Flash-back to the 90ies

I read this  nineties post here at Levelieze and liked it but thought I’d give quite different answers. Reason enough to play. Will you compare our answers?  

For me, the nineties are the period of high school and university. The period you are searching for your identity. With hindsight, I think I more often identified against groups I didn’t want to belong too. Sometimes I must have been a bit of an intellectual snob. 

Which artist from the nineties did you love very much?

Just before the 90ies, I had access to my sister’s cassette tape collection while she was away as an exchange student in Canada for a year.  I discovered New Wave and all the top hits of the 80ies and was convinced all the 90ies that nothing in the 90ies could beat the true hits of the 80ies...
While I listened mostly to the hit parade in the 90ies and indulged commercial music, it couldn't beat The Cure, U2, Simple Minds, The Police, Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Doe Maar, ...

Unlike part of my class (the party crowd) I didn't appreciate yet the more alternative music scene that lived in the 90ies...Metalica and Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys were still lost on me. I learned to love them with hindsight thanks to switching my radio channel to Studio Brussel in later years.  Back then I listend still to Radio Donna and the hit parade, and you could see me jumping around in my room on the stupid EuroDance hits.  

In grade 12 we travelled for the end of your high school trip to Turkey with over 80 girls or so.  We negotiated in one of our hotels a small party in the empty restaurant. I remember the bewildered look of the hotel staff when this crowd of girls was jumping around screaming "Ta taa taaa ta taaa taaa bonsai, bonsai".  Classic memory. 

At the same time we acquired a CD player at the end of the 80ies and my parents were creating a CD collection with lots of classical music that they were playing each weekend while at the same time I was spending up to 14 hours per week at the music academy. Both founded a a good base layer of appreciation of classical music and the sounds of instruments and the craftmanshift of mucicians. Together with a school friend - violinist, we gave the interim teacher of our Esthetica class at school a hard time when he had to teach us classical music.  Well, can't help it that we knew better than him and I even pointed out there was a mistake in the exam questions. (there was!).  (I admitted I was an intellectual snob, didn't I). 


Mid-90ies I lived myself a year in Canada. On my first day in school I had band class where the kids had just brought in the just released CD of Alanis Morissette and they just played that for over an hour.  Alanis's Jagged Little Pill will always be linked to my exchange and might also be the transition to some more alternative music style. 
My host father played every night before bedtime The Celtic Odyssey, The Narada Collection or The Celtic Legacy, The Narada Collection.  While I was already a fan of the popular Enya, I now switched entirely to celtic and folk music for the coming years.   I discovered Urban Trad at the Gentse Feesten and became a huge fan, danced to Laïs, Manau, Loreena Mc Kennit, the Asturian bagpipes of Hevia, .... and started to go to the Dranouter folk festival each year. 

Did you have a walkman or discman?

My sister got one at the end of the 80ies which I got to use now and then, but we didn't use it much outside sitting on the beach with some music during vacation really. 

Did you have posters on the wall above your bed when you were a teenager?

Actually no. As a little child both my sister and I had a wall with posters. I had ET and Michael Jackson I believe and my sister a wall of Doe Maar, David Bowie, U2, ...

But when I grew up I got a room make-over to make it a nicer teenage room and I was no longer allowed to pin posters in the wall.  There was one framed big poster that I had chosen with some romantic image of a couple, in the style of the Knuffelrock CD's. 

Was there a tv show that you couldn't stop watching?

Probably Friends, Seinfeld, the Nanny, The Fresh Prince, Mr Bean, Flikken, De Kotmadam, Het Swingpaleis, De 3 Wijzen, ... Must me much more.  I was quite into mainstream tv. 

Did you go a lot to concerts?

I don't know if I went "a lot". Probably not. 
But thanks to my sister I did see my first concert at the age of 13 when I went to De Kreuners in de Brielpoort.  I watched a lot of concerts at the Gentse Feesten for free and later on I went a lot to Dranouter.  I only attended Rock Werchter once. 

Where you a party animal?

No not at all. I was a studying nerd.  I attended now and then a birthday party or some event in the Brielpoort and as a student the academic opening party or the Galaball. But that's it really.  

Which drink or cocktail is linked for you to the 90ies?

Euh...nothing really.  I wasn't into beer (yet) for sure.   At Pole Pole (Gentse Feesten) I probably tried a cocktail but I don't think I've drunk a lot of alcohol. 

Which fashion from the 90ies did you wear?

Ha, an anecdote. I arrived mid-nineties in Canada with the European tight jeans fashion.  Over there teenagers couldn't wear their jeans baggy enough: my host sisters bought their jeans, cut open the legs and entered some colourful flower tissue in between.  
Later on I heard that they gossiped about me how sad it was that I didn't have jeans that fit me, as they had never seen such tight jeans. 


Funny that years later I observed baggy fashion in Europe and even another decade later, there was tight fashion in North America as well.  Everything returns, right? 

What did you do secretly without your parent's knowledge?

I never told my first love crushes to my parents. They had made me clear that I was not expected to come home with a boyfriend before I was 18. So when I fell in love for the first times... I remained silent.  I wrote some letters but didn't act more.  I have never been a rebel. 

Did you look forward to I Love the 90’s?

Nope, that came too early and I was still more interested in the 80ies. I don't think Eurodance has survived the test of time well. It triggers a bit of nostalgia but it's not actually "good music".  So I loved more the Studio Brussel program "was het nu 70, 80 or 90" with older music.  It's only now with more hindsight that I appreciate the rock and alternative scene that came alive in the 90ies...the ones that now fill up the Tijdloze.