Rabble-Rousing & Various Musings: 90's and Ode to Sheffiled

or It's no secret that I love the 90's music.

The 90's were a strange time of post-punk, raw fucking in your face feminism and ironic idleness. I mean, there was the first Bush, then the Clinton. There was the invention of the internet. There was Al Gore. There were a couple of important wars. There was the boy band phase. There was plaid.

There was a lot of shit going down in the 90's. A lot of important shit, and that's an understatement. However, at the same time, there was a feeling that there was absolutely nothing going on. There was a certain ignorant complacency that was happening.

I recently finished the book, "Love is a Mix Tape" by Rob Sheffield, who shares the same love of the 90's that I do. Difference, is he lived through it in his 20's. The 90's were for him what the late 2000's and 2010's are for to me. The book was hip and rhetorically awkward at times, but I have a feeling that Sheffield, who was being brutally honest is kinda hip and awkward. It was also heartbreaking. It followed the time he met his wife, Renee, to the years after she died, in his arms. All through the lens of (mostly) late 80's to the late 90's via mix tapes.

"I get sentimental over the music of the ’90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I’m concerned the ’90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps."

Sheffiled is not trying to be Klosterman. Sheffield admits to liking bad music, (terrible music, pop music! Avril Sk8r Boi!) but he does so with such a fierce, honest intensity it's hard to judge him. He's just a guy who writes who loves music who wanted to share a story articulated through music. He does so, shares a tragic story and highlights 90's music. (full review:Here) It's worth a read, if nothing else.

Then, it hit me! There is a REAL reason I am in love with the 90's. I can look back on that music and place it in time. The music was raw, imperfect. It sometimes said something, it sometimes said nothing at all. Sometimes it had screaming angry woman upset about the glass ceiling. Sometimes they just sang about being a stupid, heartbroken girl. Sometimes they just sang because they could. I can do something with that era that I can't do with music now. I can feel the years that have aged a song. I can see it's wrinkles, it's imperfections. I can hear the voice getting old & the awkward, outdated technological imperfections. You can't do that with music today. It's impossible to contextualize and place a song in a time period while you are living in the time period itself. Cultural contextualization is impossible. You don't have enough time to provide the distance to do so. That doesn't make the music I hear now better, or worse, I just can't hear the time. I can't hear it's modernity. That is a tragic loss to my ears. Maybe in 2020, I will look back and listen to MGMT and do what I do now with the 90's.

So I thank Sheffield.

Here are some 90's favorites:

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