Rethinking the Grunge era

I never quite got how some people heard nickleback et al as an actual part of the grunge era rather than just collective soul-influenced late-90s alt rock. The difference is instantly apparent to me.

grunge, like a toothpaste tube, slowly had everything worthwhile squeezed out of it. started out as noisy, greasy punk. became arena-bound pop metal. by the turn of the century, it was a just a vocal style, an emphasis on wounded pathos, and some fuzzy guitars. that's how i read it anyway.

Is it because on American radio grunge-lite never went away? Whereas here in the UK with no rock radio it was never as popular? Like R1 played grunge for a few years til britpop but commercial radio wouldn't touch it (no not even nirvana or pearl jam, infact on chart run downs they used to skip the songs)

Weirdly, possibly thanks to Offspring, No Doubt, Limp Bizkit etc having proper genuine hit singles with actual airplay they then played Nickelback.

Why anyone likes Nickelback I will never know but I'm still to meet someone who does. They sold shitloads however even here.

But 92-94 radio was actually pretty great here (for me anyway) in a way it hadnt been since I was about 11 or 12 or since. Actually hearing Them Bones by AIC on daytime Radio 1 was pretty amazing to my ears.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2358015/Avril-Lavigne-Chad-Kroeger-open-Goth-French-wedding.html

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/07/07/article-2358015-1AB38359000005DC-135_634x961.jpg

"How You Remind Me" is a good rock ballad.

I remember in early interviews a whole bunch of people from Kurt Cobain to Billy Corgan denying they were metal or into metal then later it turned out they were all massive metalheads. The 90s were a weird time with all these kids into metal yet denying it.

I'm not sure what you mean by metal here but afaik both of those guys were always really upfront about their love for Sabbath and Zeppelin. Maybe you're talking about heavier stuff though.

No, in Raw Magazine Corgan complained about being in metal mags. He wouldnt even talk to Kerrang (so they never really covered them outside of album/live reviews until mellon collie when he decided to talk about loving Judas Priest etc and since then he got mega coverage)

That was just a savvy move on his part. Talking about loving Judas Priest in 1993 would make you the squarest motherfucker in alt rock.

like I said

The 90s were a weird time with all these kids into metal yet denying it.

Did the UK have any worthwhile contribution to the whole Grunge era? There must be somebody right, but I'm racking my brains and coming up with nothing.

Fudge Tunnel were the UK answer to Nirvana remember!

Great band but were hardly going to get big.

Bush weren't worthwhile , and they sold fuck all in the UK, but I think it's fair to include them.

Although I understand why you want to just give them to America.

Bush was in that second wave of pretty grunge. Even Stone Temple Pilots pre-date them.

Interesting that Grunge was never really compartmentalised ime. Psych Grunge, Stoner Grunge, Pop Grunge, Singer-Songwriter Grunge

Also AG, did you know that the bass player from Hue & Cry ended up in Stiltskin? he was my old bass tutor, from Springburn.

Did the UK have any worthwhile contribution to the whole Grunge era?

Thee Hypnotics obviously, first UK band on Sub Pop right when they were at their grungey peak.

I didn't know that!
xp

Interesting that Grunge was never really compartmentalised ime.

― MaresNest, Monday, July 8, 2013 2:51 AM (1 hour ago)

i always compartmentalized it as grunge vs. "grunge". the former = first wave sub-pop stuff, melvins, u-men, contemporaneous outliers like halo of flies. fucked up heavy punk with on foot in 70s rawk. with, like, later black flag and the butthole surfers circa locust abo tech as proto-grunge.

"grunge" was pearl jam, mad season and aic, bullshit merchandising wearing similar clothes. (this was the "corporate rock still sucks" era, after all...)

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/931209_10152268850937137_1885912479_n.jpg

Music on Vinyl records have been releasing a few classic grunge albums on 180g Vinyl this last month,

I picked up STPs purple, as I've been searching ebay for a decent copy for a while.

Made me wonder if this was selling nostalgia to the thirtysomethings? A mirror of the the sell vinyl to buy it on CD nostagia of the 80s.

Or is there a market for classic grunge releases amongst a newer generation, in the same way there was a market for the Doors when I was a teenager.

or both?

XP - I reckon so, some of my older friends young kids seem to be arriving at Pearl Jam & Nirvana as they might Pink Floyd, The Doors, Hendrix

It feels weird seeing kids wearing Nirvana shirts when they weren't even born when they were around. I guess we know how boomers felt in the 80s and 90s.

is there a market for classic grunge releases amongst a newer generation, in the same way there was a market for the Doors when I was a teenager.

This is my experience.

Doors Alice in Chains fans aren't made, they're born!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xillqqt0Y0

I kind of think it's more about parents not letting go of the music they liked 20 years ago these days, rather than kids discovering it off their own backs. My 18yo went to see Mudhoney the other month with her mother, but has no interest in anything I tell her about that I think she'd like.

So she wont be going to see terminal cheesecake with you then?

No, "that's just noise". I think she might go for a Silverfish reunion though.

Woah I thought you were joking but Terminal Cheesecake are playing some festival in August! Fingers crossed for Loop/Terminal Cheesecake gig in London next year then...

Did the UK have any worthwhile contribution to the whole Grunge era? There must be somebody right, but I'm racking my brains and coming up with nothing.

― MaresNest, Monday, July 8, 2013 2:34 AM (5 hours ago)

I saw Swervedriver open for Soundgarden in 1992.

Didn't Swervedriver have a kind of shoegazerist quality to them? The story was that shoegaze was killed off by grunge, but now that I'm thinking about it, there was probably a notable bit of traffic between these scenes.

If anyone bridged the divide between the two, it was Swervedriver.

or Eric's Trip

Shoegaze derailed by BritPop maybe more accurate?

Smashing Pumpkins (if you wanna count them as grunge) also took some cues from shoegaze on the other side.

Neil Halstead: “When Nirvana came along and grunge came over, it kind of kicked shoegaze out of the water. Oddly enough, a lot of the bands had similar roots to bands we were into.”

Smashing Pumpkins early on seemed to escape grunge labelling. They were "alternative," but not ever viewed as part of the grunge explosion.

catherine wheel's chrome might actually be my fave grunge album.

shoegaze and grunge were of the same ilk to me. They didn't sound too much the same, but both were good for being a 13-year-old practicing using a lighter all afternoon.

re: SP. Yeah, sure. They weren't from Seattle, I was quite strict about those kinds of things as a teenager ;)

chrome had the soft/loud thing. sounded cool. actually that spacemen 3 album with when tomorrow hits on it might be my fave grunge album. just for that song.

Only "grunge" I really had much interest in was Hammerbox, but Carrie's vox and the guitarist's effects (way more than just a Big Muff) made them only tangentially related anyway imo.

never could get into hammerbox. or much of anything on c/z, tbh.

I used to run a challops racket involving claiming the best grunge band was actually Stone Temple Pilots, but now I just admit that it's Soundgarden.

in seattle, punk-rooted dumbass grunge seemed to compete with a strain grown more obviously from metal, prog, funk and jazzy art rock (that intersection defining a HUGE amount of what was going on in town, musically). c/z skewed slightly toward the latter, and i camped with the former.

^^^ yeah, that'd be an interesting take sides: Sub Pop vc. C/Z. I'm not all that familiar with either catalog tbh.

"vs."

problem is that c/z never generated a breakout mainstream act, where sub pop fielded nirvana, mudhoney and soundgarden (the latter an outlier on the label's roster in that they refused to play dumb, flashed sick chops & drew on influences outside sludgy punk & hard rock).

i guess 7 year bitch were c/z's biggest band (in terms of visibility, if not sales). maybe that first built to spill album?

Skin Yard was the best band on C/Z, don't really like much else though.

Most underrated Sub Pop band of the era was Rein Sanction, who kind of sounded like a jazzier Dinosaur Jr with maybe a dash less Crazy Horse in their blood and a bit more of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Broc's Cabin still sounds incredible to me.