10.30.2008

Zeitgeist c. 1990

I was born in 1978. That put me in middle school (6th grade) when 1990 hit. That was about the time I started watching MTV, back when MTV played a lot of music videos and hadn't yet hit on the idea of show after show of masturbatory consumer culture schlock. I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to discover that, apparently because they're tired of people watching ripped music videos on Youtube, MTV has put up a free video site.

This, of course, forced to me to look for shit I remembered from my early adolescence. The elements of the 1990 musical zeitgeist were as follows: treble, a certain kind of electronica, and the beginnings of the intersection of hip hop and pop/rock:

The KLF, 3am Eternal

Snap, The Power


There's this beautiful aesthetic in some of the videos from this era, the whole projection of what the future would look like when everything was computerized, before everything being computerized really served any useful purpose:

Information Society, Think


And it was also just the era in which some 80s bands successfully matured into something else. This was my favorite song all through middle school; Violater was the first tape (yep, tape) I bought for myself:

Depeche Mode, Enjoy the Silence


4 comments:

clumsygirl said...

Oh, man. I loved me some KFM and some PM Dawn and some Young MC. Please, don't forget Young MC!!

kungfuramone said...

I would *never* forget Young MC! This one's for all the fellas, try to do what those ladies tell us...

But the thing is, wasn't he more late-80s than 1990-era? And I deliberately just posted pop songs, albeit some with a rapper in them, rather than talking about what hip-hop was like back then. I also left out hair metal, which dominated the MTV airwaves in 1990 way more than the KLF did, if memory serves.

noncoupable said...

Oh man. You bastard. How am I ever going to get *anything* done now...

http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=33951
http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=7864
http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=97411
wiggta wiggta whack!

Oy. Thanks for the link, I think.

kungfuramone said...

Mwah ha ha ha ha!