21 Replies to “I think I’m beginning to understand what the nineties were”

  1. I suppose I had a lucky escape in the sense that the nineties were ending just as I was beginning to develop an interest in music. Even so, I don’t think I survived Britpop entirely unscathed.

  2. If I had been a pop person of some description, it would have been in the nineties, when I was in my twenties. In fact, I was in a band in the early nineties.I think it was the decade when a lot of people who had got into indie music in their teens began to get the limelight themselves, and ‘indie’ became mainstream, with the crossover of dance and guitar music beginning here.I think I liked all of the above music at the time, with the exception of Moloko and Supergrass, of whom I was probably suspicious. In a way, it’s much slicker than the eighties, much less naive. It’s as if the bands have all been to art school and taken courses in design and advertising. In the eighties, even the synth bands, who were trying to be cool and slick in some way, made a poorly judged, tinny, odd sort of noise. In the nineties they boosted the beats and got the production ‘right’, so that the rough edges were taken off of indie. I think that this could be seen as obnoxious, but there were bands who were still using this kind of savvy to do something different, and offered content as well as style.What’s interesting to me though is that, the last time I remember thinking about the nineties, I had no idea what they were. I knew what the eighties were, and the seventies, the sixties and so on, just not the nineties, which seemed like an ironed out sort of eighties if they were anything at all. But now, just as the noughties have disappeared, I was reminded of St Etienne, looked them up on YouTube, and thought, “My God, this is the nineties!”I can now place that decade in my life. It all makes a kind of sense.I still have no idea what the noughties are, though.

  3. Justin Isis writes:I’m doing my “ten posts in a row” thing here, I haven’t done it for a whileI think MTV started to go completely shit around 99 or 2000 or so; they started switching completely to teen pop and reality shows; the mid-90s they had a lot more interesting things on; look up some of those old Liquid Television shows, they were really out there, like I said, hard to believe they were broadcast to that many people. The 90s have a really strong feel to me, sort of like the aesthetic of videos like Smashing Pumpkins “Today” or something, and the whole stupid “authenticity” or “sincerity” thing started by Nirvana that I hated. The British music from the time is a lot more interesting to me now. Massive Attack, Tricky, Autechre etc. should be mentioned as well, and everything trip-hop. I was admittedly young at the time and not as into music, but no one else I knew in the US knew anything about this British music at the time either. “My So-Called Life” and anything with Claire Danes feels like the ’90sThe comic book “Gen13″I realize these are just personal associationsI was mainly a little kid at the time and thought everyone was older and cooler than me.

  7. Justin Isis writes:90’s had some of the best music ever. Really insane to consider in retrospect the incredible diversity. The previous decade comes nowhere close really. THIS IS HARDCORE hahaaAll of the above is good but it’s all British; 90’s music in the US was terrible, at least on the surface, but there was a lot of important music coming out too. HUM, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, At the Drive-In, Sunny Day Real Estate, Mr. Bungle, Ween, The Dismemberment Plan, lots of rap, electronic, everything…And MTV had Liquid Television, the Maxx, Aeon Flux…hard to imagine now.

  8. Justin Isis writes:Also what is wrong with Britpop, Blur is awesome (I wasn’t aware of them at the time but listening and watching now and it’s great), Manic Street Preachers (do they count?), Radiohead, etc. I forgot to mention Stereolab

  11. 90’s had some of the best music ever. Really insane to consider in retrospect the incredible diversity. The previous decade comes nowhere close really.I think the thing with the nineties, to extend what I was saying, is that people were really beginning to have a sense of the ‘history’ of pop music, and they were drawing on it all, with state of the art technology and so on. The music scene was, as a result, strangely even, if that makes sense. I think there was a lot of good music, probably more than in the eighties, but that there was less in the way of extremes of utter genius and laughable drivel.The noughties appear to have extended the even quality of the nineties in a sense, except as far as I can tell (and admittedly, I’ve taken little interest of late), the standard at which things are even is much lower. There is much less originality, much less content, just a sense of things running out, being recycled and so on.I think about the 90’s through cartoons like this example from Pinky and the Brain …That’s an astounding clip.I’m going to have to come back to these comments later.

  13. Justin Isis writes:”The noughties appear to have extended the even quality of the nineties in a sense, except as far as I can tell (and admittedly, I’ve taken little interest of late), the standard at which things are even is much lower. There is much less originality, much less content, just a sense of things running out, being recycled and so on.”I really feel disappointed with 00s music in general. Not saying there isn’t a lot of it I like, but a large portion of the “Pitchfork-approved” 00’s music bores me, whereas the ’90s music still feels fresh. Things have improved a bit in the last few years, but it was pretty disappointing, especially early in the decade.In general I was really disappointed by the White Stripes, the Strokes, all those regressive and terrible bands. I remember being bored with them at the time (like six or seven years ago) and they still seem completely uninteresting. The one man whose music consistently felt like the future and felt like “00’s music” was Japanese producer Nakata Yasutaka. He started off with very 90s style Shibuya-kei music but eventually developed a completely unique style. I probably listened to him more consistently and gained more enjoyment from his music than any other this decade. Listening to J-pop (and K-pop) now, you can feel how his influence really shifted the emphasis away from R&B in pop towards a more electronic model.

  14. Well, there is a lot to respond to here. I’ll attempt a little now.I should add that I am, of course, examining the music of the nineties through the lens of my own nihilism, and with the bias of somebody who is only really interested in instrumental music, and in the human voice as a musical instrument, for the most part.With this in mind, one must consider that after about 1980 (I am thinking of Vangelis’ “Blade Runner” soundtrack, and Brian Eno’s “Ambient” albums here), synthesisers were relegated almost entirely to dance music for almost twenty years, until musicians like Aphex Twin started a resurgence in the idea of experimenting with them as instruments in their own right.Also, at some point in the late eighties, or early nineties, there seems to have been a kind of backlash against any sort of instrumental virtuosity; basically, anything that might be considered “poncey” — guitar solos and so on — and musical arrangements became quite sparse, essentially unembellished vessels for lyrics. From an instrumental point of view, I find the nineties rather barren.Also what is wrong with Britpop, Blur is awesome (I wasn’t aware of them at the time but listening and watching now and it’s great)…I think one had to be in Britain at the time to appreciate how irritating the Top Gear watching, lads’ mag reading, cockney wide-boy subculture that surrounded bands like Oasis and Blur was (and is — we are still suffering its legacy today).

  15. I think one had to be in Britain at the time to appreciate how irritating the Top Gear watching, lads’ mag reading, cockney wide-boy subculture that surrounded bands like Oasis and Blur was (and is — we are still suffering its legacy today).I think the worst aspect of Britpop was undoubtedly the new laddism. In that sense, in answer to the eternal question, “Blur or Oasis?” I would, at the time, have answered, as I’m told someone else did, “Pulp”. However, if Pulp were ruled out, I would have answered Blur. Living in Britain as I did and now again do, I understand reservations about Blur, but I did and do enjoy the music. There were definitely and quite unignorably more ideas and musical things going on with Blur than with Oasis. I think one of the worst things about Britain is that if you are deemed to be working class, other people who deem themselves to be working class, will expect you to be utterly dreary and unimaginative as a matter of principle, because to do otherwise is to ‘sell out’. Blur, being middle class mockney, couldn’t, of course, sell out in that sense, but if Oasis making music more like that of Blur had implied ‘selling out’, then I’m all for selling out.Also, at some point in the late eighties, or early nineties, there seems to have been a kind of backlash against any sort of instrumental virtuosityI think this is actually a legacy of punk, and part of the attitude I’m talking about above. I do like punk, but it’s very, very limited. But I’m certainly in agreement that this backlash is tiresome. I once heard someone criticse Bowie’s Life of Mars because the use of kettle drums at the end was “dramatic” and therefore, presumably, not ‘street’ enough.

  16. The early 1990s was when I was in highschool. Up to that point, I always preferred oldies and classic rock. But then my family got cable and MTV. MTV was really awesome at the time. I have very fond memories of The Maxx which I just ordered yesterday.It seems to me that in the 90s there was a cultural explosion in the mainstream. Here in the US, there had been oppressive atmosphere throughout the entire Cold War era. The ethical codes had been lifted against such things as comic books, and much that was underground became mainstream. Many of the popular graphic novelists were doing really quality work in the 90s. SF writers like PKD became mainstream, and SF in general had a boom because of improvement in special effects.When the Cold War ended, the world breathed a sigh of relief, but it was sort of a let down. The civil rights movement had been killed by the FBI’s COINTELPRO and the Christian’s culture war was winning. I think pop culture became such a focus because politics had been so draining in the 70s and 80s. Everyone wanted to forget about Nixon and all of the assasinations. The economy was booming and there was new technology.But the nostalgia became stronger for the 60s. In my highschool, hippy fashion became popular with many popular kids and the Grateful Dead made a comeback. People wanted to pretend that all of the ugliness between the 60s and the 90s never happened.My So Called Life always reminds me of the 90s more than anything else. I’ve been rewatching it recently. It was a great show and I can’t think of any similar show of similar quality that has been made since.

  17. Justin Isis writes:”But the nostalgia became stronger for the 60s. In my highschool, hippy fashion became popular with many popular kids and the Grateful Dead made a comeback. People wanted to pretend that all of the ugliness between the 60s and the 90s never happened.”I think this is a really key insight. I’d never looked at it like that before, but in retrospect it’s true. I remember the neo-hippie resurgence at the time too (Phish, for example), and a lot of the emphasis on aliens/futurism/conspiracy theories/utopia, etc. The X-Files, Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, etc. Remember how big anything to do with aliens used to be? I think it all peaked around ’97 or ’98 or so. It wasn’t a perfect decade by any stretch, and the things that most interest me about it now are things I wasn’t even aware of at the time (Britpop, for example), but it wasn’t a bad decade to grow up in.

  18. My experience of the 90s was heavily saturated by Grateful Dead and Phish. After highschool, I was living with my older brother. The entire house had rooms that were rented and there were some old deadheads living there. I actually had the opportunity to see one of the last Grateful Dead shows and didn’t go. I did go to some Phish concerts.The other day I noticed something else from the 90s. I’ve been a fan of Coast to Coast AM for quite a while now. I started listening to it in the late 90s, but I didn’t realize that Art Bell only started it in the mid 90s. Coast to Coast is all about aliens/futurism/conspiracy theories/utopia, etc. And Coast to Coast is as popular as ever. I was happy to see on youtube that Art Bell stated that “Fox sucks!”Every Sunday night in the latter 90s was spent watching the X-Files and The Simpsons. The Simpsons is having it’s 20th anniversary which means it first started when I started highschool. During highschool, though, I don’t remember watching The Simpsons. Sadly, I was watching Beavis and Butthead instead.

  20. Okay, I’ll write a little about ‘my nineties’, before breakfast.As Justin said, all the bands/artists that I collected in the post above are British. I didn’t do this consciously out of any sense of patriotism. I was just assembling bands that most successfuly evoked the nineties to me. This must be obvious, but the nineties in Britain were not the same decade as in the States. Phish never really made it over to this side of the Atlantic. Hardly anyone has heard of them over here, though someone did tell me they were very big in the States. I don’t think there was a sixties revival thing here, or not in the same way. There were elements of it – you can see it in the design of the videos of the songs – but it was more what has been called something like – if I try hard to remember – “cold war chic”. The best example of this in the above songs would be the Portishead one, where the music has shades of a kind of chilling-but-glamorous James Bond theme.This is merely an example of how I think the decade must have been different in the two countries. How it was for me is evoked by the above videos because I spent much of the first half of the nineties visiting friends at university (I had been unable to go), and the second half actually going to university, when I finally got it together. University in Britain in the nineties was, in fact, exactly like this in every conceivable way:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjXgskUN50Students even looked exactly like that.I’m not even sure how to put it into words.Then there is St. Etienne, who prompted this post. To me St. Etienne evoke my experience of London like no other band. Actually, there’s a song called You’re in a Bad Way whose opening lines sum up London to me completely:Toast is burned, / and your coffee’s cold, /
    And you leave all the post `cause it’s nothing but bills again. /I never lived in London in the nineties, but friends who had graduated were making their way in the big wide world, and I went to visit them in their new flats, cramped, but generally rather clean and neat, and it was all rather bracing. I remember Battersea, and I remember Brixton.Others I know, in the nineties, somehow seemed to ride this generally rather optimistic tide into pretty good jobs and life with cool partners of one kind or another. For some reason, I didn’t. I was never quite there on that wave. But I do remember, quite well, the fresh, salty, ozone scent of it.

  21. Jeff Coleman writes:The nineties are important to me because that is when I became interested in music. They are also important because at the time I could still dream while listening to music. It seems like there was a time around the mid-nineties, when I was getting interested in “alternative” and experimental music, where the music was overflowing with dreams. I could still dream of the possibilities of what could happen.It seems like the the 00’s were the slow excruciating destruction of my dreams. In a way though, my dreams came true. I was just no longer part of them.

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