A mosquito, my libido

Have you noticed that each decade gets linked to one or two particular kinds of music? When you think of 50's music, you think doo-wop and early rock 'n' roll. For the 60's, you think psychedelic rock, and for the 70's it's classic rock or disco. Sure, there was a lot of other music from each of those decades, but those seem to be the genres that each decade is stuck with. But what about the 90's?

This was on my mind after we had a little music swap with Dan and Kristina. I burned them a copy of "Return to the Inner Experience" by Sky Cries Mary, which prompted Dan to make the comment that they sound like the "zenith of 90's music." That got me thinking: "what exactly is 90's music, anyway?" I think everyone has an idea of what constitutes 80's music -- it invariably is the sonic equivalent of hairspray and bright, primary colors. Interestingly, I can't think of an equivalently unifying theme for music from the nineties. It's interesting that there isn't even a subset of music from the nineties that's called "90's music" that I'm aware of.

When I think of music from the nineties, I think of grunge, in part because I lived in the northwest during it's overdose-ridden decline, and in part because it was so ubiquitous in the early 90's. The nineties also strike me as the point where hip hop crossed over into the mainstream, for better (A Tribe Called Quest, Doggystyle) and worse (Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer).

One genre that really rose to prominence in the nineties, which seems a little quaint now, was electronic music. Do you remember when electronica was the next big thing? At one point, I saw an article in Time or Newsweek saying the future of music was electronic. It seemed like only a couple months later, the Chemical Brothers were getting knocked off the charts by N'Sync and Britney. Anyway, musing about electronic music brings me back to Dan's comment. Sky Cries Mary combined a bit of the grunge ethic (they're from Seattle, they play distorted guitars, and they draw their influences from the early seventies), a bit of hip hop (this one's a bit of a stretch, but they did have a DJ who was, for the most part, buried in the mix), and of course electronic music. I've not seen any compilations attempting to tie together the 90's as a concept (not that I've really looked), but I can naively hope that any such compilation would include SCM. Compilers of "NOW That's What I Call Music By Bands That Played My College Once!" take note.

Here is a list of bands that popped into my head while I was thinking about this post and that I probably haven't thought of in nearly a decade:

House of Pain
Blind Melon
The Spin Doctors
Ned's Atomic Dustbin
Orbital
The Screaming Trees
Moist

If you can't get enough of the 90's, and you're a fan of lists, you should check out Pitchfork's top 100 albums of the 90's. True to their raison d'etre, there's a lot of indie rock -- I hadn't even heard of some of the bands in the top 20. I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with their pick for no. 1. Check and see if you do, too.

Speaking of lists, here's the super-dope 90's mix that I put on my CD player while writing this post:
Sky Cries Mary - This Timeless Turning
Soundgarden - Down on the Upside
The Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
A Tribe Called Quest - Beats, Rhymes, and Life
The Breeders - Last Splash