1994! What Was It Good For?

File Under: things you don't need explained to you. 30 years is quite a long time. Like, really long. A generation-plus for humans. The lifetime of a koi. And yet, it was just yesterday in my brain. 

So what were you doing 30 years ago today? Summer of 1994?

I know what a couple of you were doing. 

Dave was in the Garden State -- in grad school or maybe just having finished. Living in a converted whorehouse on Route 18 in New Brunswick with some reptiles that scared me and some of his old buddies... who also scared me at times. His old mates played in a band and occasionally let the Idiots jam with them for a minute or two at a time. They threw all their spare change into a big bucket every day for a year and then threw a major rager with the take. Dave read a lot of books, especially for a 24-year-old, and he drank a beer called Artic Ice. It was a Coors product misspelled badly, but Dave liked the ABV and it only had 11.5 ounces, which he said cut out the half-ounce of backwash. He also lived with a guy who took his bride's surname, but I think you would have, too. Dave also worked tirelessly to murder a monitor lizard that they should have named Rasputin. 1994 for Dave: it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. 

Rob, meanwhile, lived in Arlington, Virginia. With me. He worked for a government contractor at Fort Belvoir. He dated off and on, but he spent more time sitting on couches with Spoid and me and Buckles and Cliffy and Evan and Old and others drinking Busch Light and playing Sega and watching SportsCenter and Beavis & Butt-Head. Like lots and lots of time. Rob drove his hand-me-down Chevy Blazer, replete with Celtics vanity plates, until he went S-10 so as not to have to drive when we went out. That summer he excelled at after-work wiffle ball in our home stadium, a gloriously, perfectly dimensioned natural grass field with a big, asphalt-shingled Grey Monster in left. (Rob coined that one.) We had multipurposed the field one Saturday earlier that year for the Magnificent 7, a stop along the preposterous annual keg croquet tour -- the likes of which we may never see again. Rob tried to learn to drink scotch whisky one night in 1994. It didn't take. Rob helped make up 100 great games that year, only to promptly forget about most of them, mainly because we also hosted some of the area's best throwdowns. 1994 for Rob: it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.

My 1994 looked similar to my little buddy's. I had a long-distance gf who'd become my first wife a few years later. Most days and nights were spent amongst my comrades. I, too, logged countless hours on the sofas at 5800 Little Falls Road. I devised a creation called T-120, a VHS cassette always just a "Record" button push away from action when the nude scenes came on our premium cable channels. Spoid received that as a parting gift when we were evicted the next year. I worked my government contractor gig in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, faking it until I never made it and getting to know what life as a regular in an Irish pub or two (nextdoor to each other and across the street from my office) was all about. I wore a suit to work every weekday, which now seems as antiquated as the VHS tape. I rode the metro to and fro my DC job, only occasionally falling asleep on the last train to the Burbs after happy hour extended. I saw Dumb & Dumber in the theater, more than once, and things were never the same. I helped host multiple bachelor parties, seeing wild new stripper tricks and taking regrettable pictures. I began amassing compact discs in earnest with a completist's savage fervor, just at the outset of a long journey. I saw They Might Be Giants several times in different venues in 1994. And loved it. I began frequenting the Cowboy Café that year, commencing and consummating a love affair with that place that has stretched past multiple marriages. In 1994 I helped found a men's beer league softball team that delivered years of smiles. And oh, yes, I also helped plan a dude's trip to go fishing in Nags Head, NC, one with sea legs that not any of us could possibly have calculated or even dared wish for in 1994. 1994 for me: it was the season of light, it was the summer of hope, and we had everything before us. It was truly the best of times...

...even as I reserve the right to apply this label onto other pockets of time during my life.

How about you guys? What was the summer of 1994 for you? College summer school days? High school job mowing lawns? Well into the working world? Better halves and little ones? Selling used cars? Trying to go pro in leisure sports? Hiking the Appalachian Trail?

Unsurprisingly, so many of the memories from 30 years ago are entwined with music. Shows of all kinds, from drunken Buffett smorgasbords to killer nights at the Bayou, or the old 9:30, or Lisner, or Radio Music Hall (now the 9:30), or in Richmond or Merriweather or wherever. Ah, the fleeting freedom of having nothing much to do, great concerts abound, and just a $22 ticket standing in the way.

When we weren't catching live acts, we were watching MTV (as yet not a misnomer) or cranking the hifi with the latest arrivals from Columbia House or BMG. I joined, quit, and rejoined those clubs countless times with pseudonyms ranging from the obvious to the ludicrous -- and what a haul of CD's that period ushered into our house. A new album to soak in every other night. If music be the food of love... give me the equivalent of Wendy's SuperBar, please. 

What of the music of 1994, you ask? Well, your old buddy Whitney has gone to the trouble of curating the tunes we amped through the Onkyo that year. Here are 80 songs from 80 artists in 1994. I have seen 27 of these bands get their live groove on. And I'm still not done. Dredging through the old stuff reminded me how much fun it is. Dig in, and as one of my favorite guitarists once offered in liner notes... happy hunting.