I’ve spent the weekend mostly on the couch watching TV since my knee hurts. I feel rather stuck right now.
I watched a series called “Rewind the 90s” which was fun to remember everything they talked about. I grew up in the 90s and I think it was a fun and interesting decade. Seeing how the technology developed during the 90s led to everything we have today was amazing. Do you remember having a Nokia phone? My dad gave me my first cell phone when I started driving and it looked like a big gray brick. I didn’t get a Nokia until college. Do you remember your first cell phone?
This series made me feel a little nostalgic about my childhood, but the decade had its downside, too. Something that sticks out to me about the 90s was homophobia. I don’t know if it’s because I was raised in Middle America, but the way kids talked then is not the way kids talk now. It’s quite incredible the things that came out of our mouths that were considered acceptable, maybe even encouraged. Fast forward ten years and I learned that I had many scared friends and family hiding in the closet in the 90s. I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have felt. I know we still have a long way to go but it’s good to look back and see that progress has been made.
Argue with me all you want; I still think the 90s was the best decade for music.
Then after that series, I watched “1989: The Year That Made Us”. I thought this documentary was interesting because the first big news story I remember as a kid was the Berlin Wall coming down. Of course, I was a little kid and didn’t know what it all meant, but I remember watching it on TV. What big news stories do you remember from your childhood? Could you make sense of it?
I like to binge-watch documentaries when I’m not feeling well, especially history and true crime. My husband thinks they’re depressing but sometimes I like it when shows make me emotional. One show that makes me emotional is Intervention. I’ve seen every episode – some of them multiple times. I cry every time but I continue to watch it. Do you ever feel that way? What show gives you the feels?
What are you guys watching this weekend?
News from my childhood. Eisenhauer warning us about the military industrial complex. Kennedy being assassinated, same for Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy. Going to the moon. US students gunned down by the military. So many things.
Same with me, I remember the 60s . Remembering president Kennedy, I remember the tempest in a teapot over him being Catholic. When you consider that I was about 6 years old in 1960 , now I think that it is bizarre that 1 I understood what was going on and 2 why was it such a big deal!
Not watching much, but always listening. So I submit that the 1990’s was not the best decade for music. The late 60’s, from The Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds in 1966 through the middle 1970’s was the best years for music.
Those years included:
Close to the Edge by Yes;
Pictures at an Exhibition by ELP;
In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson;
Seventh Sojourn by The Moody Blues,
countless other progressive rock albums, some admittedly better than others, and one of my favorites, less well remembered, was 1001 Nights by Renaissance. Annie Halsam has an incredible set of pipes and should be better known.
Of course, you could make an argument that the best years for music was 1710-1750, when J.S. Bach wrote his best compositions. Or maybe late 19th’s centaury and early 20th with Ravel, Satie, Debussy, and Stravinsky, and others from that time period.
Or maybe Dave Brubeck and Vince Guaraldi in the 1950’s?
You know, I take everything back. Every time has the best music. Even the 1990’s.
But I do recommend people who love listening to music to give Renaissance a chance, if they haven’t encountered them before that is. If the link works, here is a taste of Annie Halsam:
The most nostalgic music for me is basically Motown. Just got finished listening to Brenda Holloway doing Just Look What You’ve Done . Still dance to it ! Motown had too many really good artists that they just neglected
I remember the Moon landing in 1969; crappy image on a tiny B&W TV.
Also, the best music ever is what one experiences during their teenage years.
There’s literature to that effect, anyway. 😉
(flex is probably, by that metric, a few years older than I am, and I was born in Nov 1960)
The decade you were a teenager is the best decade for music. At least, that used to be true. I’m not convinced it is any more. For me, it’s just self-evident that the 80s were better, and I can give a list of artists and albums to justify it. My mother feels more or less the same about the 60s, several of my mates the same about the 70s.
What I’m watching this weekend are the new episodes of “Bluey”. You might not have seen it, but it’s the best show on television, and I WILL die on that hill. In particular there’s an old episode called “Sleepytime”. I suggest you take a look at the IMDb reviews. See how far down you have to scroll before you find one that’s not 10/10. Now know that the recent episode “Cricket” is as good, possible better. Find some way to watch it if you can’t already.
John Morales wrote,
Ah, the fallacy of the excluded middle term, as they used to call it. I wouldn’t call your statement a mistake, it’s a generally accepted idea with some evidence to support it, and you properly protected your statement by using the word “probably”. So there is nothing to cavil at.
However, I am somewhat of an exception to that metric, although I have heard of this idea previously and generally agree. My wife certainly feels the music she listened to as a teenager the ‘best’ music as do all of my friends. Generally I think you can make a pretty good assumption that this is the case. However, I was born in 1967, so my favorite music should be from the 1980’s.
However, when I was 14 I read Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid which exposed me to the pleasurers of fugues and counterpoint, and I listened to very little contemporary music during my teenage years. I’ve corrected that oversight somewhat since then, but I tend to prefer music with a melodic line and don’t care all that much for music like beat poetry or rap.
I do reflect sometimes on what the generation of children raised on YouTube will consider their favorite music. I was talking with a co-worker a decade or so ago and he said his son was getting really into guitar. That’s not unexpected for a 14-year-old, but what I found interesting was that his son was looking through YouTube for licks and riffs to play. So his son had already been listening to Django Reinhart, Andres Segovia, and Robert Johnson as well as Jimmy Paige, Robert Plant, and Steve Howe. I don’t know if that young man was a special case or was indicative of his generation. But I know that when I was growing up Robert Johnson recordings were the province of a few enthusiasts and I never have heard of him. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to get recordings. I didn’t learn about Robert Johnson, until I started to become interested in delta blues when I was in my late 20’s, and by that time CDs were available.
A lot of our assumptions about how children learn, and how much they have learned, about any facet of history may have changed since the enthusiastic distribution of knowledge via the internet. Some years ago I read Piaget’s work in the 1950’s about childhood development, and I’m while I think a lot of the underlying principles have not changed, I think the access children have to information from a very young age will push our society into a very different path. Children can check their prejudices when they are children, before they become a fixed world-view. So they won’t have to learn to discount them later, when they are adults and less able (less willing?) to make that correction. Again, I’m talking about populations, not individuals. There will always be individuals who are unwilling to admit they could view things in a different way. I’m looking forward to seeing what this next generation can do. I hope I live that long.
Ah, thanks.
I myself have watched a number of reaction videos to old music by young people, and they seem generally impressed. I find that strangely satisfying, and I share your optimism about the newer generations.
(PS threaded comments on this blog)
I echo everyone who said there’s studies that whatever music was around in your teens is the music you gravitate toward.
As a military brat who moved around a lot, my memories are fragmented in that I remember the big news from whatever country I was living in at the time, with a few exceptions for the really big American news. For example, I was in Germany when Nixon stepped down, but it was such huge news on the Armed Forced Network (American programming in English) that nobody who had that channel missed the news. I remember wanting to stay up to see the moon landing, but in Japan it was around 2 am and my parents wouldn’t let me. I remember when all the teenagers were flocking to San Francisco for The Summer o Love.
I remember when gasoline hit $1/gallon in the USA, the Iran Hostage Crisis, when St. Helens blew its top, when Reagan was shot, the finale of M*A*S*H that 1/3 of the country watched, the Challenger disaster…
…and, more hilariously, whenever there’s some pearl clutching over an old tv show or bit of pop media. For example, not long ago there was all kinds of drama from people who weren’t even born when the long-running hit ER ran, complaining that there were no POC in that show. It’s been a quarter of a century since I watch it, yet I could rattle off a dozen series regulars–doctors, nurses, medical specialists (e.g. a cardiologist and an audiologist), security guards, a physicians assistant, and returning patients who were not white.