Phil Alexander (1)

It's funny, but the music world seemed to change in 1994, from a world where AOR, glam, poodle, pub rock and all that old fashioned stuff was acceptable to a world where no-one was interested. Perhaps Kurt Cobain's suicide was the pivot. But why?

The late 90s weren't a great time for mainstream heavy music. Britrock was a bland flavourless affair, even the best bands only having the odd decent tune and the US beginning to be dominated by Nu-Metal. This doesn't have the feel of an era in which a reader 25 years later could wish to have been part of. The bands have nothing to say, the music is mostly uninspiring. What a difference from five years earlier!

1997 doesn't seem as long ago as 1994. I mean, it wasn't, but also those three years seem to make a lot of difference. Perhaps because I was 19 in 1997 compared to 16 in 94 it seems like the difference between adulthood and childhood even though I was way more of a child than an adult in 97.

Things are starting to look bad in popular rock culture. Even the good stuff in here will fizzle out into cliche before the millenium is out.