“The 90s is a decade smacked in the middle between the old and the new world. It was absolutely beautiful, full of wonder, anticipation and adventure. You get to touch a little bit of everything. You saw the transition and felt the bittersweet emotion that accompanied it.” - Sam Anders
For me, the 90s was the longest decade of my life. I was still a little boy when it started, and I was 18 when it finished. Many changes happen in somebody’s life during those ten years, whatever the decade, but mine were those times; even though I lived in El Salvador, the influence of music from Europe and The United States was gigantic.
A return to the basics
The ones who claim rock from that decade was less rich in sound are probably right, but that was part of its magic; it was a return to the basics. There were three-people bands, each with a single instrument, making good music again.
Despite having a tricky memory, I know I arrived a bit late in the game (primarily due to my age), discovering these rock bands until 1995 when I was 13, but that didn’t prevent me from living the hype to the max of my possibilities. After getting hooked by “Come Out and Play” from The Offspring and “Basket Case” from Green Day, I became a zombie-like creature, hungry for anything that sounded (or looked) like them. In that year, I inevitably came to know Nirvana (I even asked my father to buy me an original “Nevermind” tape, which I think still exists at my parents’ house), and then I got to know the British and European bands and a new world opened to me.
I was crazy about everything they did, hearing and identifying the main instruments, specifically the bass and the guitar, and trying to understand when the drums were considered great. That is when my brother and I started one of our most beloved hobbies: recording music videos on the TV with our VCR. I still remember when we unanimously decided to overwrite our copy of the Wrestlemania IX VHS tape to record as many music videos as we could from our favorite bands and musicians. We watched and listened to that tape every week.
Rock music wasn’t necessarily better, but it was unique because it would be the last time a trend would break a previous one in such an evident way; band members would look more like regular people, use less synthesizer, and their sound was more raw. Now, artists make music that sounds like any decade, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and even the 90s. You probably will never hear somebody say in the future: “Oh, that band sounds so like 2020.”
An identity banner
Music became so important to me in those days that it was all I was after (that and video games). Without anyone explicitly agreeing on it, your music likes became part of who you were, and that is when I first started to see the difference, for example, between punk and metal fans. While I never proclaimed myself a die-hard fan of any genre, I did have my preferences, which I was proud to defend in conversations with my classmates. I was learning English, and whenever I understood a phrase that I identified with, those songs became my personal anthems. They elevated my mood, took me out of teenage depression, increased my heartbeat, and made me dream I had my own band.
My favorite bands and their sound were so attached to me that sometimes I disliked rock from the '80s, particularly the looks, with all those spongy dyed hairs, exotic outfits, and makeup, singing together in front of the same microphone. I thought they looked ridiculous. My bands (I thought) were the future, the modern times, the current sound. Soul Asylum, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Live, Goo Goo Dolls, Silverchair, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Cranberries, Oasis, The Verve, U2, Radiohead, Bush, I could go on and the list will just grow and grow. They were my sound, and I felt they would last forever.
They had the spotlight
Another factor that only increased my hype for rock music back then was its trending power. The MTV Video Music Awards were still a respectable reference for what real music was. I remember many of the nominees and the guest presentations were in that genre. The mythic show of the 1995 awards edition was followed by the successful and probably last good editions in 1996 and 1997. I remember I didn’t watch them live, but on replays and videotape recordings, some of our friends who had cable TV made for us.
If all the press coverage was not enough, there was also the fact that many rock songs became the “soundtrack” for many blockbuster movies in that decade, which was already a big thing since the 70s. I remember tripping to “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” by U2 in Batman Forever [paid link], “Humans Being” by Van Halen on Twister [paid link], or “Lovefool” by The Cardigans in Romeo + Juliet [paid link] to name a few. Now, this “tradition” seems to have lost its weight in comparison.
Times were already changing
“Once upon a time we lived in a world of information scarcity. We knew too little about things, and finding out about what we loved took time and effort and money and luck.”
Neil Gaiman on finding out about The Breeders
One of the best pieces of writing in this regard was what Neil Gaiman wrote about the band The Breeders for their fifth album in 2018 when he recalled hearing for the first time about Kim Deal, the band’s frontwoman, when she was still a member of the mythic band the Pixies: when the co-owner of a bookstore he was signing books on told him the night before she and her staff had free drinks when a waiter on a restaurant confused her with Kim Deal and also believed that her companions, all bookstore people, were the rest of The Pixies band. This is something that could never happen these days, being so easy to search on the internet for pictures and references of our idols.
To find out the latest news about our bands, we had to listen to the right radio stations, read the newspapers, talk with classmates or friends who had cable TV at home, and have the privilege of watching MTV. I remember sleeping with a portable radio next to my head. Many nights, I slept and woke up listening to music, hoping to discover a new song or to have teenage dreams with the songs I liked.
Everything around us was changing, especially on mediums to listen to music, so it was natural for me to think we were in modern times, and that idea stuck with me so much that whenever I think about 1994, I still get the feeling of modern. During this time-lapse, we listened to music from my father’s vinyl records, his tapes, our tapes, CDs, and the first MP3 files. The internet was also becoming a medium for music; I remember going to a friend’s house whose computer CD drive was fast enough to read the “special digital features” contained in one of my original music CDs.
And then suddenly, without even noticing, we were in the year 2000. While I was still buying CDs from time to time, I found myself ripping the tracks into high-quality MP3 files so I could listen to them on my computer or in the car. Once we got our first internet connection, my brother and I got to try Napster, then Audiogalaxy, and we were able to obtain music that was not available to us in any way. I even obtained some old songs my father asked me to find that he didn’t have and couldn’t buy anywhere.
Music for me now
I found that jewel phrase I opened this essay with on a YouTube comment a few months ago while scrolling through the comments on “Black Balloon,” a 1999 song from The Goo Goo Dolls. For many of us, platforms like YouTube or online music magazines are where we search for our music (For instance, I discovered Within Temptation while scrolling through the comments of an Evanescence song). The radio or popularity charts make distinguishing quality from mere trends harder these days.
Things eventually changed; I don’t think the looks of the 80s were ridiculous anymore (I know it was all part of the show). I don’t go to sleep listening to rock music, either. Sometimes, whenever I listen to some of those old songs I used to love, I am transported to the mental carcass of my teenage years, and I can relive, for a few minutes, many of the hopes, dreams, and moods those riffs made me feel. Despite rarely listening to rock music nowadays (I am in an extended instrumental music phase), and sometimes I regret never trying to make my band, I recognize how important those years were for me in learning how to appreciate other art expressions.
While I enjoyed those years, I don’t want them to return. Good music has always been made (we need to learn how to discover it), but I am sure we will never have another decade like that again.