I Love the 90s

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine about women's haircuts--and no, I don't care how gay that sounds. I was ruminating on the nature of trendiness, and trying to understand how what looks so au courant today will invariably glare out laughingly at us from pictures ten years hence. That's a subject for another time. Earlier in the week I'd heard a Letters to Cleo song on the muzak in a coffeeshop, and I was hit with an intense bout of nostalgia.

No one would mistake the Cleos for an "important" band. True success eluded them, and they didn't break any new musical ground. But, they plowed familiar fields deeply, and their video for "Awake" is like a triple-espresso shot of mid-90s grunge-pop, rich with all the cliches of that era. It's also perfect for a game of "I've been there!" and a slightly bittersweet reminder of how much Boston has changed in the decade or so since.



Perhaps today's teenagers will one day watch this video and feel the same way I do when I see this one from Journey, AKA the Greatest 80s Video Ever. Duran Duran's Girls on Film is a close second, but loses by virtue of the fact that the music is not nearly as dated as Journey.  ¶ 10:36 AM