From neon to black: music in the ’80s, ’90s

If asked what his generation would be remembered for, 33-year-old Jason Nickey, co-owner of Landlocked Music, draws a blank when coming up with descriptive terms.
He’s lived through the ’80s, graduated high school in 1994 and remembers when the shift between the glam of the ’80s and the grunge of the ’90s occurred. For him it happened when the music his classmates listened to suddenly changed.

Nickey grew up near Ball State University in downtown Muncie, Ind. He said while in middle school he remembered everyone once listening to “glitzy, cheesy ’80s pop radio” and then shifting to Nirvana and Jane’s Addiction, bands he recalls as the first nods to alternative art rock.

For Nickey, this ushered in a new era of hipster ’tude.
“I definitely grew up in the Generation X period, where no one identified as any one thing and it was suddenly cool to be ironic,” he said.

Nickey said he felt like over the course of a summer, music and popular culture changed from something on-the-surface and image-based to a shift in the 90s to grunge. 

“There was this conscious attempt to create something real,” he said. “That’s when you saw a lot of the ironic T-shirts that had nothing to do with anything become popular.”

Growing up in Generation X, Nickey said it was hard to figure out what the youth in society actually stood for.

For him, this sense of uncertainty about the future of his generation began in the ’80s, which foreshadowed what was to come in the ’90s. Nickey refers to the ’80s as a period that was bleak and black-and-white.

It all ties back to history – there was the Reagan era, the birth of MTV, the so-called death of disco and the insurgence of the AIDS epidemic.

Looking back on his upbringing in downtown Muncie, Nickey said there were crackheads on every corner, petty crimes and “just a lot of people being really dirt poor.”

Like many people seeking refuge from the poor economy and the reality of America’s drug problem, Nickey turned to his cable television set, where he said he was allowed by his parents to escape to an “unhealthy amount of bad ’80s TV and hair metal bands.”

“People wanted what was glamorous and over-the-top back then,” he said. “There wasn’t much irony in pop culture then as there is now. Tight Speedos and leotards were just what happened then.”

Despite the surface pleasures of ’80s pop culture, Nickey said he believes cultural artifacts of that time still hold up well today. He said he recently watched a season of “Miami Vice” and was surprised it was still relevant, in spite of the cheesy fashions in the show.

Nickey saw the ’90s as a sudden need to acknowledge all things considered “authentic.”

This included strides in art and fashion.

“It was listening to Nirvana, wearing oversized flannel and becoming as unglamorous as possible,” he said.  “Ripped and faded jeans were suddenly being sold in stores. It seemed refreshing at the time.”

What’s changed?

And at the end of the day, Nickey said he feels he doesn’t identify with his generation, which is likely a common feeling among Generation X members, because there were no set expectations of them from society.

He said though Nirvana is an exception to the rule, most cultural shifts from the ’80s to the ’90s didn’t age well and have no lasting identity or value beyond what is vague.
“Looking back, I feel like I belong in a different time,” he said. “It was all this sort of blur of neon and black and I don’t know where I stood in all of that.”