24 years. Let's argue about whether grunge was good or bad again.

Help!I'maRock! said:
I dunno about that. They were both equally terrible.
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Wasn't Candleboxamajig like one of Madonna's early signings to Maverick?
It was pretty astounding how a band with one hit song and nearly zero follow up success was able to open for so many established acts on big stadium tours.
 
reverend1 said:
And that right there is why I can’t stand that douchebag.

Don’t give me this I don’t want to make it, we don’t want to be popular bullshit. Of course he wanted to make it in the music business. Otherwise why put out albums or tour? So no one buy them or shows up? Please. What a fucking sham.

Check out the Sound City documentary. Not only is it very good, but it makes it quit clear they wanted to be rock stars. That woe is me crap might help with the naive scenster kids, but I’m not an idiot.
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Kurt was infatuated with the punk lifestyle and would have been just as happy touring in a van and playing small clubs the rest of his life. That's what punk kids expected success would look like for them.
 
I'd say grunge was the ugly hangover that lasted until about Tuesday.
Miserable, inevitable and necessary following last weeks binge of excess.
By Wednesday it got old, like most fashion do.

Never thought of it as a genre though, as the main acts had very little in common between them musically speaking.
Lumping them into the same "genre" never made any sense, just because they happened to be from the same area.

Only band I really dug at the time was Soundgarden. They really were something different, and musically interesting for me.
 
reverend1 said:
Think about it, what really hit you the first time you heard Smells Like Teen Spirit? For me it’s that opening drum line. The drumming through that whole tune is amazing and drives everything else home. The guitars are ok, but nothing special. Sure it was a contrast to the popular music at the time but nothing a million punk bands hadn’t done before. The Pixie’s had been doing the quit loud quit thing for awhile.
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Not to take anything away from Grohl, but that drum sound is definitely Butch Vig's creation, and a big reason why they chose Sound City.
 
sunvalleylaw said:
What was not great about that era of music and that that group of bands seemed to carry with them (except for PJ, for the most part, AFAIK) was heroin abuse and addiction. That part was not cool at all. Death, destruction and waste came out of that part of it all. I wish that part had never happened.

We have not mentioned Cornell and Soundgarden. That is another band and artist I really liked from the era. I miss Chris. Addiction sucks.
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While Pearl Jam didn't have the heroin, if it wasn't for heroin, there would be no Pearl Jam. It was Andy Wood's death from it that killed Mother Love Bone which led to Pearl Jam.
 
Rush was still putting out better albums than most of the Grunge bands in the 90's
 
Chad said:
While Pearl Jam didn't have the heroin, if it wasn't for heroin, there would be no Pearl Jam. It was Andy Wood's death from it that killed Mother Love Bone which led to Pearl Jam.
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Well, there is that. But still, on a grand scale, the heroin was bad. Of the front men, pretty much Eddie is all that is left of the bigger bands. Of course Mudhoney is still around. As is a version of The Melvins. I also wonder what Mother Love Bone would have ended up being if Andy did not die.

Modern Saint said:
Let's not and say we did....
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Aw come on. It's fun!

Lerxst said:
I'm always pretty amazed by how much we project of ourselves and who we wish we were on to other people, especially artists and other celebrity personalities. Cobain and Eddie Vedder seem to be really frequent recipients of that projection

The idea of what messages & attitudes in a genre "connect with us" (or that we reject) and especially where were are in age and experience at that time and place are pretty fascinating too.
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Sure. All of that is true. I never knew those guys. I know a few who did and do. I do know the music connected with me or me to it. For all of those reasons.
 
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DdBob said:
I say bad. At least with 'corporate"...i.e "hair metal" rock it was face value , it was what it was. Grunge masquereaded as the "alternative", the "anti" and it was a farce to begin with, a frontif you will. It produced a lot of bad trends. It also spawned the Foo Fighters in a way.
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Agreed. Grunge wasn’t even a musical style. It was record labels repackaging punk and rock bands to have the same looks cooked up by image consultants and me-too video directors. But the grunge bands were, by far, a huge improvement over the hair metal that came before and the nu-metal that followed.
 
Kerouac said:
I would rather listen to first wave nu-metal than third wave grunge.
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It is hard for me to even comprehend those genre distinctions. But, generally, I would agree that I would rather listen to many things over something labeled third wave grunge. Though I still like that The Bullys band, and no one has commented on that yet. They have kind of a Breeders/Nirvana-esque vibe. At least to me.
 
Grunge had only a fleeting impact on me. I was excited at first that there was some "new" music, but that didn't last very long.

I'll spare us all my opinions on Nirvana. I'll just say that the whole three chord garage band lo-fi stuff just ain't my cuppa.

I liked Pearl Jam quite a bit. Thought the "Ten" album was solid front to back. Having known Eddie for years at that point went a long way there too, but nothing they did after that resonated with me.

Never considered Soundgarden "Grunge" per se, and have always been a fan.

AIC... Damn. Not sure I'd call them Grunge either, but I loved what they did. Head and shoulders superior to the rest of the herd.

STP... Meh. Once again, I liked them initially, but that wore off pretty quick.

I know I have a clear BIAS since I knew a lot of those guys personally and watching them self-destruct after having their dreams come true really tainted the whole experience for me.

You reach a point where all that music is, is a sad reminder of lost friends and lives cut short.

Having said all of that, the triple bill of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and RHCP fresh upon the release of BSSM, and smack in the middle of Nirvana and PJ's skyrocketing fame was truly one for the ages. You can't contain that much raw energy in one building, in one night. It was epic.
 
I think the question is moot for people who weren't attending those concerts in the early 90s. It was an authentic, organic movement that made huge waves. The music had an immediate impact. Having just come out of the eighties with so much synth and processed music it was a welcome and fresh change. I didn't live in Seattle so I didn't experience its period of infancy, but Pearl Jam and Nirvana opened for the Chili Peppers the first time I saw both of them and almost overshadowed the RHCP, had they not been in their peak of popularity. If you missed those bands in concert and only heard of grunge through the media a couple of years too late, then your concept of grunge would be like a caricature of the real thing (as depicted in the movie Singles).

But it was a short lived movement. Pearl Jam put out 2 good albums. Nirvana showed a lot of growth with In Utero. Cobain died. Layne Stanley died. Soundgarden broke up in '97. Stone Temple Pilots stayed relevant longer than most and broke up in 2002. Yes, I realize Pearl Jam never really stopped, but they stopped being relevant early on. And unless you're going to count Bush, who sucked, that was about it for grunge. I think STP outgrew the grunge label after their second album and put out some amazing stuff after that.

The only pop music movement that was shorter was the Manchester Jesus Jones/EMF thing in the late eighties. I really thought that was going to be something. But like most good drugs, you peak and then come down, crash hard sometimes. That's it.

The biggest mystery is why the RHCPs and Foo Fighters even have careers.
 
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