PREVIOUSLY: The ’90s were a helluva drug. You really had to be there, kid, but suffice it to say it was 10 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity, a pot in every chicken, 2.5 SUVs in every garage, a Clinton was president and Donald Trump ran beauty contests instead of the free world. In the ’90s, the Internet went public and we all become tech stock billionaires overnight — all of us — selling dog bones over the World Wide Web, which was what we called the Interwebs back then, as was the style of the day. Good. Times.
Music was pretty great, too. Kurt Cobain singlehandedly killed the wicked witches of hair metal dead by crossing the streams of the Beatles and Black Sabbath and overnight grunge became a flannel-clad way of life. Axl Rose was out, Daniel Johnston was in. Suddenly the Lollapalooza Nation was ascendant and everything was called alt-something, everything except the right. (This was before the re-brand, when Nazis were still called Nazis) Every scraggly-haired fraggle-rock weirdo in a thrift store sweater got a major label contract: Mudhoney, Teenage Fan Club, Helmet, The Meat Puppets, The Vaselines, Dinosaur Jr., even the frickin’ Melvins.
My Bloody Valentine made The Greatest Album Ever Made and then went dark for the rest of the decade but never stopped ringing in everyone’s ears. Pavement recorded slanted enchantments in the Stockton garage of a drunk hippie. Guided By Voices built drunken lo-fi masterpieces in the basements of the Midwest. The Pixies tromped le monde, The Breeders were the bong in that reggae song, and Sonic Youth were stylish elders from Planet Noise, teaching skate punks how to Philip K. Dick and Karlheinz Stockhausen. And everyone loved Stereolab. All of us. MORE