More than 20 years later, the 90’s vibrant chapter in time is still flashing through our memories with a checked skirt and butterfly clips in its hair. The ‘90s were a blast! A pop culture pinnacle, this decade continues inspiring us with its pink, purple, green, and blue rays. As for the music – it kept on playing on and on.
Think of all the styles that were flourishing – grunge, punk, ska, alternative rock, hip hop, RnB, house, you name it. For most of the millennials, their first live concert experience ever happened in the wild ‘90s.
Are you one of those people? Do you remember these things?
Powerful Sound
Not just the power of the PA systems got amplified, but the sound transcended further to our VCRs, speakers, and audio systems.
Hi-fi was an insane trend that made watching pre-recorded concerts a mesmerizing experience.
Sampling was also heavily exploited and it got incorporated into live shows. Artists like DJ Premier and J Dilla became the forerunners of sampling and laid the foundation of the mixing and remixing culture.
Fascinating Visuals
What we’re taking for granted today was an extraordinary innovation back in the ‘90s. Videos were triumphing and MTV was the church of a whole generation. It was only natural then, for live gigs to employ visualization and strive for achieving a synesthesia sensation for the audience.
Video mapping and light effects were not invented in the ‘90s but they had all they needed for magnifying a hypnotic virtual reality in real-time. With the uprising of techno and psychedelic waves in music and partying, VJing became an inseparable part of live acts.
Sassy Dance Moves
Pop icons like Madonna and Michel Jackson entertained us with Vogue and the Anti-gravity Lean but that was just a hint of what was about to come. Hip-hop gave birth to roboting, liquid, popping, hammering, and hundreds of other styles that pop artists eventually borrowed for their performances.
After breakdancing and the Running Man, The Parallel Reality Man came. In 1999, The Matrix blew our minds and prompted new urban dance moves.
Loooong Acts
So often the concerts in the ‘90s were genuinely unscripted and spontaneous. Besides, some of our favorite artists were young and fresh and wanted to win our hearts. Indeed, they succeeded in doing so!
Bands like Phish were improvising on the stage with hour-long songs and some of their shows lasted for a whole night.
Meanwhile, rave festivals in the UK were going on for weeks, and sometimes they were interrupted by the police only to resume slightly later with an even more unruly force than before.
Tours were also extended adventures to remember. Whoever signed up for Bob Dylan’s tour in the ‘90s, is probably still on the road as the 80-year-old rebel’s tour is continuing. It’s a never-ending event that’s been going on for 30 years now.
The Millenium
As all good things come to an end, the ‘90s didn’t last forever. The huge difference this time was that saying goodbye to those memorable years meant saying hello to a whole new millennium. And you must admit this doesn’t happen frequently.
It’s hard to imagine anyone from the entertainment industry was unemployed on NYE 1999. The ‘00s had to make a skyrocketing entrance and 21 years later we have evidence that it really did.
Unfortunately, many world-known artists negotiated to perform at concerts that got canceled at the last minute because the tickets hit prices of $1200 and up. That was the case with Sting, Aretha Franklin, and Tom Jones who were supposed to sing in New York. The same happened to David Bowie and Sean “Puffy”.
The Artist, AKA Prince made a smart futuristic move and recorded a set in advance that was aired at midnight.
Alternatively, electronic music stages around the world were flooded and millions of ecstatic people swayed the last night of the ‘90s away together.
Where were you?
Of course, there are many other details we remember that are not decent so we chose not to share them. Anyways, it was an astonishing period of our lives and we’d like to keep its juices flowing. No matter how technologically advanced events are today, the spunk of the ‘90s is the special ingredient that makes a concert epic. Damn, we want to carry that crunchy vibe forward!
