From left, Jim Macpherson, sisters Kelley and Kim Deal, and Josephine Wiggs of the Breeders pose in front of a painted wall prior to their performance at the Catalyst nightclub in Santa Cruz, Calif., in 1994. 

Like many aging millennials who were born too late to experience the Gen X culture of the 1990s, I spent many of their summer nights as a teenager rewatching Empire Records, romanticizing and yearning for a time that I never knew. 

Although I’ve seen many of the era’s defining bands on their victory lap tours, there are days when I wish I could have seen Anton Newcombe, reckless ringleader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, in his prime as he complained about his broken sitar and instigated onstage brawls at some of their many chaotic shows in San Francisco. There are moments I wish I could have experienced the slacker euphoria of hearing Dandy Warhols’ “Bohemian Like You” on the radio for the first time, or grabbed a beer at the Phoenix Hotel while it was still a cultural hotbed for grimy rock musicians. But, mostly, I wish I could have known what it was like to be young in a world that predated data centers, tools of mass surveillance and the rapid rise of bloodthirsty oligarchs.

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For the rest of my life, though, I will probably reminisce on the night of Aug. 22, 2026, because for the first time in a long while, I didn’t think about any of these modern horrors. 

The Breeders perform at the Pukkelpop festival in Hasselt, Belgium, in August 1993. 

The Breeders, arguably one of the most significant indie-rock bands of the ’90s, were performing a sold-out show at the Castro Theatre that night, where intergenerational fans in........

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