Generation Riff

How one '90s listener turned his love of music into a multimedia project

In 1991, I was sitting in front of my mom’s TV in Brooklyn, New York when the video for Nirvana’s song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on. Three years earlier, when I was a high school kid, my friend Pat had given me a mixtape that included bands I’d barely, or never, heard of: Jane’s Addiction, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, Violent Femmes. Those bands came to define my generation and the early 1990s, a time that’s often called the Alternative Era, but something about that Nirvana video hit me differently. The music, the imagery, the vibe—it entranced me. I’ll never forget that moment or guitar riff. Now at age 48, I’m still the kid in front of my mom’s TV listening to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Thousands of other Gen Xers who shared that same experience will never forget it. Every note, every rhythm, every vocal that music gives us is a gift we take to the rest of our lives. Even when we can drop the needle into the groove and play the music on our phones, it’s stored in the sonic section of our souls as memory.

My online passion project Generation Riff is a celebration of over 30 years of musical memories that began inside me as an excited ’80s teenager. Generation Riff started as an idea for a book that chronicled the years 1991-2021 and the impact grunge and alternative music had on the culture, and the population of kids known as Generation X. It’s now morphed into a multimedia project containing articles, interviews, videos, and podcasts. I’m still writing the book.

Back in the infancy of the internet, around 2003, I did some freelance music writing and loved every minute of it. I blame two projects for turning me into a full-blown music writing addict. 

The first was working as the music columnist for a website called The Truth Magazine. I named my column A Steady Diet of Nothing, stolen from the Fugazi album of the same name. I was able to write about any music related topic, be it a review, an opinion piece, a rant, or news. 

When that ended, I wrote for a live-music review magazine called Festival Preview. My first and only assignment for them was covering Lollapalooza 2007 in Chicago, Illinois. Pearl Jam headlined. Being  a diehard Pearl Jam since they first dropped Ten, I jumped at the chance.

Long after that ended, I got the itch to write about music again, and I dove back in around 2014. A lot had changed since the carefree days of the early 2000s. I was now married with one child and a second to come, and my time was no longer my own. any longer. The funny thing about music is, if it’s in your DNA, it’s there for life. 

Writing has been a passion since I was in grammar school. I wrote stories, poems, song lyrics, and mock interviews of musicians I loved. So coupling music with writing seemed a no brainer. In 2015, with life going at warp speed, I started the music blog SoundEvolution Music. It proved short lived. 

I lost my job in corporate America. It was a blessing in disguise, because it gave me an “a-ha” moment, you know, one of those times when a great idea comes to you and you just know you have to do it? So I turned SoundEvolution Music into a record label. 

Sounds crazy, but I released three vinyl records for two different artists, a digital double-album for another artist, and a digital single for yet another. We helped make a few music videos, recorded a few mini-documentaries, and helped our musicians with everything from studio production to marketing, to booking live shows. It was a blast!

Then the pandemic hit. Everything just stopped. Everything everyone was doing just stopped. My next move was simple. I couldn’t help people make music anymore, so I needed to start writing about it again. In spring of 2021, while in the backyard with my dog, I found myself thinking about the pandemic year we’d all just lived through and how insane it was. I was almost 48-years-old and wondering where the time had gone. Then it hit me, 30 years has passed since I started my “adult” life as a freshman in college back in 1991. 

For anyone in my generation, especially anyone who’s into alternative and/or punk rock music, 1991 is the year. Now, 30 years later, as a husband, the father of two young kids, standing in my yard thinking about all of this, it seemed clear that there’s a book to be written. It would fit into a niche category for sure, but what a niche it is. Millions of kids came of age to the music and culture spawned in 1991. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden became our music. Bubble gum pop, hair metal, and bands from the ’ 70s hanging on by a thread were gone, and we were the new game in town. I wanted to speak to my generation. I wanted to talk about the old times and see what they were up to 30 years on. I had to write this book.

That Generation Riff book will discuss how and why 1991 happened and the culture it created. This wasn’t just a musical phenomenon, it was a cultural avalanche that flipped society on its head and gave an entire generation of kids, slackers and all, a voice. Gen X’ers were here to stay, and we were going to be loud as hell the entire time. I’m confident that we will never see the likes of a physical or geographical music scene ever again. As a matter of fact, I’d argue that it was the first and last global music scene since the 1960s. There are many reasons for why I believe this to be true and I’ll put them all in the book.

As for the Generation Riff website, the idea was to jumpstart my focus on writing the book after I hit a major wall while drafting—a case of writer’s block like I’ve never known. So far though, it’s worked. The website’s rejuvenated me, gave me new, exciting ideas that I can flesh out on the site in real time, and weave back into the book. I’ve met people I would have never met if I hadn’t created the site, and some of those people have been willing to work with me on my projects and have asked me to collaborate with them on their projects. Who knew writer’s block could be so productive? 

The universe has a mean left hook, and if it lands, watch out.

Last August, my cousin Angel, a partner in my record label, and a creative force who I leaned heavily on for everything creative, died one month after being diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. I was hanging with her in June. S, she went into the hospital in July. She died on August 5th, my daughter’s birthday. To say I was gutted would be the ultimate understatement.

I promised her, and myself, that I would develop all of the ideas we worked on together. She was involved in my book, and I was going to write one with her about her very successful food company. If for no other reason than to keep my promise to her, I will continue to talk about, write about, and immerse myself in the music and culture that we loved. It’s easy, because I’m still the high school kid, listening to a mixtape given to me by my friend Pat in 1988, with songs from bands I’d barely, or never, heard of.