The following is a Designated Cheerleader piece by @bermanmatt for the Best Album of 1991 tournament. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you follow the link to vote in the tournament. Thanks!

If you were over the age of 13 and alive in 1992 (yes, it's a 1991 album, but it didn't break big on radio and MTV until 1992), you probably don't need me to introduce you to Spin Doctors. You might, however, need a re-introduction.

So let's start with what you already know: Chris Barron, the Peruvian-flop-hatted, neo-hippie ragamuffin waifishly high-kicking front-and-center in every Spin Doctors song. The endless airplay of "Two Princes" and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" that slowly ground the sharp edges off their chunky, pop-funk heart. A follow-up album that met an audience largely ready to move on, and a band that somehow became something of an easy target for people who'd grown sick of them mostly because of how damn ubiquitous they had become.

Put that aside for a second and let's ask this: How did *this* little rock band and *this* little album get *that* big?

The answer, of course, is that -- shhhhhh -- they were really, really good, and they were also really, really fun. At the exact moment in music history when everyone was embracing the dark sludgy alt-punk-and/or-metal-edged drudge of Chris Cornell shrieks and Eddie Vedder growls and Kurt Cobain howls, Spin Doctors showed up with a welcome ray of sunshine - a bluesy, jammy Jersey band with nary a Doc Martin in sight. On track after track on this, their debut album, drummer Aaron Comess and bass player Mark White lock in to form a classic, deep funky pocket (Comess's snare work throughout is particularly sharp), which guitarist Eric Schenkman alternates between riding atop and cutting through with a sharp, snarled tone and unique blues-rock riffing. Add in Chris Barron's sweet but throaty vocals and his joyous, shyly goofy (and happily stoned) embrace of the same spotlight that made his grunge contemporaries so uncomfortable, and you had the perfect counter-tone to what was happening elsewhere in alt rock. The sound was huge and fresh and so very welcome after a year of Nirvana clones. I was a sophomore in college in 1992, and I am not shitting you when I tell you that for a solid three month period, literally *every* band that started up on campus was copying those funk-chunk chords and trying to recreate Spin Doctors' sound.

All of this would mean little if the songs weren't so good, but they are. "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" sets the template for the album - a lightly funky, but undeniably poppy groove, a deceptively simple yet snaky guitar riff, and Barron's cheekily stoned-funny lyrics, resolving into a mid-song haze of a jam. The sharper edge of "What Time Is It?" - with its ridiculous but oh-so-damn-catchy "what time is it? 4:30" call and response. The heavier lean into-the-jam songs like the droning "Refrigerator Car" and the Hendrix/Stevie Ray-riffage of "Shinbone Alley/Hard to Exist." The mind-blowing harmonica runs that a then still-mostly-unknown John Popper drops in as a guest on "More Than She Knows" and "Off My Line." And of course, the pure pop joys of "Two Princes" and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong," songs melodically strong enough to sell that soon-to-be-much-mocked Peruvian hat and introduce the word "neo-hippie" to the country.

It became easy to crap on Spin Doctors in the years that followed their success, as if alt rock radio was ashamed it had lost its collective mind over some jamband. And yet Spin Doctors blazed a path that plenty of other jambands followed without the same kind of blowback. Some hit the same radio-based bigtime (first Blues Traveller, then Dave Matthews Band), others elevated to a more sustained level of off-radio popularity (Phish, Widespread Panic). And Spin Doctors got brusquely pushed aside as yesterday's news - too poppy for the jam fans, too jammy for the pop kids, and nowhere near alt rock enough. But the strength of those three strands unabashedly mixed together is what makes this album so very good. The pop-rock sensibility is undeniable. The blues-rock and jam-funk riffs are rock solid. And Chris Barron singing about Lois Lane and "what a prince and lover ought to be" will still put a smile on your face. This was an album to throw on and party with, so drink a beer or light a joint and take a spin with Pocket Full of Kryptonite. Is it *the* album of 1991? Probably not. But if you want to vote to send it deep into the tournament, just go ahead now.

-- @bermanmatt