Office Debate: Best Band of the 90s....

[Kitten Diver]

Listening to all these suggestions, I feel terrible because I realize that I'm old.

I'm sure you're not that old..

[boo7382]

Listening to all these suggestions, I feel terrible for everyone who was a teenager in the 90s. No wonder rap became mainstream, it's just as bad as all these bands you are mentioning.

Not to knock you or anything, but if you knew what good music was, you were listening to it. The 90s was a big part of the grunge era which spawned Nirvana and all those other bands which I definitely listened to.

Rap became mainstream because it grew from the 80's. Actually, hip hop was originally influenced by Disco in the 70's. Disco spawned the basis of hip-hop music. In the 80's, rap music diversified and started to turn into what it is today. So, if anything, you should be blaming the mainstreaming of rap on the 80's, not the 90's. It just happened to coincide with the 90's b/c of its continuation from the 80's.

If you knew good music, you didn't have to listen to shitty rap. Not saying I haven't listened to rap/hip hop in my day, but I also listened to Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Billy Joel, a good amount of Elton John, and some Jethro Tull among others. I'm still listening to them today.

Its all about what you are exposed to.

[Epistaxis]

Dave Matthews Band. They were so much better back then than anything they've done 2000s

I always considered them to be one of those bands that chicks absolutely LOVED, therefore you must love them too.

Like Cetera.

[cookinwithgas]

Stop telling me I think that these bands are bad. I specifically said that they were not.

But seriously, Nirvana? I agree they changed music and brought rock back from the dead after Guns N Roses and all the hair bands killed it. But Groehls Foo Fighters has a lot better writing, sound, and every other technical part heads over heels better than Nirvana.

The mid 80's effectively killed music as a truly life changing experience, and by the time rock had made a comeback, digital music had replaced the idea of CDs/albums - why buy and experience the bands actual train of thought when you can pay 99 cents to get the hit, play it to death and move on to the next one?

In the late 70's/early 80s an album release by say, the Police, would be something a bunch of us would plan to be at when the store opened, then we would take it back home and listen to it - intently - and discuss. You didn't even have to be a real hardcore fan for this; Pink Floyd albums were particularly famous for this.

Now I see my daughter downloading songs of the week to play on her phone with the crappy earbuds, and this is the way most people listen to music - it's a silence filler while you are driving or looking at Facebook.

Yes I'm a grumpy old man, but I have a reason for it. A lot of younger people really don't know what they have given up for instant access to music.

[CLTPanther]

Yes, because 80's music rocked! not

[Captroop]

Man, that's a good one. If you broke the 90s down into a few subsegments, it would be easy. Because some bands owned the early, mid and late 90s, but couldn't represent the decade as a whole. The one's that represent the whole decade I'm not a huge fan of.

If I had my drothers, I'd drop names like Googoo dolls, TLC, Edwin McCain, but there's no way they represent the 90's as a whole.

So I guess it's Green Day by default.

[boo7382]

Listening to all these suggestions, I feel terrible for everyone who was a teenager in the 90s. No wonder rap became mainstream, it's just as bad as all these bands you are mentioning.

....im confused where you didn't say they were bad

[boo7382]

Stop telling me I think that these bands are bad. I specifically said that they were not.

Now I see my daughter downloading songs of the week to play on her phone with the crappy earbuds, and this is the way most people listen to music - it's a silence filler while you are driving or looking at Facebook.

Yes I'm a grumpy old man, but I have a reason for it. A lot of younger people really don't know what they have given up for instant access to music.

I think that has more to do with the advances in technology. Albums-8tracks-tapes-CDs-Mp3's

Its not like I can go to a store and buy an album even if I wanted to. I could buy the CD at the store, but I could also buy the same CD online on Itunes.

[GritsRgreat]

Yes, because 80's music rocked! not

80's rock > anything since and most of the hippie crap before.

and yes CWG, The Foo Fighters destroy Nirvana.

[cookinwithgas]

You had to be there. If you missed MTV starting up and seeing music change based on what the people wanted to see, you probably won't get it. "New Wave" is incredibly odd to listen to these days but when it came out, not only was the writing and tone of the music different, electronic music became mainstream. I freaking hate "Tainted Love" but the synth sounds on it were something people generally didn't hear back then. Synths were either filler sounds, or oddball melody/rythym tracks like what Townshend did with Teenage Wasteland. I mean, you could turn on your radio and hear these wierdos singing "Puttin on the Ritz". Is radio ever going to do that again?

The end of the 70's was all disco, the conventional rock acts were foundering, there was still segregation in music to a limited extent. MTV changed the way music was sold, for good and for ill. Michael Jackson was not a dead freak, he was a teenybopper turned into a musical force because he was insanely talented and was smart enough to hire John Landis to make a music video with him.

It allowed bands like REM, Talking Heads, B-52's to stop being tiny niche bands and actually make money and become popular.

It also allowed Phil Collins to become a superstar so theres a dark side to all this.

But really, compare what Pink Floyd did in the 60s and 70s and try to find a 90's band that came close to that kind of artistic and commercial success. Nirvana is a pale shadow of what REM did in the 80s, but they hit at a great commercial moment. Do you think that 20 years from now any 90's rock star is going to make the money that the Stones generated this past decade?

[GritsRgreat]

The biggest seller in the 90's was Garth Brooks for crying out loud

[boo7382]

You had to be there. If you missed MTV starting up and seeing music change based on what the people wanted to see, you probably won't get it. "New Wave" is incredibly odd to listen to these days but when it came out, not only was the writing and tone of the music different, electronic music became mainstream. I freaking hate "Tainted Love" but the synth sounds on it were something people generally didn't hear back then. Synths were either filler sounds, or oddball melody/rythym tracks like what Townshend did with Teenage Wasteland. I mean, you could turn on your radio and hear these wierdos singing "Puttin on the Ritz". Is radio ever going to do that again?

The end of the 70's was all disco, the conventional rock acts were foundering, there was still segregation in music to a limited extent. MTV changed the way music was sold, for good and for ill. Michael Jackson was not a dead freak, he was a teenybopper turned into a musical force because he was insanely talented and was smart enough to hire John Landis to make a music video with him.

It allowed bands like REM, Talking Heads, B-52's to stop being tiny niche bands and actually make money and become popular.

It also allowed Phil Collins to become a superstar so theres a dark side to all this.

But really, compare what Pink Floyd did in the 60s and 70s and try to find a 90's band that came close to that kind of artistic and commercial success. Nirvana is a pale shadow of what REM did in the 80s, but they hit at a great commercial moment. Do you think that 20 years from now any 90's rock star is going to make the money that the Stones generated this past decade?

No one is arguing about money here. We are simply talking about the best bands from the 90's. You are probably right, 20 years from now there will not be a lot of the music from the 90's still around. But, that is not at all what we were talking about.

I think all of us who grew up through the 90's saw MTV change and decline into the piece of trash that it is today. No one is arguing that either.

[CLTPanther]

Yea, I was around when MTV came online, grew up in the 80's, the music was trash

[Panthro]

FWIW

Nirvana rose to the top bc of Kurts sex appeal and the fact that Frank Blank is an ugly little trilobite