Summertime 1996

It's been a while!

I'm sorry there hasn't had much in the way of posts, but I am still deep in the word mines with the extra Gemini Man stories for the Kickstarter rewards. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the second (and last) bonus story and it has taken most of my writing focus. On top of that, there has been a lot of real world things getting in the way. I'm sure you know what that's like. I apologize for the lack of blog activity in the meantime, but it will hopefully end once I finish up with said extra work and unrelated events finally settle down.

Today's subject is a strange one that has stuck in my brain for a good while now. In a lot of ways, it feels like a random time period no different than any other, but Generation Y kids probably remember this time most fondly since it is just around where they hit adolescence. It is not because anything remarkable happened in history that the time period is fondly remembered. No, it is a time like most any other. What they probably think of it is being a period of peace before the storm hit their lives--sort of like an eye in the cultural hurricane.

I am talking about Summer 1996.

This might seem like an odd thing to bring up, not even just mention as a subject to write about, but that is because it was kind of an odd thing to notice as I was listening to music while writing recently. There were a strange amount of songs focused on that particular period of mid-90s summer I kept finding. Why? I'm not exactly sure. They weren't even recent songs.

The above video was made around a song from a long defunct band called the Skunks (and it was from their last album recorded in this very time frame) that manages to encompass that inexplainable feeling for those who were around at the time. The album itself also sounds like 1996, feeling like the end of an era before what would come next, especially in the music industry, when such bands and musical styles fell out of favor for corporate slop and they were almost instantly thrown to obscurity. The song above is called "Summertime 1996" and perfectly encapsulates both the silliness and the general atmosphere of a time period in one 4 minute song. It is a shame that said band never got more well known, but their album No Apologies from 1996, is a hidden gem still worth hearing today. It is like being transported to a time and place very far away from here.

This lead me to thinking about different eras in my own life and how they intersected both with this and others.

I am starting to understand why summer of 1996 was such a unique time, and that is because each generation that was alive at the time was at a general period in their lives when things were looking up. From the kids to the elderly, they all hit the same period with the same general outlook (yes, even Gen X, the ones who wrote the above album) and despite the outliers, it was a small bump in positivity that would fade with the very next year. This is why 1996 feels like the end of an era in many ways, and why it is the last year that engenders any sort. I even ended up asserting as much in Y Signal, which ends in the summer of 1996, a coincidence I am just now realizing and noting. There was something strange in the air back then.

At the same time, I was reminded of the album The Elements of Transition from Edna's Goldfish, released in 1999, which is a nostalgic lookback at the early 1990s as the band grew from adolescence to adulthood and talks about the things lost and gained in such a move. In the process, it highlights feelings and ideas from the timeframe that also fell out of favor with the passage of time. The first album was called Before You Knew Better, from 1997, and focused on the change from childhood to adolescence, so it is like they portrayed a full cycle of early life with both albums. It's probably providence that the band also broke up after its release. All that remains would be one discussing the transition to senior, and that isn't happening for a good while.

Regardless, the album is a bit of a trip listening to today. I can see why at the time it might have been seen as a letdown to those wanting more energetic ska from their debut, but this one offers a whole new side of the band. Even the lone popular single from the album is still seen as their most famous to this day. It encapsulates an era that doesn't exist anymore.

Sample lyrics from said album:

Everyone I Know is from Lindenhurst

Summer of 93

What did you want from me?

I'll take you out

To the show

You get to meet everyone I know

What comes next I'll keep you guessing

Come to see the life that you've been missing

Everyone I know and

Everything I see

Everywhere I've been

It means so much you meant so much to me

They've made jokes at my expense

I'm my own worst defense

Another night of being lost

I'll see you at any cost

What comes next I'll keep you guessing

Come to see the life that you've been missing

Everyone I know and

Everything I see

Everywhere I've been

It means so much you meant so much to me

Summer of 95

I still don't feel like I'm alive

Sometimes I can feel so drained

But my friends are here I can't complain

I've underestimated again

The power of the words of all my friends

Everyone I know and

Everything I see

Everywhere I've been

It means so much you meant so much to me

What comes next I'll keep you guessing

Come to see the life that you've been missing

Everyone I know and

Everything I see

Everywhere I've been

It means so much you meant so much to me

Everyone I know and

Everything I see

Everywhere I've been

It means so much you meant so much to me

As I said, the mid-90s almost comes off as a time of reflection and calm before the storm than it resembles the material high of the 1980s or the more biting cynicism and the early 90s were known for. It also doesn't help that Cultural Ground Zero started to take over here, before feeling its full flowering in the next few years. As a result, 1996 is usually the last year that garners any wide cultural nostalgia to this day. Such a thing is bizarre looking back, because the year very much feels like it is closing the book on an era and not part of the wider zeitgeist. Unfortunately, it seems the next book it opened turned out to not be what it was sold as being and was donated to Goodwill ages ago. Now all that remains are the memories.

So why bring this up now? Should we really be looking into nostalgic time period as things are crumbling around us? There are a few reasons to talk about this, the main one being a major misunderstanding about how reflection is supposed to work and how it affects those who lived at the time. We should focus on this first.

There has been a bit of a pushback online to the recent generational theory, calling it the new astrology or some such nonsense, but that kind of talk ignores the reason it exists. Deniers claim that there is nothing that holds people together on a wider level, but I would posit that such an idea is not only incorrect but missing the forest for the trees. Everything you think, believe, and do, contributes to both who you are, as well as those around you.

You are not an island. I know it has been popular to flaunt individuality and not being "sheep" like the rest, but such an attitude is one that can only exist in a society that is so safe that going anywhere you will run into someone with shared cultural values to you. Giving a "firm handshake" to get a job across the country from here is only possible because of a shared understanding you have with said employer. This is not individuality, it is only possible because they are just like you. If they don't have that shared idea--guess what? A firm handshake means nothing. In such a case your individuality is revealed as what it is: a problem.

Life isn't about being on your own or pushing ahead of the pack. You are part of a group, many of them actually, and that is an unescapable truth.

Your generation doesn't define who you are: you define your generation. There are shared cultural ideas and social climates that influence people depending on both their geographical location and their exposure to both the education system and popular consensus and entertainment consumed. This is unavoidable--you are either slathered in or reacting against the same thing as your peers. You simply have more in common with those you grew up with than you do your grandparents or grandkids, who are several generations apart. It is unavoidable.

Yes, it has always existed, but not to this level, and there is a reason for that.

How it is different for the 20th century is that the West became a globalist world "family" in the worst sense of that word. Almost all in the West (yes, everywhere) experienced a large amount of the same things through the way focus moved from individual nations to the world itself (think "We Are the World" and you begin to understand the sort of philosophy every western country foisted on its populace) meaning that for the first time in history your youth and formation has more in common with someone your age across the sea than your parents who grew up in the same country as you. This has never been the case before the 20th century.

This exacerbated with the internet and online "communities" that function as replacements for local interaction. You are easily able to do this because you have more in common with random people you meet online in or neighboring your generational cohort than you do with the people who actually live in your neighborhood. Because you both focus on the same smaller aspect of your shared cultural identity at the expense of a wider one. Ask for the ages of the people you spend the most time online with, and you won't be surprised to see they are very near your own or in the neighboring generation to your own. At least, for normal people. That is just simply the way humanity works, but twisted to operate on a wider global scale to become more common.

The reason generational theory starts with the Lost Generation at the end of the 19th century and ends with what I called the Last Generation near the start of the 21st is because this era is over, mostly due to the obvious realization that it's not sustainable. Loneliness and atomization, rising suicide rates, and depression, the biggest issues of our time, exist because there is no more local community anymore to satiate that part of our souls, and it is only getting worse with age.

The online world will never replace human interaction, even though it tried very hard to do so. I predict a hard and forceful return to local communities in the years to come, especially as the internet continues to die. When such a thing happens, it will spell the end of the modern generational theory and the Global Village idea that is currently falling down around our ears. Essentially, we are living at the end of that time right now, with the current generation of young ones being the last to experience this world before it, too, fades away just like that world of the mid-90s did long ago.

Will this era engender as much nostalgia as that time period does now? The only comparable example we have is that of the 2000s, a decade 20 years old now, which has nothing in the way of a nostalgia movement to this day. the 90s had a movement literally right as it ended, one that continues to this day. But the 2000s remains ignored. That is because it was the first that completely championed isolation and vice as the key virtue to living a happy life. What does anyone remember besides bad music no one plays, lame movies no one talks about, or terrible TV that aged even worse. No to mention all the trends it slathered itself in never went away. The 2000s can't have a nostalgic movement because it never actually went away.

The only thing that garners any sort of wistful memories from the 2000s or appreciation of the time is the old internet, where most everyone spent their time as the real world and shared culture crumbled around us. If you take the internet out of the equation, which is easy enough to do due to it fading away as we speak, what are you left with? A long period of bland nothing.

Lockdown world was the end of a lot of things, but life online did not improve or save anyone from the inevitable realization that life as we knew it is over and changing. But what will it change into? the 20th century is done and we've been clinging to it way past its expiry date. Like we did in summertime 1996, we'll just have to wait and see what comes next, I suppose.

I'll leave you with one last video, a medley I made from the Skunks excellent 1996 album No Apologies, summing up both the sound of the band and the time period it was both recorded in and highlighting. Give it a listen as you relax your way into the weekend and gather hope for the good times coming ahead of us. There might be some rough patches, but they will pass into something better. They good times will come eventually, we just have to keep working for them.

Sooner or later, times will change. Then we will have out own Summertime 1996 to wistfully look back on and cherish, as everyone should.

Have a good weekend.

Two warriors travel across the country to face their explosive destiny as the second world closes in on them!