This just in: You're old.

Well, not if you're still in your teens or 20s. but the rest of us have another reason to feel ancient: The music of our not-so-distant past is on the verge of becoming a new generation's "classic rock."

While you weren't paying attention, radio stations have begun fondly remembering the music of the previous decade. You know, the years when we all had to cope with a troubled Bush presidency, a war in Iraq and battles over Clinton health care.

The 1990s.

Just turn to alternative-rock station 91X to see what I mean. Each weekday at noon, veteran local DJ Steve West spins tunes from the '90s, just like disc jockeys in the past might have offered up an hour of '60s or '70s music.

"When you look at a 29-year-old, and you go back to when they were 15 or 14, that's 15 years ago, and that's the beginning of the 1990s," West said. "That's this generation's oldies, if you will."

It's also a generation that advertisers still want to reach. Old-fashioned "oldies" stations, those that played music from the '50s and '60s, have largely died off because advertisers think their 60something fans are too old and doddering to actually buy

anything. (Just about every time I write this, older folks write in to say I'm being mean. Don't send me e-mails or telegrams or whatever. I'm just the messenger here.)

Meanwhile, "pop standards" stations that played even older music, from the '30s and '40s, have gone under too. Traditional "classic rock" stations such as KGB still exist, but they tend to rely heavily on music from the 1970s.

So will there be any '90s-only radio stations? Probably not for a while. There were some '80s-only stations around the country about eight or 10 years ago, but they fizzled out as other competitors started playing the same songs.

Part of the problem may be the difficulty of defining what the 1990s were in the pop music world, said radio analyst Sean Ross of Edison Media Research. Was it the era of grunge? Singer-songwriters such as Sarah McLachlan? Dance music? Teen pop like (God forbid) Hanson?

"With the exception of grunge, the '90s music has been the weakest music we've seen at most formats -- not as exciting as the new stuff, not as venerable as the '80s," Ross said. "If anything, that's only starting to change now as those records reach the point where it might be interesting to hear them again."

Judging by past history, though, the music of the '90s will never leave the minds of those who were young then, said Garett Michaels, program director at alternative rock station FM 9/49.

"Music researchers know that generally, for most people, the music that was important to them and relevant to them when they were between the ages of 15 and 22 is the stuff that really rings true to them (later)," he said.

In other words, today's 30-year-olds will be listening to Green Day four decades from now and scoffing at the nonsense their grandkids like to hear. Ah, the circle of life.

Is '90s music any good? Some doubted it at the time.

"Honestly, when were going through the 1990s and early 2000s, everybody looked and thought, what a crappy decade compared to the '80s," 91X's West said.

Indeed, the 1990s were responsible for dreck like Hootie & the Blowfish. But in West's alternative world, the decade also brought us Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine.

In fact, the online magazine The A.V. Club just declared that 1997 may be as huge in the history of rock music as 1967, thanks to a bunch of groundbreaking albums by the likes of Radiohead.

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Quickies

If you lean left, beware the ides of October.

Oct. 15 may turn out to be a very important day for fans of liberal talk radio station KLSD, at least to judge by new rumors in blogworld. Supposedly, the current format will be history that day. In an e-mail sent Monday, station boss Cliff Albert said there's nothing new to report -- "yet." … FM 94/9 has 4,500 signatures -- and is trying to get 10,000 -- on its petition urging Bruce Springsteen to bring his upcoming tour to San Diego. He hasn't been here with the E Street Band since 1981, when tickets cost $12.50. The petition is at fm949sd.com. … Good news: Your friends might not be as pathetic as you thought. Well, at least compared to the guys that 91X morning host Chris Cantore hung around with when he was in his 20s. During a discussion of yet another supposed celebrity sex tape the other day, the 30something Cantore revealed that some of his pals liked to secretly videotape their intimate moments with women. Maybe we shouldn't relive the 1990s after all.

Randy Dotinga was just a wee babe in the 1990s and can't remember a thing about them. Refresh his memory at NCTimesRadio@aol.com.