My family and I were having lunch in a hipster diner in Philadelphia the other day when the radio station or playlist switched from fun ’60s songs like The Zombies‘ “Time of the Season” to early ’90s hits, from half-remembered Britpop bands to that Janet Jackson video shot in sepia tone, when she’s super-buff and frolicking in the sand with an equally buff model-type of guy. Remember that song?
The music made me unexpectedly nostalgic for the early ’90s, a palette-cleansing decade of sorts, following the most culturally offensive decade of my life to date, the ’80s. I mainly got to enjoy the early ’90s during the year my wife and I lived in Budapest, Hungary, from October 1993 to October 1994. Living over there by ourselves, watching Ray Cokes‘ MTV’s Most Wanted on EuroMTV, without our network of like-minded culturally snobbish friends to insulate us, I could appreciate artists like Blur; Suede; Darryl-Ann; some heavyset, black, super-corny English “hippie” guy…and those mainstream videos from back home with drop-the-cat moments by the likes of Janet Jackson and Madonna. I even learned to love a song by The Cure, a remix no less with some Sid and Marty Krofft-style “undersea” video. I can never remember the name of that song. Some day, when I do, I’ll purchase it and add it to my iPod.
It was during that year abroad that Townsman andyr sent me cassettes with Matthew Sweet‘s Girlfriend, Crowded House‘s Together Alone, and Martin Newell‘s Greatest Living Englishman. It was inspiring to hear albums with that ’60s-based vibe. Even the cheesiest of those Britpop bands, like Jesus Jones, had a groovy ’60s vibe beneath the surface. Then there was “Groove Is in the Heart.” Now THAT was a song (and video) that made the early ’90s worth living.
Curly hair came back into fashion, and all-cotton fibers. Grunge bands were kind of like ’70s burnouts of my youth. Elaine on Seinfeld was cute and funky the way women had not been during long stretches of mainstream ’80s living. The early ’90s held mild promise. Beck came along and seemed poised to take it to the next level, maybe even put our culture over the top to my long-awaited Peace Warrior era. But it was not to be. Maybe Bill Clinton getting busted for his Monica Lewinsky affair did us in. Now we seem to be living through the most prudish stretch since the 1950s. Or maybe we’re too far onto our own little social astral planes.
Where were you in the early ’90s? What was your musical world?
