I can't remember exactly when or where I heard this last week, but something about 1990s nostalgia was brought up in a conversation. Something was mentioned about how it was going to be the next nostalgia trend with people my age and younger. As in, more modern bands referencing 90s bands and people throwing parties centering around a theme that is very 90s-centric. And within just a few days, I talked with some friends at a party that were en route to a party where people were asked to dress up as a character from a 90s' sitcoms.
I know nostalgia doesn't stop, and I don't think nostalgia is a bad thing, but I find things strange to experience nostalgia for an era that actually lived through.
Being a teenager who was born at the end of the 1970s meant there were no 8-tracks, Led Zeppelin concerts, or a Vietnam War to deal with in your teenage years. So it's easy to imagine how things were much cooler in the 70s when the Ramones and the Clash put out their debut albums and how awesome films like Star Wars and The Godfather were in the theater. While Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Pavement were cool at the time in your teenage years, there was this strange (but understandable) kind of connection to a past where you weren't there. It's the, "things just aren't what they used to be" kind of thought process.
I'm very guilty by association with feeding into a mentality that certain things in the 90s were "better" (see my first book and my second book in the works), but I'm not trying to change the course of the past and alter the future. Rather, I think it's necessary to talk about the context of the day to understand why certain bands and movies were great in their day and are still great today.
That said, I'm definitely not somebody who wants to pretend like the 90s never ended. Far from it. I'm definitely not the same person I was in middle school and high school, and I don't pine for those days as much as I pine for the days ahead. I think I'll find myself in a time warp for the next few years seeing oversized pants, flannel, and vintage Big Muff distortion pedals back in style.
I know nostalgia doesn't stop, and I don't think nostalgia is a bad thing, but I find things strange to experience nostalgia for an era that actually lived through.
Being a teenager who was born at the end of the 1970s meant there were no 8-tracks, Led Zeppelin concerts, or a Vietnam War to deal with in your teenage years. So it's easy to imagine how things were much cooler in the 70s when the Ramones and the Clash put out their debut albums and how awesome films like Star Wars and The Godfather were in the theater. While Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Pavement were cool at the time in your teenage years, there was this strange (but understandable) kind of connection to a past where you weren't there. It's the, "things just aren't what they used to be" kind of thought process.
I'm very guilty by association with feeding into a mentality that certain things in the 90s were "better" (see my first book and my second book in the works), but I'm not trying to change the course of the past and alter the future. Rather, I think it's necessary to talk about the context of the day to understand why certain bands and movies were great in their day and are still great today.
That said, I'm definitely not somebody who wants to pretend like the 90s never ended. Far from it. I'm definitely not the same person I was in middle school and high school, and I don't pine for those days as much as I pine for the days ahead. I think I'll find myself in a time warp for the next few years seeing oversized pants, flannel, and vintage Big Muff distortion pedals back in style.
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