Floraline
Floraline
1999. Minty Fresh
1999 may have been the peak of human life in the western world. At the very least, it was the last year that all of the tools and technology to achieve Utopia were laid out before us and we still felt good about it.
We had the internet, but it hadn’t eaten up most of our brains yet. We didn’t have it in our pocket yet. We weren’t distracted by it in traffic yet. There was no social media to scroll and raise your blood pressure at any time of day yet.
The soul of the internet was still weirdness. Regular people made the rules and corporations were still figuring out what to do with it.
Technology was in the WOW! stage, as opposed to the This is going to take away my job and leave me starving on the streets stage.
Also, the World Trade Center attacks hadn’t happened yet. We had a tragic school shooting in the US (Columbine), but that sort of thing was still an unheard-of crazy anomaly. You could be an adult who lived your whole life without hearing the word pandemic.
Crass sex comedies could still be box office hits. Every neighborhood had a bookstore and a music store and a video store (or two) nearby. New movies from Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch were coming out.
Growing up in the USA in the eighties, our vision for the turn of the century was Armageddon. We had the Cold War mentality. Me, I was also raised on Biblical prophecy (in the eighties, my mother really wanted me to know that the world was going to end soon and I probably wouldn’t live to be 25; thanks, mom). In 1999, the sky was gonna be all purple and people were gonna be running everywhere.
The switch-over to 2000 would not be smooth and half of your loved ones were sure to be trampled by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Then 1999 actually happened and everything was… FINE. No apocalypse. Overall, 1999 was a chilled-out, frozen margarita of a year. Me, I was a young wreck, but my memories of that time are still pleasant. I’d go back for a day and cruise around.
My pick for the music would be the sole release by a group from Atlanta, Georgia called Floraline. It’s a little-known pop gem that’s endured as my own personal, private definitive album for that final, frivolous year of the last century.