Being older, I get similar feelings about the 80s. A lot of it has to do with the way we’re communicating now. I mean right now. No social media or internet in the 80s with all the problems (and benefits of course) that it brings. Plus the politicians we’ve had since then have almost all been diabolical - evil, if you like.
The one glimmer of hope I still cling to is that the transformation of Britain has been so rapid that midlifers still remember the Before Times. If we could just get ourselves organised, we could be the vanguard for Restoration.
I too suffer from Long 90s. I sometimes wonder whether most generations view their childhood / teenage years as the best time, and I’m simply being nostalgic. But even my teenage children can see, mainly from watching 90s films, that things were better then.
I have 90s radio on in the car and it invokes an entirely different feeling to how I feel now. There was a freedom and optimism that seems to have evaporated.
I remember watching Terminator 2 at the cinema in 1991. I was 13 and it was rated 15 but my 15-year-old male German exchange partner wanted to see it (they would never pair up opposite sexes now, and especially not with an age gap!). I absolutely loved T2 and have enjoyed sharing it with my girls, along with all the other brilliant 90s films.
I remember watching T2 as a teenager on video at a friend's house. We were all terrified of Arnie T-800 until it was revealed that he's the goodie come to save humanity! Minds blown. We were innocent kids and hadn't been exposed to half the weird shit kids are exposed to these days.
The 90s were truly glorious days. I wish I could have appreciated them even more at the time. It just seemed like those good times would go on forever.
This one hits hard. Young Gen X here, we didn’t know what we had until it was stolen from us.
I remember everybody feeling that the 90s were a bit of a joke decade at the time. People were fundamentally optimistic and didn’t take things too seriously. I grew up in Australia, so my memories are of long hot summers with pavement so hot you would burn your feet, but you’d walk around barefoot nevertheless. Learning to row; long bike rides by myself at the age of 14; sleepovers with the friend whose dad had a killer sound system and 1000 CDs.
I’d give almost anything to go back to that summer of 1995, rowing hard every day at the training camp on the Parramatta river, Oasis on the radio and movies we all picked together on VHS on the coach on the way home.
I can remember going to see A Few Good Men with my Mum when it first came out. It’s interesting how the film makes you flip between support for Dawson and Downey on the one hand and then Jessop on the other. Kendrick is the only person who comes across as a scumbag. Ultimately, society needs people like Jessop. He is the quintessential “strong man standing ready to do violence on our behalf”. His tragedy is that he believed he was above the law, and that the ends justified the means.
Think it goes deeper than that. Kendrick is one dimensional but duplicitous. He is motivated only by what is good for Kendrick, not for the men that he ultimately should serve and lead with courage and humility. He exists to mock the hoo-rah but low-octane officers of the Vietnam era like William Calley. Officers like Kendrick are filtered out by the British system which breaks down ego and encourages you to think for yourself. In my 20 years in uniform, I’ve met several Jessops or people who were Jessop adjacent, but no Kendricks!
Many lawyers are just like the team in the film though, like they just woke up in uniform one day and have no recollection of how that happened.
Hey Ian, I grew up in a WA country town and my brothers and the other kids used to go barefoot to school, we would play out in the bush by the creek until Mum whistled us in for dinner. Innocent times. I did the obligatory stint in London in the 90s and loved it. So many great memories from those days.
That was the great thing about growing up in 80s and 90s: you were left to find things out for yourself. No need for constant mobile phone tracking or anything like that.
Playing in a creek as a kid was so much pure and wholesome fun, and I relived it recently when I went to visit my brother in Victoria and we spent a largely fruitless day panning for gold.
Maybe all generations are prone to bouts of nostalgia, though it does seem those of us who came of age in the 90s are particularly susceptible. I even found myself listening to Sleeper in the car the other day, and I was more of a metalhead (not the 'Nu' variety though!).
Another great piece Nick - really enjoying your recent stuff. Born in ‘87 so this one really chimed with me.
‘In hindsight the grievances seem like the bleatings of emo kids not realising they’re still basking in the glow of a coherent society and functioning economy’.
I’ve said this a lot too and you can really notice a certain aesthetic in 90s movies and music videos where white-picket fence 50s suburbia is depicted as belying some sort of inherent darkness / sinister self-repression (‘Pleasantville’, ‘Edward Scissorhands’ or the ‘Black Hole Sun’ video by Soundgarden for example), when it was objectively the most harmonious idyllic period the US has ever known.
I’m told the author is a bit of a libtard and there’s a couple of notes of shitlibbery to swerve past but I think it nicely conveys that same sense I get from your piece about there just being that bit more magic in the world for the likes of us back in the 90s.
I like the concept of 'long 90s' as something which plays on the minds of us Gen Xers, and Xennials like you Nick (I also use 'The Long 90s' to describe the period from the start of Cold War detente in 88/89, to September 2001).
I think about this stuff a fair bit. I was 16 when the 90s began and 26 when they ended. It's the decade where I became a man, went to college and university, had relationships, got proper jobs, got married, and became a father. From 1995 to 1999 I was a bookseller for Waterstones, which I still describe as the best job I ever had, even though the pay was terrible. It was just tremendous fun, and of course being around books the whole time was marvellous. I often say that I learned more about literature there than I did on my degree. I met two of my best friends there, and my first wife. I regularly dream that I'm back working there again in the Grey Street branch, and when I wake I'm always disappointed.
Whilst I wouldn't exactly call it a cultural golden age, it does seem to me that everything artistic was much better than now - books, films, music, comedy, all of it. And I barely gave politics a second thought the whole time, which now seems blissful.
Born late '58 (like the Mott the Hoople song!) , but I agree mostly with your perspective on the '90s ; especially movies.
Yes there was still an overall feeling of optimism I think. The wholesale off-shoring of Western industry hadn't taken hold yet, nor of course the attempted replacement of our culture. We knew who we were, and the idea of apologising as a Western obligation would have been laughable to most of us. It doesn't seem rose-tinted to say that race relations had probably been on the whole improving all the time......or maybe that is my White complacency, dunno.
I liked the allusion to A River Runs Through It as well. I saw it at the pictures and it was a beautiful film, which is not a phrase that you would ever hear these days. First time I heard of Brad Pitt as well, as I only went because of Redford's involvement. A masterful film maker imo.
As for the music scene.....I wouldn't put it up with the previous two decades personally, but there was still plenty of great and actual happy pop music, which is pretty much history over the last twenty years for some reason or reasons.
I suffer from Long 80s being a tad older. The days before mobile phoned and emails and when we wrote letters and sent postcards from abroad. Things just worked and you sort of assumed they were getting better. You could just assume you would get a job, get married and but a flat that you would then sell before buying a nice house in an up and coming part of London or move further out and get something really nice. The politicians seemed experienced and capable and while the police were a bit rough at times they would come when called, the GP would come out and see you at weekends and there was always the Armed Forces which were firmly believed - especially post Falklands - really were the Best in the World.
I think you may be right about this, I'd just started work and everything seemed within reach. By the middle of the noughties house prices had blown up and the financial crash, and the massive transfer of wealth to bankers, was just around the corner.
Yes shed seven were class, disco down is a great tune 🫶 my dad stole my sleeper cd 🤣🤣 sale of the century is a great tune and connection is also amazing… sake I’m away to watch labyrinth or overboard now🤣🤣 best times
I was born in 1989, so the 90's and 00's were peak for me. I wonder whether it's just the nostalgia, or whether it was actually all roses. Things did definitely take a notable turn after the 2008 GFC.
I'm 62, so think of the late 80s & 90s. Here in the US, country music was best in the 80s and early 90s. When you talk of movies, I am thinking of Robert Redford's film The Natural. I absolutely loved that movie & have the soundtrack. I loved the story, but what I really remember is the softness of the movie as far as visually. It was like someone had put a coat of Vaseline on the camera lens. I'm sure there is some type of filter. You mention that things went really squirrelly in about 2010. Funny, that was the year I moved from the city to a very rural part of Kentucky & lived totally off grid until 2019. The only political/cultural news I got was from a 3-hour radio program on a Christian radio station. I didn't get back online till late 2019. I guess I kind of missed a lot of the turmoil. I do like having access to news/politics now, but often long for when I lived off grid, for many reasons. As the sergeant used to say at the beginning of every Hill Street Blues episode - "Be careful out there."
Kathy, I’m the same age as you but spent my childhood in Australia. Those years seem so innocent and pure looking back. Your time in Kentucky sounds idyllic. I did stay with a friend in rural Florida for a few days in 2015 and was shocked when she told me to avoid running along a particular road cos the resident had a gun!
I'm sorry that I laughed when you mentioned the gun. It's like that in some parts of the US. I wonder about that sometimes in my rural part of Kentucky. But in general, everyone is friendly. Most of the violence around here it seems, anyway, is among families and people who know one another. But, still, I try not to get on the wrong side of people here, since you just never know. Yes, those years were very innocent. I am remembering when I was in my 3rd year of high school, for fun, my friend and I would go to a park and swing on the swing set late at night, and she and I would talk about all the serious things teenagers talk about - laugh & just have fun. Very different times now, for sure. And yes - so much more innocent then.
Being older, I get similar feelings about the 80s. A lot of it has to do with the way we’re communicating now. I mean right now. No social media or internet in the 80s with all the problems (and benefits of course) that it brings. Plus the politicians we’ve had since then have almost all been diabolical - evil, if you like.
The one glimmer of hope I still cling to is that the transformation of Britain has been so rapid that midlifers still remember the Before Times. If we could just get ourselves organised, we could be the vanguard for Restoration.
I too suffer from Long 90s. I sometimes wonder whether most generations view their childhood / teenage years as the best time, and I’m simply being nostalgic. But even my teenage children can see, mainly from watching 90s films, that things were better then.
I have 90s radio on in the car and it invokes an entirely different feeling to how I feel now. There was a freedom and optimism that seems to have evaporated.
I remember watching Terminator 2 at the cinema in 1991. I was 13 and it was rated 15 but my 15-year-old male German exchange partner wanted to see it (they would never pair up opposite sexes now, and especially not with an age gap!). I absolutely loved T2 and have enjoyed sharing it with my girls, along with all the other brilliant 90s films.
I remember watching T2 as a teenager on video at a friend's house. We were all terrified of Arnie T-800 until it was revealed that he's the goodie come to save humanity! Minds blown. We were innocent kids and hadn't been exposed to half the weird shit kids are exposed to these days.
The 90s were truly glorious days. I wish I could have appreciated them even more at the time. It just seemed like those good times would go on forever.
Funny that the matrix pegged the climax of western civ as the 90s and it was made in the 90s.
This one hits hard. Young Gen X here, we didn’t know what we had until it was stolen from us.
I remember everybody feeling that the 90s were a bit of a joke decade at the time. People were fundamentally optimistic and didn’t take things too seriously. I grew up in Australia, so my memories are of long hot summers with pavement so hot you would burn your feet, but you’d walk around barefoot nevertheless. Learning to row; long bike rides by myself at the age of 14; sleepovers with the friend whose dad had a killer sound system and 1000 CDs.
I’d give almost anything to go back to that summer of 1995, rowing hard every day at the training camp on the Parramatta river, Oasis on the radio and movies we all picked together on VHS on the coach on the way home.
I can remember going to see A Few Good Men with my Mum when it first came out. It’s interesting how the film makes you flip between support for Dawson and Downey on the one hand and then Jessop on the other. Kendrick is the only person who comes across as a scumbag. Ultimately, society needs people like Jessop. He is the quintessential “strong man standing ready to do violence on our behalf”. His tragedy is that he believed he was above the law, and that the ends justified the means.
Kendrick is just a cartoon put there to make Christians look nasty and stupid.
Think it goes deeper than that. Kendrick is one dimensional but duplicitous. He is motivated only by what is good for Kendrick, not for the men that he ultimately should serve and lead with courage and humility. He exists to mock the hoo-rah but low-octane officers of the Vietnam era like William Calley. Officers like Kendrick are filtered out by the British system which breaks down ego and encourages you to think for yourself. In my 20 years in uniform, I’ve met several Jessops or people who were Jessop adjacent, but no Kendricks!
Many lawyers are just like the team in the film though, like they just woke up in uniform one day and have no recollection of how that happened.
Hey Ian, I grew up in a WA country town and my brothers and the other kids used to go barefoot to school, we would play out in the bush by the creek until Mum whistled us in for dinner. Innocent times. I did the obligatory stint in London in the 90s and loved it. So many great memories from those days.
That was the great thing about growing up in 80s and 90s: you were left to find things out for yourself. No need for constant mobile phone tracking or anything like that.
Playing in a creek as a kid was so much pure and wholesome fun, and I relived it recently when I went to visit my brother in Victoria and we spent a largely fruitless day panning for gold.
No doubt you also did some gilgie fishing!
Maybe all generations are prone to bouts of nostalgia, though it does seem those of us who came of age in the 90s are particularly susceptible. I even found myself listening to Sleeper in the car the other day, and I was more of a metalhead (not the 'Nu' variety though!).
Ha the singer followed me on Twitter a while ago. Then unfollowed when she saw some of my posts.
Another great piece Nick - really enjoying your recent stuff. Born in ‘87 so this one really chimed with me.
‘In hindsight the grievances seem like the bleatings of emo kids not realising they’re still basking in the glow of a coherent society and functioning economy’.
I’ve said this a lot too and you can really notice a certain aesthetic in 90s movies and music videos where white-picket fence 50s suburbia is depicted as belying some sort of inherent darkness / sinister self-repression (‘Pleasantville’, ‘Edward Scissorhands’ or the ‘Black Hole Sun’ video by Soundgarden for example), when it was objectively the most harmonious idyllic period the US has ever known.
Don’t know if you’ve read this before?:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-so-sad-when-old-people-romanticize?r=7y9em&utm_medium=ios
I’m told the author is a bit of a libtard and there’s a couple of notes of shitlibbery to swerve past but I think it nicely conveys that same sense I get from your piece about there just being that bit more magic in the world for the likes of us back in the 90s.
P.S: ‘Fighting Fit’ by Gene is a banger.
I like the concept of 'long 90s' as something which plays on the minds of us Gen Xers, and Xennials like you Nick (I also use 'The Long 90s' to describe the period from the start of Cold War detente in 88/89, to September 2001).
I think about this stuff a fair bit. I was 16 when the 90s began and 26 when they ended. It's the decade where I became a man, went to college and university, had relationships, got proper jobs, got married, and became a father. From 1995 to 1999 I was a bookseller for Waterstones, which I still describe as the best job I ever had, even though the pay was terrible. It was just tremendous fun, and of course being around books the whole time was marvellous. I often say that I learned more about literature there than I did on my degree. I met two of my best friends there, and my first wife. I regularly dream that I'm back working there again in the Grey Street branch, and when I wake I'm always disappointed.
Whilst I wouldn't exactly call it a cultural golden age, it does seem to me that everything artistic was much better than now - books, films, music, comedy, all of it. And I barely gave politics a second thought the whole time, which now seems blissful.
Born late '58 (like the Mott the Hoople song!) , but I agree mostly with your perspective on the '90s ; especially movies.
Yes there was still an overall feeling of optimism I think. The wholesale off-shoring of Western industry hadn't taken hold yet, nor of course the attempted replacement of our culture. We knew who we were, and the idea of apologising as a Western obligation would have been laughable to most of us. It doesn't seem rose-tinted to say that race relations had probably been on the whole improving all the time......or maybe that is my White complacency, dunno.
I liked the allusion to A River Runs Through It as well. I saw it at the pictures and it was a beautiful film, which is not a phrase that you would ever hear these days. First time I heard of Brad Pitt as well, as I only went because of Redford's involvement. A masterful film maker imo.
As for the music scene.....I wouldn't put it up with the previous two decades personally, but there was still plenty of great and actual happy pop music, which is pretty much history over the last twenty years for some reason or reasons.
Great piece!
I suffer from Long 80s being a tad older. The days before mobile phoned and emails and when we wrote letters and sent postcards from abroad. Things just worked and you sort of assumed they were getting better. You could just assume you would get a job, get married and but a flat that you would then sell before buying a nice house in an up and coming part of London or move further out and get something really nice. The politicians seemed experienced and capable and while the police were a bit rough at times they would come when called, the GP would come out and see you at weekends and there was always the Armed Forces which were firmly believed - especially post Falklands - really were the Best in the World.
I think you may be right about this, I'd just started work and everything seemed within reach. By the middle of the noughties house prices had blown up and the financial crash, and the massive transfer of wealth to bankers, was just around the corner.
Yes shed seven were class, disco down is a great tune 🫶 my dad stole my sleeper cd 🤣🤣 sale of the century is a great tune and connection is also amazing… sake I’m away to watch labyrinth or overboard now🤣🤣 best times
Connection is Elastica!
Oh aye
I was born in 1989, so the 90's and 00's were peak for me. I wonder whether it's just the nostalgia, or whether it was actually all roses. Things did definitely take a notable turn after the 2008 GFC.
A very fine collation describing our sit-rep (and I like the neat bow at the end)
I'm 62, so think of the late 80s & 90s. Here in the US, country music was best in the 80s and early 90s. When you talk of movies, I am thinking of Robert Redford's film The Natural. I absolutely loved that movie & have the soundtrack. I loved the story, but what I really remember is the softness of the movie as far as visually. It was like someone had put a coat of Vaseline on the camera lens. I'm sure there is some type of filter. You mention that things went really squirrelly in about 2010. Funny, that was the year I moved from the city to a very rural part of Kentucky & lived totally off grid until 2019. The only political/cultural news I got was from a 3-hour radio program on a Christian radio station. I didn't get back online till late 2019. I guess I kind of missed a lot of the turmoil. I do like having access to news/politics now, but often long for when I lived off grid, for many reasons. As the sergeant used to say at the beginning of every Hill Street Blues episode - "Be careful out there."
Kathy, I’m the same age as you but spent my childhood in Australia. Those years seem so innocent and pure looking back. Your time in Kentucky sounds idyllic. I did stay with a friend in rural Florida for a few days in 2015 and was shocked when she told me to avoid running along a particular road cos the resident had a gun!
I'm sorry that I laughed when you mentioned the gun. It's like that in some parts of the US. I wonder about that sometimes in my rural part of Kentucky. But in general, everyone is friendly. Most of the violence around here it seems, anyway, is among families and people who know one another. But, still, I try not to get on the wrong side of people here, since you just never know. Yes, those years were very innocent. I am remembering when I was in my 3rd year of high school, for fun, my friend and I would go to a park and swing on the swing set late at night, and she and I would talk about all the serious things teenagers talk about - laugh & just have fun. Very different times now, for sure. And yes - so much more innocent then.