The other 90's

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
every decade has its cutting edge and its reactionary music. or even just its good and bad music. but usually those two polarities are informed by entirely different sensibilities and sonic influences.

for example there was very little convergence between easy listening and acid rock; different fashion, drugs, incomes, age groups, ideologies, etc.

what's interesting about some of the absolute worst stuff from the 90's was that it was informed by the same cultural inputs as the best stuff.

trip hop, down tempo, illbient, etc. were on paper not a million miles away from the nuum, but somehow something went terribly wrong for all of them.
 

other_life

bioconfused
tried getting at this in the CHRIS OTT DISCORD SERVER crowl's in there, re:gorillaz, beck, fiona apple's 'tidal', soul coughing, other people brought up shit like citizen king's 'better days'. cibo matto and halcali were also mentioned tangentially but imo that stuff's miles better.
i think the common denominator is "rave but at comfortable alt rock mid-tempo" "hip hop but the voices don't trigger castration anxiety/make me feel like i'm being Sonned" "'nuum but it's accessible in cd-format at fye sam goody etc.". that's what makes it so much worse.
it's totally a gateway to the real thing for u.s. kids my age though like, who's moms and older sisters loved this kinda stuff.
it's similar to contemporary stuff third, carol and i have touched on around "i'll get out of rockism and into rap and club BUT IT HAS TO HAVE SOMETHING GOING FOR ME AS A ['sensitive', 'queer', invariably sheltered labor aristocrat and usually white] WHO CAME UP ON THE UNDERGROUND [which of course is overground]."
can't take it as it is w all the conventions that come w it, has to be qualified, already in your ballywick. Boards of Canada + their kids, Young Thug + his kids. soul coughing beck et. al. probably have Kids as well, someone in the 'cord mentioned cage the elephant and i thought from there of 21 pilots
 

other_life

bioconfused
chris HATES the avalanches but capes for dj shadow, would u guys consider either of them in there? of course it's 'canon' but i think its estimated too highly by people who wouldn't say [admit] they particularly care for those early gorillaz and beck records, which they have a fair bit in common with, no?
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
shadow got good when he started making hyphy records but he was always a bit hip hop for people who don't want to deal with the complicated politics of hip hop.

@ otherlife, that's what my list can also be read as, the gangsta queer manifesto.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
One of the things about the 90s in the sort of music we are talking about here is that right up until the mid-to-late 90s at least it was wrapped up in the self-satisfaction of not being the 80s.

It's impossible to understand for those actually born in the 90s how toxic the 80s was - not just politically, but aesthetically - at this time, and how smug everybody was about having "moved on" from it. But all the things that actually moved on were partly built upon the musical developments and detritus of the 80s.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I remember the 80s being a laughable decade - everything garish and gauche, horrible overproduced rock records, etc.

Of course now the 90s looks awful and the 80s looks - culturally - amazing.
 

luka

Well-known member
One of the things about the 90s in the sort of music we are talking about here is that right up until the mid-to-late 90s at least it was wrapped up in the self-satisfaction of not being the 80s.

It's impossible to understand for those actually born in the 90s how toxic the 80s was - not just politically, but aesthetically - at this time, and how smug everybody was about having "moved on" from it. But all the things that actually moved on were partly built upon the musical developments and detritus of the 80s.

I'd forgotten this dynamic but you're right. The '90s saw itself very much as a good taste decade, chinos from Gap decade.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Did the 60s revivalism of Britpop come out of rave culture (the hippy element to it) or was it just a reaction to it?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I think Britpop was even more sonically and scenically parochial than that. It was more like a reaction to other stuff that was happening in guitar music in the 90s - partly grunge (in the case of Blur) but even more so the self-effacing blank shoegazer bands like Ride and Slowdive and the horrible grebo T-shirt band scene of Neds Atomic Dustbin, Carter USM, Kingmaker etc.

It was literally a reaction to other guitar bands in 1992. This narrow horizon was why it was so horrible, with the whole pointless thing playing out across the pages of Melody Maker and NME.
 

luka

Well-known member
Craner is something of an expert on this topic as he was a music journalist on a student magazine at the time, and I wouldn't dare contradict him. What he says is 100% true, but what I had in mind was a certain expansiveness and euphoria and messianism oasis inherited from the stone roses which was a holdover from rave culture to some degree
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Britpop is the absolute worst. Has there ever been a phenomena so oversold and overhyped? It's made even worse by the fact that it had such a close relationship with the media, that even now, you get one of those pundits from back in the day going on about it, still. I kind of think of it as a mass marketisation of 90s UK's cultural excitement only with the black people and drugs taken out, for the University market.

And musically, it's so. BAD.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
My reading of it is that there's no element of rave culture left in it. The 60s revivalism was simply an aping mod bands. The idea of 4th generation Small Faces impersonations, handed down via The Jam, with more dilution each time. There was never an aspiration to be psychedelic - though you can find that done well and badly in lots of other bands of the time - Spiritualised, The Shamen, Loop etc.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Just read Luke's post - that is true of the Roses, but I thought that was watered down by Oasis. Seems totally bound up in my head with Loaded magazine and a kind of revival of white hetreo blokeiness.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I wanted to post a Groove Armada track but I hate them so much I don't know the names of any of their songs.
 
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