Back In My Day
by Andrew Judd
Back in my day food was cheap. A $1 mixture of lollies was bursting to the brim, you could get a Happy Meal for $3.95 and there was the huge commotion in New Zealand about Georgie Pie. This is a memory that my generation will cherish. My grandparents had World War II, my generation had Georgie Pie. Do you realise that Georgie Pie not only had great tasting pies but they were only 75 cents each! Seventy-five cents for a delicious mince and cheese pie! Oh my goodness. But then they put the price up to $1 and McDonalds muscled them out. Gutted.
R.I.P. Georgie Pie. We will remember you.
In the 90s, rollerblades were still cool. We would blade down to the local skate bowl and the skateboarders would stop to watch us. If you could go backwards on your blades, you were a legend. There was even a movie made about rollerblading – Airborne – starring Jack Black (he’s a baddie). It’s a story about this surfer guy from California, who moves to the cold of Chicago and isn’t cool until he takes up rollerblading and wins a race.
Surfer Guy: “Chill Brah”
Jack Black’s character: “Did he just call you a piece of underwear?”
There were only a handful of really famous bands in the 90s because the record companies still had blanket control of the music industry. Some of the 90s bands are still going strong. Some are defunct (or deceased). Music was a big deal in the 90s. What you listened to was where you put your stake in society. There was a pretty good selection of self expression through music:
1. If you listened to Rage against the Machine, you were “angry”.
2. If you listened to the Smashing Pumpkins, you were “depressed”
3. If you listened to Nirvana you were “angry and depressed”.
Life was simpler in the 90s.
Back in my day we had cassette tapes which were way better than LPs. I was sceptical about the hype presented about CDs, though.
“…are they really all they’re cracked up to be?”
“Oh, yeah man, you can totally tell the difference between a CD and a tape.”
I had to dub my mate’s CD onto a cassette because external CD burners were about $900 each and when you’re putting $2 of petrol in your car, believe me, you’re not too fussed music quality. It was okay though because in the 90s it was still okay to release REALLY low quality albums. You could buy a Nirvana CD for $20 or a local band’s garage recording for only $10. A no brainer. I think I even dubbed a song called Georgie Pie by an Auckland band called Krusty. Horrible quality, great music. Loved it.
Gaming was also a no brainer. You’ve got the big names: the original Warcraft or the original Doom. The best way to get a game was to go to your mate’s house and dub their game onto floppy disc. With PKunzip.exe I could compress Doom onto 6 discs. Then I would take my entire desktop to my cousin’s place and we would connect our PCs via serial cable. It usually took between 30mins and two hours to get the stupid computers to link up. Then we would play Doom till our eyes crystallised over.
Travel was a much more pleasant experience. Especially when it came to air travel. There was no such thing as 9/11 and security wasn’t so tight. Would you believe I carried a box of 16 high pressure CO2 canisters (for an air gun) from North Carolina, x-rayed through Tennessee, Tulsa, Denver, LAX and onto Auckland airports, without being asked to remove them from my carry-on! Mind boggling when you consider that bottled water is contraband these days. The CO2 was for my .22 calibre air pistol that was also in my checked luggage.
The 90s were not kind on fashion. Fashion was in limbo during that decade. I think that growing up in the 90s has left me hamstringed when it comes to what to wear. I have to look at the Hallensteins website to see what the cool kids are wearing these days. But clothes were a little like music selection in the 90s. There was grunge… and that’s about it. Even the metal heads looked grunge. There was a lot of grunge so it didn’t really matter what you wore. As long as it was from a second-hand shop, you were alright.
So the 90s were a good decade. I’m sure that like the 80s, the 90s will have another go. If we are careful to follow what Marty McFly does in Back to the Future II we can’t go wrong (especially when it comes to fashion). I’m still hoping for a hover board, but it’s not 2015 yet.
Comments