Last Friday night, your dream of the nineties was alive at the Ottobar.
Now, please understand that I don’t make such a statement lightly. I’m well aware of all that it entails — though most of us were no more than ten years old, tops, when that era ended, we’ve all got some pretty hefty memories tied up in those years (remember those brightly colored cereals, those classic cartoons, the Clinton administr — well, actually, kids, it’s probably better if you weren’t exposed to the fine points of that one too early).
So here’s what I mean when I say that WJHU’s Night of the Living Head distilled the essence of what was great about the nineties, with none of the messy “Mom, who’s OJ Simpson?” conversations: around 10:30 pm, you could’ve witnessed Brooklyn grunge-rockers DIIV obscure the stage in a blur of baggy tee shirts, long hair and thrashing guitars that would’ve made any nineties Seattleite proud.
A perfect fit for the Ottobar’s basement-like atmosphere, DIIV’s set—which, to be honest, was played more or less at one driving tempo—morphed the crowd into a head-bobbing mass that rivaled Kurt Cobain’s pep rally from hell in “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” And sincerely, don’t we all wish that was what growing up in the nineties was really like?
From the instantly addicting licks opening to their track “Doused” to (imagine my surprise) a Nirvana cover, I’m pretty sure that the man himself was swinging his Doc Marten-clad feet off a cloud somewhere up above, smiling down at DIIV. Or maybe he was just smiling to finally be rid of Courtney; beats me.
As the night wore on past 11:30 (which, in the nineties, most of us would’ve regarded as long after bedtime), you would’ve seen Toronto synth-pop duo TRUST take the stage — or at least you would’ve after your eyes adjusted to the strobe lights and smoke machines.
With Robert Alfons swaying in a very-nearly-disconcerting manner near the edge of the stage and balancing himself with a microphone stand, the only thing in the room skinnier than himself, you wouldn’t have been too far off base to imagine yourself in Chicago’s The Double Door, circa ‘99.
Clad in denim overalls — (denim overalls!) — Alfons simultaneously embodied the kid you wished you were, musically, and the kid you actually were, sartorially, in the nineties.
Partner-in-crime Maya Postepski, looking rather like a Betsey Johnson model, preferred to stay somewhat in the background, letting Alfons vamp or stumble or fidget or whatever it was he was doing.
By this time, the crowd was one solid, emboldened, undulating body ready to do whatever TRUST asked of us — and thankfully, they didn’t ask much. We were as content as they were to hand over our faculties and let the strobe light transform us all into the incredible dancers we thought we were when we were nine.
A track like “Sulk” (contrary to its name) pretty much allows you to forget your body exists, and for a generation of people who occupied the nineties in a time when we pretty much actually didn’t know our bodies existed, this was a good thing.
So, with a group of musicians who could’ve flawlessly staged a remake of Empire Records, I have to ask: are the nineties back?
Hopefully not, or at least not in the superficial way that things tend to be “back” (how many Hipster Ariels did you run into in Fell’s this past week?)
But for one, brief, fleeting moment at the Ottobar last Friday — from the first chords of opening Donavon Frankenreiter-esque singer-songwriter Alex Duncan, through the headliners and all the way to the closing beats of DJ Fiar Medico — the nineties were here. And, man, it was good to be back.
