Save me from this season's dead air

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

06/11/94 : Amorica - The Black Crowes


Only the second ever mention for The Black Crowes - I don't believe I'm a fan and I can assure you that album cover would certainly put me off from listening to this under normal circumstances. I also won't be listening to the 3+ hours of the deluxe version.

Well, I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm instantly converted to a fan, but it was better than I was expecting - it's based in 70s rock (some of it sounds quite like Rod Stewart from that period - which is not a bad thing), but it's got a few interesting additions to it and it's not as sludgy as I feared. I'm obviously never going to listen to it again but we stand a strong chance of meeting them again in '92 and maybe I'll approach it with a bit less trepidation than I might otherwise have done - can't say fairer than that!

We're at a surprisingly high #8 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a surprisingly brief five week run, with this being as high as it got. The top five this week are the Nirvana unplugged album (a new entry), Madonna and best-ofs from Bon Jovi, INXS (a new entry) and Chris Rea with the next highest new entries being best-ofs from Sade (#6) and Aerosmith (#7) - Xmas was definitely on the record labels' minds.

Wikipedia tells us this is their third album and the only aspect which is entered into any detail is the album cover. It was taken from the July '76 issue of Hustler and was "subsequently banned from chain stores like Walmart and Kmart" - I have a suspicion that "subsequently" is not really required in that sentence because I struggle to imagine there was a significant time period between someone seeing it and going "nope - not gonna happen!". Critically, the album was well received (5/5 from Kerrang!) and it also did well commercially globally, although somewhat surprisingly it charted highest here, also getting to #11 in the US.

discogs.com tells us you're going to have to spend the princely sum of £3 to get a decent copy but if you want the limited edition white vinyl copy then it's going to set you back £90 - I do like a nice white vinyl but I think I can just about resist the temptation. This was OK though - I imagine they are (yup, they're still going) fun live, although I suspect the audience would be a little too rowdy for the likes of me.

30/10/94 - Considerably more bearable than expected
13/11/94 - Certainly not for me

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