Dem Vinyl Boyz are back again and this week they're dropping the needle on some 90s Vinyl from the legendary rock band Nirvana. 'In Utero' coming two years after their second studio album 'Nevermind' which went on to change music history selling over 30 million copies. Their third studio album was unfortunately Nirvana's last, after lead singer Kurt Cobain tragically passed away after an alleged suicide. In Utero is contrarian rock, it’s meant to be everything Nevermind wasn’t and perhaps nothing illustrates that more clearly than the rough, dissonant chord that spearheads Serve the Servants. It’s not exactly a song I would call strenuous, but it’s abrasive and confrontational. The Vinyl Boyz listen to old interviews with Kurt Cobain which were few and far between due to his reclusive nature. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album and has been certified five-times platinum. It’s also a fixture on all sorts of best album lists even nearly 30 years later.

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Dem Vinyl Boyz are back again and this week they're dropping the needle on 'Me Against The World' a hip-hop album by arguably the greatest rapper of all time Tupac. It’s an amazing, cohesive body of work that completely illustrates all the nuances that made up the complicated persona of Pac. His previous works showed flashes of brilliance, but Me Against the World became a manifestation of his artistic vision and his ongoing evolution as a Black man in America during the 90s. “Dear Mama” released as the lead single on the album peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100, going platinum, which earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Solo Performance. The song describes his poverty-stricken childhood, his mother’s drug addiction, and her triumph against insurmountable odds.

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Dem Vinyl Boyz are back again and this week they're dropping the needle on 'Electric Ladyland' a groovy record from the 60s by musical pioneer and genius Jimi Hendrix. When rock critic connoisseur's refer to him as the creator of a generation's most potent exceptional music, this is the album they're talking about. What Hendrix musically compassed on this record expanded the canvas of what an artist could generate out of a modern recording studio. Tragically Hendrix would lose his life less than two years after this album was released due to asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates. He was a legendary icon who created art that can never be replicated in any shape or form as well as pioneering a path for fellow guitarists and musicians to follow and evolve the craft.

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Dem Vinyl Boyz are back again and this week they're scratching 'Licensed to Ill' a classic record from the eighties by Rock n Roll Hall of Famers The Beastie Boys. This album was a pioneer for hip-hop history as it was the first hip-hop album to ever top the Billboard 200, was certified Platinum, and it sold over 10 million copies. Licensed To Ill was a pun based on a 1965 imitation James Bond film, Licensed To Kill. Strangely, the album pre-dated a real James Bond movie entitled License To Kill by three years. The album’s cover artwork which has gone down in infamy was created by collage artist World B Omes and illustrated an airplane crashing into the side of a cliff. Held up to a mirror, the plane’s serial number, 3MTA3, reads like “EATME”, which was on purpose of course. The inspiration for the songs on this album came from 'Run-DMC', whose “Rock Box” had combined rap and rock elements two years prior.

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On this week's episode of Dem Vinyl Boyz we drop the needle on a rare 80's record from Alfred Matthew AKA "Weird Al Yankovic." Even Worse was Yankovic's fifth studio album and parodies Michael Jacksons 'Bad' album on the cover. His previous record 'Polka Party' was widely considered a commercial failure and was released to mixed but mostly negative reviews. Even Worse came and revitalized his career bringing mostly positive reviews and peaking at no. 27 on the billboard 200 while also becoming Al's best selling album. Michael Jackson, who was actually a big fan of Yankovic's work, bought copies of his music for his whole family even supporting Weird Al by letting him use the location set for 'Bad' for his parody 'Fat'. The music video was credited with helping boost the success of "I'm Fat”. In fact, it set a whole new standard for parody artists because of the state-of-the-art special effects he used such as the fat suit Yankovic had designed for himself.

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On this week's episode of Dem Vinyl Boyz we drop the needle on a 90's record from a female. Alanis Morrisette sold more copies of Jagged Little Pill than Metallica's Black album, Bruce Srpingsteen's Born in the USA and Guns N Roses Apetite for Destruction. Madonna the co-founder Maverick Record's label back in 1992, Her company signed a then relatively unknown 20-year-old Morissette. Just over a year later and her debut album for the label had been released and proved to be the smash record the label had envisioned. With total sales now in excess of 33 million units globally, the album not only cemented Morissette’s star status, but went 16x platinum in the US, became the best-selling debut album of all time and garnered the singer five out of the nine GRAMMY Awards she was nominated for in 1996, not to mention taking out the number one spot in a staggering 14 charts around the world. But this album is about so much more than just groundbreaking statistics—it’s a powerful album about personal experiences. Jagged Little Pill isn’t a rock record. It’s grungy discomfort set to the kinds of top 40 hooks and backing tracks one gets working a guy like Glen Ballard, who Morissette met in 1994 and quickly took a liking to.

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The is week on Dem Vinyl Boys we find an old record from 1968 to jam to. This was really a comeback for The Man in Black as his image was tarnished and his previous albums hadn't done as well. But this week we play back some classic interviews of Johnny telling tales of life, faith and whiskey.

Johnny Cash: if you don’t know his name, you should. As a singer-songwriter, Cash sold more than 90 million albums worldwide, for a multitude of genres from 1955 to 2000. His album “At Folsom Prison” is a great place to start for those not familiar with him. It has a mix of so many genres there is something for everyone.

Cash has collaborated with many artists including Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. In addition to receiving 11 Grammys, Cash has been inducted into the Rock and Roll and Country Music Hall of Fame His life was even the subject of the 2005 Oscar-nominated film “Walk the Line.”

Cash’s 1968 live album “At Folsom Prison” made him an icon to many: from country fans who were lost, to rock fans, folk fans and people who opposed social norms. Despite a year of turmoil for Cash, involving drugs, alcohol and a rocky marriage, the musician was plain-spoken and trustworthy, which people loved.

The album was recorded during a concert for the inmates inside Folsom Prison in California. Once released, it went platinum and emphasized his outlaw image because of the country-folk sound with a jailbird song influence.

Listen to our other episodes as well. Next week we will be reviewing a classic from Jimi Hendrix. Please rate and review our show. If we suck please tell us.

Thriller is the sixth studio album by the American singer and songwriter Michael Jackson, released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records. It was produced by Quincy Jones, who had previously worked with Jackson on his 1979 album Off the Wall. Jackson wanted to create an album where "every song was a killer". With the ongoing backlash against disco music at the time, he moved in a new musical direction, resulting in a mix of pop, post-disco, rock, funk, and R&B sounds. Thriller foreshadows the contradictory themes of Jackson's personal life, as he began using a motif of paranoia and darker themes. Paul McCartney appears on "The Girl Is Mine", the first credited appearance of a featured artist on a Michael Jackson album. Recording took place from April to November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, with a budget of $750,000.

With 32 million copies sold worldwide by the end of 1983, Thriller became the best-selling album of all time. It was the best-selling album of 1983 worldwide, and in 1984 it became the first album to become the best-selling in the United States for two years. It set industry standards with its songs, music videos, and promotional strategies influencing artists, record labels, producers, marketers, and choreographers. The success gave Jackson an unprecedented level of cultural significance for a black American, breaking racial barriers in popular music, earning him regular airplay on MTV and leading to a meeting with US President Ronald Reagan at the White House. Thriller was among the first albums to use music videos as promotional tools; the videos for "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Thriller" are credited for transforming music videos into a serious art form.

The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die

(1994)

Dem Vinyl Boyz head to the home of Hip-Hop., New York City! East coast Rap at its finest. “Ready to Die” is a concept album chronicling the life and myth of the Notorious B.I.G., complete with stories of robbery, drug dealing, sex and even suicide. It was the first full-length album release from Bad Boy Records, a new imprint run by a young Sean “Puffy” Combs. Combs was very involved in the production and direction of “Ready to Die,” especially with the hit singles “Juicy” and “Big Poppa.” “Puffy was incredibly smart about branding,” Coker says, “and about how to sell this album to the masses at large.”

The album features productions by Bad Boy founder Sean "Puffy" Combs, Easy Mo Bee, Chucky Thompson, DJ Premier, and Lord Finesse, among others. It was recorded from 1993 to 1994 at The Hit Factory and D&D Studios in New York City. The partly autobiographical album tells the story of the rapper's experiences as a young criminal, and was the only studio album released during his lifetime, as he was murdered sixteen days before the release of his second album Life After Death in 1997.

Dem Vinyl Boyz drop the needle on a rock record this week that ended up teaching us so much about this band. You will find out that GnR' was not a band from California, they were from Seattle, Indiana and Cleveland and only met in L.A. In an era of bad-boy rockers who weren’t terribly bad and wrote music that sounded too good, Guns N’ Roses were the genuine article. Their songs echoed with the love for rock and roll and the spirit of rebellion. When Geffen Records A&R man Tom Zutaut signed the band he had no idea what he had gotten into. No one else wanted GN’R because they were viewed as a liability, a band as likely to miss the show as perform a gangbuster set. Yet what Zutaut heard from vocalist Axl Rose, guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler was inspiring and seemed to have the potential to be a profitable signing if they didn’t all die in an alcohol or drug related mishap.

Appetite for Destruction is the debut studio album by American hard rock band Guns N' Roses. It was released on July 21, 1987, by Geffen Records.

The album was released to little mainstream attention in 1987. It was not until the following year that Appetite for Destruction became a commercial success, after the band had toured and received significant airplay with the singles "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City" and "Sweet Child o' Mine". The album peaked at number one on the US Billboard 200 and became the seventh best-selling album of all time in the United States, as well as the best-selling debut album. With over 30 million copies sold worldwide, it is also one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Although critics were originally ambivalent toward the album, Appetite for Destruction has received retrospective acclaim and has been viewed as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2018, it was re-released as a remastered box set to similar acclaim.