Okay, I can’t just leave that to lie there like some bluegill gasping for air in the bottom of a rowboat. The long version of that thought is: “now that early ‘90’s revivalism is in full swing-- Clintonian centrism, the indignant crusades of the post-Moral Majority moral minority, localized genocide, war in Iraq, apres-boom recession blues-- it’s interesting (to me at least) to take a look back at the music of the early 1990s and see how it has aged in relation to what we gots today.

Popular music in its time is like a flea market. Even the most discerning buyer is hard pressed to identify the good stuff, the real finds, the million-dollar tea sets, in among all the crapulous junk exuded from a thousand moldy basements. For every Nirvana, there are a dozen Nerf Herders, Candleboxes, Collective Souls, and Four Nontalented Non Blondeses. It’s only in retrospect that the really good stuff can shine through.

Case in point: the early to mid 90s. Listening to a whole set of the best of the period all at once, like I get to do whenever WFNX, the local ‘alternative’ station runs a 90’s lunch, makes it seem like rock music hit a high water mark around 1995 and that everything since is a recession. (Hell, for all I know that could be true. I can’t think of one band-- even one single-- in the last four years that’s as indelible as Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight.") I bring this up because I was recently poleaxed by Hole’s “Doll Parts.” I haven’t heard that song in years, at least not that I can remember, and I can’t believe how well it has aged. Back when it came out, Hole was just another part-girl ‘grunge’ band right along with L7 and Four Non-Blondes. and Courtney Love was the new Yoko Ono. Now “Doll Parts” seems absolutely perfect-- timely, relevant, tough, freaky and disturbing, without a whiff of quaintness-- and underscores the appearance that nobody today is doing it as well. What the hell? Is it possible that rock music managed to go for ten years without noticing that it’s run off a cliff?

It seems to me that since about 1996 all the forward momentum in pop music has been on the hip-hop/soul side of things as Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, The Ruff Riders, the Dirty South crew, Eminem, LA Reid, Irv Gotti, and even Clive Davis have moved the state of the art forward by leaps and bounds while rock stays stuck in a rut. Aside from critical darlings (Radiohead and their clones, Coldplay), rock is a revival act now. The White Stripes worship “Electric Mud.” Franz Ferdinand worship Gang of Four. Queens of the Stone Age worship Foghat. Creed worship Jesus (and, to a lesser extent, Collective Soul).  Even Radiohead bear more of a debt to Bowie, Pink Floyd, and Brian Eno then they like to let on. And, yes, I will grant that Courtney Love took all the cues for “Live Through This” from “Nevermind,” which in turn was pretty much the Pixies “Doolittle” all over again, but such first-hand piracy is different from today’s nostalgia acts pretending that New Wave never actually happened the first time.

My assignment to you: prove me wrong, children! Prove me wrong! Is it possible that rock’s forward progress stopped around the time Rage Against the Machine released “Bomb Track” and Smashing Pumpkins broke up?