[ This essay is by Elly. ]

I was born in 1991, a great year in terms of music. I’ve learned over the years that the span of that decade was some of the best years of my little life. There are often times when I think it wouldn’t be so bad to zip back to a year like 1998, when I was about seven-years-old and people like Alanis Morrisette, the Barenaked Ladies and Smash Mouth ruled the air waves – and Green Day were kings with “Good Riddance.” Good times, right?

I have some sort of odd connection with those years, even those I can’t remember. Not only because I was a crazy little kid, but because the times were somewhat comforting; simpler, even. Sure, there was the Internet, but it was not as advanced- computer monitors were as big as I was. There was no war, no terrorist threat; there was no nation of paranoia. I would do unspeakable things like drink out of the garden hose. There was no bird flu, or SARS, or West Nile virus. The worst we had to worry about was a promiscuous president- who pales in comparison to the guy twiddling his thumbs in Oval Office now…I’ve finally been gaining back some of I call, ‘Nineties Optimism,’ where everyone was excited about the future and what it would bring us.

But even though I was born and raised in the Nineties, there was so much I missed. Grunge, Dookie, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are just to name a few. My ideal year to visit is 1994. I can’t believe I missed Woodstock…

I wasn’t even three-years-old yet. Jeezus. My father says he watched some of it; he remembers the mud fight. And I get this visual in my head of me being a slobbering two-year-old staring vacantly at the t.v. as some skinny dude with blue hair crams a wad of mud into his mouth. Maybe he made me laugh….See how I want that that all to be true? That I watched Woodstock ’94 as it happened by some miracle; that my wide, unknowing eyes watched three youthful urchins bound around on a mud-slathered stage… I’m listening to Dookie as I write this. There is so much to this album. If I think of the Nineties, this is what comes to mind.

I love the pictures from the Dookie era. You can see the bewilderment on their faces, almost like, ‘why the hell are you taking my picture?’ You can see the potential there, too. When you listen to that album, it’s almost like a different band. But I like them as three scruffy guys playing in places like Gilman St. and leaving a moment of awe and inspiration in their wake. Look at them…do they know how lucky they are?

Once my sister and I were listening to “Basket Case” in her car, and she told me she’d traded Dookie for something else. I remember getting kind of mad at her; she lived what I’d wanted, to be a teen in the Nineties and see Green Day, and have it all surround me the rest of my life instead of finding out about it ten years too late.

The Nineties were a time of Beavis and Butthead, Bart Simpson and all sorts of strangely drawn personalities. What people may not realize is that there is real intelligence behind those shaky- lined characters. Yes, Beavis and Butthead were idiots, but they were lovable idiots, who saw the future in the next music video or song.

I guess I’m just trying to bring to light how music is synonymous with prosperity and hope. I get the impression that kids my age in 1994 would see their futures (if they believed they had a future) as full of music and hope and that lovely idealism. They’d sit there all moody in their baggy jeans and flannel shirts pretending they had no future, but I think deep down, they knew they had one.

I guess…it’s normal to want to be magically whisked away to the past. Everything always seems so much better, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I live in the ‘now.’ I can’t change that, and I’m cool with knowing that.

…That still doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what it was like to stay all day at Lollapalooza, watch the Chili Peppers perform in their ‘light bulb’ costumes, or- my favorite- wait slathered in mud and sweat and rain for Green Day to come on, so you can hear their kickass version of “Knowledge.”

It all doesn’t seem so bad to me. And to think…I only just missed it.

Related Posts:
Still Love is on My Mind (Another essay by Elly)

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