Every now and then I have a longing for the 90s. After watching Clerks II, I have this longing again. That movie was very nostaligc, not just that it was a very popular 90s movie, but it was chalk full of great 90s music, and I also think much of the sentiment we felt during the 90s.
The 90s was such a great time to be around. The music was great. With bands like Alice in Chains, Alanis Morrisette, The Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Dave Mathews Band, and of course Nirvana… today’s bands don’t even compete. Yeah a few of these bands are still around (namely Dave Mathews and Nine Inch Nails), but most have gone their separate ways and even the ones who are around aren’t nearly as good as they were in that time (likely because they are trying to cater to today’s crappy music crowd). I can’t think of any band from today that is in the same league as these guys, the closest I can come is Linkin Park, but even they came around in the late 90s, they just have been able to maintain it.
It wasn’t just these groups that made the decade great though. It is other smaller groups that offered a great variety. Included in this is Blues Traveller, Fatboy Slim, Moby, Beck, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Smashmouth, just to name a few. It wasn’t just that Rock & Roll was really at its peak since the 60s, it was also that everything had a peak. You saw Swing make a come back, you saw punk, blues, rap, techno, disco, retro, and ska all playing on the same radio station. We didn’t care about the genre, we cared that it was good, and that’s it. Everything I hear on the radio now is either metal, pop, or rap… and almost none of it is good.
Movies were great in the 90s too. Now by this I don’t necessarily mean the mainstream movies. I think outside of The Matrix and a few other notables, mainstream movies were just as forgetable as they always have been. Independant movies really came to the forefront. Kevin Smith and Quentin Terrintino got their name in the 90s. But it wasn’t just these guys, everyone was making indie flicks of all sorts and they were great. And you heard about them too… now adays I feel like I have to go out of my way to find good indie flicks… and this in the day of the internet (not that it wasn’t around in the 90s), back then it seemed like everyone had heard of Clerks, Trainspotting, and Swingers… everyone quoted them. They were part of the culture. Now don’t get me wrong, there are many good indie flicks that come out today. In fact I am very pleased that they continue to prosper, and Hollywood even embraces them to some degree as you see big actors taking salary cuts to be in an indie from time to time. But there seemed to be more good ones, more variety of types, and they were much easier to find.
Television was ok, not great. I don’t think television has been great for a very long long time. In fact I think in some respects Television may be better now than it has for awhile, maybe even the 90s, but it is close. It is hard to compete with Friends (which was at its best in the 90s) and Seinfeld.
You know what is really weird is that I never thought while I was in the 90s that I’d turn out to be one of them old guys who’d fondly remember “the good ol’ days.” I never knew any better. All I knew was that type of quality, I just figured it had always been like that and that I was just too young before… and that it would always be like this in the future. Boy was I wrong… it’s been years.