Nirvana

Thursday

Steven Poole

The best and coolest decade: nostalgia for the 1990s

The long 1990s began with the Pixies album Surfer Rosa in 1989 and ended with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Or perhaps the short 1990s began with Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991 and ended with The Matrix in 1999. Or perhaps the 1990s never really ended for those of us who have lived blissfully ever since in a mental version of Portlandia — the place where, according to that sitcom’s theme tune, ‘the spirit of the Nineties lives on’. Or perhaps the 1990s did end at some point in the new millennium, if only so that the 1990s revival could commence straight afterwards. It doesn’t really matter of course: decades

Thursday

Michael Hann

Makes me nostalgic for an era when music was more than a click away: Teenage Superstars reviewed

In Teenage Superstars, a long and slightly exhausting documentary about the Scottish indie scene of the 1980s and ’90s, there was a moment when a man revelling in the name of Stephen Pastel — his real name is Stephen McRobbie, and he must be pushing 60 now — was described as ‘the mayor of the Scottish underground’. Such a position — even one, as this, necessarily unelected — would be all but impossible to occupy today. With the internet and democratisation of music — its creation, its distribution, its consumption — has come the fallowing of what were once its most fertile fields: the local scenes created and inhabited by