Short-Lived Music Fads

Epic's ill-fated Nu-Disks and the even shorter-lived, but equally absurd, New Romantic movement are two that spring to mind. Any that were even more brief?

 

Does Kris Kross' backwards fashion sense count?

 

Just after "punk" and "new wave" there was a "power pop" thing which journalists tried to hang a label on.
I went to gigs to see The Records, The Stukas, saying to myself "I'm watching a power pop band". It all blew over rapidly.

 

The swing revival in the late 90's felt like it lasted about six months. Although those Setzer LP's are still enjoyable 20 years later.

 

Well, that's a curious juxtaposition.

 

Rococo.

 

Mini Discs

MC Lyte

 

Digital Compact Cassettes.

 

The Freddie

 

In retrospect, that craze was baffling. I was in college at the time and it was so weird to see how widespread it suddenly became and then how quickly it disappeared. Within about two months, nearly every single bar in my college town dedicated at least one night a week to swing. The pluses of the fad? Even if it was brief, it was nice to see folks dress up to go out again and cocktails getting popular with a college crowd. People stopped looking askance at me when I ordered gin and tonics while my friends chugged crap beer.

 

I assume since your post listed nu-disks you mean both musical and technological? On the playback side there were quite a few.

Highway Hi-Fi
Pocket Records
four track cartridges
Home DAT
minidiscs

 

I was into it musically, probably because I'm a trumpet player. I was going to Chapel Hill when the Squirrel Nut Zippers were first getting started. A law school buddy of mine was friends with the band, and some of them played his birthday party at the restaurant he worked at.

 

The Record Industry's foisting of Cassingles upon the gullible masses lasted only a few years, so it was relatively short.

In particular, I recall a Bryan Adams cassingle that was packaged in the bare minimum, for maximum profit...

 

The Bosstown Sound.

 

You also had to actually be a pretty good musician to play that stuff, which was nice to see, since musicianship was a largely undervalued commodity in the late 90's.

 

Maybe not music per se, but line dancing was pretty big and pretty annoying.

 

Guitar groups went out in 1962...

 

When I started watching 120 Minutes around 1990 or 91, they were hyping the "Manchester sound" to the point where they had a contest for someone to win a trip to Manchester on one episode. By the spring of 1992 I doubt they were talking about Manchester anymore.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Disney-Micro-Player-12-Song-Music/dp/B000NX5RNY

 

The whole "groups of 4" thing never got too far, either...

 

Man, I had a ton of those cassingles! Where you get lucky if Side B is an actual B side, but Side 2 is either snippets of other upcoming tracks, or the same music from Side A!

 

Those ridiculous 'guitar' keyboards in the 80s

 

Man, I was gonna post that! Glad I read the thread first!

 

San Diego as the next Seattle ;-(

 

Better tell the remaining Beatles, the Ventures, all the studio musicians that released records under studio created group names, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, etc. who basically came to fame 1962-on.