The Meaning of the '90s

version

Well-known member
hard to discern through that kind of fog. but i think we can all agree that there was more positivity being passed around, higher spirits and more fun in general. you can taste it from all the archived media on youtube etc from back then. in particular youth media which was mostly vibrant and playful.
There's also the danger of taking 90s Britain, Europe and America as the entire world. Very different for those growing up in, say, Bosnia.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
I like Craners use of 'death drift'- the peshay mix sounds like euthanasia music. Great swathes of soft sound for the final IV drip. Certain 90's media tells me the decade was a collective resignation to the loss of affect; the process is preordained. Im not sure that feeling has left, but the utopian angle is gone.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
That Peshay mix makes me think of ketamine rather than ecstasy.
would you call ketamine a downer, or tending towards it? I think lots of the future minded electronic music to come after the 90's correlates either to downers or no drugs at all. music for lurid sobriety

(apologies for having you explain ketamine to me for the tenth time)
 
Last edited:

luka

Well-known member
I like Craners use of 'death drift'- the peshay mix sounds like euthanasia music. Great swathes of soft sound for the final IV drip. Certain 90's media tells me the decade was a collective resignation to the loss of affect; the process is preordained. Im not sure that feeling has left, but the utopian angle is gone.
I used that because it's the opposite of that the 90s fe,t Li,d
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
In the 70’s the future was a dream. ‘Europe endless’.

in the 80’s it was a gimmick. Towards the end of the decade it became fleeting utopia with rave

in the 90’s the culture had a horrifying premonition that the future belonged to The Man and the underground mounted a hi tech resistance like John Connor

in the 2000’s the future enraged The Man

in the last 10 years the future has retreated into amniotic cul de sacs of madness and fiendish shamanic chatter. The future has become the mutant offspring of dystopia.

so what does the 90’s mean? It was the last flicker of resistance; that’s why the 70’s (reggae, civil rights soul, etc.) was so crucial to its mythology.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
There are approx three 90’s - early, middle and late.

Early archaic - no-one can quite believe the Berlin Wall is down and Thatcher is out. The music is peak era for the period, 88-92/93 really. Carnage still in NI, but you could go out and hear Frankie Bones and some of the finest House ever made at the same shindig. The blends and range of music at the time under one roof/marquee has never been matched. Add S.A.W’s, the horizontal tent finding and founding new musical experiences, plus buying bags of pills off ex-ICF that funded a footloose lifestyle.

Middle classical - oh, we’re back to the usual bs, Balkans erupts but Bill Clinton‘s hugging black babies and then, to cap it all off, Britpop hits. Hardcore warps into jungle and the mood darkens considerably. Criminal Justice Bill passes and a night out with mates and strangers under the stars becomes a decidedly political act of resistance. R1 have Tong and One in the Jungle, something is beginning to rot but the smell and source haven’t been isolated yet.

Late Hellenistic - Ketamine smashes everything to bits, crack and heroin surge back and start to kill off those of us who got through the first 80’s smack apocalypse. Tony Blair arrives to add a false sense of hope and, right before the millennium, the GFA passes, akin to another wall partially coming down. DiY 10th birthday bash in Nov 99 near Tower Bridge was immense (easily one of their best) and then their millennium bash near Peterborough surpassed your best hopes. I drove home with mates thinking it ain’t over yet, but it kinda was.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
There are approx three 90’s - early, middle and late.

Early archaic - no-one can quite believe the Berlin Wall is down and Thatcher is out. The music is peak era for the period, 88-92/93 really. Carnage still in NI, but you could go out and hear Frankie Bones and some of the finest House ever made at the same shindig. The blends and range of music at the time under one roof/marquee has never been matched. Add S.A.W’s, the horizontal tent finding and founding new musical experiences, plus buying bags of pills off ex-ICF that funded a footloose lifestyle.

Middle classical - oh, we’re back to the usual bs, Balkans erupts but Bill Clinton‘s hugging black babies and then, to cap it all off, Britpop hits. Hardcore warps into jungle and the mood darkens considerably. Criminal Justice Bill passes and a night out with mates and strangers under the stars becomes a decidedly political act of resistance. R1 have Tong and One in the Jungle, something is beginning to rot but the smell and source haven’t been isolated yet.

Late Hellenistic - Ketamine smashes everything to bits, crack and heroin surge back and start to kill off those of us who got through the first 80’s smack apocalypse. Tony Blair arrives to add a false sense of hope and, right before the millennium, the GFA passes, akin to another wall partially coming down. DiY 10th birthday bash in Nov 99 near Tower Bridge was immense (easily one of their best) and then their millennium bash near Peterborough surpassed your best hopes. I drove home with mates thinking it ain’t over yet, but it kinda was.

The 90s were like the 60s.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. - h.s.t.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
By an ex colleague, a really well put together bridge that inadvertently ties multiple themes together

 
Top