A Love Letter to... the Mid '90s

I've been thinking over the past couple of days about my favorite period in modern music. I think that, when reminiscing, every music nerd has a space of a few years that holds a more specialer place in their heart than all other periods. It's not that this period is better than any other - it's just that they identify with it more than any other. Some people love early '60s rock, or late '60s, or late '70s glam, or mid-'80s new wave, etc. etc. I have a correlating theory that one's magic period is usually focused on the time that they, themselves, became aware of the music coming out around them.

At least both of these things are true for me. Somewhere wedged in my chest is a hollow of glitz and glitter devoted to post-grunge, '90s alternative circa 1994-1997. In reality, the whole decade has me in love with it from the 1989 stirrings of Mudhoney, Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, the Happy Mondays, Faith No More and Primus to the final death-rattles that alterna-rock gave as it was successfully co-opted by adult-contemporary radio to be replaced by boy- and girl-groups and the likes of Matchbox 20 and the Goo Goo Dolls.

But, to my mind, after Cobain died the muddy self-seriousness of grunge filtered into a mainstream stew with Brit-pop, electronica, funk, punk, folk, blues, etc. to create a really exciting mixture of sounds that, to my ears, look more to the future than most of the throwback rock/pop that makes it onto the radio now. From the likes of the White Stripes, the Strokes, the Hives and (ugh) Jet to the Killers, the Bravery, Interpol and (ugh) She Wants Revenge to the Kings of Leon and whatever other bland bullshit has been bumping for the past three or four years, mainstream rock radio has become populated with bands that traffic in impersonating attitudes and sounds by bands that did them better decades ago.
It's not that the mid-'90s were a font of originality born fully-formed out of a vacuum, but there was a sense of reaching for something new. Today bands reach to the past; retro is in, whether it be murky carbon-copies of the Velvet Underground or Joy Division.

Modern indie-rock, for it's part, has become Ouroboros-like. Fans look for bands based on contrived shticks and self-conscious flailings to set themselves apart from other groups, leading to bizarre sub-sub-categories of music by fans trying to distance their pet-groups from others. "They're like this freak-folk, sleaze-core group from New Hampshire, but they all wear black stockings on their heads so they can't see what they're doing. At the end of the show the lead singer always dresses up like a butterfly and runs through the audience. Their name is unpronouncable, because it's entirely made up of Arabic punctuation." Music has become overlooked for cache and gimmickery causing the turn-over rate for hot new bands has become miniscule.

Meanwhile mainstream rock has become almost non-existant leaving bands-least-likely-to like Nickelback and Hinder to wear the mantles of rock kings.

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But it wasn't always like this.
Over the next couple of days I want to write about my favorite albums of my favorite 4 years of music. They will almost definitely not match up with anyone else's tit-for-tat, so I want to know from people reading this about their favorite period of music. Who else identifies with a musical chunk of history more than any others? You have to answer, cuz this post will look really sad with no comments on it.