20% Amnesia

[countblastula]

This year marks my 15th anniversary of moving to the Bay Area. It was 1994 and I was 23, which seemed very old to me at the time. It had been the 90s before, slightly, but 1994 was the onset of the mega-super 90s. The internet was just catching on. A program called Mosaic enabled computer users in one part of the world to view "pages" from other

Comments

[stacyinthecity]

you write the awesomest posts.

[miss_maxine]

Thank you for this post. It's really resonating with me and my situation right now-- newly arrived in Boston, limited money, hunting for any damn job I can get. (Though my prospects are made somewhat shakier by looming tuition bills, student loans, and limited availability to work when the semester starts.)

But I find this strangely inspiring. I'll find something, anything. I'll be able to pay my bills. It'll be okay. (For one thing, I'm sure as hell not hauling all my stuff back out of here to Virginia again.)

[jayeclaire]

1994 was the onset of the mega-super 90s.

Best way to say it!!!

What an awesome post. I got to see Elvis on his reunion tour too in 1994, on the east coast.

1994 was the year I met my husband.

[halphasian]

1994 was the year Kurt Cobain committed suicide and the year of the baseball strike.

This makes me want to talk about 1994

[jtemperance]

1994 I was at UC Berkeley, very excited about this new Internet thing, probably spending too much time on Usenet. Highly motivated as a student. Commuting from SF to Berkeley every day. Going to poetry open mikes at the Chameleon and the Albion when I wasn't too swamped with school work.

That summer, the Mekons' "Retreat from Memphis" album came out, which is the number one music event I remember from that year. The Big Star reunion show at the Fillmore being second.

After I read on Usenet in a campus computer lab that Kurt Cobain died, I went over to KALX for an office shift. A few people called in to the station wondering if there was going to be a benefit concert or something. But the news was still too new for anything to have been arranged.

Re: This makes me want to talk about 1994

[countblastula]

Usenet, now that's something I have not heard of in a long long time. I barely remember what it did. Was it the thing with groups like ba.food and alt.music.kinks?

Re: This makes me want to talk about 1994

[jtemperance]

Yes, exactly.

[annarama]

i kind of miss the CD browsing scene, too. it was relaxing to just cruise the aisles and flip thru tons and tons of CDs. i think if i were to do that today i'd probably get bored or feel like i was wasting my time. you know, compared with all our new technology and instant gratification these days. :/

another thing i remember about the 90s was people getting all in-your-face about bands selling out and big corporations being evil. my cousin makes those arguments a lot today and i just tell her she's old meme.

[countblastula]

>another thing i remember about the 90s was people getting all in-your-face >about bands selling out and big corporations being evil. my cousin makes >those arguments a lot today and i just tell her she's old meme.

This is probably not so much a 90s phenomenon as it is a rite of passage for all people in their 20s. We thought it then, your cousin thinks it now, 20 year olds will think the same thing 10 years from now. If I were to get all analytical about it, it's probably a transference thing. What's upsetting is not that the bands you like sold out, it's that you yourself are now too old to like the bands that have not yet sold out.