Hey, how good were the early 90s? Super Nintendo! Ducktales! 90210! Reebok Pumps! Other things that appear in online You Might Be A 90s Kid If quizzes! So rad!
Also, it was the last time that music was properly dangerous.
Hip hop was breaking through and was still deeply political, rather than obsessed with money and status. And the other big movement was loud aggressive guitars from people that weren’t all that impressed with the world.
And one of them changed the world: his name was Kurt Cobain, he was the singer/songwriter of Nirvana, and he died 25 years ago today on the 5th of April, 1994.
Until Nirvana went mainstream noisy guitars were not a thing that got played on the radio. You cannot understand what a revelation ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was in 1991: without that one song become the anthem for an entire generation that felt left out and neglected things would have been very different. Especially for bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Sonic Youth who would never have gotten lucrative major label deals otherwise.
And it was a real movement too. Grunge caught the spirit of the times and the feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Was it a coincidence that the Democrats broke the Republican stranglehold on US politics at the first post-Nevermind election? Or that the UK booted the conservatives and installed a Labour government on the wave of the English reaction to grunge, Britpop?
No. No, it was not.
Leaving aside that these songs became the soundtrack for activism, there’s the artistic side of it. Grunge was similar to the first flush of punk, where noise and enthusiasm was more important than competence. Everyone was welcome to have a bash – and if it was still mainly straight white dudes, it certainly wasn’t exclusive to them. And hell, those Bikini Kill records still sound amazing.
What do guitars do now? They’re more likely to be ukuleles plinkity-plonking through an insurance ad than a droptuned Fender Jazzmaster copy having its neck bent into wrongness.
But despite that, we’re seeing a stirring of that quarter century old spirit in Australia right now. Not only are the biggest acts here still slinging guitars (thanks, Gang Of Youths; keep the dream alive, Amity Affliction) but bands like Camp Cope and Tired Lion are showing off a downright 90s zeitgeist and attitude.
Kurt changed everything. And after 25 years without him, we need someone else to take up that mantle. If ever there was a time for a mass youth movement based around being screamingly furious about the state of the world and filled with a bile-bubbling contempt for the people in charge, how can this not be it?
In the meantime: goddamn, those records stand up. Give them a spin for Kurt tonight. Then pick up a guitar and do something.