by Joel Rubinoff
It was the Canadian version of the outlaw country supergroup, The Highwaymen.
Four frontmen, past and present, of four iconic Canadian '90s bands — Sloan, Barenaked Ladies, The Pursuit of Happiness, The Odds — joining forces at Guelph's River Run Centre last week to perform their greatest hits, and only hits.
"I'm An Adult Now," "Someone Who's Cool," "Brian Wilson," "Underwhelmed."
As The Trans-Canada Highwaymen banged out their songs of smart-aleck alienation with energy, conviction and an unerring sense of melody, it was all killa, no filla, a perfect time capsule of a pivotal era in Can-rock expansion.
"It's fun for Captain Kirk to be in the same band as Captain Picard," joked Sloan frontman Chris Murphy with classic Canadian self-deprecation. "I don't know if you know this, but this group was put together by Simon Cowell."
It was one for the record books.
But instead of Massey Hall or the Air Canada Centre, this so-called "supergroup" played a tiny, 785-seat concert hall to a rabble of enthusiastic diehards and loyal series subscribers in their 80s who appeared taken aback by the volume.
Which begs two questions: 1) jeez, what is going on with '90s nostalgia? 2) is this the best it can do?
At which point I remembered the much ballyhooed Big Music Fest two summers ago at Kitchener's McLennan Park.
Nope, not the sellout triumph with classic rock stalwarts Slash, Styx, Aerosmith and Bryan Adams, who drew a massive multi-generational crowd without breaking a sweat.
The one a year later that saw '90s alt-rockers Soundgarden, Jane's Addiction and Extreme play to a half-empty field of tattooed, nose-pierced 40-something slackers — and no one else.
This, it seems, is the pitfall of '90s nostalgia and indie rock in particular: great as it was in its time, it was so far from the mainstream, with such limited appeal, that it can't pull in the big tent crowds needed to fuel a genuine renaissance.
And it's not just in Canada.
Scanning Soundscan's Worldwide Ticket Sales chart for the top 100 tours of 2016, I count only 12 rooted in the decade of Bill Clinton, harem pants and Luke Perry sideburns, with zero in the top 20.
The highest, at No. 24, is Blink-182, followed by the Dave Matthews Band (27), Phish (29), Celine Dion (38), Red Hot Chili Peppers (42), Weezer and Panic! At The Disco (47), Snoop Dogg with Wiz Khalifa (53), Pearl Jam (56), I Love the '90s with Salt-N-Pepa and Vanilla Ice (76), Ricky Martin (83), Mariah Carey (94) and Rob Zombie/Korn (96).
Who made the Top 10?
Coldplay, a defiantly millennial act, is No. 1, followed by Bruce Springsteen ('70s/'80s), Beyoncé (current), Justin Bieber (current), Guns N' Roses ('80s), Adele (current), Luke Bryan (current), Trans-Siberian Orchestra ('00s), Kenny Chesney (current), and Muse ('00s).
What they have in common, of course, is that they play accessible music that appeals to more than one age group, boast killer live shows and — other than a cursory nod — have little to do with hip hop or grunge.
Call it the '90s Curse, but if you listen to Sirius radio's '90s on 9, what you hear is a preponderance of melismatic divas (Mariah Carey), teen troubadours (Britney Spears) hip hop schlockmeisters (MC Hammer) grunge distortionists (Screaming Trees) and one hit wonders (Right Said Fred).
None of which translate into a) arena-sized tours b) a legacy longer than Y2K panic.
Let's be blunt: The Spice Girls were big, but they were no Beatles (though they may have been The Monkees).
The Backstreet Boys were no Rolling Stones.
And Chumbawamba, despite their fist-pumping anthem "Tubthumping," was no Led Zeppelin.
So where do forged-in-the-'90s stars like Carey, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette and Backstreet Boys earn a living these days?
Casinos, cruise ships and 2,000-seat venues across North America.
It's as if the entire decade, it's time come 'round once again, said, "You know what? Meh. I think I'll pass."
"Very few '90s acts were able to develop deep catalogues of albums with hits that sustained," notes former Kitchener deejay Steve Sobczuk, pointing to a determined lack of melody in both hip hop and alt-rock.
"In the '80s, acts like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince and Springsteen did this, and even secondary level acts like John Mellencamp were able to put together a pretty long career to draw from.
"If Nirvana was one of the biggest acts of the '90s, they had only two hit albums of new material and a third 'unplugged' record with covers and older material before Kurt blew his brains out. Pretty thin output to base any 'legendary' status on."
As New York Times essayist Carl Wilson pointed out in a pithy rant on the same topic, it's hard to feel nostalgia for, say, gangsta rap, when it's associated with things like crack cocaine, turf wars and the Rodney King riots.
The counter argument, of course, is that the reason there's no flag waving, cross-burning '90s revival overtaking pop culture is because the '90s, ahem, never left.
Think about it. In the decades prior to the '90s, we could expect a major musical paradigm shift once every decade or so: rock 'n' roll in the '50s, guitar bands and psychedelia in the '60s, disco and punk in the '70s, synth-pop and metal in the '80s, grunge and hip hop in the '90s.
And then what?
If you scan Billboard's Hot 100, you can draw a straight line between then and now, with a few squiggles for variations on a theme: dance pop, electropop, synth pop, indie pop, indie folk, indie rock, alt rock.
"There's so many more genres vying for your dollar," points out Greg Henderson, programming manager at Kitchener's Centre in the Square, noting how music splintered in the post-90s digital era. "EDM, R&B, hip hop ..."
And just as disco begat EDM and Madonna begat Lady Gaga, so did '90s titans like Mariah Carey beget Adele and Jay Z beget Drake — younger, hipper offshoots drawing from the same musical well.
To be fair, the decade wasn't a total wash, nostalgically, with remakes of TV shows/films like "Full House," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Power Rangers" going head to head with upcoming reboots of "Will & Grace," "Baywatch" and "Toy Story."
Flannel shirts and Mom jeans are back — who would have thought that was possible? — O.J. Simpson was the subject of two recent miniseries, and '90s 'It girl' Winona Ryder made a comeback in the Netflix series "Stranger Things."
"The Simpsons," on the other hand, never left, Pokemon and SpongeBob SquarePants are bigger than ever and — because the culture feels stuck in permanent dry dock — '90s series like "Seinfeld" and "Friends" feel contemporary almost two decades after they went off the air.
And guess who was just named "World's Most Beautiful Woman" by People Magazine for the fifth time since 1991?
Julia Roberts, of course, her perky visage seemingly frozen in time.
Which begs the question, how can we miss the '90s if they won't go away?
"In our Been There Done That Mashup Age, nothing is obsolete, and nothing is really new,"' Kurt Andersen wrote in Vanity Fair, explaining this "stylistic paralysis" as a natural reaction to massive techno and geopolitical changes since 9/11.
"I feel as if the whole culture is stoned, listening to an LP that's been skipping for decades, playing the same groove over and over. Nobody has the wit or gumption to stand up and lift the stylus."
"The end of history" was the popular refrain as the '90s kicked off with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and pundits celebrated the fact humankind had reached its evolutionary peak.
Ha, ha. What's ironic, in hindsight, isn't that history continued with gleeful abandon — 9/11, the War on Terror, Donald Trump — but that pop culture had its head so far up its butt it neglected to pay attention and offer a modicum of course correction.
"I think Bruce Springsteen and Fleetwood Mac wrecked it for everyone," points out programming chief Henderson of the classic rock acts that dominate the concert landscape. "They're so massive and still huge draws."
So here we are in 2017, grappling with bro country and Justin Bieber in place of Billy Ray Cyrus and the Backstreet Boys, watching the same/similar TV shows, the same/similar blockbuster sequels, with the odd sense that no time has passed.
Once "The Rachel" makes a reappearance, there will be no turning back.
--taken from: Waterloo Region Record
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