90's Flashback!

Grunge, Pop-Punk, and Alternative: The 90s Music Triumvirate

Ask someone what comes to mind when you say "90s music", and odds are you'll get 8 or 9 "Nirvana"s for every 10 people. It's no surprise, really, since Nirvana was considered the epitome of the Grunge music movement. They were the group to open up the big old can of teenage angst. But even though Grunge was a genre unique to the 90s, we all know that there were at least 2 other genres that soared in popularity during our favorite decade. Alternative rock and Pop-punk music both dominated the airwaves (that weren't packed full of teen-pop like the Backstreet Boys and N*Sync) throughout the 90s. And although both genres continue to crop up in contemporary bands, Gen Y members know that the heyday of both occurred before Y2K.



Grunge: angst, distortion, and dynamics

Nirvana
Come as you are

Of course everyone knows that the big band of the 90s was Nirvana. The brooding, flannel-clad nonconformists took the airwaves and discontent teenage hearts by storm. Their surprising rise to fame has only been surpassed by their overwhelming influence on music since their unfortunate end with Kurt Cobain's death. Despite the band's relatively short lifespan, they still managed to record 3 studio albums of material, with 10 other releases of EPs, Live records and compilations. For their 3 studio releases, Nirvana had a whopping 20 singles, which goes to show just how popular they had become by the early 90s. Though it may have pissed Kurt off to know that Nirvana had become such a big name in the music industry, their songs are still in regular circulation and they are often cited as a significant influence on contemporary bands.

Check them out:

• Smells Like Teen Spirit
• Come As You Are
• Polly
• Lithium
• In Bloom
• About a Girl
• The Man Who Sold the World

Other 90s Grunge bands include: Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden

Pop-Punk: fast, melodic brattiness

blink-182
What's my age again?

Along with Green Day and the Offspring, blink-182 headed the 90s genre of Pop-punk, giving snotty teens that weren't pissed off something to blast from their boom boxes and car stereos. Pop-punk was all fun and power chords with the occasional incoherence and allusion to masturbation (or entire song about it, see: Longview by Green Day). Although it didn't take root right away, by 1997 pop-punk had caught on thanks to Green Day's Dookie, the Offspring's Smash, and blink-182's Dude Ranch. blink-182 was known for their melodic toilet humor and catchy adolescent anthems, releasing 3 more albums before a hiatus in 2005, and returning in early 2009. Though Pop-punk doesn't hold a title as instantly recognizable and influential as Grunge and Nirvana did, this genre did have a very large appeal to the teens of the 90s and 2000s, and has spawned a contemporary wave of bands following in its footsteps.

Check them out:

• Dammit (blink-182)
• What's My Age Again? (blink 182)
• Feeling This (blink-182)
• When I Come Around (Green Day)
• Church On Sunday (Green Day)
• I Choose (the Offspring)
• Want You Bad (the Offspring)

Other 90s Pop-punk bands include: Rancid, the Descendents, Less than Jake

Alternative: post-80s grab bag of rock

"Alternative" is really a blanket term for music since the late 80s that doesn't fit exactly into one specific genre or another. As such, there are a shitload of "Alternative" bands out there today, with such different types of music that it is nearly impossible to pick a defining band like Nirvana is to Grunge. At its inception, Alternative was known as "College Rock", since bands of the genre were widely played on college radio stations as a reflection of college students' musical tastes. Scores, if not hundreds of bands like the Strokes, 3 Doors Down, Barenaked Ladies, Matchbox 20, the Gin Blossoms, and Oasis encompass the Alternative genre. With the advent of Grunge, windows opened for Alternative bands and their popularity soared, still lasting to this day. One of the most popular and recognizable Alternative bands is R.E.M., especially among Generation Xers, but by now anyone could name an Alternative band that they have in their ipod/iphone/mp3 player library.

Check it out:

• Hey Jealousy (Gin Blossoms)
• (What's the Story) Morning Glory (Oasis)
• Ain't That Unusual (Goo Goo Dolls)
• Kryptonite (3 Doors Down)
• Pinch Me (Barenaked Ladies)
• Semi-Charmed Life (Third Eye Blind)
• Creep - Radiohead

Other 90s Alternative bands include: Tonic, Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket

90s music is a huge subject to talk about, go out and search for some artists outside of your 90s favorites. Regardless of your favorite genre, you'll find dozens of songs and artists to add to your library!
Look around Amazon.com and you'll find items like Non Stop '90s Rock,
or put your favorite songs and artists into Pandora and find new music as you listen!

Where Are They Now? pt. 1

Since All Saint’s Day (the day of the dead) has just recently passed, and since 2009 is drawing closer to its end, I thought we’d spend a bit of time looking back at some of the notable 90s icons, and seeing where they are today. A Then and Now, if you will. And you will.

R.I.P.

We all agree already that it's a sad thing that the 90s have passed by and left us in the new millennium with cold, unfeeling machines and up to the ears in text messages and "i-[product]"s, whereas BopIt and Simon (the game) just aren't cool anymore. But it saddens me to share with you the passing of some of the more cuddly familiar faces since the turn of the century.


Dolly the Sheep (1996-2003)

Remember all the talk when Dolly was first born? The first cloned mammal from an adult cell, "the most famous sheep in the world" (suck it, Lamb Chop), was a huge deal when the success story first hit the news. It was all over then, The Attack of the Clones was nigh (thanks a lot, Star Wars) and mad scientists were surely cooking up batches of look-alike killing machines from our stolen hairs.
Well, the takeover never happened, and six and a half short years later, Dolly the First Cloned Sheep died of lung cancer in 2003. The funny thing is, I know everyone heard about Dolly being born, but I can't remember at all if the news ever got out that she died. I didn't hear about it until I saw it online several months ago. Despite being more than half a decade late to the wake, I now share with you the sad reality that is a post-Dolly world. Since Dolly's successful birth, many other animals have been cloned, and scientists even suggest that cloning may eventually be able to reproduce extinct species such as Woolly Mammoths and dinosaurs. But hey, at least we weren't attacked by clones, right?

CHOOSE YOUR DEATH!

Gidget the Taco Bell Dog (1994-2009)

A lot of celebrities died this summer, but here's one you may not have heard about. Granted, Gidget didn't moonwalk or do kung fu or sell Oxiclean; she didn't direct movies or create guitars and she wasn't one of Charlie's angels. But dammit, she was cute and damn good at making us crave fast food!

After several years of being the face of Taco Bell, she played a role in Legally Blonde (something no man should have known before reading either this blog or that linked article) and lived in doggy luxury until the age of 15. Gidget's catch phrase lives on, buried in the minds of the 90s kids and their parents. Pop culture and Psyche!the90s remember her and the words that hijacked our brains: "¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!"

Clash of the Consoles, pt. 2 (And the One Reason 90s Kids DID Want to Go to School)

Reason #3 kids wanted to stay home: Sony Playstation

Look at that sleek, savvy thing up there. That was one bitchin console when it came to us from Japan in 1995. It caught the attention of kids like wildfire with its impressive graphics and fast gameplay, and even though it lacked an iconic character like Sonic or Mario, it offered many popular game franchises like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Frogger, the video game giant that is the Final Fantasy series, and a slew of sports and racing games. It catered to everyone; Hell, you could practically hear a choir of angels singing as you opened the box. This wonder machine has claimed millions of childhood hours worldwide, while parents’ suggestions to “go outside!” fell on deaf ears.

Ahh, Frogger…so many good times. So many angrily thrown controllers.

And the winner by a long shot: Nintendo 64

The granddaddy of classic video games, the Nintendo 64. Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye 007; this console holds claim to the heavyweight champions of the classic video game world. It came to us in 1996 and hasn't stopped being great since. You haven't fully experienced video gaming until you've played at least one of these great titles. The number of hours 90s kids spent collecting stars, shells, swords and bullets, and stomping on, stabbing at, and shooting up colorful villains must be astounding. I know I spent a good 3 years of my life playing on this system. And regardless of where you look, these games make it on nearly every list of the top video games of all time. Of all time; this console offered games in the late 90s that beat out games powered by a 250GB Playsation 3 more than a decade later. Japan sure knows their video games. I've probably spent a couple hundred hours playing through the big-name titles time after time, how about you?

What are your memories? Let's get some feedback! Post a comment with your favorite console, game, or memory, or maybe your worst; frustrations are welcome as well. You know you played at least one of these games or systems, and you know you loved it. Now revel in it!

Ok, you've been waiting and suspecting since seeing the title of this post, now it's time to sate your curiosity. The one reason 90s kids did want to go to school was...

Oregon Trail

Yes it was. You remember this. Oregon Trail day. The day the class got to use the computer, and that was the best day of the week for damn sure. No one even cared that it was an educational game, we loved it anyway. The only thing that wasn't awesome about it was that eventually the class would be over (alas, the great despair of all video gamers), and you would have to go back to boring, actual learning.

Book learning sucks.

You led a caravan of settlers through the titular trail, you hunted deer, rabbits and oxen, and maybe died of dysentery. AND YOU LOVED IT.

AND, since I know how you really want it, I'll go ahead and indulge your pangs of nostalgia. There is an ONLINE VERSION OF THE GAME. Oh yes. Enjoy. Go die of dysentery. It'll be the best thing you've done all day.

Hooray for reliving 6th grade!

Funny, I Feel Like I've Seen This Before

This past weekend I went to see Surrogates at the theater since the trailer caught my interest and I was curious to see what they were making Bruce Willis beat up nowadays. And he's got that godawful wig on. The movie itself was decent, I give it 6/10 stars.
******



But be warned: there is a whole lot of déjà vu in this movie. That's probably because I, like most people, saw it the first time around when it was called

Yup. Pretty much. The premise is that people can buy robots (overtones of I, Robot) that they can make look however they want (like the Matrix characters do when they're plugged into the Matrix)and sent out into the world as a proxy to do pretty much whatever they want while they themselves are plugged into a machine (getting pretty blatant, here). There's also a rebel group that hates the machines and eventually someone that wants to wipe them all (the machines in this case) out. His name isn't Smith, though. Too bad, we were almost 5 for 5 there.

Does anyone else notice that movies lately tend to be shameless ripoffs of other movies (see here), shameless remakes (Black Christmas, The Omen, I Am Legend), or shameless capitalizing on books (the Harry Potter franchise, The Road, Narnia movies, and the unfortunate reality that is Twilight)? How does this keep happening? When did it become ok to constantly recycle older ideas? Isn't that considered plagiarism? Isn't plagiarism bad?

And the real shame is that the several original ideas that make their way to the cinemas each year are usually pretty terrible. Maybe I'm just hard to please, but when I see previews for Saw VI, 2012, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, my faith in the movie industry hits rock bottom, and I really really hope that it's not just me.

I guess we can only hope for the best, and watch our DVDs of better movies from better times. Here're some of my recommendations (90's themed, of course):

• American Pie (1999) Sexy comedy
• Jurassic Park (1993) Dinosaurs and Jeff Goldblum (and Colonel Sanders)!
• The Matrix (1999) Ted Theodore Logan, post-Alaskan military school
• Scream (1996) Ghostface!
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - for the Burton fans
• Titanic (1997) - for the girls
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) Arnold is back, just like he said he'd be back!
• Home Alone (1990) Every kids' how-to guide to boobytrap your house and piss off your parents
• Tommy Boy (1995) or Black Sheep (1996) It's really the same movie either way
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) Disturbingly hairy Mike Myers works mojo and bad teeth
• Back to the Future, part 3 (1990) DeLorean and hoverboard awesomeness in the Old West.

A Matter of Perspective...Not!

Alright, so the Generation Z kids wont agree because they don’t know any better, as all of us Gen Y-ers know, the 90's were, in fact, the bomb. But in lieu of Y2K, the familiarity of our golden childhood days is quickly slipping away.


In the last decade audio players went from cassette tapes to walkmans (dude!) to cds to mp3 players, which will surely be phased out any month now. Landlines have been damned to quaintness as every man, woman, 9 year old and their dog has their own personal cell phone (minimal radiation emissions!) to text each other when it's time for dinner. Kids born after the mid-90's have never known a time in their life when the internet hasn't been available for completing school projects at the last minute. Oh, hey, does anyone want a Polaroid? Better get one soon if you do, because they're not going to be making them for much longer.
Polaroid is getting out of the Polaroid business. What the hell is this?


Turn of the century kids never got to appreciate that which went before them; cds, cell phones, computers and crappy tv have just been the norm. Gone are the days of good cartoons and simple childhood pleasures. Here's a prime example; a beloved elementary school toy, Bop It, as the 90's kids will remember it.



And here is the ungodly post-millennium version, Bop It Download. How are kids supposed to play with that thing? How do you even hold it?




Are you happy now, Gen Z?




What about another simple toy, Skip It? Where are those now? Oh, wait, nobody cares, because kids are too busy playing with their Nintendo DS's and Hannah Montana Music Video sets.


And as time went on, baseball cards became [insert popular anime-model tv show] cards, Barbies became Bratz, and Pogs simply disappeared. MTV traded music videos for "reality" shows about a bunch of jerkoff 20-somethings that live on the beach of South California. Saturday morning timeslots got filled with Disney drivel and the 17th incarnation of Power Rangers. N*Sync gave way to Eminem. Though to be honest, I can't tell which of those two is the greater evil.


The shortcomings of the new millennium are many, and I could write a page-long post full of reasons why, but I don't want to be writing all night, and you don't want to be reading all night, right? I haven't even talked about the difference music, gone in-depth with cartoon comparison, or talked about the plague that is reality television. So consider this post the first of...well, a series of posts about why the 90's were better than Now.

'Til next time, all the best.

Clash of the Consoles, pt. 1 (Why 90's Kids Never Wanted to Go to School)

If you're anything like me, you know that the mid-90's were a magical time for kids, introducing the first generation of competing video game consoles. Parents the world over would come to lament the time their kids would spend in front of the tv instead of doing "better things"...going outside, doing their homework, reading, and all that noise. 90's consoles brought us some of the most recognizable and classic characters in the video game industry. Here are some of the most popular consoles in the order they were released; which was your favorite?

Let's start things off with: Nintendo Game Boy

Old school

Remember this bad boy? How many hours did you kill using one of these? How many batteries did you have to buy to keep that sucker running? The original Game Boy came out in August of 1989, so 80's kids got to enjoy it first, but many of the good games came about a couple years later. You could numb your mind with some Tetris, though. Being part of the Nintendo franchise, Gameboy users could also play classics from their NES (released in 85) like Super Mario Bros. and Zelda on the go. Hundreds of other games followed, including Wario World, Kirby's Adventureland, Donkey Kong Land, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and, of course, Pokemon. Yup, Pokemon. That's a whole other animal that we'll get to in another post. Oh yeah, we're coming back around for that, don't you worry. But not now. Later. You'll have to contain yourself til then.

Next up: Sega Genesis

You were probably either a Sega kid or a Nintendo kid; they were like the first Burger King vs McDonalds of the video game world. Even now, 20 years after the Sega Genesis came out, the best-known icon of the console, Sonic the Hedgehog, is one of the biggest names in video games, along with Nintendo's Mario. How's that for a lasting impression? I have proof:

http://www.gamespot.com/wii/sports/mariosonicattheolympicgames/

The Genesis wasn't the last we heard from Sega, but it was by far the best received, and was (for those who somehow still have one somewhere. You nerds) the classic console of the company. The Genesis did have other games you could buy (it's true!), but who really cared?

All you ever needed

Pictured: Crime against video games

Check back for the big-name systems in Clash of the Consoles, part 2, and watch for the coming poll to vote for your favorite video game system!

"OH YEAH!"

Let's jump right into this one, shall we?


Iiiiiiiiiiinnn West Philadelphia, born and raised...

Growing up in the 90's, what kid didn't know the words to that song? You probably either loved this show or you hated it, but either way, there was no escaping it. Every afternoon, it'd be on the tv, and you'd hear Will Smith's rapping and your kids or siblings or friends singing along. And probably laughing way too loud at the gags, but what the Hell did we care, we were kids.

Maybe some kids got in trouble for some show-inspired hijinks, as kids are wont to do, but it was all in the spirit of fun and rebel-tastic coolness. Will Smith was like the Optimus Prime of actual people; he was that cool.

Sadly, old-time fans will find themselves relegated to watching reruns on Nick @ Nite to get their Fresh fix. But for your enjoyment, here is a tribute site that is really god-awful. It's good for a few kicks and any website-revision project, because it's really just terrible. But I digress. There are also numerous sites where you can watch episodes of the show online, and you can now buy the first 4 seasons on DVD. Pop in some popcorn and let the hijinks commence!

Oh, and just try getting that song out of your head now.

On to our second bit of memorabilia:

Kool Aid Man!

Okay, so Kool Aid Man wasn't from the 90's; his actual birth date was in 1954 as "Pitcher Man". The animated rendition we know now, though, did start in the 90's. Circa '75, the now-famous (and often parodied) mascot was an actual person dressed up in a giant pitcher costume, while before that he was simply a smiling piece of creepy glassware.

By the time the 90's came around, advertisements featured Kool Aid Man performing extreme sports and bursting through brick walls. It was probably shortly thereafter that the clunky pitcher costume was abandoned in favor of an animated mascot (actual human beings do have an unfortunate lack of brick- and concrete-busting ability). Thanks to his sixth sense for finding large groups of bored children, Kool Aid Man would show up at backyard parties, pools and playgrounds to give everyone Kool Aid, announcing himself with a shout of "OH YEAH!" and thereby becoming the life of the party. Whether these spontaneous arrivals were met with restraining orders from concerned parents remains curiously unanswered.

Kool Aid Man's destructive tendencies and hilariously famous catchphrase has since been parodied in numerous animated cartoons, the best known of which being Family Guy.

Here's another gatecrashing food mascot. Partners in crime?

"How do you mascots keep finding me???"

And now here's something we hope you'll really like;

DAMN YOU, AOL!

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to the commencement post of Psyche! The 90's! My aim for this blog is to bring a touch of nostalgia to my audience and help you to reminisce about your memories of all the 1990's had to offer: the best, the good, and even the not-so-good. Hopefully you'll enjoy my posts; maybe you'll passionately dislike some of them--not all memories are good ones. But I hope to keep you interested and entertained, and offer material that everyone can enjoy.

Let me break the blog down for you; each post from here on out will highlight a few aspects of the 1990's, whether they be musical artists or songs, movies, tv shows, celebrities, toys, fads, news, events, or just miscellanea. There are far too many things to talk about for every post to include something from each of these categories, so check back often if the latest post doesn't include a topic you're looking for.

Also, most topics will include a commentary, but some may just be an image, video, or audio file to be amusing and to appreciate; not everything will necessarily have a rhyme or reason.

Now, being the conscientious blogger that I am, I will present you with a few links to other 90's-themed sites, should my blog alone not be enough to satisfy your (surely ravenous) desire for 90's nostalgia. Here they are, for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.inthe90s.com/index.shtml

http://www.1990sflashback.com/

http://iceicebabies.com/

I leave you now with a memory of a better, simpler time.

Remember that? Ha!