PASSED: How we lost the promise of Skynet
Posted by Mat | Filed under Music
Terminator 2 was the rated R movie that every other 9 year old saw in ‘91. With it came two promises – that Eddie Furlong has a fruitful career ahead of him and that the machines would totally take over.
That Furlong thing never came to fruition, but by the second half of the decade, a more benign Skynet takeover seemed imminent. Detroit had brought the techno, the Brits had passed acid house and MDMA across the pacific, and the hoover sound was the biggest and baddest of them all. Papua New Guinea represented the harmonious union of world cultures and technology.
The cultural juggernaut that is was, mass media soon got on board. We had the first uber-umbrella term paid on us by the music industry – Electronica. Homogenic and Kid A showed that even Alternative bands knew what was up. MTV heard our collective voices and brought us our standard-barer of things to come. Fashion promised us round backpacks, hot chicks with neon hair, and big ass pants to hold all our futuristic doodads – beneath which we would rollerblade, appearing to the world like levitating horsemen of the new millennium.
The future looked fiber optically bright.
And then things had to go and Okenfolded in on itself. The Sneakerpimps were without any hos – and that was that. By ‘01, the beats that had once promised digital Shangri-La were now only heard in new model Mustangs cruising for chicks. The machines had lost, and the new millennium was ushered in by a bunch of baseball cap sporting, white rappers.
The memory does live on; the resistance is out there. In towns too small to name, but too large to only support Juggalos, the spirit is alive. PLUR… or not.
Tags: 90s, electronica, farce, passed
5 Responses to “PASSED: How we lost the promise of Skynet”
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Verdilak Says:
February 11th, 2010 at 2:16 amWhat about the sudden burst that was “ElectroClash”? Even though the fashion was a throwback to what the 80s thought was futuristic, the music was definitely a homage to those old machines.
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Mat Says:
February 11th, 2010 at 9:29 amOh yeah the genre that brought us one club and um… FIsher Spooner.
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TheHobo Says:
February 11th, 2010 at 10:29 amI feel like reading your blog is like getting a music history lesson. But in a good way. Also, love the song clips… :-)
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Listenable – White Hinterland: Kairos – underwater ice music | View From the 101 Says:
March 5th, 2010 at 10:44 am[...] – Vespertine The follow up to 90s defining album, Homogenic, Vespertine is often the overlooked album between the “big deal” disc [...]
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PONDERED: Taxonomy and manifesto; identity in digital media | View From the 101 Says:
March 15th, 2010 at 2:54 pm[...] Alternative, and Electronica add less definition to an artist than New Weird America, and yet is far more recognizable and has [...]
