Canvey Island cds, tapes and vinyl: Class of ’92 Special!
To coincide with the release of the new Class of ’92 documentary film (@classof92film, Class of ’92 DVD) we’re taking six familiar faces, with six all too familiar names to Canvey Island: Giggsy, Scholesy, Butty, Phily, Gary-y and Becky. What?!
For this special trip, our Canvey Island family will be sharing the song that defined 1992 for them.
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As they were boarding the train, the conductor stopped them for a second to ask “if we’ll get to find out what happened to the other 86?! Hey?! Hey?! Lads?!” (Hey! That’s my joke.) and then helped them aboard, in silence, ‘cept for a distant death knell.
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There was only one train waiting to depart, there was only one destination …
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Canvey Island!
They stepped off the train and were ushered, like the others before them, towards the car park where they found the car-boot sale and the stall run this time by someone who looked suspiciously like ex-Manchester United player Eric Cantona. He always rotas himself in for the good ones.
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Eric had a message for them: “Bonjour mes petits amis spéciaux préférés … Hey! Je me demandais si nous pourrions obtenir pour savoir ce qui s’est passé à l’autre 86? Non! Attendez une minute … qu’est ce que c’est cloche pour? Quoi qu’il en soit, s’il vous plaît jeter un oeil à ce que la famille Canvey a choisi pour vous…”
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…And this is what the Canvey Island family members picked as the song that defined their own 1992, and why (in their own words)…
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Slam Jam by The WWF Superstars
Picked by Adam Pinfold
“Not sure if this was my favourite track of ’92 but definitely takes me back in time to that era. I remember buying this on tape down Woolworths and then sticking it on full blast while playing WWF Superstars on my Game Boy – YES MATE! Wrestling and 90s music – the perfect combination … or should that be the Perfect Plex?“
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Jump Around by House of Pain
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Weekender by Flowered Up
Picked by Angela Hallmark
“So this has been very hard for three reasons:
1. It is a very long time ago and I cannot remember last week – never mind 21 years ago.
2. 1992 was a year of transition for me – I did my GCSEs and then left school to go and be *cool* at 6th Form College.
I was listening to an awful lot of Atlantic 252 when I was revising – this included Curtis Stigers, Richard Marx, Annie Lennox, Mr Big, Sophie B Hawkins & John Secada.
I was still discovering guitars – The Charlatans, Primal Scream, Ride, Teenage Fanclub (please stop now Angela – cos you JUST WERE NOT COOL). And then when I went to *college*, I started to go out far more – so bought SL2 On A Ragga Tip (which is ACES), RumpShaker, Insanity etc etc…
3. It turns out that the music from this year can be summed up by the following LIST of BRIT WINNERS:
| Year: 1992 | |
| Best British Male Solo Artist | Seal |
| Best British Female Solo Artist | Lisa Stansfield |
| Best British Group | The KLF/Simply Red (Joint Winners) |
| Best British Album | Seal – “Seal” |
| Best British Dance Act | n/a |
| Best British Newcomer | Beverley Craven |
| Best International Male | see below * |
| Best International Female | see below * |
| Best International Group | U2 |
| Best International Newcomer | PM Dawn |
| Best Soundtrack | The Commitments |
| Best British Video | Seal – “Killer” |
| Best British Single | Queen – “These Are The Best Days Of Our Lives” |
| Best Pop Act | n/a |
| Outstanding Contribution | Freddie Mercury |
| Discretionary Awards for year 1992 | |
| Best British Producer | Trevor Horn |
| Best Classical Recording | Verdi (Sir Georg Solti) – “Otello” |
| * Best International Solo Artist | Prince |
I think this list sums up the music on offer pretty well … as does this from Q:
Best Album R.E.M. – “Automatic For The People”
Best Reissue/Compilation Bob Marley – “Songs of Freedom”
Best Live Act – Crowded House
Best Act in the World Today – U2
Best New Act – Tori Amos
Best Producer Daniel Lanois/Peter Gabriel/The Orb
Songwriter Award – Neil Finn
Q Inspiration Award – B.B. King
Merit Award – Led Zeppelin
ANYWAY – I think I have shown how hard it was for me.
I have 3. (I know I know I know – but you know, I am super special!)
I am gonna have…
FLOWERED UP – Weekender (bought it on 12 inch)
HOUSE of PAIN – Jump Around (“party anthem”)
PATTY SMYTH with DON HENLEY – Sometimes Love Just Aint Enough (DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THIS WAS RELEASED THEN – IS MY BEST KAR-E-OKE SONG LIKE EVER I SING IT AMAZES) (harks back to Atlantic 252 days). (Ed – As you didn’t know this was released back then, it can’t actually have defined your 1992 – thems the rules! And the breaks.You can have a link.)
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Jump by Kriss Kross
Picked by Birchy
“God, I struggle to think back to what I was listening to at 9 years old. Probably Jump by Kriss Kross, rather than the cool songs from 1992 that I listen to now; my coolness in music taste came at a later age. I was too busy watching Ryan Giggs and United Monthly Review VHS, whilst playing heads and volleys and wall ball, to care about music.”
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Nuthin’ but a G Thang by Dr Dre and
Lithium by Nirvana
Picked by Chewie
“This is cheating but I can’t call it.”
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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Theme Tune
Picked by Jay Goolaup
“I was 6 and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme tune was probably my jam at that time…”
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Black or White by Michael Jackson
Picked by Liz Worsley
“I loved listening to this on my Walkman. I’m sure the Class of ’92 loved this too!”
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Estranged by Guns ‘n’ Roses
Picked by Paul Ansorge
“1992 was a formative year for me, musically speaking. The next five years of my music listening were forever altered when Ed off United Rant was given a cassette with 45 minutes of Nevermind on one side of it and 45 minutes of Use Your Illusion 2 on the other side of it. I am a bit sad to say that I liked the Use Your Illusion side best, and fell down an abyss of Guns N Roses listening that only a fifteen year old can.
Whilst I grew to appreciate in the years ahead that Kurt is obv > Axl, you try telling that to 15 year old me with my leather jacket with the cover of Lobo #1 painted on the back, and the really really terrible hair that comes in between short and manageable and long enough to throw around the place in rock clubs.
It’s hard to pick one tune of the insane indulgence of the Use Your Illusions. That’s somewhere between being because there are too many good songs and none of the songs actually being good enough, but the one that I occasionally still listen to is Estranged. It also perhaps best captures the sheer insanely overblown explosion of juvenile emotional self-expression that is late period GNR. It sounded so incredibly deep. It is so incredibly shallow. But, as with so much of their output, if you ignore the lyrics, there are still some absolutely fantastic noises coming out of Slash’s guitar. That man really, really, really could play.
Over the years ahead, Nirvana overthrew GNR in my affections, then there was a bit of a raver phase, then it all settled down into the music I’d liked before all this kicked off. But in ’92, I wanted nothing so much as to learn to play like Slash and sing like Axl. I grew up pretty quickly, and unlike the Class of ’92, my love for GNR didn’t last, but at the time, that C90 changed my life, and it was very very exciting.”
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Harvest Moon by Neil Young
Picked by Pauline Gill
“I’ve really enjoyed thinking about this one … mind you, my musical taste hasn’t particularly moved on since ’92! Have always been a Neil Young fan, and I loved Harvest Moon that year… the video sort of perpetuated my idealistic view of life in the States … a cosy restaurant full of ‘like minded’ people, great live music… nonsense of course, but you know! It still brings a smile to my face, anyway.”
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Under The Bridge by Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Picked by Paul Gunning
“I was only eleven years old in 1992. So, my first year in high school, a year of first, awkward, taking-an-age-to-build-up-the-courage-to-slip-my-arm-round-a-girl’s-shoulders dates at cinemas, first kisses with tongues, terrible clothes and ‘curtains’ haircuts.
It’s fitting that this song should be a love letter to a city, as 1992 was also the year that I truly fell in love with Manchester and began to feel the first flutters of melancholy and aloneness within my soul, perfectly encapsulated in this heart-rending track.
It’s such a powerful, evocative song that brings back flooding memories of important loved ones in my life, and a time of awakening and possibility as I embarked on the first, faltering steps of my teenage years.”
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Would I Lie To You by Charles & Eddie
Picked by Tom Pattison
“In my ninth year on planet earth it was ALL about Charles & Eddie Would I Lie To You and it basically still is.”
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Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits
Picked by our very own David
“When I was 11? Probably Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits!”
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End of the Road by Boyz II Men
Picked by our very own Brett
“One of the best things about this song – and there are lots of best things about this song (apart from perhaps the second half of the talky part, that goes on a bit) – is that it can be sung in a key that means anyone can proper belt it out, irrespective of singing ability. It also lends itself really well to the fist-clenching-grabbing-of-that-lingering-hope-and-anguish-and-pulling-it-in-close-to-your-chest move.
My only experience of music before my early teens (I was 13 in 1992), was via the medium of Atlantic 252 and the telly (Top of the Pops and The Chart Show). Naturally I was into some pretty dark stuff: Michael Jackson. Take That. Simply Red. NKOTB NKOB. MC Hammer. Jimmy Nail. And Boyz II Men. Though I do think End of the Road is one of the best pop songs of the past twenty-five years, it’s not the song in and of itself that marks it out as defining my 1992. It’s the memory attached to it (yes, there is more)…
It was the ‘Christmas Variety Show 1992′ at our school. The Christmas Variety Show at our school was really just a vehicle for the posh and confident and “talented” and popular kids to show off, as teachers and parents fawned over them. Meanwhile, the rest of us were supposed to watch on, gratefully. Paradoxically, we despised them all, yet (for no good reason) longed to be one of them. This year the headline act was to be a duet performed by the two school ‘hunks’ (I forget their names) and it seemed everyone was restless with anticipation – everyone, but me. As the familiar slow drum roll from the backing track tumbled in and hunk #2 sloped towards the front of the stage and began to speak in a low voice whilst hunk #1 caressed himself, it soon became apparent that this was very much not cool. I’m not sure if I’d ever experienced the frisson of cringing on someone else’s behalf before that moment; certainly not to that degree; nor for that long; nor that intensely.
I might have been achingly shy and tragically unpopular and a bit rough (themes that have stuck), but at least I wasn’t that. And I didn’t stroke my groin in front of the whole school, with the minimum of self-awareness. I went home from the Christmas Variety Show 1992 feeling comfortable in my own skin – happy I wasn’t one of them. Happy to be me.”
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And then we dropped them off back home, but not before asking if we’d be finding out what happened to the other 86…
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To get your hands on a copy of the DVD > Class of ’92 DVD
To keep up-to-date with all the news about the film > @classof92film
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Remember, to see the original musical picks from any of the lovable members of the Canvey Island family simply click on their names.
If you want to become a member of the Canvey Island Family, then please refer to the train timetable at selected stations, or easier still, drop us an email.
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thank you
You’re welcome