I was talking to a colleague 10 years my junior in the pub the other day and after a while the topic moved, half drunkenly on to what cool stuff you did as a student.

As a student I went to clubs like the Hacienda, Soak and bands like the Happy mondays and Stone Roses were in their heyday. He said that he wished he’d been around to experience that period. I often wonder what it would have been like to be round in the punk era.

Does each generation grow up envying the previous ones defining genres?

What was the coolest youth culture era of the 20th century?

Are there any around at the moment that will define the first decade of the 21st century, I have to wonder when I look at hispters, but thats probably me getting old I accept…?

define cool. I’m kindathick, but you’ve gotta give a definition first? you just sound a bit like me. looking for something to happen,oh, I’m 38!

fashionably attractive or impressive

What like me? 🙂

personify that definition: (anyone!)

Kevevs, how many edits can you do on one post in 3 minutes?

I only wish i found mountain biking in the 90’s and not beer women and more beer and women.

Can’t think of an era in time when i’d rather be other than riding instead of wasting.

I really haven’t thought this through. I need to find a hipster forum to ask this question on, not a forum full of middle aged duffers 😀

I’d have liked to go to the massive outdoor raves in the early 90s.

Middle aged????

Why you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i’m 38 and have no intention of reaching 76yrs old….

I could hardly call it cool but for me the rave scene was the time I remember most fondly.

how do you quantify “cool”, how do you put it into a certrain time? cool is scmool! It is not important. But I still think video from mars or the moon is “cool”.

the sixties surely even though I was only borm in 1968.

That was a real revolution in cultural norms, everyday behaviour, music, fashion, social upheaval (mainly in a good way I think) and everything since has been fairly incremental in comparison. That said punk in late 1970s must have been good. 1980’s moder romance shite is fairly embarrassing.

Late 60s early 70s UK must have been the most exciting and important time for rock / pop music. The Beatles, Stones, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, The Who, Sabbath, Hendrix, Bowie getting started etc etc. Basically the most influential bands in history, and you could see em all in their prime.

If you’re over 30 and into rock music, then chances are your mum has been to better gigs than you’ll ever go to. It’s not just the concerts, though. Hearing something like Led Zep IV, Who’s next etc at the time would be a totally different proposition to hearing them now, after they’ve been copied 10,000 times.

Pends through whose eyes you see things though, don’t it?

Lots of things have happened all over the World throughout Human History. To limit things to suggest just one era in recent Western History is a tad limiting. There is radical change happening in places like China, India and the Middle East, whilst people in Chile might consider the end of the reign of the dictator Pinochet to be their coolest era.

The 60s in the UK was when the media really came to the fore as helping define contemporary culture in a way never seen before. So, an important era in modern British history perhaps. But ‘cool’ is as subjective as the viewer, surely?

For me, the explosion of Jungle and later Drum n Bass music was cool, as it came from where I do. Nice to see a culture born of your own environment and experience make it into the public consciousness.

What was the coolest youth culture era of the 20th century?

60s or 70s?

Nahh I changed my mind they are all shite.

drum n bass v apollo rockets blasting into space. **** ALL CULTURE, rockets blasting into space. Human culture is WEAK. beatiful bits of moss growing on yer ass.

late 80s early 90s for me personally.. with all that protesting and strikes and then the arrival of rave music and ecstacy it really looked for a minute like the smarmy fellows in charge were finally going to get their come uppance..

through my drug addled teenage eyes anyway..

For me, the explosion of Jungle and later Drum n Bass music was cool, as it came from where I do. Nice to see a culture born of your own environment and experience make it into the public consciousness.

🙄

And me, I’m from the uk, as is jungle…

Gotta say that for a kid, listening to Elvis, Beach Boys, The Stones, Who, Beetles etc for the first time on a crackly wireless must have been an amazing experience – it was all so new.

Now there is so much diverse music around and so many ways to experience it, it is all so diluted and there is nothing to polarise a generation – for every kid that likes X Factor there’s another that likes Florence and the Machine.

Live in the now. You are shaped by your past but nothing is better than this moment.

That being said it is instructive to consider how and when we learn, the teenage and early adult years are when we first become aware of the world around us and culture has a massive impact. So the tendency is to consider the best years to be when your memories were imprinted, before you became cynical and jaded.