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Was 1988 any different??

#61
I was born in '68 in the US, 1988-1993 was me finishing college into a depressed economy with little hope of a huge career or even retirement, but having fun playing music. Locally, we have lost a lot of the bars and clubs where we played shows in the late '80-early '90s, but there are a whole new crop of great clubs with their own strong scenes.

The early '90s was a great time for indie music, fairly bad time if you were queer or person of color, economy was middling, politics were a mess in ways we wouldn't see for years. Much of society was improving and there was good optimism at the time that we could build things better, but progress has been slow.

I once had a lot of nostalgia for the 1960s, and still feel it was peak design (though not peak quality) for cars. But I've come to learn that every era is messy and terrible and great, and it all depends on who you are and where you are living through it. If i had a time machine i'd go back and make my younger self wear earplugs.
 
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#62
salmon256 said:
Now they are charging 70 dollars for games just look at Nintendo with the Switch 2
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The Atari 2600 cost the equivalent of $1000 in 2025 dollars when it was new. And for $130 (2025 dollars) per game cartridge we could play games like this:
th.jpg

And we did! For hours! We had no choice: Paid the money, took the chance, not getting a refund and can't afford another cartridge for a while. Unfortunately the pic fails to capture the fact there are four ghosts on the screen, they had to flicker on and off because the console only had the capability to draw a couple moving objects at a time.

$500 for a console and $70 for something like this? A bargain when you consider the time you can spend in it.
our-favorite-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-screensh_1wn9.jpg
 
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#63
J Wilson said:
I was born in '55 and worked on a job with a young man who was super enamored with the 60's which to him was the 'Summer of Love', the hippies, that whole thing.

I explained to him that between 1960 and 1970 the whole world turned inside out in so many ways past his being so enamored with his idea of the flowers in your hair he had no idea.

He still doesn't.

Having lived a while, I can tell you EVERY era had great things and at the same time things you hope to never see again, and that times change far easier than people.
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I wasn't there (born in 80) but the electric kool-aid acid test is such a great portrait of the hippie hangover.

I try to be a kind of cultural sherpa for my 10-year-old kiddo and share nuggets without nostalgia or retread.
 
#64
Cadillac_Mike said:
I was born in 1989 but if I had a choice I'd live the rest of my life in a loop between 1988-1993... That was the peak of The West IMO
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the west was ready for their victory lap from winning the Cold War by the end of the 80s. the west beat communism not by bullets and bombs but with MTV and Levis, with Dallas the TV show, Madonna, and Nintendo. the 80s was a spectacular decade for the west. the western nations were engulfed by consumerism by the end of the 80s.

by 1987, the Soviet Union began to unravel. that same year, Reagan gave his Berlin Wall speech. Hungary and Romania freed themselves from Soviet control shortly thereafter. the Central American wars were coming to a close and Metallica played for over a million people in Moscow in 91. sadly, the communists crushed protestors in Beijing in 89 and by 94, Clinton signed NAFTA and all went to hell for middle class America.

it was a hell of a time.
 
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#65
Swerve said:
I mark 2012 as the turning point when it all started going downhill. The Mayans were right.
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1980. That's when banks and investors got their claws into everything at every level, including music. There have always been problems but prior to that, you really could live off the radar in ways that are inconceivable. It was when mom and pop shops, especially music shops, record stores, etc., started to get bought up and forced out. OTOH, being able to carry a 6 space rack and a bunch of mics to anywhere I want to go and make state of the art 24 track recordings with ease is insanely miraculous. Not having to listen to crappy monitors on stage that blow out your ears within 20 minutes is also miraculous. The quality of low cost instruments is miraculous. The scope of musical talent and breadth of expression is miraculous. In some ways, it's harder than ever to be a musician (that $100/gig went a lot farther when rent was only $100 a month), but easier beyond wildest dreams to actually create music. Life sure is interesting!
 
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#66
wompwomp said:
I wasn't there (born in 80) but the electric kool-aid acid test is such a great portrait of the hippie hangover.

I try to be a kind of cultural sherpa for my 10-year-old kiddo and share nuggets without nostalgia or retread.
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I was born in 1961 and my son was born in 2012. When he was 5, I showed him Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar at Monterey (Xander was not impressed) and I realized that happened as long before his birth as the debut of the Rite of Spring in 1913 was before mine. Both were revolutionary moments in music. Now that he's almost 13, he likes hippies (I play in a Grateful Dead tribute band, so he gets exposed to the culture, sort of) but still doesn't like the music. All about the hip hop, when was still years away when I was his age. However, he's super into vinyl, which is fun. I gave him a stereo that would have been beyond my wildest dreams back then. Music is the best!
 
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#69
Aussie Player said:
We were politically quite dumb, but that allowed happines and freedom of thaught to flourish, especially in music, melody, harmony and the growth of the bass guitar as a major contributor to sound, rather than just a background thumpy noise that seemed pleasing to the ear. Interestingly, also mostly unrecognizable as a sound source by the listening public. People seemed to have trouble picking out the bass untll the 70's.
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Yes we were and it was wonderful. Now we are beat over the head 24 hours a day by our phones.


Aussie Player said:
My father once asked why we listened to screaming rubbish like Zeppelin and the Who, I insilently told him that my music will be on the radio all my life where his music was already dead and gone.
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sadly this is still true. however, I substitute teach at an all girls priory and I am very surprised that many know songs from the Sinatra/Ella era. culture sometimes circles back. ironically, the are very familiar with 80/90's tunes as thats their parents generation as it is mine. I once played Duran Duran in class and they all hummed along to Hungry like the Wolf. very cute.
 
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#71
The biggest cultural shift Ive seen is fomented by Tech. Walk into a bar and all you see are peeps completely disconnected from one another, hunched over their devices. There are no dudes checking out chicks and vice versa. Just random narcissists, socially disconnected becoming increasingly self absorbed. This is unsustainable. A normal society can no longer exist. We have become increasingly meaningless to one another. Im older. My cell stays in my pocket until it does normal phone stuff, like ring. I think a declining birth rate and a generation that sees 40 year old virgins is happening before us. This represents an evolutionary change with profound consequences.
 
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#75
Wood and Wire said:
?


ET was pretty much impossible to avoid in the early, and mid 80's.
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oh that was science fiction. He's talking about the real ETs. Some people think the congressional hearings outline the 5 ET races presently operating on earth were definitive, but that wasn't really definitive (majority of people unaware) and zero point energy is part of the secret government that may or may not exist. It would solve our energy problems but would destroy the whole oil based economy, so "they" are withholding it until After the micro nova that happens every 6000 years and resets civilization.
 
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#76
Gorilla Monsoon said:
The biggest cultural shift Ive seen is fomented by Tech. Walk into a bar and all you see are peeps completely disconnected from one another, hunched over their devices. There are no dudes checking out chicks and vice versa. Just random narcissists, socially disconnected becoming increasingly self absorbed. This is unsustainable. A normal society can no longer exist. We have become increasingly meaningless to one another. Im older. My cell stays in my pocket until it does normal phone stuff, like ring. I think a declining birth rate and a generation that sees 40 year old virgins is happening before us. This represents an evolutionary change with profound consequences.
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You know all those people at the bar, on their phone, are cutting right to the chase on Tinder etc, right?

Everything is much more streamlined, and efficient than it was in your day - no need waste time & money eyeing up whoever is in the bar, when you can get straight to the point in the app; and if there's nobody in the bar that suits your fancy, you can widen your search until you connect with someone who might be 4 miles away, at home in front of the TV, and invite them to the bar (or they cut to the chase, and invite you straight round their house).

Sex ain't goin' outta style : have you seen the internet lately?
 
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#77
Yeah, its even scarier than i could imagine i guess. I think you overestimate the effect you describe though. I have family members who are millennials that disparage the Gen Z crowd for their reliance on all things Tech, although i think they are pointing fingers in a dust storm. The art of casual conversation is dying. Everything runs downhill from that.
 
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#78
BassBrass said:
oh that was science fiction. He's talking about the real ETs. Some people think the congressional hearings outline the 5 ET races presently operating on earth were definitive, but that wasn't really definitive (majority of people unaware) and zero point energy is part of the secret government that may or may not exist. It would solve our energy problems but would destroy the whole oil based economy, so "they" are withholding it until After the micro nova that happens every 6000 years and resets civilization.
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Okay... and are these the lizard people? And does Nostradamus figure in there?
 

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