Insane Nostalgia

Why the 90s Were Great

— I just didn’t notice it

Everyone’s heard the line.

If you can remember the 60s — you weren’t there!

It paints a lovely nostalgic picture of that hedonistic time. Except it was bollocks!

My parents grew up in 1960s Britain, and they remembered it perfectly. Why? Because they were working in a factory. No sex, drugs, or rock ‘n’ roll for them. Or anyone.

Speak to their friends, and they’ll all say the same.

‘We worked, and at the weekends, we had a few beers or sherries and went to a dance.’

My parents never took anything stronger than an aspirin, and while my father smoked cigarettes, he never smoked dope.

My mum even saw the Beatles once. In the middle of the afternoon for half an hour. Then she returned to work as a secretary while my father toiled on the factory floor.

Later he got promoted to the office, married my mum, and moved to the countryside outside of Leeds. That’s where I grew up. This was me with my mum and dad in 1976 (now both sadly gone).

This was me twenty years later

I’m on the left singing (sort of) in 1996, and I’m probably on drugs, and I’m certainly drunk.

This was mid-90s Nottingham, smack bang in the Britpop, Indie, Rave, Techno, Thrash, and Grunge period. I could see Oasis, The Stone Roses, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, The Foo Fighters, Metallica, James, or The Rolling Stones— you name it! Plus, any number of great local bands, like us!

Or if I didn’t want live music, I could go to an illegal rave and dance to hardcore techno all night — which I did. Then mellow out to Bert Jansch or John Renbourne on a Sunday evening.

And yet. During this period, I wanted to be back in the 60s and 70s. Just look at the way we dressed on stage. Not to mention our music, which was a mix of space rock, prog rock, and art rock. Kind of like early Genesis, although not quite as weird.

We were stuck in another period. We listened to 60/70s music and lived together in a flat that looked like a set from Withnail & I.

We were like the writers in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, where a goofy Owen Wilson goes back in time and stumbles upon a Paris bar filled with the likes of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Not content to be part of that 1920s scene (now regarded as one of Europe’s golden periods), they hark back to La Belle Époque thirty years previous, revering such writers as Zola, Proust, and Thomas Mann. Not to mention artists such as Renoir, Van Gogh, and Gauguin.

Looking back now at 90s Britain, it was incredibly hedonistic. Go to any British city in that period— Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Bristol — and you could score good drugs, see great bands, and dance for the whole weekend.

Furthermore, if you were a student at the time, as I was, rent was cheap, the government still paid your tuition, and when you stopped studying, you could sign on the dole — and get more free government money!

I wouldn't stand a chance if I was twenty now in 2022. For starters, I’d be broke from four years of paying university fees and sky-high rents. And would probably have to start work immediately, and not stop until I died, as I would still be paying off my loan.

Times have changed, and yet when I was there, I didn’t realize how good it was. I suppose this is normal; it’s sometimes difficult to live in the present. In fact, it’s probably one of the hardest things to achieve.

What did Oasis sing?

“Right here, right now, do you know what I mean?”

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