Grunge gets shit on. That is incredibly blunt and matter-of-fact but I strongly believe that the grunge genre or movement, whatever you want to call it, was/is seen by many as a joke. Now there are a variety of reasons and events that can lend creedence to the belief that grunge was a joke or a fad. Some of these reasons include: signing every band or guy who played guitar and had long hair to massive record deals, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren’s “Grunge Fashion Collections” ($75 dollar flannel shirts!), and the abomination that is post-grunge. All of these things are valid reasons for people to say, “Grunge sucks!” I for one believe that post-grunge is one of the worst things to ever happen to popular music. The bands that were “inspired” by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc. sound nothing like them; and that is a good thing because they are honestly horse-shit and should be seen as an insult. Somehow Nickelback and the legacy of the Seattle scene and grunge have become intertwined, and as a person who believes that grunge and the years 1989-1994 were a transcendant period in music history, I have to defend a music culture I hold dear.
I first of all will tell you what grunge is:
- Grunge musically is the sludgification of the American underground indie scene of the 1980’s. It is the offspring of Black Sabbath’s brain warping riffs, The Stooges’ primitive guitar chug, the Ramones’ speed, Led Zeppelin’s wailing, and often the Beatles’ keen sense of melody.
- Grunge is no pretenses, no bullshit in your face rock and roll. Grunge is not being rich or having musical training (mostly) and playing sweaty clubs to 50 people.
- Grunge is Chris Cornell shirtless making the paint peel from the walls with his voice, Mudhoney drunk and thrashing around on stage in a dual-guitar maelstrom, Eddie Vedder climbing the stage rigging and diving into the crowd, and Kurt Cobain smashing the only guitar he owned.
- Grunge was the last major musical/cultural movement that America has had in the last 20 years. It was the last time that the best music was also the most popular.
Grunge was a direct response to the suffocating atmosphere of the 1980’s. Music had reached the brink, the underground was bubbling up and someplace, somewhere it was going to burst. In the same way punk was a rebellion against the pomp of 70s arena rock and roll, grunge was a kick in the teeth to the synth-pop of the 1980s. Two musical uprisings divided by ten years in time. It has been almost 20 years since when many say the grunge era came to an end and here we are again in an era where pop and rap dominate, wimpy keyboards have taken over, you can’t find 5 awesome guitar solos played by someone under 25, and Coldplay wrote the song ‘Fix You’ (scientifically proven to be garbage). Maybe people need to look a little bit more to the years 1989-1994 for a little inspiration instead of Paul Simon’s “Africa beat-reggae-jazz-folk-prog” period. While the magic that was the grunge era cannot be recaptured or duplicated, we can at least give it the respect it deserves.
-5 Grunge Nuggets for Exploring
- Soundgarden - Superunknown (Album)
- Mudhoney - ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ (Song)
- Nirvana - In Utero (Better than Nevermind)
- Screaming Trees - ’I Nearly Lost You’ (Song)
- Mother Love Bone - ‘Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns’ (song)
