"My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana"

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And he was having hits long after Nirvana, as I recall.

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

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:29 (twenty years ago)

(Although I do like the idea of desperate Geffen A&R types trying to dig up the corpse and make it write something.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:30 (twenty years ago)

The Nirvana panic lasted more than a week - it didn't really die until around the time Cobain did - and, symbolically at least, it opened the doors for Green Day and eventually My Chemical Romance to storm the charts. Which is the big difference between Nirvana and MCR as far as I can tell - what they're doing is part of a by now long-established commercial trend and, regardless of musical quality or demographic share, isn't having ANY overarching effect on industry patterns or attitudes. They are business as usual, which Nirvana just plain wasn't.

― Major Bloodnok, Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:36 (twenty years ago)

the true test: has MCR induced Weird Al to come out of (semi)retirement and regain superstardom? (ala smells like nirvana)

― irrigation can save your purple, Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:37 (twenty years ago)

Irrigation— Kurt Cobain said that was how he knew that he'd made it- when Weird Al did a parody.

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.

― js (honestengine), Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:44 (twenty years ago)

My next conception of what "this generation's Nirvana" means -- people are going to be co-opting the most obvious part of your sound and milking it for easy MOR hits even a decade later. In other words, this is the sound you're going to hear a lot of. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon... and for a long time. "Nirvana" is kind of shorthand for a lot of acts signed around that time, regardless of how much similarity they actually had when you get down to the music.

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.

― mike h. (mike h.), Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:59 (twenty years ago)

One of my friends married a guy who plays in a band called Loud Love that manages to over-glop so much of what I originally liked about grunge that I can't even stand to talk to him (since that's all he'll talk about. His band is big in Ohio, apparently).

― js (honestengine), Thursday, 9 March 2006 17:01 (twenty years ago)

"The difference between what Nirvana was doing and art metal" can best be illustrated by listening to "Incesticide" with the following (possibly apocryphal) anecdotal material in mind: Kurt's favorite label in the late '80s / early 90s was Touch N Go, home of such perenially marginal bands as Butthole Surfers and The Jesus Lizard (both often enshrined on KC's many ratty t-shirts). When TNG owner Corey Rusk (who had recently lost his chief A&R person, according to Chicago legend) ineptly passed on the Nirvana demos (later enshrined on "Incesticide") a krestfallen Kurt was directed Geffen-ward by Thurston Moore as a sort of 'consolation prize.' In other words, if Kurt had gotten his way, Nirvana's second album would've been on a SMALLER indie label than Sub Pop and would have featured "Hairspray Queen" and "Mexican Seafood" as emphasis tracks. Instead, the poor guy was forced to top the charts and change the world. Again, not a whole lot of biographical / aspirational common ground with My Chemical Romance...

― Major Bloodnok, Thursday, 9 March 2006 17:09 (twenty years ago)

JS, please read more closely. I never said Nirvana weren't a big deal, never said I couldn't tell them from art-metal. I said they didn't change the world as permanently or unprecedently and unrepeatably as people pretend. And they didn't. Given the way their myth has been self-perpetuating, it's no surprise that folks believe otherwise.

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.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 9 March 2006 17:18 (twenty years ago)

Okay, before this degenerates into an argument about genre-definitions (apparently xuxhk's classifications are facts while anybody else's are arbitrary but whatever)I'll just go out on a limb and proclaim what the Nirvana "revolution" meant to me. When I first heard "Smells Like" it was a month or so before it 'topped the charts' and my reaction was "Hey, cool, here's another song like 'Makes No Sense At All' or 'Monkey Gone to Heaven' or 'I'll Buy'" - that is to say a perfect, grittly little pop tune of the kind I regularly put on mix tapes of songs I felt would be popular in a better world, i.e. one where my personal taste held sway. When "SLTS" actually GOT popular, it was as if the world had turned upside down and, as such, seemed full of sweet new possibility, from my point of view, anyway. But nothing like it ever happened again and in the end it really wasn't such a big deal, although the charts did permanently shift around to accomodate 'post-punk' etc. The whole phenom still baffles me, really.

― Major Bloodnok, Thursday, 9 March 2006 17:33 (twenty years ago)

>xuxhk's classifications are facts while anybody else's are arbitrary <

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.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 9 March 2006 17:54 (twenty years ago)

To my tin ear, the sentence "Whether Cobain would have called it [art metal] doesn't particularly matter" seems to imply that you are privy to factual genre-classification info that others aren't. That said, I in no way disagree with your overall thesis. Carry on.

― Major Bloodnok, Thursday, 9 March 2006 18:03 (twenty years ago)

You know, if we were having this argument about the Sex Pistols, the same things could be said. The Ramones came first and did it better anyway... The Sex Pistols were overrated...

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.

― Brian O'Neill (NYCNative), Thursday, 9 March 2006 18:51 (twenty years ago)

THANK YOU FOR PUTTING TATTOOS ON MADISON AVENUE, NIRVANA

― ant@work, Thursday, 9 March 2006 18:57 (twenty years ago)

Now, if Daniel Johnston "Hi How Are You?" t-shirts worn beneath unbuttoned pajama tops had become Madison Avenue couture the revolution would've been underway indeed.

― Major Bloodnok, Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:10 (twenty years ago)

No, people would be complaining about them here too.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:11 (twenty years ago)

nirvana changed a lot of things for me, at least. and for a lot of my friends that have now moved on to all sorts of different types of music and bands....but yeah brian is right....if you were the right age, and not that hip and from somewhere in the sticks where you didn't really have access to much underground rock culture, it was a big deal.

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.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:12 (twenty years ago)

Nice post, Brian. But this:

>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.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:15 (twenty years ago)

xpost

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.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:17 (twenty years ago)

xp (But anyway, the "tattoos and piercings" basically connect to what I said about Nirvana way upthread: "Haircuts changed, I guess.")

― xhuxk, Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:20 (twenty years ago)

(And did Guns N Roses really not inspire any kids to get tattoos? I'm shocked.)

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.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:21 (twenty years ago)

I got my right ear pierced but that was it.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:25 (twenty years ago)

Matt, so you're saying that, after Lollapalooza, EVERYBODY was metal? (Makes sense to me. Hell, I've said the same thing about the music!)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:31 (twenty years ago)

nirvana was the first 'metal' band i liked as a kid, then i found out that they weren't 'metal' at all, but 'alternative.' which was good, cuz i hated 'metal.'

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.

― ant@work, Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:52 (twenty years ago)

oh here we go, "it was a bright summer day in Hoboken when i first heard Teen Spirit on the radio. the birds were singing, but not like this. this was special." OK THX BYE

― yuengling participle (rotten03), Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:57 (twenty years ago)

I gotta say, though, I haven't studied it but I'm not actually totally sure that MCR has been ignored or hated by the press. They made the cover of Spin (with a quite positive profile) and AMG loves Three Cheers at the least.

― Sundar (sundar), Thursday, 9 March 2006 20:29 (twenty years ago)

What I've been writing has nothing to do with how good they were; it has to do with how *important* they were.

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.

― Brian O'Neill (NYCNative), Friday, 10 March 2006 00:27 (twenty years ago)

Cripes, who fuckin' cares?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 10 March 2006 00:36 (twenty years ago)

Cripes, who fuckin' cares?

Exactly.

― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Friday, 10 March 2006 00:39 (twenty years ago)

Even my Mom knows who Nirvana were. My Mom will never hear -- much less care -- about My Chemical Romance.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 10 March 2006 00:49 (twenty years ago)

You heard it here first, folks:

Are Dracula collars the new skinny ties?

― darin (darin), Friday, 10 March 2006 00:53 (twenty years ago)

And this wasn't *that* long ago - I graduated in the mid '80s.

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

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Friday, 10 March 2006 02:51 (twenty years ago)

Ah, the impertinence of youth.

Fuck off, kid.

― Brian O'Neill (NYCNative), Friday, 10 March 2006 02:57 (twenty years ago)

I don't know who the next Nirvana is, but I know DAMN WELL that their album will get higher than number 28 in the charts.

― Mr. Snrub, Friday, 10 March 2006 04:16 (twenty years ago)

I think we're all good that the answer to the question in the thread's title is "no." We're discussing the finer points now.

― Eppy (Eppy), Friday, 10 March 2006 05:28 (twenty years ago)

Uh, such as they are.

― Eppy (Eppy), Friday, 10 March 2006 05:28 (twenty years ago)

Nobody can deny that generation gaps are real. I just went to this show with Safety Scissors, Bochum Welt, and Thomas Dolby and the freakish split based upon what the different sets of music meant to the people in the audience and how it affected them was so clearly stratified by age group. The kids in the crowd thought it was hilariously "80s" in a way with big scare quotes around it, while the 34 year olds such as myself were sincerely going "Whooo hoooo" for synthpop classics like "She Blinded Me With Science" and "Europa". Thing is, there were crappy middle of the road pseudo-"alternative" rock bands in the 80s and they don't matter to anybody now, and figuring out whether My Chemical Romance are on one side of the fence or the other nowadays isn't so easy. When it was a choice between Mister Mister and Husker Du circa the 80s the line seemed pretty clear to me at the time and it still seems so. When it's a choice now between, say, Fall Out Boy or Yellowcard on the one hand and, say, Pissed Jeans or Mika Miko on the other, it still seems clear too, but . . . . there does seem to be more wiggle room / vagueness about what stands on what dividing line between "popular but shitty" (Fall Out Boy) and "popular for a good reason" (My Chem, according to its defenders). But I'm drunk now . . .

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Friday, 10 March 2006 08:48 (twenty years ago)

>what sold during that time.<

Hot 100 number-one hits of 1991 (USA)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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These are the Billboard magazine Hot 100 number one hits of 1991.

Issue Date Song Artist
January 5 Justify My Love Madonna
January 12 Justify My Love Madonna
January 19 Love Will Never Do (Without You) Janet Jackson
January 26 The First Time Surface
February 2 The First Time Surface
February 9 Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) C&C Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams
February 16 Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) C&C Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams
February 23 All the Man That I Need Whitney Houston
March 2 All the Man That I Need Whitney Houston
March 9 Someday Mariah Carey
March 16 Someday Mariah Carey
March 23 One More Try Timmy T
March 30 Coming Out of the Dark Gloria Estefan
April 6 Coming Out of the Dark Gloria Estefan
April 13 I've Been Thinking About You Londonbeat
April 20 You're in Love Wilson Phillips
April 27 Baby, Baby Amy Grant
May 4 Baby Baby Amy Grant
May 11 Joyride Roxette
May 18 I Like the Way (The Kissing Game) Hi-Five
May 25 I Don't Wanna Cry Mariah Carey
June 1 I Don't Wanna Cry Mariah Carey
June 8 More Than Words Extreme
June 15 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
June 22 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
June 29 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
July 6 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
July 13 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
July 20 Unbelievable EMF
July 27 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 3 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 10 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 17 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 24 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 31 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
September 7 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
September 14 The Promise of a New Day Paula Abdul
September 21 I Adore Mi Amor Color Me Badd
September 28 I Adore Mi Amor Color Me Badd
October 5 Good Vibrations Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch featuring Loleatta Holloway
October 12 Emotions Mariah Carey
October 19 Emotions Mariah Carey
October 26 Emotions Mariah Carey
November 2 Romantic Karyn White
November 9 Cream Prince and the New Power Generation
November 16 Cream Prince and the New Power Generation
November 23 When a Man Loves a Woman Michael Bolton
November 30 Set Adrift on Memory Bliss P.M. Dawn
December 7 Black or White Michael Jackson
December 14 Black or White Michael Jackson
December 21 Black or White Michael Jackson
December 28 Black or White Michael Jackson

Hot 100 number-one hits of 1992 (USA)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
These are the Billboard magazine Hot 100 number one hits of 1992.

Issue Date Song Artist
January 4 Black or White Michael Jackson
January 11 Black or White Michael Jackson
January 18 Black or White Michael Jackson
January 25 All 4 Love Color Me Badd
February 1 Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me George Michael and Elton John
February 8 I'm Too Sexy Right Said Fred
February 15 I'm Too Sexy Right Said Fred
February 22 I'm Too Sexy Right Said Fred
February 29 To Be With You Mr. Big
March 7 To Be With You Mr. Big
March 14 To Be With You Mr. Big
March 21 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
March 28 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
April 4 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
April 11 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
April 18 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
April 25 Jump Kris Kross
May 2 Jump Kris Kross
May 9 Jump Kris Kross
May 16 Jump Kris Kross
May 23 Jump Kris Kross
May 30 Jump Kris Kross
June 6 Jump Kris Kross
June 13 Jump Kris Kross
June 20 I'll Be There Mariah Carey
June 27 I'll Be There Mariah Carey
July 4 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
July 11 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
July 18 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
July 25 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
August 1 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
August 8 This Used to Be My Playground Madonna
August 15 End of the Road Boyz II Men
August 22 End of the Road Boyz II Men
August 29 End of the Road Boyz II Men
September 5 End of the Road Boyz II Men
September 12 End of the Road Boyz II Men
September 19 End of the Road Boyz II Men
September 26 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 3 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 10 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 17 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 24 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 31 End of the Road Boyz II Men
November 7 End of the Road Boyz II Men
November 14 How Do You Talk to An Angel The Heights
November 21 How Do You Talk to An Angel The Heights
November 28 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston
December 5 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston
December 12 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston
December 19 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston
December 26 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston

― xhuxk, Friday, 10 March 2006 16:05 (twenty years ago)

Ah, The Heights

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:07 (twenty years ago)

Frankly, in a weird way you're proving Ultragrrl's point, Chuck. Nirvana wasn't a big deal for you, but you were already too old and too laden with music history. Whether or not that's happening with MCR is up for debate.

― js (honestengine), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:16 (twenty years ago)

Further, Chuck, Nirvana would have been on the Modern Rock charts, not the Hot 100 (until, what, 2004? when they combined Pop and Hot charts), even though they only topped it three times.

― js (honestengine), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:24 (twenty years ago)

What do those 1991 and 1992 lists have to do with my tastes, or my age? Mostly, they show how silly Brian's "that generation didn't want or need 'fun'" claim is. Unless you think Kriss Kross, Right Said Fred, Sir Mix-a-Lot, and Roxette's "Joyride" were no fun. Which would be odd. (Those Timmy T and Amy Grant songs are great too, by the way.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 10 March 2006 16:25 (twenty years ago)

And what they also probably demonstrate is that most people in that "generation" cared about other music MORE than Nirvana. But I don't really believe in "generation"s anyway -- Not then, not now.

― xhuxk, Friday, 10 March 2006 16:27 (twenty years ago)

Don't forget Jackyl! They were fun.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:31 (twenty years ago)

And I wasn't "too old" for them, either! Or Kris Kross! (Or Nirvana, even! Hey, I LIKED "Smells Like Teen Spirit"! Who said I didn't?)

― xhuxk, Friday, 10 March 2006 16:33 (twenty years ago)

One thing I don't often see discussed, and this is perhaps tangential and/or projecting from my own experience, so feel free to ignore, is how Nirvana's rise sort of paralleled the media-fueled "Generation X" thing. The whole "irony/slacker/boomer resentment/children of divorce" generation idea, which seemed to have roots in the Pacific Northwest (maybe b/c Douglas Coupland lived in Vancouver, plus the Gus Van Sant connection). Of course all that turned out to be very whiny and embarrassing, but it seemed connected to Nirvana at the time (at least to me, but I was the target age for it). I wonder if that's what Brian is getting at there, when he says that this generation didn't want or need fun.

― Mark (MarkR), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:38 (twenty years ago)

Not too old to like it, but too old to feel its importance as a watershed.

xpost— Mark OTeponymous.

― js (honestengine), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:39 (twenty years ago)

You know I can't be wastin time
Cus gotta get my fun
I got to keep on movin
Cant stop til it's all done

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:42 (twenty years ago)

why does that person think that all music writers are 35? anyway, that's a healthy blog she has! 130 responses to that one lil' post. wow.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:50 (twenty years ago)

then again, this thread is almost 350 posts long. she must have her finger on the pulse or something.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 10 March 2006 16:51 (twenty years ago)

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