Guess who’s back!

In the course of one weekend recently I read that both Bell Biv Devoe and House of Pain were playing live (not on the same bill), tickets for a Faith No More show would be going on sale the following week, and Pearl Jam was on Saturday Night Live.  I then started thinking about twenty year cycles and how it’s 2010 and it struck me- shit, we’re on the cusp of a nineties revival.

I turned 13 in 1990, so I pretty much spent that decade both reasonably aware of and overly spiteful of things around me.  I was into the alternative band scene (the revival will include all stupid terminology as well) about a year to nine months before peer group and was extremely possessive about it, so I was pretty pissed my freshman year when every douche at my school was walking around in Fugazi or Dinosaur Jr. t shirts (what kind of an idiot owns a Fugazi t shirt anyway?).  I’ve been trying to get over that one for twenty years now, and I think I’ve finally been able to come to terms with it.  So, you know, while I’m not really looking forward to a resurgence of Soundgarden and Candlebox on the radio, I don’t think I’ll go shoot myself in the head with a shotgun after taking a very large amount of heroin over it.

But saying that assumes what form the revival will take.  Maybe it won’t be a grunge thing.  Maybe it’ll be Smashmouth and Chubbawamba and Sugar Ray.  Maybe it’ll be a Britpop thing.  Maybe everyone will be really into X-Clan (finally).  These things are always fairly capricious in nature, so it’s basically impossible to predict whence this nostalgia rocket shall find it’s fuel.  Unfortunately, whatever form the nineties revival takes, it’s shape will most certainly be molded by the most vacuous cultural signifiers that one might say defines “the nineties”, and it most certainly won’t pay any mind to the many passing lameities and true horrors that happened, just as the atrocities of the 70s and 80s seemed to get a pass (I’m sure Rwanda will be given as much attention by nineties revivalists as Cambodia and Lebanon were given by 70s and 80s enthusiasts, respectively).

Which brings me to my point.  I don’t really care if people start wearing Phillies Blunt shirts again or White Sox caps or revisits the Macarena.  What I dread, and what I really hope we can nip in the bud, is the coming of a nostalgia for the 2000s ten years hence.  Please let’s all remember that this decade we are coming out of really really sucked.  The politics were totally poisonous.  Many many people died for terrible reasons.  More in the perview of this blog, the music kind of sucked.  Rap was really boring.  Pop was disgustingly mindless (even for pop).  Autotune.  As for the indie scene- yes, the internet made it easier for “indie” bands (indie being the alternative of today) to get an audience.  Is that always the a good thing?  Perhaps there’s something to be said for an apprenticeship period playing bars, high school dances, and pool parties where you actually figure out how to play and whether or not you’re any good.  And why aren’t more of these twerps getting bullied in high school?  Maybe the nineties people will get all hopped up on Limp Bizkit and strike down the Cera Brigade once and for all!  Or at least until fifteen years from now, when I catch my kid wearing a Shins t shirt, and it all begins again…