Time to move to the 90s

 After two months, where I've been publishing a song of the day from the eighties, I'm reluctantly going to move on to the 90s. And it is a reluctant move - because the 80s is the place where some of the best songs in the world were ever written and the nineties has all this pop crap which gets in your head and has the depth of a piece of paper.

And then there is Sinead O'Connor and her cover of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U - a superlative version. A better version than the original. And all of a sudden I'm taken back to 1990. 

It was a strange year. 

I was working at John Martins department store, working in the sub-basement in a very menial clerical job. I was living in a box room in a flat in Kensington with a flatmate who I had next to nothing to do with. I was completing the final year of my degree, attending lectures in my lunch hour. I look at that time and I now know I was clinically depressed for much of it. I had no idea who I was or what my potential might be. Interest rates were 17.5%. Bob Hawke was Prime Minister of Australia. Margaret Thatcher was still the Prime Minister of England. Nelson Mandela was let out of prison after 27 years. George Bush, the first one, was President of the US. The Gulf War started. All sorts of strange and varied things happened in 1990. 

Lots of strange and wondrous things happened in the 90s. A lot of it I'd rather forget. But some stuff I don't mind remembering. 

I could stay stuck in the 80's, but it's time to face some uncomfortable truths of the 90s. We all have to grow up. And growing up is awful. The lessons are hard and harsh. 

But there are some good things too, about the 90s. 

And I hear this song and I think of my friend Mariah and I drinking coffee at the Coffee Pot coffee shop down Gawler Place. Mariah still drinks her coffee black. She put me on to real coffee way back then. Mariah was always so much more wordly than I was. I was a very young 21 in 1990. 

But I hear Sinead O'Connor and the I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got album and think of Mariah telling me how much she thought of this album and the special nature of the songs. 

And I remember this moment as being the moment I moved from loving rock and pop and moving into more alternative music. 

And I'm still grateful for this. 

Even if the nineties is a painful and difficult time for me to remember. 

Today's song: