1991: Rock’s Last Great Fall

How the rock music of 1991 transformed my life as an 18-year-old college freshman

Note: This post was inspired by one of my favorite YouTubers, Rick Beato, and this recent live stream, which you should check out.

I enjoyed the heck out of this playlist as I wrote this. (Photo: Author).

August 1991

I’m 18, sitting in the backseat of my dad’s car and Led Zeppelin’s epic “Kashmir” is caravaning through my headphones off the mixtape in my Walkman and I’m getting excited. We are about to ascend off the floor of California’s boring, sunny San Joaquin Valley into the mountains that mark the psychological northern boundary of one of the world’s great cities.

Los Angeles. Home for the next four years. College. Who knows what will happen?

Sure, there will be study sessions, new friends, football games and frat parties. But that’s just college life. What about the city itself?

Los Angeles was an amazing adventure for an 18-year-old in 1991. Photo by Sterling Davis on Unsplash

Surely I’d venture to Hollywood where the Mighty Zep made their mark 20 years earlier with legendary rock n roll debauchery in the hotels, bars and strip clubs of the Sunset Strip. After all, no 18-year-old leaves their suburban town for Tinseltown without a…