Going Retro - Every media outlet has latched onto the '70s and '80s and given us sappy retrospectives on those decades. Blast beats them all this issue with a look back at the '90s.

So Far, So Bad
Bring on the Millenium - the '90s sucks
By Leo F. Kay
"It seems as if every 20 years our society feels a need to go retro, to bring back some of the styles and fads of years past as if they were suddenly cool again. In the '70s we felt the need to pull the '50s back into the mainstream through such vehicles as 'Grease' and 501s. The '80s saw a resurgence of the '60s, and now the '90s have resurrected the '70s. People, there's a reason why big bell bottoms went out in the '70s. Let it go."

'90s Music Nostalgia? Fuggedaboutit!
A Look Back at the Decade That Gave Us Hanson
By Warren Pederson
"The '90s have accomplished what I once thought was impossible: They made me nostalgic for the music of the '80s. What can you say about a decade that brought us MC Hammer's mega-success, the proliferation of sampling, the Lambada, the birth of the Spice Girls and the death of Kurt Cobain?"

Vintage Clothing is Hip
By Amy Pang
"As the decade creeps ever so slowly toward the overly-hyped end of the millennium, fashion trends have taken a nostalgic, navel-gazing turn. It's all about retro these days. We've already witnessed the return of disco, punk, ska, and swing, and all the accoutrements that accompany them. We're so busy waxing rhapsodic over the past that there's no defining '90s look except in how we redefine past fads."

You Think This Decade Sucks...?
By Suzanne Pullen
"If you think the 1990s suck, try being a woman or a minority in the 1890s. You want to talk oppression, racism and religious zealotry? Much of the century found women unable to own property, sign contracts, have custody of their children or vote."

Rock Radio R.I.P.
By John Pendell
"Has the time finally come when we can all agree that rock radio is in a tremendous rut? Nineteen ninety-eight has arrived, and with it the dull strains of a national radio playlist dominated by the likes of Matchbox 20 and an endless string of their sound-alikes. Rock radio will survive, as it always has, but popular rock music has not sunk to such depths since the late '80s, when listeners were subjected to the ear- and mind-numbing vapidity of Starship, Cutting Crew and Sheriff."

SUV Drivers: Kill 'Em All
By Kim Girard
"Commuting on Highway 101 I have a recurring vision of myself, a 30-year-old woman who tries to avoid killing ants and spiders, smashing the windshields of random cars or trucks with a baseball bat. Like TV darling Ally McBeal, who is haunted by a dancing baby, a symbol of her ticking biological clock, I am taunted by this bat - a symbol of my deep-seated anger toward bad drivers, cell phones and SUVs."