Distorted Guitars And Unintelligible Lyrics

My husband, Dan, and I miss the music of the '90s. This is hard to admit because it means the '90s are over. Our coming-of-age decade is long gone, and we are left sounding like all the generations before us.

"Music isn't as good as it was in the (pick a decade, any decade)."

Luckily, for Dan and me, there is a '90s nostalgia wave to ride right now, probably because those of us in our thirties and forties are the ones who can afford to go to concerts.

Dan and I still buy entire albums. Sometimes we even (gasp) buy CDs, rather than the digital version that ends up on some ethereal cloud that I am not entirely convinced exists. We don't buy albums on vinyl though. We're not that nostalgic. However, I do own a record player.

Dan and I attended Treefort, a local music and arts festival, last spring and found ourselves gravitating toward the '90s-sounding bands. We could care less about the current, overly synthesized “alternative music” that screams EDM and the '80s. Give us distorted guitars any day.

Are these hip, late thirty-somethings attending a rock concert? Ear plugs required.

The other day, Dan bought the new Garbage album. The kid at the cash register scanned it and said, "This is a great album."

He said it in a way that made me think it had been a discovery for him, as if this album may have been the first time he had ever heard of Garbage. Six albums ago, he may not have been born yet.

A couple of weeks previous to this, we were in a coffee shop in Cody, Wyoming. The state's Songwriters' Festival was in a week or so, and nomadic young musicians were starting to roam the town. Three of them, two girls and a guy were in this coffee shop, strumming guitars and looking up YouTube videos on laptops, probably for songwriting inspiration.

The guy was talking about Eddie Vedder like he was some sort of former icon, the way I think of and admire Bob Dylan. The girls had never heard of the Pearl Jam frontman. The guy started strumming his guitar and singing some sort of version of “Yellow Ledbetter.” I say some sort of version because I sure as hell didn't recognize whatever he was singing. Of course, no one could understand the lyrics to that song back in the '90s anyway.

Several '90s bands are still making records, and, like many of us, they have mellowed with age.

The Toadies released an album of acoustic versions of their music. Radiohead doesn’t seem to like electric guitars and drums anymore, and PJ Harvey taught herself how to play saxophone. The most recent song on the radio by The Strokes (more 2000s, I know) included a synthesizer.

“Has Garbage mellowed a little too?” Dan asked after we had listened to their new, "great" album.

You can always count on Weezer though. The latest albums definitely recall their '90s heyday sound.

I was in the North End the other day, and a young woman noticed my Sleater-Kinney shirt.

"I was a pretty young when they first started playing, but once I came of age, Riot Grrrl changed my life," she said.

I told her I preferred that era and that I didn't care for today's alternative music with all the electronic stuff.

"Some bands can still shred, but indie pop has taken a dark turn," she said.

We both sighed and stared off into the distance.

I have to remind myself the '90s wasn't all rock guitars and unintelligible lyrics. The I Love the '90s Tour will grace Boise with its presence at the end of August. Their take on '90s music?

Vanilla Ice, Tone Loc, and Color Me Badd. Oh well, no accounting for . . . you know the saying.

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