saw them.

Happy Nation: (1992-3)
All That She Wants - Produced by Denniz Pop, the same guy who helped out another Swedish native, Dr. Alban during the same period. Sooo many Hindi (not to mention South Indian) songs have sampled a mixture of this song and The Sign, it's not even funny. Then again, it never is, because the same copycat assholes go and pretend they did real work.
Happy Nation - The title track from their debut album.
Wheel of Fortune   - While I retain this video mainly for nostalgic purposes, this is my favourite AoB song. You might be fuel. This song was actually the first AoB track ever released, but never made it big until All That She Wants came out.
Trivia: Dimension of Depth is, as far as I know, the only AoB instrumental track. The whole album is cool, listen to other tracks. If you're in India, also listen to Happy Nation (U. S. Version).

The Sign (Happy Nation U.S. Version) (1994)
The Sign  - 1993 had turned into 1994, and the end of high school was near when this song came out, giving me a little bit of hope when I looked to the future.
Don't Turn Around - Summer 1994, those meaningless fruitless trips to different colleges in Madras in the hopes of actually being able to study without leaving home. Almost every person in our group was still around. A cover of an Aswad song, as I found out while in college. What was that show Sofia usedto host that consisted of listing cover versions? That was where.
Living In Danger  - Oh yeah, by the time this song came out, I was in Bombay, getting used to a new college and new friends. This video has the same actress who was in All That She Wants.

The Bridge (1995-6)
Beautiful Life - A lot of energy in this song. I was not yet tired of Happy Nation (U. S. Version), and here was another album to look forward to. I ran out and bought the first copy I could find in that stupid store outside the Matunga Central Railway Station.
Lucky Love - Another one of my favourite AoB tracks.
Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry - While watching this song on the Asian Top Twenty Countdown, some food on a plate, I heard Nonie say that AoB were giving up music in favour of setting up a bunch of suntan-beds or something. WTF?? I was devastated. I had to wait two years for the next album to come out. By then, I was distracted by other things.

Flowers (1998)
Life Is A Flower   - I was thrilled when this song came out, sadly it was just as I was adjusting to life in IISc without as much television (but a lot more internet!)
Cruel Summer - The very last AoB video I saw more than a couple of times while I was in India. I like the remix version (see video) more than the one they came out with originally. That one sounded too much like the original Banarama track.

If you were in India in 1993 and you didn't hear the name Apache Indian, then at least you must have heard someone sing "Me wan GAAAL!!! From Jullunder city!". No? What about the title track from Anaida's Love Today Hai Nahin Aasan? Well, surely you remember Love Rap from Krantiveer? NO? Who the fuck ARE you??? All of a sudden, Khaled's Didi was no longer what we listened to, and as the summer of 1993 drew near, Steven Kapoor a.k.a. Apache Indian, a UKBCD, achieved nationwide popularity thanks to the first video, Arranged Marriage, from his album, No Reservations. Everyone wanted to be able to sing this song. Needless to say, we did too. The casette came with lyrics, so it was slightly easier for us. Which would explain why I sang this song practically any chance I got. Chok There was the second release. No video for it on YouTube, unfortunately. Rumour is that Apache actually thought "Jullunder" was the capital of India. I don't know if that is true, but I DO know that he mentions Khalistan in Chok There ("Thema bawl from Khalistaniya, everyone from Sri Lanka") I had two versions of this casette - on one of them, the Khalistan verse was absent!! Maybe it slipped through the first cut or something? Anyway, Boom Shack-A-Lak from 1994's Nuff Vibes EP was another big hit, and was featured in a few Hollywood movies, the most famous of them being Dumb And Dumber. It is the first song in the movie, in the very first scene as Jim Carrey pulls away from an Austrian girl in his limo. It was followed by Caste System, and so fades away Apache before he returned in 1995 with Make Way For The Indian, featuring the title track and the more famous Ragamuffin Girl featuring Frankie Paul.

From 3 Years, 5 Months, And 2 Days In The Life Of... I give to you Mr. Wendal and Tennessee. This used to be one of Baba Sehgal's favourite groups. In 1994, Zingalamaduni featured my favourite AD song, Ease My Mind.

Conscience was released in 1993, and it featured the song, You've Got Me Thinking. I love the repeating thing in the back. Another song that I like from this album (although I had never seen the video until just now) is Sweet Harmony. It has to do not only with the vocals but also the strong feeling that it is 1993 once again.

Of course, No Rain. We knew nothing about this band except for this one great song. In some ways, we have a little Bee Girl inside ourself, wanting acceptance, and will one day find a wierd garden full of *other* circus freak Bee People who will dance with us. Oh for more hippie dreams.

Our first brush with David Bowie was from the 1993 album with the cool title, Black Tie, White Noise. One of my all-time favourites, here's Jump, They Say.

That's What Love Can Do is one of the earliest videos I remember watching on MTV. It was also on Dial MTV a lot. The curly-haired brunette reminded me of someone I knew.

This kind of reggae, I like. No Sean Paul for me, thanks. 1993 saw CD&P release Tease Me/Murder She Wrote/All She Wrote (whatever you want to call that album).  The first video I saw was Tease Me, followed by the really cool cover of Twist And Shout featuring Jack Radics and The Taxi Gang. I don't think I ever saw the Murder She Wrote video. The next I saw of CD&P was when they came out with the video to Gal Wine which, sadly, seems to be missing from YouTube.

Duophonic had two videos. This is the more famous one, Would I Lie To You? I used to like this song.

The show Best of The West on DD used to show videos in 1991-2, and I Wanna Sex You Up from CMB was one of them. Owing to certain content, we had to watch it muted at the time, which was rectified once we had MTV at home in 1993.

"Everybody Else Is Doing It" is what the album credit on MTV said for the first video we saw, Linger. This was the only Cranberries video we saw in 1993. Dreams came around in 1994, a while after I moved to Bombay. MTV/Channel [V] finally got the album name right: Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? By then, The Cranberries had already performed a bunch of famous live shows in the US, and the live video for Zombie came out in mid-1994. I remember that during the Christmas 1994/5 episode of Asian Top Twenty Countdown,  Mariah Carey's cover of All I Want For Christmas Is You was kicked off the number one spot by the latest Cranberries release, Ode To My Family from the new album No Need To Argue. I can't decide which of the two - Everybody or No Need - I like better. Well, alright, the latter album has Zombie, I Can't Be With You, and my all-time favourite video for a Cranberries song, Ridiculous Thoughts (Here's the director's cut, that according to someone on YouTube, the band rejected) Much like a young Elijah Wood in the video, I was apt to walk around the bedroom with my hands cupped around the earphones, yelling "Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!".. To The Faithful Departed came out in 1996, featuring Salvation, When You're Gone, and Free To Decide. Although I couldn't pay very much attention to 1999's Bury The Hatchet, which featured the videos to Promises and Animal Instinct, among others that I might have seen once or twice, I don't know if I'm out of my Cranberries (or, as a neighbour of ours wrote on his mixtape, Canaberries) phase yet.

The name of the video is I Believe, from the album, Jewel. In her case, it wasn't difficult to tell that she was half of Shakespeare's Sister. Same makeup and all that. I still like this song. This is from spring or early summer 1994, I remember watching the video at home before our final exam in April/May. I ALSO recall singing this song one day at Anna University, while we were applying for the DOTE test. A fat lot of good that did.

One of my all-time favourite songs is The Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat), from the album Reachin - A New Refutation of Time and Space. The horn sample is from some famous jazz song, I forget which. This is SUCH a cool song. I mean, come on. We be to rap what key be to lock???

The Wedding Album (so called because of the pictures of married people on the cover) is the one of the best albums of the 90s, containing two of my favourite songs of all time, Ordinary World and Come Undone. I also like the songs Too Much Information and Breath After Breath, the latter is especially cool because of the ?Portuguese? vocals. I haven't seen this video in a while!

Walthamstow was released in 1993, and I actually liked all the songs that had videos. In order: Deep, Slow It Down, West End Girls, and It's Alright. YouTube used to have the video to West End Girls, a Pet Shop Boys cover, but I can't seem to find it anymore. Oh well. It's Alright sound familiar to you? Maybe that's because there is a hilarious cover of that song in Karan Arjun that goes, "Jai Kaali! Jai Kaali! Naash dusht ka karne waali!"

We had already seen the video for Fairground Attractions' Perfect a few times on Classic MTV, but never made the connection when, during the transition period, someone named Eddi Reader released a self-titled solo album with a video for the song, Patience of Angels. This is another one of my favourites from the period.

Another one of the songs from the transition period in summer 1994 was Good Times, by Edie Brickell featuring Barry White. We had never heard of her before this video, and I only found out in 2001-2002 that Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians sang the original version of Tin Tin Out and Emma Bunton a.k.a. Baby Spice's 1997 track, What I Am. Good Times, in retrospect, is a great song. At the time, it was just getting in the way of other videos for us, heh heh.

Enigma II: The Cross of Changes was their follow-up to Enigma: MCMXC AD. It was early 1994 when the first video, Return To Innocence, was released. A cool song, and a really cool video. Then came The Eyes of Truth, which was, among other things, used in the previews for The Matrix. I forget the order in which the other songs came out, but here's 1993's Carly's Song re-released as Age of Innocence, and Out From The Deep. A really funny cover of Carly's Song is the Southie and Hindi version in the Southie/Hindi ripoff of 1993's The Fugitive, starring Nagarjun. The Hindi version, Criminal, features it as Tum Mile. This song not only copies from Enigma, it also uses Every Breath You Take, which is what makes it absolutely comical. No, really, this is very romantic.

Pornograffiti, the second Extreme album, has a name that is hard to forget. It of course features the crowd favourite, More Than Words, but my favourite song and video is Hole Hearted (refer Bart Simpson, teenagers... like fish in a barrel) Erik likes this song too, and we have tried on numerous occasions to reproduce it (unsuccessfully). It gives me STRONG memories of 1993. Even though the album was released in 1990, and the video is from probably from 1992, I only started seeing it on TV in late 1993, meaning it was being re-released or something.

Dreams from 1993's Find Your Way.

Bart Simpson is right when he says, "Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel". Pick any pop song, it will probably sound like the singer is actually talking about your problems. In 1993, the Blossoms' album New Miserable Experience came out. While the Americans probably like Hey Jealousy better, my favourite track from the album is Found Out About You. Gin Blossoms went on to perform two more of my favourites in 1995/6, Till I Hear From You and Follow You Down.

In 1993, George Michael performed with Queen and Liza Stansfield at Wembley, and the result was the Five Live EP, which among other things introduced us to the term EP. The only video from this album that didn't consist of live footage was the really slick Killer/Papa Was A Rolling Stone, which introduced us to the concept of song names with STROKES in them. Another track from this album that I really like is Somebody To Love. The find.... me.... somebody to love part is the best part, with audience participation!

Inner Circle released Bad To The Bone, featuring Bad Boys, the theme to Cops, in 1992. The most memorable track from this album is of course, Sweat (A La La La Long). No one in my class, male or female, seemed to be embarassed by the fact that the chorus was referring to intercourse. Instead, we all concentrated on her big brown eeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyeeeeees (looking in your big brown eyes). Another song from this album that I like is Wrapped Up In Your Love, the video for which is sadly missing from YouTube.

Full Moon, Dirty Hearts came out in 1993. The song Make Your Peace is one of my favourite INXS songs (but I have to say that it takes a backseat to What You Need and Beautiful Girl). It has a really cool video, so go watch it. Other songs from this album: The Gift and Please (You've Got That), a duet with Ray Charles.

Like a lot of other artists, I had never heard of Tom Jones before 1993, so The Lead And How To Swing It was my first exposure to Tom Jones. If I Only Knew is one of my all-time favourites. Undivided, undecided !!!

I don't know if JX really had any other songs. I actually do like Sonofagun. A man that's on the run, is a dirty sonofagun. There, I just wrote down practically all the lyrics in the song. Still, I like it. While this video was released in 1994, for some reason, the same song (no changes at all) was back on the UK charts in 1996. The video was different, the woman was black instead of white. I must admit, the voice actually sounds black and not white. The second version of this video pops up as a related link when you click on the above link.

Ha ha ha. We only found out later that Joey Lawrence's self-titled album wasn't his first foray into the entertainment world, he used to play Mayim Bialik's brother on Blossom, Never mind that, here's the video for Nothin' My Love Can't Fix. Tell me that isn't cheesy. This is one of the FIRST videos I saw on MTV, simply because it was on Dial MTV early in the mornings with Nonie. Nothing was better than to have to see Nonie's face the minute I opened my eyes. Oh fair Nonie, where art thou? We'll make sure NO ONE ever gets gum in your hair.

I heard this song thanks to Vinay in the spring of 1993. The video is probably from 1992, though. From the album In The Blood, I present one of my all-time favourite tracks, mostly because of the memories associated with it, I've Been Thinking About You.

The Smiths lead singer went solo in the early 90s, and the album Vauxhall and I was released in 1994. The video for The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get was on during the wierd transition period between MTV and Channel [V]. During this period, I discovered quite a bit of alternative music, and this song is one of my favourites even though it doesn't really belong to the alternative category. It does belong to the period that seemed like there was nothing else but alternative music on this generically-named "Star Television Music Channel" we used to have. Seven years hence, I would discover the Morrissey poster and learn that the ball never really hit the ground.

From the 1994 movie Airheads, here's Born To Raise Hell. Whitfield Crane is from Ugly Kid Joe.

My number one, all-time New Order song was also my first exposure to this awesome band from the 80s. In 1993, New Order released Republic and came out with at least two videos, both of which were really cool. The first one is for my favourite song, Regret, which apparently was also featured as performed by the band on an episode of Baywatch (you can search YouTube for that yourself, I am not going to sully my memory of this beautiful song by putting up that shitty link on this page!) I love the lyrics, I love the music. This song also has one of my all-time favourite instrumental breaks. The D minor to A minor change does something to me.

The next video was for a song called Ruined In A Day. The video is really cool because who among you has actually thought about playing Dumb Charades with Buddhist monks??

Stand Above Me from Liberator is one of the first videos I ever saw, I think it must have been on the European Top Twenty Countdown. As usual, I was a fan of the line, "You gotta say you love me, but I know you don't".

I'd never really listened to any PSB until Very came out in 1993. My loss. Very is one of the best albums of the 1990s, and every song that I have seen the video for is on my all-time list. We start in 1993 with Can You Forgive Her?Teenagers... fish in a barrel), followed by Go West (a Village People cover) and I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing (which, over time, has become my favourite PSB track. Robbie Williams does a decent cover of this song which is on the Friends soundtrack somewhere.) In 1994 came Liberation, the video for which was also regularly used during station identification messages on the generic Star TV Music Channel and the early avatar of Channel [V]. Later in 1994, PSB released Disco2 which had a really cool remix of the Very track Yesterday When I Was Mad. Someone said it's fabulous, you're still around today.

The self-title album Porno For Pyros featured the video for Pets. At the time, we didn't pay much attention to the lyrics, the name Porno For Pyros is something you don't easily forget. I finally listened to what was actually being said around 2001, and it's hilarious. Apparently when the Martians land, we'll make great pets, we'll make great pets. In the mid 90s, there was another Porno For Pyros video I saw which was for a song from the movie Howard Stern's Private Parts. 

We barely remember the name of this song, my brother and I just know that the album was called Pork Soda and it featured a video (which turns out to be for the song Mr. Krinkle) with a Piggy on the Upright Bass. Later on, I heard another song from this album called My Name Is Mud. It also has a wierd video, with an actual reference to a pork-flavoured effervescent drink. Primus went on, of course, to write the South Park theme.

The best R.E.M. album, Automatic For The People, came out in 1992. Most of the videos were released in 1993, I think. Almost every song is on my all-time list: Drive, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, Everybody Hurts, Man On The Moon, Nightswimming, and Find The River. Out Of Time, the preceding album from 1991, is also one of the best of the 90s. Here are the videos: Radio Song, Losing My Religion, Low, and Shiny Happy People.

If you're Indian, you're probably thinking, here comes the It Must Have Been Love plug. Well, you're wrong. Even though I like that song, that's not the Roxette I'm going for. Granted, it was the first I heard of Roxette, it wasn't The Look, which I heard way later. On the Pretty Woman soundtrack, this song was also part of the Joyride album (the title song is one of my favourites)

Technically, Roxette didn't have an album released in 1993. But one of my all-time favourite Roxette songs was released that year. From the Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack, here's Almost Unreal. I was just about to call it a day and pack up my stuff and head to Bombay, when Crash! Boom! Bang! came out in 1994. Here's the first release, Sleeping In My Car, which was followed by the title track. The last video I remember from this album was Run To You, featuring footage of live performances. 1995 saw the release of their greatest hits compilation Don't Bore Us, Get To The Chorus. This is one of the best albums of the 1990s, I tell you hwat. It featured four new tracks: You Don't Understand Me, June Afternoon, She Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and I Don't Wanna Get Hurt, June Afternoon being the best of the lot.

Shaggy burst onto the music scene in 1993 with Oh! Carolina from Pure Pleasure. This kind of video and song were, at the time, very novel to us. For me, Shaggy's best tracks are the Mungo Jerry cover In The Summertime from 1995's Boombastic, followed by the title track from the same album (which I only started paying attention to after its appeareance in this commercial, I must confess), followed by Oh! Carolina.

Naming his debut album Twelve Inches of Snow was probably sad innuendo, but when we heard the song Informer, our first order of business was to try and see if we could sing it. When the album finally appeared on the New Music India racks, it was a week before my birthday in 1993. Remember when casettes came in those cheapass plastic cases, with the stupid transparent wrapping that would sometimes have the irritating stickets that wouldn't come off easy, and you would end up having a really shitty cover? This album came with a sticker that said, "Inside: Lyrics to Informer" The next thing I knew, I was buying myself a birthday present. I was at home in half an hour, it was around 7:30 PM on the 15th of July (or was it the 16th?). Around the time MC Shan started to rap, the stupid pujari started ringing the ghanti at the small temple facing our house. A couple of replays later, I was perplexed as to why the pujari seemed intent on invoking the Gods at the EXACT instant that MC Shan started singing about his dibbie dibbie gurl. And my retarded brain finally made the connection. Oh, the temple bells were ringing in the SONG, dumbass! Anyway, my brother and I learnt the lyrics to Informer, and regurgitated them every chance we got, which was all the fucking time. We went to interschool talent competitions and sang it, and random people came up to us (alright, it was one random chick) and asked for the lyrics to be written down. I was scribbling away, ignoring the pain in my wrist. My brother won first place in the light music competition at school that year, when he sang Informer. That's because he got there first, damn him. Not to be outdone, I belted out most of Girl, I've Been Hurt, and was awarded third prize. Mostly because my English teacher happened to be on the panel, and her head went up he instant I started singing in a totally different voice than my speaking voice. Hey, it was all I could do to prevent each and every one of the winners being some stupid classical music bitch or the other.
Anyway, I also came upon this really funny sketch from In Living Color, spoofing Informer.

Here We Go from 1993's Supermarket was also followed by a video about conserving water, with an appearance by Roger Moore (the then spokesperson for UNICEF) at the end. Down The Drain.

Even though the Kiwi group Supergroove's album Traction came out in mid to late 1994, I am putting this video for Sittin' Inside My Head on the list, for a lot of reasons. I think it is one of the best songs of the 90s, it was very hard to find the mp3, and even harder to find the video. I love the lyrics, and the vocals, guitars and snare. But I choke on every letter, the glass flies off the table, I keep telling her I ain't the one to blame.

We heard the song, Break It Down Again from Elemental before we heard any of the classic TFF songs. I really loved the strong drum beats, and did not care that this version of TFF was only ONE of the original members who took the TFF name with him when they split. No more building up, it is time to dissolve.

I'm not really a great U2 fan, but Zooropa had some videos that I liked: Stay (Faraway, So Close) and the great videos for Numb and Lemon.

One of my all-time favourite albums is UB40's 1993 release, Promises And Lies. The obvious popular song everyone remembers is the cover of Elvis' I Can't Help Falling In Love, called (I Can't Help) Falling from the Sliver motion picture soundtrack (which, by the way, also featured Shaggy's Oh! Carolina and Enigma's Carly's Song)

But that's not all that Promises And Lies has to offer. There's  Higher Ground,  Bring Me Your Cup, Reggae Music, Many Rivers To Cross, and C'est La Vie.

A reference Pretty Boy Floyd and a song called Everything About You from Ugly As They Wanna Be was followed by 1993's America's Least Wanted, that featured the video to the cover of Cats In The Cradle.

The video for UB40's C'est La Vie is missing from YouTube's collection. If you saw it, you will notice that at the very end of the video, the showbill and banner outside the theater that UB40 are performing at says "UB40 with US3". Cantaloupe Island is a jazz song recorded by Herbie Hancock. Of course, the music is tight, but the thing that doesn't sit right with me about jazz is the lack of unidiotic vocals. Yeah, yeah, all of you just went "Oh no he didn't" but to paraphrase a graffito I saw at the Konigsplatz U-Bahn station in Munich, FUCKYOUALL. Anyway, US3 took the whole song and rapped to it, creating Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia). It is still one of the coolest songs of the 90s. Speaking of Munich, when my roommate and I had a bunch of people over for dinner, we were all sitting around singing songs while someon played the guitar, and all of a sudden someone said, "Bid de bid de bop"... there was silence. Then, again: "Bid de bid de bop"... and this guy Paolo and I chorussed: "Funky, funky!". Inside jokes rule.

Just one beautiful song, Is It Like Today? from the 1993 album, Bang! by ex-Waterboys artist, Karl Wallinger. There are two versions: this one, and this one (which was on Indian/Asian MTV)