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Originally Posted by Keeping It Gimple
y
and what did you get? 00s culture was even more hyper conservative and positive than zombie reagans alzhiemer dementia hallucination/memory of it.
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i don't remember it as positive-- it was fucking PARANOID. as you recall from deleuze/guattari, paranoids are fascists. then again those people do pretend to be happy.
yes it was a fucking fascist decade, but that had nothing to do with music. terrist terrist terrist nucular terrist terrist nucular nucular weppens terrist terrist terrist = paranoia.
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Originally Posted by Genteel Death
It's interesting how cities get marketed because of various mentions of buildings, spots, bars, shops etc where iconic bands appeared at one point or another. At the time the Velvet Underground were out and about New York had around probably 1/100 of the bars and cafes it has now. A lot of the ''art'' life was still based on the streets, in parks, and privately rented spaces. In London's case it's probably even more drastic because of the stricter licensing laws of the past and the geography of the city.
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back then bombed out cities still offered a kind of economic refuge but gentrification is now in overdrive. soon after seattle became fashionable people migrated there in troves. plus the microsoft economy made many rich. then portland became fashionable.
yuppies and developers have been buying chunks of detroit in overdrive for years now. "it's so artsyyyyy". not for long... the futue lifestyle centers or whatever the fuck open-space malls are called these days are being parceled out as we speak. i haven't checked this fact but i'd bet money it already offers some kind of (new, boho) "destination" spots.
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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
Thats definitely a big part of it, but think of how facetious so many of their songs are, they weren't always angst filled as much as kind of making fun of things. This was a big part of punk that was NOT part of the metalhead scene that dominated the late 80s.. Nirvana brought back that "we're actually having fun" feeling in punk in bands like descendents.. not taking it all too seriously.
Where there real fun was is their stage presence and media interaction. They were really a band of class clowns and the bigger their unintended celebrity got the more fun they seemed to have making fun of it all! Again, for me the antics from 1991 TheYearThatPunkBroke really defines this aspect of them.
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that may be the insider's view in 20/20 hindsight, but the mass culture didn't see that movie or go to those shows-- it was the video with the sick looking cheerleader and the grim-faced janitor over & over on mtv that got watched in places like idaho or indiana.
nirvana "allowed" (i'll clarify that later)--it allowed rock to be about pain and depression, and opened the door to all manner of earnest bands-- for a while anyway. radiohead were moaning
cause i'm a creep. beck singing
i'm a loser baby, so why don't you leave me. it's not like nirvana gave people permission to think & feel these things, which have been around forever-- it's more like big business realized there was big money in that sort of broadcast because it resonated with a lot of people.
you're dead on w/ noticing the transition from hair bands-- the bands that were used to force noriega out of the vatican embassy after the invasion of panama. the best encapsulation of that change is that scene in "the wrestler" where he bitches about how music used to be fun and then came nirvana. look up the clip on youtube.
what happened is the mantle of mass culture *finally* was passed from entitled boomers into the hands of jaded gen-xers. it had been long overdue but it did not last long either. gen-xers were small in number and got squeezed at both ends-- boomers values had a long overbearing reign and the obedient milennials woke up early (this is the conservatism of the 00's that nik remarked upon--and the source of the social progress you mention-- supernice milennials-- and milennials are supernice but also compliant-- they don't mind being groped at the airport). also gen-xer cynical youth culture was overridden by the clinton era and soon you had bobos in paradise-- making millions while sitting at a starbucks. so the milennials occupied wall street. hary rama.