90s Weekend

Coming of age in the late 90s it use to be 80s flashback weekend on KROQ, after college it seemed that suddenly 90s were on the flashbacks lunch. Also Richard Blade had long since left KROQ to be replaced by Tammy Heidi and later Kat Corbett. But none of that rotating Jockery mattered just that I got to listen to music I had forgotten about. Songs like Tattva and The Way one hit wonder like songs that caught in the old brain cavity and would ring through the week. Or something like Your Woman that happened to get fame near when the Star Wars re-release happened so that riff that sounded a bit like the Imperial March had people humming in all it’s 4 track glory. But those weekends showed all manner of lost gems that couldn’t be crammed into an hour.

This past weekend The End here in Seattle did the same turning over the airwaves to the old time music of its first decade. Back when Alternative wasn’t a generic subgenre of mainstream rock… then again it may never have been a legitimate subgenre of rock. Merely something that wasn’t the 80s pop classics that preceded it. Some of those songs brought back memories that I’d rather forget about. Sitting alone waiting for a show, listening to near static after school or riding long trips on the bus after summer school. But also of dreamier times when my form of difference was a real shock to some kids that I hope are happy with their choices and don’t want for the courage I had to make some seemingly stupid decisions.

There’s a quote that I remember from a documentary on Rock n Roll when it was dealing with the Grunge and Gangsta movements that happened in the 90s it went something like ‘…but they’d have to come up from the underground.’ Seemed to sum up a lot about what was happening. But listening to by gone bands on a long weekend in Seattle just didn’t give any great insights on what the underground was or if it's still there but it was fun anyway.