He then played every song from 1993
the crowd applauded as he curtsied bashfully

�Dntel

I was flipping through April's Spin yesterday. They've got a new monthly column by Dave Eggers. And their cover story is about the ten-year anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. I had one of those Old Man moments: Has it really been ten years? Yes. Yes it has. I won't bore you with the story of what I was doing when I found out he'd offed himself, mainly because it's not a very interesting one: I came home from school, turned on the TV, and Kurt Loder told me. But reading this issue made me realize how much has changed since that time.

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I think most people my age assume that pop culture has been more or less static, these last ten years or so. It's only when I look at an artifact from the 90s (and I think we're far enough into the 00s to be able to start talking about the 90s in a cultural-decade kind of sense, in much the same way VH1 has been pimping the 80s) that I realize how far music�and probably film and television�has traveled to be where it is today. Compare Nirvana, Soundgarden, and the Smashing Pumpkins to Sigur R�s, Bj�rk, and Godspeed You! Black Emporer. Maybe these aren't parallel examples, but I don't think the last three artists could exist and flourish ten years ago (I realize Bj�rk was around ten years ago, but I'm talking about Vespertine-era Bj�rk�just as Radiohead may have debuted in 1993, they were not the Radiohead we know today). There's an appreciation for subtlety now that wasn't around ten or twelve years ago: Sigur R�s, for example, can say a lot musically and sell a lot of albums without singing a single word in English or even naming their songs. Artists in the early Nineties had to be a lot louder, I think, and paint with bolder colors in order to set themselves apart from the crap that was out there, and in order to survive the musical clearing of the decks that grunge brought about. Some did it right, like Nirvana, and some did it so very, very wrong, like the Spin Doctors. Or, as Chris Ott puts it in a recent Pitchfork review: "Everything had to be so much more obvious to be understood�including alternative music�which is why it all looks like a dayglo renaissance faire in retrospect. But prior to the information age, you couldn't chart your own roadmap. You needed big, flashing signs pointing the way." And perhaps today, the same is true in reverse: many artists, the Godspeeds and the Sigurs, for example, opt for understatement and relative anonymity as an antidote to the flashy excess and ubiquity of the Britneys. (Sorry to keep bringing up Sigur R�s; it's probably because I'm watching the Sigur 1 / Sigur 9 DVD as I type this.)

But ultimately, we mustn't forget that context is everything. It's hard to believe now, for example, that the Blue Album could ever be called lame, but that was the party line when it was released ten summers ago. Back to Spin, and their review of the new Blue Album reissue: "Back then, Weezer seemed inconsequential, if not objectionable. Their label had sold them as an alternative rock-band, but their music replaced the public purging that had been grunge's hallmark with cheeky lyrics about sweaters and Mary Tyler Moore. ... In the shadow Jurt Cobain cast over that whole summer, the band's quasi-novelty smash "Undone (The Sweater Song)" felt like an affront, a cheap joke."

Last night I watched Tank Girl (don't ask) and the degree to which it is every bit a product of the 90s is amazing. I won't say why, because I'm not sure I can. I just know it when I see it, and you probably do too.

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