#0.1 - Welcome to the 1991 MusiCards Blog!

Hello!

My name's Gavin, a.k.a. "defgav" as my username many places online and @breakdowncards on Twitter. I've been blogging over at Baseball Card Breakdown since 2013.

Now, for the first time, I'm branching out to do a separate, dedicated "set blog". Which set of cards inspired me to take such a plunge? Well, 1991 Pro Set SuperStars MusiCards, obviously!

What a wonderful/awful set! Some acts I really love, some I kinda hate, some I've never even heard of. But that's alright. Show me someone who is a fan of everyone in the '91 MusiCards set, and I'll show you one severely disturbed individual. But yeah, I think this will be a great project for me to branch out from baseball cards and into my other love: music.

And the blog won't be just about the music. I plan to make it a full-on look back to the late 80s/early 90s. From time to time, we'll be talking about video games, movies, toys, cartoons, and other stuff from the era. Sort of a sentimental look back at the world during my youth.

Some background on me:

1991 was right in the sweet-spot for me as far as music becoming an important part of my life. Late 80s, early 90s.. I was in that pre-teen becoming a teen age. Nearly starting high school but still finishing up middle school. I was splitting my allowance on baseball cards, comic books, and cassette tapes (and candy with whatever was left over). I was still into pop music being served up to me by mainstream radio and MTV, but also just starting to dig out off-the-beaten path bands that piqued my interest with snippets I caught here and there. I remember when Lou Reed's "Dirty Boulevard" got nominated for a MTV Video Music Award and they played a short clip of it during the awards show (they never seemed to actually play the video on MTV), and I was like, "Hey, what is THAT?!" And when Jane's Addiction's "Mountain Song" was briefly featured in an MTV News segment about hard-to-understand lyrics, it was eye opening to me, giving me a taste of the "alternative" wave that was just starting to break onto the scene. Nirvana came along and changed what was cool in rock music, pretty much killing off hair metal. Popular rap was still dominated by the likes of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, but The Chronic was just about to change the game. But yeah, seemed like the popular music scene was really pivoting across the board.

Me? Hey, I loved all of it.. or most of it, at least. And to this day I have a soft spot for the pop I grew up on, though I ultimately landed with my musical taste more aligned with alternative rock in the 90s-- and later indie rock in the '00s. But I still listen to a wide range of stuff. 1991 MusiCards doesn't include the likes of Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam, but it does have Soundgarden and Sonic Youth. I could have done with less Madonna and more Nirvana, for example, but overall, it's a decent cross-section of popular music at the time. I'm sure licensing and record labels played a role behind the scenes as far as what acts made the checklist.

This blog may end up being an outlet for me to relive my musical education and reminisce about my days as a kid playing hooky from school to stay home playing NES and listening to the radio. While I'm essentially just doing this blog for me, hopefully it'll be an enjoyable read for anyone else who lived through that era (or are interested by it). I'd love to get plenty of interaction in the comments, hearing other folks' thoughts and memories of the topics of each post.

Here's the plan:

Each post will feature one MusiCard, in order-- even artists that have multiple cards in the set will still get a separate post for each card (though I reserve the right to change this policy in the future if it becomes too taxing)-- and I'll give a basic career recap as well as my thoughts, memories, and favorite songs. If I'm not familiar with the act, well, I'll have to do some research and find out about them via the likes of Wikipedia and YouTube. Discovering new bands will be part of the fun of the blog!

I'll whip up a special custom card for nearly every post featuring an act that isn't in the set. I'll try to match it up somewhat with the main artist of the post.. such as being a similar genre or perhaps a newer band influenced by the band in question... something like that. From well-known greats to hidden never-was gems.

Of course there will be plenty of music for your listening pleasure, usually via embedded YouTube videos. Also expect to hear cover songs, sometimes even recorded by yours truly specifically for that post.

So my plan for each post will look something like...

- Card front

- Card back

- Recap of band's career

- My thoughts & memories of them

- My favorite song(s) of theirs

- Maybe a cover song

- Probably a custom card of another band, perhaps tangentially related, and my thoughts on them

- Maybe a pop culture highlight from the era (film, tv show, video game, toy, comic book, or whatever) Stuff like this will be mostly for posts where I don't have much to say about the subject of the card. For example, Vanilla Ice has a bunch of different MusiCards... I'll likely run out of things to say about Vanilla Ice by his second card or so. That's when talking about movies and toys and crap will help round out the posts.

We'll start on Series 1, then work our way to Series 2, eventually onto the UK edition of the set, and if by the time I'm done covering that-- roughly 500 posts-- I'm feeling 2 legit 2 quit, maybe I'll even move onto the Yo! MTV Raps set that Pro Set put out in 1991-- Technically those are branded "MusiCards" too, so I suppose I should include them even though rap isn't my wheelhouse. (Or maybe I'll give up and stop this blog after just a handful of posts-- you never know with set blogs! The cardsphere is littered with abandoned set blogs that never made it to the final card.)

Sound good? I'm really looking forward to this deep dive into 1991 MusiCards and I hope you tag along for the ride!

As we kick off, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below..
Who are your favorite musical acts who were active back in 1991? 
How about today? 
Any feedback for me regarding the blog? What kind of stuff would you like to see here?