1994 Nostalgia: Guilty As Charged

I wrote a nostalgic piece about Hole’s Live Through This a couple of weeks ago. Brendan and I did a tribute to 1994 music in our most recent podcast. Yes, I fully accept the fact I’ve fallen into the nostalgia wormhole, something I try to spend as little of my life wallowing in.

A lad on Flavorwire is urging us to stop the nostalgia and realize that 1994 was a shitty year in music. He points to Kurdt offing himself, Green Day’s Dookie and the genesis of the seemingly never-ending grunge derivative bands (or, grunge-lite).

And that’s true. All true. But even with those warts, look at this list of gems. Alice in Chains, Meat Puppets, Cornershop, Tori Amos! And that was all only in January.

I am fully aware that I am biased here. I was 15 at the height of adolescence and the weirdness that entails. So there is some corner of my heart that has some fondness for anything that helped me survive my teenage years.

Yesterday I made a mix of songs released in 1994. If you want a portable version, you can download the Mixcloud app.

By the way, I cheated a little. This picture was taken in 1996. This was also the haircut that got me kicked out the house for a weekend because it was deemed “too gay”.