Okay, so my friend Rob gave me this genius idea for a series of blogs after he called the film Hackers, dangerously 90's. I thought this too much of a genius tag to make something out of it, haha. Soooo.....I am inviting some of my dearest darling friends to give me their thoughts on what made the 90's! These are people who I love to bits, and who I rocked the 90's with.....so are totally on par with the often quirky mindset of Little Miss Morleysaurus. And CLEARLY I still haven't quite left the 90's. Still rockin' the dungarees and army jackets! ;) This blog is kinda the cooler side of the 90's, but do not worry, the cheesy cool IS to come! MWAH! :)
First up, my bestest friend in the whole wide world. The guy who inspired me in so many ways, and looked pretty freakin' epic in dungarees with the top down. It was cool yo! :P Seeing as how I didn't have any older siblings, it was great having him for musical inspiration, and I am happy to say that he is still the guy I go to when I'm looking for new tunes! :) So without further adu....
A brief thought.....
Just when it seemed like there was nothing, suddenly there was everything. Music was groaning under the strain of behemoths such as Phil Collins, Paul Simon, Elton John, and Bryan Adams (although mercifully the New Kids on the Block were starting to die the death) and the 80´s hangover looked like it was never going to go away.
Thankfully Newton´s third law came to our rescue “When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body” and man did the second body ever exert.
Back then I was only really beginning to develop my musical tastes and I was lucky that there were many interesting moments in music happening at the time, also it´s worth remembering that I had a cassette Walkman (It depressed me greatly when I saw these in a freakin' HISTORY museum....man I'm getting old, haha!!) and a record player, this was pre, well pre just about every technology we take for granted now, so to discover a new band/album demanded a bit of leg work and quite a few duds made it home to the collection (I did at some point upgrade to a Discman, which still works, whereas my last 4 Ipods don´t).
Seemingly from nowhere there was a tidal wave of guitar noise coming out of the States and I devoured the Sup Pop label and most of the other bands that were painted with the Grunge/Alternative brush.
You know who I mean, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, L7, Rage Against The Machine, Alice in Chains (any excuse to listen to Down in a Hole, heehee!!) etc, etc.
And by following that beautiful noise I discovered Modest Mouse, Pavement, The Flaming Lips, Built to Spill, Galaxie 500, Yo La Tengo on and on down the road to an endless list of band names - you don´t need me to do your shopping list for you (that´s the fun bit, for me anyway).
It wasn´t all lumberjack shirts and tatty converse however as back on this side of the water, we were still riding the wave of the Stone Roses first album. Which along with Pills ´n´ Thrills and Bellyaches, gave us new air to breathe.
Add in The Charlatans (pictured above), Ride and a few others and our lungs were fit to burst. These bands were labeled as Indie/Madchester and opened the door for kids like me to cross the line and dip their toes into what was called “dance music” back then (Screamadelica was the trailblazer, and for the labelists - indie not Madchester), but my roots by then were firmly in the guitar camp so I never really got that far into it.
With the release of a few seminal albums there was a whole new world to discover, and a CD collection to build (vinyl was becoming harder to come by).
As we approached the middle 90´s the Brit Pop thing was taking shape with Parklife and Definitely Maybe (Live Forever is my favourite track of this album, and I totally think sums up just awesomeness!! Jennifer x) everywhere and anywhere you went, which was great until the laddism took over and Brit Pop became more about fashion than music (see also just about every other decent music scene ever), but there was a period of 3-4 years where it was nothing but epic times all around - shouting lager lager lager - indeed.
It was a time where I felt that the bands were ours, men and women just like us, only they were making great tunes.
Everything felt new, from politics (New Labour), booze (alcopops), football (the premier league in England) and TV was new (Sky or BSkyB or whatever they were called at the time)
Then Newton´s law came back at us, the money men weren´t making enough, Celine Dion, Spice Girls, Boyzone, and other bloated cash cows started to drown the airwaves. Couple with suicides, fame, jail, death and to a degree the rise of the internet (Napster wasn´t too far away) some bands broke up, some were never given enough time to develop and others seemed to have hit their creative peak, or maybe they were just so hyped up that anything they released would have been disappointing.
All is was not lost though, that decade gave us so many gems, musical memories so go and check out the bands I have mentioned and despite what I said two paragraphs ago I will give you a brief listening list of some of my personal favourites, and please listen to the whole album I despise skippers.
In no order and excluding the most obvious heavy hitters...
The Charlatans – Up to Our Hips
New Fast Automatic Daffodils – Pigeonhole
Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West
Teenage Fanclub – Bandwagonesque
Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane over the Sea
Ride – Going Blank Again
The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin
