"My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana"

I'm putting this from a rock fan's perspective, obvs.

Chuck— How can it be a difference of degree and not genre if they didn't sound like Nirvana? As far as the Michael Jackson thing, I think that it was a pretty symbolic thing. Nothing like Nirvana had ever been a #1 before, and Jackson was the "king of pop."
And a difference in degree on its own is significant, if only based on the magnitude of that degree. Again, triple platinum in three months. That's amazing, and seems to imply that there were a lot of people out there who were waiting for an album like Nevermind to come along. Commercial radio was suddenly playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a mopey nonsensical muddle of angst and gibberish. It didn't sound like anything else on the radio, aside from a few college stations and that nascent X format. Nevermind was a milepost like Thriller was a milepost (and it was a better album than Thriller, just to toss the obligatory bomb).
And yeah, a lot of their legacy has been crappy. A lot of the My Chemical Romance appeal still owes itself to the legacy of the angsty suburban kids who bought Nevermind. But Nevermind was the first album like that which didn't require actively looking for it. And I don't blame Faith No More and Anthrax for Korn and Limp Bizkit, even though I might (Limp Bizkit opened up for FNM on FNM's last tour, and played three Rage Against the Machine covers).

Uh, because not everybody in every genre sounds exactly the same?

"Symbolic things" matter to people who want to create myths. ("King of Pop" is another myth, by the way. Michael's sales hadn't exactly been on the upswing through the '80s. Being displaced by Nirvana means zilch.) (And he was having hits long after Nirvana, as I recall.)

And lots of hit songs don't "sound like anything else on the radio." If you doubt me, go ask Chumbawamba or OMC or Lou Bega or Crazy Frog. Or Living Color or Faith No More or Queensyryche, for that matter.

As for *Nevermind* vs. *Thriller*...well, nevermind.

I think there might have been an external factor playing into that.

Chuck— Right. So why'd Nirvana have the traction that those other one-hit wonders didn't? And even though I love LC and FNM, they were one-hitters in terms of popular conception.
For all your "not that great, not that big of a deal," there still seems to be the popular perception that Nirvana WERE a huge deal. Where'd that come from?
And again, if you can't tell the difference between what Nirvana was doing and art metal, you're not really trying.

On a mostly unrelated note, my sister is engaged to a guy who has a band that is influenced by "Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Silverchair, and Soundgarden" according to something I just read. I really just want to cry, sometimes.

Touch & Go was one of my favorite labels in the mid '80s too, for whatever it's worth. I wrote a ton about Killdozer and Die Kreuzen; interviewed Scratch Acid for Spin while they were still with Rabid Cat, *before* Corey and Lisa picked them up. Touch & Go's music? Art-metal, mostly. Whether Cobain would have called it that doesn't particularly matter. (Flipper and lots of stuff on SST fit here, too.)

Please show me where I said this.

Anyway, the basic Seattle Subpop soound, five years before Nirvana hit, was basically Sabbath + Stooges + early gloomy Aerosmith (as in "Seasons of Whither"; Green River even put "produced by Joe Perry" on an early single as a joke) + the Birthday Party (HUGE influence on bands like Killdozer and Scratch Acid from the gitgo). Of COURSE the classification (like any genre classification) is only an opinion, but how that equation *wouldn't* add up to art-metal is sort of beyond my ability to understand taxonomy. Soundgarden tossed some Zeppelin (who were also a fairly blatant influence on both Jesus Lizard AND Jane's Addiction) in there; Nirvana made the sound sweeter with melodies that might have come from the Replacements or, especially, Husker Du. And yeah, the metal influence was filtered though early '80s artsy hardcore bands (Flipper, Black Flag, Wipers, etc), but what had set those bands apart from punk rock per se in the first place was that they *were* drawing on stuff like Sabbath -- slowing the songs down, making the bass sound heavier, letting their hair grow longer, and so on. The Replacements and Husker Du, at least early on, hadn't been especially shy about their metal influences, either. (One of them covered Kiss, for instance, and the other one named an EP *Metal Circus,* but that was only the beginning.) By "art metal," I mean a sound that mixes up "traditional" metal influences with seemingly more esoteric stuff. That's what Jane's Addiction did; it's what Living Color did; it's what Faith No More did; it's what Nirvana and Soundgarden did. No, they didn't all do it in the SAME WAY. But it was something that was happening in many corners at the turn of the '90s.

I would disagree with them as much about them as I do about Nirvana even though the unprecedented sales of Nirvana (something the Pistols never had) is evidence that can be submitted here.

I went to High School BC (Before Cobain). I was thinking back to my High School years while watching some current HS kids walk through my store. I cannot recall anyone with tattoos. I can recall only a couple of punk rockers with piercings. It was revolutionary for a guy to even have his ears pierced. I was not in some backwoods enclave either - I went to HS in Manassas which was then a fast-growing suburb of Washington DC. And this wasn't *that* long ago - I graduated in the mid '80s.

In my class was a kid, Kenny Thomas, who took guitar lessons from Brian Baker. Nobody in school knew who Brian Baker was even though DCHC was a few miles away! Yet, how many kids at my old school saw Bad Religion headline Warped tour a couple of decades later? A lot more than heard him in Junkyard. And I happen to feel that "Values Here" is a much better song than anything Nirvana ever did.

The kids in my school *made fun of* people who listened to the bands that inspired Nirvana even though most of them could be heard on the then-progressive WHFS.

If we laud the Pistols for changing musical history (and really, feel free to hate them but the band was definitely a "before/after" group), how can we not laud the band that took the same things that the Pistols promissed and put it on Wall Street, Madison Avenue and other places quite far from the Bowery. But more important, it left Manhattan entirely and played for the kid in Idaho who felt alienation and found a soundtrack to that.

I guess there were kids in Idaho in 1978 who read Creem and also found music that spoke to them. But what was fascinating about Nirvana was how a whole generation felt that this cynical, loud guitar punky band spoke to them.

Sorry xhuxk that Nirvana killed fun but you know, the kids didn't need fun. Not then. And I think that's what Nirvana did. It made things mainstream that weren't before. And everyone in High School with a belly piercing, tribal tattoo or even just the kids who listen to bands such as My Chemical Romance owe a debt of gratitude to Nirvana. Whether we like it or not.

I was back in DC the day that Cobain died reviewing a Pearl Jam concert. It was a surreal moment for me. I watched the MTV coverage. Somehow I don't think that had Geoff Tate or Vernon Reid died that day that things would have been the same.

i know people get sick of hearing about nirvana blah blah blah and i do too, but to say that they were the same to kids that graduated around 91 as living color or something is just bullshit.

>The Ramones came first and did it better anyway... The Sex Pistols were overrated...<

Has pretty much nothing to do with anything I said about Nirvana, for whatever it's worth. What I've been writing has nothing to do with how good they were; it has to do with how *important* they were.

As for not needing fun "then", I wish you'd elaborate on why you think "then" was any different than any other time, because I sure don't see it myself. (Also the music of the '80s wasn't *just* fun. I still think Nirvana took away a lot more than they added. ) (And did Guns N Roses really not inspire any kids to get tattoos? I'm shocked.)

now, whether or not the music, in retrospect is as good as living color or faith no more or soundgarden or whatever, that's another matter....

...it's the same with, say sabbath....i mean that band was a part of its time and there was a thread of music that was heading in that direction regardless of sabbath, but for whatever reason, they were the band that seemed to make a bigger impact....lots of this feels like people saying "Oh man, Sir Lord Baltimore and Atomic Rooster and Crushed Butler are at least as important to the development of heavy metal as Black Sabbath."...in a way, I see what people are saying, but for average kids it just wasn't like that.

i'm sure, in a way, they did inspire kids to get tattoos, but - in my memory at least - alt rock, esp. the lollapalooza midway, was the first time that so-called "regular kids" started getting tattoos..before that it was more of a statement, i.e. you were a hardcore metal dude, long hair, leather, etc....more of a hesher thing...after alt-rock it was everybody, preps, nerds, whatever, getting tattoos.

I think when you're younger some people are using bands to express a personal aesthetic, and Nirvana helped popularize one that was seductive to a lot of p.c. nerds like me. 'fashion' means a lot to some people. plus kurt was a sardonic goofball with drama queen moments, which was something sadsacks could identify with. it's easy for me to mock it now, esp. when you realize what bunk a lot of the heroic myths about it are, but its worth remembering why you bought them.

Fine, but my post didn't address your comments alone (except the one part that addressed you in particular). Some people are using musical merits - or their personal oponion of the musical merits more accurately - and saying that the band isn't important because of this. And as much as I feel that you are wrong, I feel that argument is *doubly* wrong because it's wrong for the wrong reasons.

But sure, that's not your point of contention. Noted.

As for not needing fun "then", I wish you'd elaborate on why you think "then" was any different than any other time, because I sure don't see it myself.

All times are different from all other times. That sounds evasive but I can't put it any more succinctly.

As for why did that particular time "need" music that wasn't fun, I can theorize about it and have that theory get quite convoluted and then we can debate about causal relationships and how society and pop culture are necessarily intertwined until we are so far from the OP that even Untragrrl doesn't recognize it.

So I'll just say that it doesn't matter *why* that generation didn't want or need "fun." What matters is whether they did or not, and I feel they did and I feel the evidence that bolsters that view is what sold during that time.

(Yes, that might be a circular argument but what more evidence can we use to decide what teenagers wanted then to look at what teenagers consumed?)

Also the music of the '80s wasn't *just* fun. I still think Nirvana took away a lot more than they added.

I am just guessing here, but I think the crux is that Nirvana took away stuff that you liked and added a bunch of stuff that you didn't like. And you don't like that. I wouldn't either, for what it's worth.

Exactly.

Are Dracula collars the new skinny ties?

I love when people who graduated before I was born pretend they're still young.

Fuck off, kid.