Ray William Johnson and DeStorm take you Back to the 90s.
I would argue it was in the '80s that that happened, maybe even earlier. It seems to me there was, if anything, a bit of a lull in environmentalism during the '90s. CFCs, Chernobyl etc all brought environmentalism to the fore in the '80s.
Yeah, that’s the difference. Most of the time you have to seek out good music, and 99% of the stuff being foisted onto the public on the radio doesn’t qualify. But occasionally good music bubbles up from the bottom and forces its way onto the airwaves almost in spite of corporate goons. And that happened in a big way in the early 90s.
By the late 90s that was all over and we were back to corporate crap.
No, I think BG is right. I particularly remember Earth Day 1990 (the 20th anniversary of the original) really giving a kick start to recycling efforts:
After that, you began to see large scale recycling of paper and glass particularly, where that hadn’t been the norm before. (At least in the US.)
This is the weird thing about nostalgia - from '95 to '98 I was at university, and convinced that the rate at which nostalgia was catching up with contemporary culture meant that at some point in the near future the two would collide! In the UK they had 70s-theme clubs called ‘Flares’ in the 90s, which I believe were converted into 80s-theme clubs called ‘Reflex’ in the 00s.
And while the 90s had new cultural stuff to offer - dance music, ‘Indie’, grunge - the fact that the nostalgia bandwagon was already rolling means that any echo of the 90s will always be somewhat ‘an echo of an echo’.
With any luck, discovery of viable nuclear fusion techniques and the naotechnology revolution will mean we can embrace a shiny new future, and stop this never-ending trip down memory lane. Or would that just be 50s nostalgia?
And it wouldn’t have happened if environmental issues weren’t already on the agenda prior to that, in the 1980’s.
That’s nothing new. 50s nostalgia was big in the 70s. Hence we got Happy Days. Nostalgia seems to peak 20 years or so after the decade being remembered. So the 90s are due.
Ditto. And not only that, but crime started to fall and the economy surged. It was a good time to be a kid/teen. I suspect with more time it will be remembered as a kind of replay of the '50s.
This song was on heavy rotation on B97, the number one top-ten hit station here in my town, in 1997. I heard this song literally every night when I listened to the radio.
This is far from the best song of the '90s or even the best song of 1997, although I still like it a lot. But could you imagine a song like this getting played on the top-ten teenager hit radio station today? All B97 plays today is Gaga, Katy Perry, and horrible autotuned overproduced wannabe hip-hop and rap.
I think it started awhile back. Nintendo has basically been remaking Pokemon, Mario 64, and Ocarina of Time for 15 years. Doom, Quake, HL1, Diablo 1-2, and Counter-Strike set the stage for modern PC gaming. The NBA has been trying to find a new Michael Jordan since '98.
Rave culture is kinda still around as a dance music culture, though the term “rave” is rarely used, and it’s less candy-raver/happy house/etc. than it used to be. More underground, more likely to be 21+ instead of all-ages (though there are still big all-ages bashes-- witness the hullabaloo over the recent under-21 deaths at a Texas electronic music festival). Once you’re in the scene, it’s easy to find parties every weekend in and around most major cities, but it’s not like the old days of dropping in to a local music shop and finding a psychedelic flyer by the door. It’s also dropped a lot of the neon magic-mushroom shit that used to make old rave culture feel like a continuation of hippie culture… but still a lot of rolling and tripping going on.
I’m hitting this touring electronic music festival this summer, and it promises to be pretty fun. The cool thing is that I’m already in on an afterparty to the festival when it comes in through my town that promises to be like the old days; all-ages, goes 'til the sun comes up, chill-out rooms, multiple dance floors…
Wouldn’t that be now, with the whole Rockabilly/Pin-Up/Retro-/Mad Men thing? Said as someone who is very fond of all of those things, to be fair. 
Is there a “whole thing” now? Rockabilly has been “revived” a bunch of times. We’re farther now from “Stray Cat Strut” than it was from “Blue Suede Shoes.”
Burlesque style’s period of rediscovery is pretty long now too, within my personal knowledge going back to, yes, the '90s.
There was a brief swing / ska / rockabilly revival in the mid to late 90s. Movies like Swingers, bands like Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Cherry Poppin’ Daddies popularized the style for like 18 months..
Someone be sure to let me know when it does hit, so I don’t have to be so secretive about rocking out to November Rain.
I remember the 90s Somewhat conflictedly. I’m 33, so the 90s should be what I remember with nostalgia. I actually remember the 80s with more nostalgia than the 90s. I think this is mostly because of the music. The 80s pop music all seemed so happy, with Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Rick Astley, etc. In the 90s Michael Jackson and Madonna started making sadder music. We also had Alanis Morisette and similar artists that made what seems like depressing music to me. And I’m not sure why that happened with music, since as a nation everything was going well, a good economy, peacetime, etc.
I just noticed this.
Just 18 months? Man, people who remember that revival fondly are laaaame.
That’s a full 14 months longer than electroclash lasted.
I am proud to announce that I started 1990s nostalgia - no, wait, I mean ridicule and mockery of the 1990s - in the mid-1990s.
I went to the 1995 (I think, may have been 1994) Malibu Nightclub Halloween party (Malibu Nightclub, Lido Blvd, Lido Beach, NY - home of Malibu Sue and the Mighty Maximizer, Punks & Guidos together - alas, it closed in 1996) dressed as a Grunge rocker - long hair, flannel shirt, stupid logo t-shirt, torn jeans, work boots, (fake) ear-ring, and an ugly inflatable plastic guitar. Alas, the parody was lost on many in the crowd, as most of the guys not wearing costumes were dressed that way in real life (guess they didn’t get the memo that grunge was dead, long live MODERN ROCK, dammit!), and so I looked pretty much the same as them except carrying a stupid plastic guitar. The irony was simply lost to the world, but I did try.
(My friend wore skis - yes, full size skis - to the rather crowded event - this did not turn out well).