On Late-90s Classic Rock

Couple months ago, a friend and I were reminiscing about our teenage years in the late-90s--specifically, how much they sucked.  Yeah, yeah, the American economy was decent(er) and the horrors of 9/11, Iraq, the PATRIOT ACT, and mass shootings galore were still beyond the horizon, and the worst example of Executive abuse we knew of was the President having an affair in the Oval Office; but that was just it, things were too good, we were all too complacent, too cartoonishly cocky and so jaunt-filled with unearned swagger that it never even occurred to us we'd ever have to pay for.

Case in point?  The biggest "rock" band on Earth at the time was Limp Bizkit.  Oh my, remember them?  The middle-school locker-room joke that combined the worst parts of rap and rock into something even dumber?  The corporate-bros that co-opted teenage rebellion for the bullies and the frat boys?  The multi-platinum monstrosity fronted by a sentient date-rape and backed by the musical equivalent of downloading dirty pics on dial-up?

No?  No?  Not ringing any bells?

Thank heaven for small favors.

Because as both my buddy and I remembered it, the sheer omnipresence of the Bizkit at the tale-end of the Clinton administration meant not only there was nothing good on Modern Rock radio, but that they would in all likelihood become the signifier for our era. "Ah man, I don't want Limp Bizkit to represent my High School years!" my friend remembers groaning.  We could see it now: Forest Gump-style nostalgia films about the late-90s featuring "Nookie" in the trailer; Classic Rock radio blasting "Break Things" in between Springsteen and the Who; kids dressed up as Fred Durst for Homecoming week Decade-Days.  These clowns would define our generation till we died.  Things looked pretty bleak.

But today?  I teach 18-year-olds right now, and if they have any memories of late-90s music at all, the worst they remember is, say, Third Eye Blind or Blink-182.  The hipster kids remember the era most fondly for Radiohead.  Nowadays, Bizkit isn't even a historical footnote, a blip on the nostalgic radar; they feature on no retro T-shirts at Urban Outfitters alongside Joy Division and Nirvana; no copies of Chocolate Starfish sit wedged in the backseat of some 16-year-old's first car beside Queen's Greatest Hits and Led Zeppelin IV; there are no "nü-metal" retrospectives on PBS or NPR; no one pines for the "good ol' days" when they still made "real music" like they did back in the late-90s.

And thank goodness! Sweet heavens, even '80s Hair Metal wasn't culturally disowned as completely as the Bizkit has been!  Sometimes folks really do go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public; sometimes our culture's worst mistakes really are mercifully forgotten, and that far quicker than we hope or deserve.  Take heart!